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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029764077 
 
HI S T E Y 
 
 or THE 
 
 II^TELLECTUAL DEYELOPMEIJ^T 
 
 or 
 
 EUROPE. 
 
 ET 
 
 JOHN WILLIAM gEAPER, M.D., LL.D., 
 
 Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University trf New York ; Author of a 
 " Treatise on Human Physiology," " Civil Policy of America," &c. 
 
 /nitrili iHtinu. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 PBANKLIN SQUAEE. 
 
 186 6. 
 
 .5 
 
 ■ % 
 
/\ 5 t,T.o t " 
 
 Entered, accordiDg to Act of Congress, in tne year one thousand eight 
 hundred and sixty-two, by 
 
 Haepbe & Beothees, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of 
 
 New York. 
 
 Shortly will be publilhed, by the same Author, 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 
 
 Three Volumes, 8vo. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 At the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of 
 Science, held at Oxford in 1860, 1 read an abstract of the physiological 
 argument contained in this work respecting the mental progress of Eu- 
 rope, reserving the historical evidence for subsequent publication. 
 
 This volume contains that evidence. It is intended as the comple- 
 tion of my work on Human Physiology, in which man was treated of 
 as an individual. In this he is considered in his social relation. 
 
 But the reader will also find, I think, that it is a history of the prog- 
 ress of ideas and opinions from a point of view heretofore almost en- 
 tirely neglected. There are two methods of dealing with philosophical 
 questions — the literary and the scientific. Many things which in a pure- 
 ly literary treatment of the subject remain in the background, sponta- 
 neously assume a more striking position when their scientific relations 
 are considered. It is the latter method that I have used. 
 
 Social advancement is as completely under the control of natural 
 law as is bodily growth. The life of an individual is a miniature of 
 the life of a nation. These propositions it is the special object of this 
 book to demonstrate. 
 
 No one, I believe, has hitherto undertaken the labor of arranging the 
 evidence offered by the intellectual history of Europe in accordance 
 with physiological principles, so as to illustrate the orderly progress of 
 civilization, or collected the facts furnished by other branches of sci- 
 ence with a view of enabling us to recognize clearly the conditions un- 
 der which that progress takes place. This philosophical deficiency I 
 have endeavored in the following pages to supply. 
 
 Seen thus through the medium of physiology, history presents a new 
 aspect to us. We gain a more just and thorough appreciation of the 
 thoughts and motives of men in successive ages of the world. 
 
 In the Preface to the second edition of my Physiology, published in 
 1858, it was mentioned that this work was at that time written. The 
 
iV ' PEEFACE. 
 
 changes that have been since made in it have been chiefly with a view 
 of condensing it. The discussion of several scientific questions, such 
 as that of the origin of species, which have recently attracted public 
 attention so strongly, has, however, remained untouched, the principles 
 offered being the same as presented in the former work in 1856. 
 New Yobk, 1861. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 Owing to the Civil War, the publication of this work has been post- 
 poned for nearly two years. I do not regret the delay. The Ameri- 
 can reader, for whom it is chiefly intended, will find on many of its 
 pages suggestions arising from the history of other people and other 
 institutions, which may be profitably considered in connection with the 
 great events now transpiring. When a nation has reached one of the 
 epochs of its life, and is preparing itself for another period of progress 
 under new conditions, it is well for every thoughtful man interested in 
 its prosperity to turn his eyes from the contentions of the present to 
 the accomplished facts of the past, and to seek for a solution of existing 
 difficulties in the record of what other people in former times have done. 
 
 New York, 1863. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 Theee large editions of this work having been exhaasted, I have 
 carefully revised this — the fourth. 
 
 For the mark of approval and encouragement thus given me, I re- 
 turn my sincere thanks. Though I felt assured that the time had come 
 when a book treating of history in the scientific method might be of- 
 fered to the consideration of the public, I was not prepared to expect 
 that my work would find so many readers both in America and Eu- 
 rope, and that so many editions, reprints, and translations of it would 
 be called for. 
 
 To those of my literary friends who have reviewed it, both favorably 
 and otherwise, I am greatly indebted : to the former for the generosity 
 of their criticisms, to the latter for the valuable suggestions they have 
 made. It was not to be supposed that a work of such wide scope, deal- 
 ing with so many contested questions of profound interest, could be 
 writtei^in a manner to come up to the ideal of every reader. The great 
 success that has rewarded this attempt has altogether exceeded my most 
 sanguine anticipations. 
 
 From that success I hope that those who have been led to consider 
 historical questions in the manner here presented will take encourage- 
 ment. There can now be no doubt that the public approval is given to 
 that method. 
 
 It will be seen, from a comparison of this edition with the preceding 
 ones, that the Publishers have made considerable improvements, so far 
 as its typographical appearance is concerned. With these additional 
 recommendations, I ask for it continued favor. 
 
 New Tokk, 1865. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON THE GOVERNMENT OP NATUEE BY LAW. 
 
 2^1! Sttbject of this Work proposed. — Its Diffictthy. 
 
 Gradual Acquisition of the Idea of Natural Qovernment by Law. — It is eventually sustained by 
 Astronomical, Meteorological, and Physiological Discoveries. — Illustrations from Kepler's 
 Laws, the Trade-winds, Migrations of Birds, Balancing of Vegetable and Animal Life, Va- 
 riation of Species and their Permanence. 
 
 Indicidual Man is an Emblem of Communities, Nations, and Universal Humanity. — TTiey exhibit 
 Epochs of Life like his, and like him are under the Control of Physical Conditions, and there- 
 fore of Law. 
 
 Plan of this Work. — The intellectual History of Greece. — Its Five characteristic Ages. — Euro- 
 pean intellectual History. 
 
 Grandeur of the Doctrine that the World is governed by Law Fage 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 OF eukope: its iopogeapht and ethnology. 
 
 ITS PEIMITITE MODEB OF THOUGHT, AMD THEIB PR0QKES3IVE VAEUTIOHB, MAMTFESTED IN THE GREEK AGE OP 
 
 CEEDUUTY. 
 
 Description of Europe : its Topography, Meteorology, and secular geological Movements. — 
 Their Effect <m its Inhabitants. 
 
 Its Ethnology determined through its Vocabularies; it was peopled from Asia. 
 
 Comparative Theology of Greece; the Stage of Sorcery, the Anthropocentric Stage. — Becomes 
 connected with false Geography and Astronomy. — Heaven, the Earth, the Under World. — Or- 
 igin, continuous Variation and Progress of Greek Theology. — It issues in Ionic Philosophy. 
 
 Decline of Greek Tlieology, occasioned by the Advance of Geography and philosophical Criticism. -- 
 — Secession of Poets, Philosophers, Historians. — Abortive public Attempts to sustain it. — Du- 
 ration of its Decline. — Its Fall 17 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 DIGRESSION ON HINDU THEOLOGY AND EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Comparative Theology of India ; its Phase of Sorcery ; its Anthropocentric Phase. 
 
 Vedaism the Contemplation of Matter, or Adoration of Nature, set forth in the Vedas and 
 Institutes of Menu. — The Universe is God. — Transmutation of the World. — Doctrine of 
 Emanation. — Transmigration. — Absorption. — Penitential Sei-vices. — The Happiness of abso- 
 lute Quietude. 
 
 Buddhism the 'Contemplation of Force. — The supreme impersonal Power. — Nature of the 
 World — of Man. — The Passage of every thing to Nonentity. — Development of Buddhism into 
 a vast monastic System marked by intense Selfishness. — Its practical Godlessness. 
 
 Egypt a mysteriom Country to the old Europeans. — Its History, great public Works, and for- 
 eign Relations — its Fall. — Antiquity of its Civilization and Art. — Its Philosophy, hieroglyphic 
 literature, and peculiar Agriculture. 
 
 Rise of Civilization in rainless Countries. — Geography, Geology, and Topography of Egypt. — 
 The Inundations of the Nile lead to Astronomy. 
 
 Comparative Theology of Egypt. — Animal Worship, Star Worship. — Impersonation of Divine 
 Attributes — Pantheism. — The Trinities of Egypt. — Incarnation. — Redemption. — Future Judg- 
 ment. — Trialofthe Dead. — Rituals and Ceremonies 41 
 
yl CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GREEK AGE OF ISQtTIET. 
 
 EIBE AiTO DECLINE OP PHYSIOAL SPBCUT-ATION. 
 
 Ionian Philosophy, commencing from Egyptian Ideas, identifies in Water, or Air, or Fire, the 
 First Principle.— Emerging from the Stage of Sorcery, it founds Psychology, Biology, Cos- 
 mogony, Astronomy, and ends in doubting whether there is any Criterion of Truth. 
 
 Italian Philosopht depends on Numbers and Harmonies. — It reproduces the Egyptian and 
 Hindu Doctrine of Transmigration. 
 
 Eleatic Philosophy joresenis a great Advance, indicating a rapid Approach to Oriental Ideas. 
 — It assumes a Pantheistic Aspect. 
 
 Rise of Philosophy in Eueopban Greece. — Relations .and Infiuence of the Mediterranean 
 Commercial and Colonial System. — Athens attains to commercial Supremacy. — Her vast 
 Progress in Intelligence and Art. — Her Demoralization. — She becomes the Intellectual Centre 
 of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Commencement of the Athenian higher Analysis. — It is conducted by the Sophists, who reject 
 Philosophy, Religion, and even Morality, and end in Atheism. 
 
 Political Dangers of the higher Analysis. — Illustration from the Middle Ages Page 69 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GREEK AGE OF FAITH. 
 
 EIBE AND DECLtNE OF ETHIOAI. PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 Socrates rejects Physical and Mathematical Speculations, and asserts the Importance of Virtue 
 and Morality, thereby inaugurating an Age of Faith. — His Life and Death, — Tlie Scliools 
 originating from his Movement teach the Pursuit of Pleasure and Gratification of Self. 
 
 "BijXTO founds the Academy. — His three primal Principles. — The Existence of a personal God. 
 — Nature of the World and the Soul. — The ideal Theory, Generals or Types. — Reminiscence. 
 — Transmigration. — Plato's political Institutions. — His Republic. — His Proofs of the Im- 
 mortality of the Soul. — Criticism on his Doctrines. 
 
 Rise op the Skeptics, who conduct the higher Analysis of Ethical Philosophy. — Pyrrho de- 
 monstrates the Uncertainty of Knowledge. — Inevitable Passage into tranquil Indifference, 
 Quietude, and Irreligion, as recommended by Epicurus. — Decomposition of the Socraiic and 
 Platonic Systems in the later Academies. — Their Errors and Duplicities. — End of the Greek 
 Age of Faith 106 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 the greek age op reason. 
 
 ETSE OP BCIENCE. 
 
 The MACEDomAN Campaign.— ZljsasfroMs in its political Effects to Greece, hut ushering in 
 the Age of Reason. 
 
 Aristotle founds the Inductive Philosophy.— His Method the Inverse of that of Plato.— Its 
 great Power.— In Ms own hands it fails for want of Knowledge, but is carried out by the 
 Alexandrians. 
 
 Zeno.— Ms Philosophical Aim is the Cultivation of Virtue and Knowledge.— He is in the Eth- 
 . ical Branch the Counterpart of Aristotle in the Physical. 
 
 Foundation op the Museum op Alexandria.— 7%e great I^ibraries, Observatories, Botani. 
 cal Gardens, Menageries, Dissecting Houses.— Its Effect on the rapid Development of exact 
 Knowledge. — Influence of Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Apollonius, Ptolemy, Hip- 
 parchus, on Geometry, Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, Chronology, Geography. 
 '^'-'■-; of the Greek Age of Reason 127 
 
CONTENTS. VU 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE GREEK AGE OF INTELLECTUAI, DECBBPITUDE. 
 THE DEATH OP OKBEK pmLOSOPUT. 
 
 Decline of Greek Philosophy : it becomes Retrospective, and in Philo the Jew and Apollomm of 
 Tyana leans on Inspiration, Mysticism, Miracles. 
 
 Neo-Platonism founded by Ammonius Saccas, followed by Plotinus, Porphyry, lamblicus, 
 Proclus. — The Alexandrian Trinity. — Ecstasy. — Alliance with Magic, Necromancy. 
 
 Tlie Emperor Justinian closes the philosophical Schools. 
 
 Summary of Greek Philosophy. — Its four Problems : 1. Originofthe World; 2. Nature of the 
 Soul; 3. Existence of God; i. Criterion of Truth. — Solution of these Problems in the Age of 
 Inquiry — in that of Faith — in that of Reason — in that of Decrepitude. 
 
 Determination of the Law of Variation of Greek Opinion. — The Development of National In- 
 tellect is the same as that of Individual, 
 
 Determination of the final Conclusions of Greek Philosophy as to God, the World, the Soul, the 
 Criterion of Truth. — Illustrations and Criticisms on eachof these Pmnts Page 153 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 DIGEESSION ON THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES OF ROME. 
 PBEPARATION FOtt lUEBTJMIHG THE EXAMINATION OP THE ENTELLEaTTIAL PEOGKESS OP EUROPE. 
 
 Religious Ideas of the primitive Europeans. — The Form of their Variations is determined by the 
 Influence of Rome. — Necessity of Roman History in these Investigations. 
 
 Rise and Development of Roman Power, its successive Phases, territorial Acquisitions. — Becomes 
 Supreme in the Mediterranean. — Consequent Demoralization of Italy. — Irresistible Concentra- 
 tion of Power. — Development of Imperialism. — Eventual Extinction of the true Roman Race. 
 
 Effect on the intellectual, religious, and social Condition of the Mediterranean Countries. — Pro- 
 duces homogeneous Thought. — Irrg>erialism prepares the Way for Monotheism. — Momentous 
 Transition of the Roman World in its religious Ideas. 
 
 Opinions of the Raman Philosophers. — Coalescence of the new and old Ideas. — Seizure of Power 
 by the Illiterate, and consequent Debasement of Christianity in Rome 177 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE EnEOPEAH AGE OF INQUIRY. 
 THE PBOGKESSIVE VABIATION OP OPINIONS CLOSED BY THE INSTITUTION OF COtlNOILB AND THE CONOENTEATION 
 
 OF POWEB IN A PONTIFF. 
 EI8E, EABLY VAEIATI0N8, CONFLICTS, AND PINAL ESTABLISHMENT OP CHKISTIANITT. 
 
 Rise of Christianity. — Distinguished from ecclesiastical Organization. — It is demanded by the 
 deplorable Condition of the Empire. -^ Its brief Conflict with Paganism. — Character of its 
 first Organization. — Variations of Thought and Rise of Sects: their essential Difference in 
 the East and West. — The three primitive Forms of Christianity : the Judaic Form, its End — 
 the Gnostic Form, its End — the African Form, continues. 
 
 Spread of Christianity from Syria. — Its Antagonism to Imperialism ; their Conflicts. — Position 
 of Affairs under Dioclesian. — The Policy of Constantine. — He avails himself of the Christian 
 Party, and through it attains supreme Power. — His personal Relations to it. 
 
 The Trinitarian Controversy. — Story of Arius. — The Council of Nicea. 
 
 The Progress of the Bishop of Rome to Supremacy. — The Roman Church; its primitive subor- 
 dinate Position. — Causes of its increasing Wealth, Influence, and Corruptions. — Stages of its 
 Advancement through the Pelagian, Nestorian, and Eutychian Disputes. — Rivalry of the Bish- 
 ops of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Rome. 
 
 Necessity of a Pontiff in the West and ecclesiastical Councils in the East. — Nature of those 
 Councils and of pontifical Power. 
 
 The Period closes at the Capture and Sack of Rome by Alaric. — Defense of that Event by St. 
 Augustine. — Criticism on his Writings. 
 
 Character of the Progress of Thought through this Period. — Destiny of the three great Bish- 
 ops 197 
 
Ylii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER X, 
 
 THEEUEOFEAN AGE OF FAITH. 
 
 AGE OF FAITH IN TIIE EAST. 
 
 Consolidation of the Byzantine System, or the Union of Church, and State. — The consequent Pa. 
 
 ganization of Religion and Persecution ofPUhsophy. 
 Political Necessity for the Enforcement of Patristidsm, or Science of the Fathers. — Its peculiar 
 
 Doctrines. 
 Obliteration of the Vestiges of Greek Knowledge hy Patristidsm. — Uie Libraries and Serapion 
 
 of Alexandria. — Destruction of the latter by Theodosius. — Death ofHypatia. — Extinction of 
 
 Learning in the East by Cyril, his Associates and Successors Page 228 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PKEMATHEE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST. 
 THE TIIEEE ATTACKS, VANDAL, PEEBIAN, ABAB. 
 
 The Vandal Attack leads to the Loss of Africa. — Recovery of that Province by Justinian 
 after great Calamities. 
 
 The Peksian Attack leads to the Loss of Syria and Fall of Jerusalem. — The true Cross car- 
 ried away as a Trophy, — Moral Impression of these Attacks. 
 
 The Arab Attack. — Birth, Mission, and Doctrines of Mohammed. — Rapid Spread of his 
 Faith in Asia and Africa. — Fall of Jerusalem. — Dreadful Losses of Christianity to Moham- 
 medanism. — The Arabs become a kamed Nation. 
 
 Review of the Koran. — Reflections on thi Loss of Asia and Africa by Christendom 241 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 the age of faith in the ttest. 
 
 The Age of Faith in the West is marked by Paganism. — The Arabian military Attacks pro- 
 duce the Isolation and permit the Independence of the Bishop of Rome. 
 
 Gkegoet the Great organizes the Ideas of his Age, materializes Faith, allies it with Art, 
 rejects Science, and creates the Italian Form of Religion. 
 
 An Alliance of the Papacy with France diffuses that Form. — Political History of the Agreement 
 and Conspiracy of the Prankish Kings and the Pope. — Tlie resulting Consolidation of the 
 new Dynasty in France, and Diffusion of Roman Ideas. — Conversion of Europe. 
 
 The Vahe of the Italian Form of Religion determined from the papal Biography 258 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 digression on the passage of the ARABIANS TO THEIR AGE OF REASON. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF MEDICAL IDEAS THEOUGH THE NESTOEIAJiS AND JEWa 
 
 77(6 intellectual Development of the Arabians is guided by the Nestorians and the Jews, and is 
 in the medical Direction. — 27ie Basis of this Alliance is theological. 
 
 Antagonism of the Byzantine System to scientific Medicine. — Suppression of the Asclepions. 
 
 Their Replacement by Miracle-aire. — The resulting Superstition and Ignorance. 
 
 Affiliation of the Arabians with the Nestorians and Jews. 
 
 1st. The Nestorians, their Persecutions, and the Diffusion of their sectarian Ideas. Tlmy in- 
 herit the old Greek Medicine. 
 
 Sub-digression on Greek Medidne. — The Asclepions. — Philosophical Importance ofSippocrales, 
 who separates Medicine from Religion. — The School of Cnidos.—Its Suppression by Coti- 
 stantine. 
 
 Sub-digression on Egyptian Medidne. — It is founded on Anatomy and Physiology.— Dissec- 
 tions and Vivisections. — The great Alexandrian Physicians^ 
 
 2d. The Jewish Physicians.— Thar Emandpation from Superstition.— They found Colleges 
 and promote Science and Letters. 
 
 The contemporary Tendency to Magic, Necromancy, the Black Art.— The Philosopher's Stone, 
 Elixir of Life, etc. 
 
 The Arabs originate sdenttfic Chemistry. — Discover the strong Adds, Phosphorus, etc.— 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 TTieir geological Ideas. — ^ppl>/ Chemistry to the Practice of Medicine. — Apjiroach of the 
 Conflict between ilie Saracenic material and the European supernatural System Page 284 
 
 CHAPTEB XIV. 
 
 THE AGE or FAITH IN IHE WEST — (^Continued). ' 
 
 IMAOE-WOBBniP AK1> TKB MONICS. 
 
 Origin o/'Image-worship. — Inutility of Images discovered in Asia and Africa during the Sara- 
 cen Wars. — Eise of Iconoclasm. 
 
 The Emperors prohibit Image-worship. — The Monks, aided by court Females, sustain it. — Final 
 Victory of the latter. 
 
 Image-worship in the West sustained by the Popes. — Quarrel between the Emperor and the 
 Pope. — The Pope, aided'by the Monks, revolts and allies himself with the Franks. 
 
 The Monks. — History of the Rise and Development ofMonasticism. — Hermits and Coenobites. 
 — Spread of Monastidsm from Egypt over Europe. — Monk Miracles and Legends. — Hu- 
 manizaiion of the monastic Establishments. — They materialize Religion, and impress their 
 Ideas on Europe 306 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. THE THREE ATTACKS : NOKTHEKN OK MORAL ; WEST- 
 ERN OR INTELLECTUAL ; EASTERN OR MILITART. 
 THE NOETHEEH OE MOEAL ATTACK OH THE ITALIAN BT8TEM, AND ITS TEMPOEABT EEPULBB. 
 
 Geographical Boundaries of Italian Christianity. — Attacks upon it. 
 
 The Northern or moral Attack.— -The Emperor of Germany insists on a reformation in the Pa- 
 pacy. — Gerbert, the representative of these Ideas, is made Pope. — TTiey are bothpoisoned by 
 the Italians. 
 
 Commencement of the intellectual Rejection of the Italian System. — Originates in the Arabian doc- 
 trine of the supremacy of Reason over Authority. — The question of Transubstantiation. — Rise 
 and development of Scholasticism. — Mutiny among the Monks. 
 
 Gregory VII. spontaneously accepts and enforces a Reform in the Cliurch. — Overcomes the 
 Emperor of Germany, — Is on the paint of establishing a European Theoa'acy. — The Popes 
 seize the military and monetary Resources of Europe ihrcmgh the Crusades 326 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST — (^Continued). 
 
 TIIB WESTEEN OB IMTBLLEOTDAL ATTACK ON TOE ITALIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 The intellectual Condition of Christendom contrasted with that of Arabian Spain. 
 
 Diffusion of Arabian intellectual Influences through France and Sicily. — Example of Saracen 
 
 Science in Alhazen, and of Philosophy in Algazzdli. — Innocent III. prepares to combat these 
 
 Influences. — Results to Western Europe of the Sack of Constantinople by the Catholics. 
 The spread of Mohammedan light Literature is followed by Heresy. — The crushing of Heresy in 
 
 the South of France by armed Force, the Inquisition, mendicant Orders, auricular Confession, 
 
 and Casuistry, 
 The rising Sentiment is embodied in Frederick II. in Sicily. — His Conflict with and Overthrow 
 
 by the Pope, — Spread of Mutiny among the mendicant Orders < 345 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST — (^Continued). 
 
 OTEETHBOW or THE ITALIAN SYSTEM BY THE COMBINED INTELLECTUAL AND MOEAL ATTACK. 
 
 Progress oflrreligion among the mendicant Orders. — Publication of heretical Books. — The Ev- 
 erlasting Gospel and the Comment on the Apocalypse, 
 
 Conflict between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII. — Outrage upon and death of the- Pope. 
 
 The French King removes the Papacy from Rome to Avignon. — Post-mortem Trial of the Pope 
 for Atheism and Immorality. — Causes and Consequences of the Atheism of the Pope. 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 The Templars fall into Iiifidelity.— Their Trial, Conviction, and Pmishment. 
 
 Immoralities of the Papal Court at Avignon. — Its return to Rmne. — Causes of the great Schism. 
 —Disorganization of the Italian System.— Decomposition of the Papacy.— Three Popes. 
 
 The Council of Constance attempts to convert the papal Autocracy into a constitutional Monarchy. 
 —It murders John Huss and Jerome of Prague.— Pontificate of Nicolas V.—End of the in- 
 tellectual influence of the Italian System Page 382 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE AGE OP FAITH IN THE WEST — (^Concluded). 
 
 EFFECT OF THE EA8TEEH OE MILITAEY ATTACK. — GENEEAL EEVIEW OP THE AGE Off FAITH. 
 
 The Fall of Constantinople. — Its momentary Effect on the Italian System. , 
 
 General Eetiew or the iNTELLECinAL Condition in the Age of Paith. — Supemat9- 
 rallsm and its Logic spread all over Europe. — It is destroyed by the Jews and Arabians. — 
 lis total Extinction. 
 
 The Jewish Physicians. — Their Acquirements and Influence, — Their Collision with the Imposture- 
 medicine of Europe. — Their Effect on the higher Classes. — Opposition to them. 
 
 Two Impulses, the Intellectual and Moral, operating against the Mediceval state of Things. — 
 Downfall of the Italian System through the intellectual Impulse from the West and the moral 
 from the North. — Acticn of the former through Astronomy, — Origin of the moral Impulse. — 
 Their conjoint irresistible Effect. — Discovery of the state of Affairs in Italy. — The Writings 
 of Machiavelli. — What the Church had actually done. 
 
 Entire Movement of the Italian System determined Jrom a consideration of the four Revolts 
 against it 402 
 
 CHAPTER XIX.' 
 approach op the age op reason m Europe. 
 
 IT IS PRECEDED BY MAEITIMB DISCOVEEY, 
 
 Consideration of the definite Epochs of Social Life. 
 
 Experimental Philosophy emerging in the Age of Faith. 
 
 The Age of Reason ushered in by Maritime Discovery and the rise of European Ciitidsm. 
 
 Maritime Discovery. — The three great Voyages. 
 
 Columbus discovers America. — ^De Gama doubles the Cape and reaches India. — ^Magellan 
 circumnavigates the Earth. — The material and intellectual Results of each of these Voyages, 
 
 Digression on the Social Condition of AMBRicA.,—In isolated human Societies the process 
 of Thought and of Civilization is always the same. — Man passes through a determinate suc- 
 cession of Ideas and imbodies themin determinate Institutions. — The state of Mexico and Peru 
 proves the influence of Law in the development of Man 436 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 approach of the age op reason in EUROPE. 
 IT IS PKECEDED BY THE EI8E OF OEITIOISM. 
 
 Restoration of Greek Literature and Philosophy in Italy.— Development of Modern Languages 
 and Rise of Criticism. — Imminent Danger to Latin Ideas. 
 
 Invention of Printing.— It revolutionizes the Communication of Knowledge, especially acts on 
 Public Worship, and renders the Pulpit secondary. 
 
 The Reformation.— rAeorj^ of Supererogation and Use of Indulgences.— The Right of Indi- 
 vidual Judgment asserted.— Political History of the Origin, Cuhmnation, and Chech of the 
 Reformation.— Its Effects in Italy. 
 
 Causes^ of the Arrest of the Reformation.— Internal Causes in Protestantism.— External in the 
 Policy of Rome.— The Counter-Reformation.— Inquiiition.— Jesuits.— Secession of the great 
 Gntics.— Culmination of the Reformation in America.— Emergence of Individual Liberty of 
 Thought ^gg 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 BIGBESSION ON THE CONDITION OP ENGLAND AT THE END OF THE AGE OE PAITH. 
 BEBULT8 PRODUOnD BY THE AGE OF FAITH. 
 
 Condition of England at the Suppression of the Monasteries. 
 
 Condition of England at the Close of the seventeenth Century. — Locomotion, Literature, Libra- 
 ries. — Social and private Life of the Tjdty and Clergy. — Brutality in the Administration of 
 
 Law. Projiigacy of Literature. — The Theatre, its three Phases. — Miracle, Moral, and Real 
 
 Plays. 
 
 Estimate of the Advance made in the Age of Faith. — Comparison with that already made in the 
 Age of Reason Page 494 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE EUROPEAN AGE OP KEASON. 
 
 REJEOTION OF AUTHORITY AND TEADITION, AND ADOPTION OF SCIENTIFIC TEDTH DISCOVERY OF THE TEUE 
 
 POSITION OF TDE EARTH IN THE UNIVERSE, 
 
 Ecclesiastical Attempt to enforce the Geooenteic Docikine that the Earth is the Centre of 
 the Universe, and the most important Body in it. 
 
 Tlie Heliooenteio Dooieine that the Sun is' the Centre of the Solar System, and the Earth a 
 small Planet, comes gradually into Prominence. 
 
 Struggle between the Ecclesiastical and Astronomical Parties.— Activity of the Inquisition. — 
 Burning of Bruno. — Imprisonment o/" Galileo. 
 
 Invention op the Telescope. — Complete Overthrow of the Ecclesiastical Idea. — Rise of 
 Physical Astronomy. — Newton. — Rapid and resistless Development of all Branches of Nat- 
 ural Philosophy. 
 
 Final Establishment of the Doctrine that the Universe is under the Dominion of mathematical, 
 and, therefore, necessary Laws. 
 
 Progress of Milhfrom Anthropocentric Ideas to the Discovery of his true Position and Insignif- 
 icance in the Universe 511 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 THE EUEOPEAN AGE OP REASON — (Continued). 
 
 HISTORY OF THE EARTH HER SUCCESSIVE CHANGES EN THE COURSE OF TIME. 
 
 Oriental and Occidental Doctrines respecting the Earth in Time. — Gradual Weakening of the 
 
 Latter by astronomical Facts, and the Rise of Scientific Geology. 
 Impersonal Manner in which the Problem was eventually solved, chiefly through Facts connected 
 
 with Heat. 
 Proofs of limitless Duration from inorganic Facts. — Igneous and Aqueous Rocks. 
 Proofs of the same from organic Facts. — Successive Creations and Extinctions of living Forms, 
 
 and their eontemporaneous Distribution. 
 Evidences of a slowly declining Temperature, and, therefore, of a long Time. — The Process of 
 
 Events by Catastrophe and by Law. — Analogy of Individual and Race Development. — ifioth 
 
 are determined by unchangeable Law. 
 Conclusion that the Plan of the Universe indicates a Multiplicity of Worlds in infinite Space, 
 
 and a Succession of Worlds in infinite Time 542 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 THE EUROPEAN AGE OP REASON — (Continued). 
 
 THE HATUEB AND EEI.ATIONS OF MAN. 
 
 Position of Man according to the Heliocentric and Geocentric Theories. 
 
 Op Animal Life. — The transitory Nature of living Forms. — Relations of Plants and Ani- 
 mals. — Animals are Aggregates of Matter expending Force originally derived from the Sun. 
 
 The Organic Series. — Man a Member of it. — His Position determined by Anatomical and 
 Physiological Investigation of his Nervous System, — lis triple Form : Automatic, Instinctive, 
 Intellectual. 
 
XU CONTENTS. 
 
 The same progressive Development is seen in individual Man, in the entire animal Series, and in 
 the Life of the Globe. — They are all under the Control of an eternal, universal, irresistible 
 Law. 
 
 The Aim of Nature is intellectual Development, and human Institutions must conform thereto. 
 
 Summary of the Investigation of the Position of Man. — Production of Inorganic and Organic 
 Forms by the Sun. — Nature of Animals and their Series. — Analogies and Differences between 
 them and Man. — The Soul. — The World Page 674 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 THE EUHOPEAN AGE OF HEASON — (Continued). 
 
 TIIB UNION OP eoIENCB AND INDCSTBY. 
 
 European Progress in the Acquisition of exact Knowledge. — Its Resemblance to that of Greece. 
 
 Discoveries respecting the Air. — Its mechanical and chemical Properties. — Its Relation to Ani- 
 mals and Plants. — TTie Winds. — Meteorology. — Sounds. — Acoustic Phenomena. 
 
 Discoveries respecting the Ocean. — Physical and chemical Phefnomena. — Tides and Currents. — 
 Clouds. — Decffmpositian of Water. 
 
 Discoveries respecting other material Substances. — Progress of Chemistry. 
 
 Discoveries respecting Electricity, Magnetism, Light, Heat. 
 
 Mechanical Philosophy and Inventions. — Physical Instruments. — Tlie Result illustrated by the 
 Cotton Manufacture — Steam-engine — Bleaching— Canals — Railways. — Improvements in the 
 Construction of Machinery. — Social Changes produced.— Its Effect on intellectual Activity. 
 
 IVie scientific Contributions of various Nations, and especially of Italy 595 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. — THE FUTUEE OF ETJEOPE. 
 
 Summary of the Argument presented in this Book respecting the mental Progress of Europe. 
 
 Intellectual Development is the Object of individual life. — It is also the Result of social Prog- 
 ress. 
 
 Nations arriving at Maturity instinctively attempt their own intellectual Organization. — Example 
 of the Manner in which this has been done in China. — Its Imperfection. — What it has aceom- 
 plifihed. 
 
 The Organization of public Intellect is the End to which European Civilization is tending.. 615 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 
 OF EUROPE. , 
 
 CHAPTER I. ' 
 
 ON THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE BY LAW. 
 
 Tke SiAject of this Wori: proposed. — Its Diffimlty. 
 
 Gradual Acjuisition of the Idea of Natural Government by Laia. — It is eventually sustained by 
 Astronomical, Meteorological, and Physiological Discoveries. — Illustrations from Kepler's 
 Laws, the Trade-winds, Migrations of Birds, Balancing of Vegetable and Animal Life, Va- 
 riation of Species and their Permanence. 
 
 Individual Man is an Emblem of Communities, Nations, and Universal Humanity. — They exhibit 
 Epochs of Life like his, and like him are under ihe Control of Physical Conditions, and there- 
 fore of Law. 
 
 Plan of this Work. — The intellectual History of Greece. — Its Five characteristic Ages. — Euro- 
 pean intellectual Historif. 
 
 Grandeur of the Doctrine that ihe World is governed by Law. 
 
 I INTEND, in this work, to consider in what manner the advancement 
 of Europe in civilization has taken place, to ascertain how far ,j^^ m-b^enA 
 its progress has been fortuitous, and how far determined by p^po^^J- 
 primordial law. 
 
 Does the procession of nations in time, like the erratic phantasm of 
 a dream, go forward without reason or order? or, is there a predeterm- 
 ined, a solemn march, in which all must join, ever moving, ever resist- 
 lessly advancing, encountering and enduring an inevitable succession of 
 events ? 
 
 In a philosophical examination of the intellectual and political history 
 of nations, an answer to these questions'is to be found. But how diffi- 
 cult it is to master the mass of facts necessary to be collected, to handle 
 so great an accumulation, to arrange it in the clearest point of view ; 
 how difficult it is to select correctly the representative men, ^g affieuity 
 to produce them in the proper scenes, and to conduct sue- »»* erandeur. 
 cessfully so grand and complicated a drama as that of European life ! 
 Though in one sense the subject offers itself as a scientific problem, and 
 in that manner alone I have to deal with it, in another it swells into a 
 noble epic — ^the life of humanity its warfare and repose, its object and 
 its end. 
 
 Man is the archetype of society. Individual development is the 
 model of social progress. 
 
 A 
 
2 PRIMITIVE OPINIONS OF MAN, 
 
 Some have asserted that human affairs are altogether determined hy 
 the voluntary action of men, some, that the Providence of God directs 
 us in every step, some, that all events are fixed by Destiny. It is for 
 us to ascertain how far each 'of these affirmations is true. 
 
 The life, of individual man is of a mixed nature. In part he submits 
 Individual life of to the free-will , impulscs of himself and others, in part he 
 a mixed kind, jg Tm(jer the inexorable dominion, of law. He insensibly 
 changes his estimate of the relative power' of each of these influences as 
 he passes through successive stages. In the confidence of youth he 
 imagines that very much is under his control, in the disappointment of 
 old age very little. As time wears on, and the delusions of early imag- 
 ination vanish away, he learns to correct his sanguine views, and pre- 
 scribes a narrower boundary for the things he expects to obtain. The 
 realities of life undeceive him at last, and there steals over the evening 
 of his days an* unwelcome conviction of the vanity of human hopes. 
 The things he has secured are not the things he expected. He sees 
 that a Supreme Power has been using him for unkno^wn ends, that he 
 was brought into the^ world without his own knowledge, and is depart- 
 ing from it against his own will. 
 
 Whoever has made the physical and intellectual history of individual 
 man his study, will be prepared to admit in what a surprising manner 
 It foreshadows i* forcshadows social history. The equilibrium and move- 
 Bociaiufe. jjjgjj^ Qf humanity are altogether physiological phenomena. 
 Yet not without hesitation may such an opinion be frankly avowed, 
 since it is offensive to the pride, and to many of the prejudices and in- 
 terests of our age. An author who has been disposed to devote many 
 years to the labor of illustrating this topic, has need of the earnest sup- 
 port of all who prize the truth ; and, considering the extent and pro- 
 fundity of his subject, his work, at the best, must be very imperfect, re- 
 quiring all the forbearance, and even the generosity of criticism. 
 
 In the intellectual infancy of a savage state, Man transfers to Nature 
 First opinions his couccptions of himsclf, and, considering that every thing 
 ofBavageiife. ]^g ^^gg -g determined by his own pleasure, regairds air pass- 
 ing events as depending on the arbitrary volition of a superior but in- 
 visible power. He gives to the world a constitution like his own. The 
 tendency is necessarily to superstition. "Whatever is strange, or power- 
 ful, or vast, impresses his imagination with dread. Such objects are 
 only the outward manifestations of an indwelhng spirit, and therefoire 
 worthy of his veneration. 
 
 ^ After Eeason, aided by Experience, has led him io^^ from these delu- 
 sions as respects surrounding things, he still clings to his originalideas 
 as respects objects far removed. In the distance and irresistible mo- 
 tions of the stars he finds arguments for the supernatural, and gives to 
 
THE IDEA OF GOVERNMENT BY LAW. 3 
 
 each of those shining bodies an abiding and controlling genius. The 
 mental phase through which he is passing permits him to believe in the 
 exercise of planetary influences on himself. 
 
 But as reason led him forth from fetichism, so in due time it again 
 leads him forth from star-wOrship. Perhaps not without Fetichism displaced 
 regret does he abandon the mythological forms he has ere- *'' sfr-worahip. 
 ated ; for, long after he has ascertained that the planets are nothing 
 more than shining points, without any perceptible influence on him, he 
 still venerates the genii once supposed to vivify them, perhaps even he 
 exalts them into immortal gods. 
 
 Philosophically speaking, he is exchanging by ascending degrees his 
 primitive doctrine of arbitrary volition for the doctrine of law. As the 
 fall of a stone, the flowing of a river, the movement of a shadow, the 
 rustling of a leaf, have been traced to physical causes, to like causes at 
 last are traced the revolutions of the stars. In events and scenes con- 
 tinually increasing in greatness and grandeur, he is detecting the do- 
 minion of law. The goblins, and genii, and gods who sue- The idea of gov- 
 aessively extorted his fear and veneration, who determined «''™™' ^y ^'^■ 
 events by their fitful passions or whims, are at last displaced by the no- 
 ble conception of one Almighty Being, who rules the universe according 
 to reason, and therefore according to law. 
 
 In this manner the doctrine of government by law is extended, until 
 at last it embraces all natural events. It was thus that, hardly two cen- 
 turies ago, that doctrine gathered immense force from the discovery of 
 Newton that Kepler's laws, under which the movements of jt^ application to 
 the planetary bodies are executed, issue as a mathematical ^^^ ^°"^'' '^°'*'°' 
 necessity from a very simple material condition, and that the complica- 
 ted motions of the solar system can not be other than what they are. 
 Pew of those who read in the beautiful geometry of the Principia the 
 demonstration of this fact, saw the imposing philosophical consequences 
 which must inevitably follow this scientific discovery. And now the 
 investigation of the aspect of the skies in past ages, and all predictions 
 of its future, rest essentially upon the principle that no arbitrary voli- 
 tion ever intervenes, the gigantic mechanism moving impassively in vir-' 
 tue of a mathematical law. 
 
 . And so upon the earth, the more perfectly we understand the causes 
 of present events, the more plainly are they seen to be the consequences 
 of physical conditions, and therefore the results of law. To allude to 
 one example out of many that might be considered, the winds, Andto tem* 
 how proverbially inconstant, who can tell whence they come '""' *''™"- 
 or whither they go ! If any thing bears the fitful character of arbi- 
 trary volition, surely it is these. But we deceive ourselves in imag- 
 ining that atmospheric events are fortuitous. Where shall a line be 
 drawn between that eternal trade- wind, which, originating in well-un- 
 
4 LAW IN THE INOBGANIC AND OEGANIO WOBLD. 
 
 derstood physical causes, sweeps, like the breath of 4estiny, slowly, and 
 solemnly, and everlastingly over the Pacific Ocean, and the variable 
 gusts into which it degenerates in more northerly and southerly regions 
 —gusts which seem to come without any cause, and to pass away with- 
 out leaving any trace? In what latitude is it that the domain of the 
 physical ends, and that of the supernatural begins? ^ 
 
 All mundane events are the results of the operation of law. Every 
 movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the uni- 
 verse is under government. 
 
 But if we admit that this is the case, from the mote that floats in the 
 sunbeam to multiple stars revolving round each other, are we willing to 
 carry our principles to their consequences, and recognize a like operation 
 of law among living as among lifeless things, in the organic as well as the 
 inorganic world ? "What testimony does physiqlogy offer on this point ? 
 
 Physiology, in its progress, has passed through the same phases as 
 physics. Living beings have been considered as beyond the power of 
 external influences, and, conspicuously among them, Man has been af- 
 Andtotheor- firmed to be independent of the forces that rule the world in 
 ganic world, -yy^ycii }xq liyes. Bcsidcs that immaterial principle, the soul, 
 which distinguishes him from all his animated companions, and makes 
 him a moral and responsible being, he has been feigned, like them, to 
 possess another immaterial principle, the vital agent, which, in a way of 
 its own, carries forward all the various operations in his economy. 
 
 But when it was discovered that the heart of man is constructed upon 
 the recognized rules of hydraulics, and with its great tubes is furnished 
 with common mechanical contrivances, valves ; when it was discovered 
 EspedaUytoman. that the eye has been arranged on the most refined princi- 
 ples of optics, its cornea, and humors, and lens properly converging the 
 rays to form an image — its iris, like the diaphragm of a telescope or mi- 
 croscope, shutting out stray light, and regulating the quantity. admitted; 
 when it was discovered that the ear is furnished with the means of deal- 
 ing with the three characteristics of sound — ^its tympanum for intensity, 
 its cochlea for pitch, its semicircular canals for quality ; when it was 
 seen that the air brought into the great air-passages by the descent of 
 the diaphragm, calling into play atmospheric pressure, is conveyed upon 
 physical principles into the ultimate cells of the lungs, and thence into 
 the blood, producing chemical changes throughout the system, disen- 
 gaging heat, and permitting all the functions of organic life to go on ; 
 when these facts and very many others of a like kind were brought into 
 prominence by modem physiology, it obviously became necessary to ad- 
 mit that animated beings do not constitute that exception once supposed, 
 and that organic operations are the result of physical agencies. 
 
 If thus, in the recesses of the individual economy, these natural agents 
 bear sway, must they not operate in the social economy too? 
 
DOMINION OF LAW IN SOCIAL LIFE. 5 
 
 Has the great shadeless desert nothing to do with the habits of the no- 
 made tribes who pitch their tents upon it — the fertile plain in a„ciai asweu aa 
 no connection with flocks and pastoral life — ^the mountain individual iife. 
 fastnesses with the courage that has so often defended them — the sea 
 with habits of adventure ? Indeed, do not all our expectations of the 
 stability of social institutions rest upon our belief in the stability of sur- 
 rounding physical conditions ? From the time of Bodin, who nearly 
 three hundred years ago published his work "De Eepublica," these 
 principles have been well recognized : that the laws of Nature can not 
 be subordinated to the will of Man, and that government must be adapt- 
 ed to climate. It was these things which led him to the conclusion that 
 force is best resorted to for northern nations, reason for the middle, and 
 superstition for the southern. 
 
 In the month of March the sun crosses the equator, dispensing his 
 rays more abundantly over biir northern hemisphere. Following in his 
 train, a wave of verdure expands toward the pole. The luxuriance is 
 in proportion to the local brilliancy. The animal world is Effectaofthesca- 
 also affected. Pressed forward, or solicited onward by the and plants" 
 warmth, the birds of passage commence their annual migration, keeping 
 pace with the developing vegetation beneath. As autumn comes on, 
 this orderly advance of light and life is followed by an orderly retreat, 
 and in its turn the southern hemisphere presents the same glorious phe- 
 nomenon. Once every year does the life of the earth pulsate ; now there 
 is an abounding vitality, now a desolation. But what is the cause of 
 all this ? It is only mechanical. The earth's axis of rotation is inclined 
 to the plane of her orbit of revolution round the sun. 
 
 Let that wonderful phenomenon and its explanation be a lesson to us ; 
 let it profoundly impress us with the importance of physical agents and 
 physical laws. They intervene in the life and death of man personally 
 and socially. External events become interwoven in our constitution ; 
 their periodicities create periodicities in us. Day and night are incor- 
 porated in our waking and sleeping; summer and winter compel us to 
 exhibit cycles in our life. 
 
 They who have paid attention to the subject have long ago ascer- 
 tained that the possibility of human existence on the individual existence 
 earth depends on conditions altogether of a material kind. cSuonT ^^^'"^ 
 Since it is only within a narrow range of temperature that life can be 
 maintained, it is needful that our planet should be at a definite mean 
 distance from the source of light and heat, the sun ; and that the form 
 of her orbit should be so little eccentric as to approach closely to a cir- 
 cle. If her mass were larger or less than it is, the weight of all living 
 and lifeless things on her surface would no longer be the same; but ab- 
 solute weight is one of the primary elements of organic construction. 
 A change in the time of her diurnal rotation, as affecting the length of 
 
OEIGIK, VARIATION, AND EXTINCTION OF SPECIES. 
 
 the day and night, must at once be followed by a corresponding modifi- 
 cation of the periodicities of the nervous system pf animals ; a change in 
 her orbitual translation round the sun, as determining the duration, of 
 the year, -would, in like manner, give rise to a marked effect. If the 
 year were shorter, we should live faster and die sooner. 
 
 In the present economy of our globe, natural agents are relied upon 
 Animal an4,yege- ^s the mcans of regulation and of government. , Through 
 ISI^'b^m'ateS beat, the distribution and arrangement of the vegetable 
 conditions. tribes are accomplished; through their mutual relations 
 
 with the atmospheric air, plants and animals are interbalanced, and 
 neither permitted to obtain a superiority. Considering the magnitude, 
 of this condition, and its necessity to general life, it might seem worthy 
 of incessant Divine intervention, yet it is in fact accomplished automat- 
 ically. 
 
 Of past organic history the same remark may be made. The con- 
 densation of carbon from the air, and its inclusion in the strata, constir 
 tute the chief epoch in the organic life of the earth, giving a possibility 
 And also appear- for the appearaucc of the hot-blooded and more intellectual 
 
 ances and extinc- . ,,. ^.■7 __. .-,--. 
 
 tjons determined, animal tribes. That great event was occasioned by the ii),t 
 fluence of the rays of the sun. And as such influences have thus been 
 connected with the appearance of organisms, so likewise have they been 
 concerned in the removals. Of the myriads, of species which have be- 
 come extinct, doubtless every one has passed away through the, advent, 
 of material conditions incompatible with its continuance. Even now, a 
 fall of half a dozen degrees in the mean temperature of any latitude, 
 would occasion the vanishing away of the forms of warmer climates, and 
 the advent of those of the colder. An obscuration of the rays of the 
 sun for a few years would compel a redistribution of plants and ani- 
 mals all over the earth ; many would totally disappear, and every where 
 new-comers would be seen. 
 
 The permanence pf organic forms is altogether dependent on the in- 
 permanenoeofor- Variability of the material conditions under which they 
 mTb^yofraJiro- ^^^^- -^^J Variation thereip, no matter how insignificant 
 ai conditions. ^^ might bc, would bc forthwith followed by a correspond- 
 ing variation in the form. The present invariability of the world, of 
 organization is the direct consequence of the physical equilibrium, and 
 so it will continue as long as th^ mean temperature, the annpal supply 
 of light, the composition of the air, the distribution pf water, oceanic and 
 ^atmospheric currents, and other such agencies remain unaltered; but 
 if any one of these, or pf a hundred other incidents that might be men- 
 tioned, should suffer modification, in an instant the fancifuldoctrine of 
 the immutability of species would be brought to its true value. The 
 organic world appears to be in repose, because natural influences have 
 reached an equilibrium. A marble may remain forever motionless 
 
VAEIATION OF SPECIKS BY OEDERLY CHANGE. 7 
 
 upon a level table ; but let the surface bd a little inclined, and the mar- 
 ble will quickly run off. What should we say of him who, contemplat- 
 ing it in its state of rest, asserted that it was impossible for it ever to 
 move ? 
 
 They who can see no difference between the race-horse and the Shet- 
 land pony, the bantam and the Shanghai f9wl, the greyhound and the 
 poodle dog, who .altogether deny that impressions can be made on spe- 
 cies, and see in the long succession of extinct forms, the ancient exist- 
 ence of which they must acknowledge, the evidences of a continuous 
 and creative intervention, forget that mundane effects ob- orderly aequence ■ 
 serve definite sequences, event following event in the ne- ^^edby m-deriy'' 
 cessity of the case, and thus constituting a chain, each link ™e™'c changes, 
 of which hangs on a preceding, , and holds a succeeding one. Physical 
 influences thus following one another, and bearing to each other the in- 
 ter-relation of cause and effect, stand in their totality to the whole or- 
 ganic world as causes, it representing the effect, and the order of suc- 
 cession existing among them is perpetuated or embodied in it. Thus, 
 in those ancient times to which we have referred, the sunlight acting on 
 the leaves of plants disturbed the chemical constitution of the atmos- 
 phere, gave rise to the accumulation of a more energetic element there- 
 in, diminished the mechanical pressure, and changed the rate of evapo- 
 ration from the sea, a series of events following one another so neces- 
 sarily that we foresee their order, and, in their turn, making an impres- 
 sion on the vegetable and animal economy. The natural -influences, 
 thus varying in an orderly way, controlled botanical events, and made 
 them change correspondingly. The orderly procedure of the one must 
 be imitated in the orderly procedure of the other. And the same holds 
 good in the animal kingdom ; the recognized variation in the material 
 conditions is copied in the organic effects, in vigor of motion, energy of 
 life, intellectual power. 
 
 When, therefore, we notice such orderly successions, we must not at 
 once assign them to a direct intervention, the issue of wise predetermina- 
 tions of a voluntary agent ; we must first satisfy ourselves how far they 
 are dependent upon mundane or material conditions, occurring in a defi- 
 nite and necessary series, ever bearing in mind the important principle 
 that an orderly sequence of inorganic events necessarily involves an or- 
 derly and corresponding progression of organic life. 
 
 To this doctrine of the control of physical agencies over organic forms 
 I acknowledge no exceptions, not even in the case of man. umvermi control 
 The varied aspects he presents in different countries are the over organS'^ 
 necessary consequences of those influences. 
 
 He who advocates the doctrine of the unity of the human race is 
 plainly forced to the admission of the absolute control of such agents 
 over the organization of man, since the originally-created type has been 
 
8 VAEIATIONS IN MAN. 
 
 bronglit to exhibit very different aspects in different parts of the world, 
 apparently in accordance with the climate and other purely material 
 circumstances. To those circumstances it is scarcely necessary to add 
 The case of man. manner of life, for that itself arises from them. The doc- 
 trine of unity demands as its essential postulate an admission of the par- 
 amount control of physical agents over the human aspect and organ- 
 ization, else how could it be that, proceeding from the same stock, all 
 shades of complexion in the skin, and variety in the form of the skull 
 should have arisen ? Experience assures us that these are changes as- 
 sumed only by slow degrees, and not with abruptness ; they come as a 
 cumulative effect. They plainly enforce the doctrine that national type 
 is not to be regarded as a definite or final thing, a seeming immobility 
 in this particular being due to the attainment of a correspondence with 
 the conditions to which the type is exposed. Let those conditions be 
 changed, and it begins forthwith to change too. I repeat it, therefore, 
 that he who receives the doctrine of the unity of the human race, must 
 also accept, in view of the present state of humanity on various parts of 
 the surface of our planet, its necessary postulate, the complete control of 
 physical agents, whether natural, or arising artificially from the arts of 
 civilization and the secular progress of nations toward a correspondence 
 with the conditions to which they are exposed. 
 
 To the same conclusion also must he be brought who advocates the 
 origin of different races from different centres. It comes, to the same 
 thing, whichever of those doctrines we adopt. Either brings us to the 
 admission of the transitory nature of typical forms, to their transmuta- 
 tions and extinctions. 
 
 Variations in the aspect of men are best seen when an examination is 
 Hu&an variations, made of nations arranged in a northerly and southerly di- 
 rection ; the result is such as would ensue to an emigrant passing slow- 
 ly along a meridional track, but the case would be quite different if the 
 movement were along a parallel of latitude. In this latter direction the 
 variations of climate are far less marked, and depend much more on geo- 
 graphical than on astronomical causes. In emigrations of this kind 
 there is never that- rapid change of aspect, complexion, and intellectual 
 power which must occur in the other. Thus, though tlie mean temper- 
 ature of Europe increases from Poland to France, chiefly through the 
 influence of the great Atlantic current transferring heat from the Gulf 
 of Mexico and tropical ocean, that rise is far less than would be encoun- 
 tered on passing through the same distance to the south. By the arts 
 of civilization man can much more easily avoid the dif&culties arising 
 from variations along a parallel of latitude than those upon a meridian, 
 for the simple reason that in that case those variations are less. 
 
 But it is not only comple?:ion, development of the brain, and, there- 
 fore, intellectual power, which are thus affected. With difference of 
 
PEOGEESS OF XS ETHNICAL ELEMENT. 9 
 
 climate there must be differences of manners and customs, that is, differ- 
 ences in the modes of civilization. These are facts which de- Their pouti- 
 serve our inost serious attention, since such differences are in- ""^ '''^'^'• 
 evitably connected with political results. If homogeneousness is an el- 
 ement of strength, an empire that lies east and west must be more pow- 
 erful than one that lies north and south. I can not but think that this 
 was no inconsiderable Cause of the greatness and permanence of Eome, 
 and that it lightened the task of the emperors, often hard enough, in 
 ; government. There is a natural tendency to homogeneousness in the 
 east and west direction, a tendency to diversity and antagonism in the 
 north and south, and hence it is that government under the latter cir- . 
 cumstances will always demand the highest grade of statesmanship. 
 
 ' The transitional forms an animal type is capable of producing on a 
 passage north and south are much more numerous than those it can pro- 
 duce on a passage east and west. These, though they are truly transi- 
 tional as respects the type from which they have proceeded, Nature of tran- 
 are permanent as regards the locality in which they occur, sitioiiai forms, 
 being, indeed, the incarnation of its physical influences. As long, there- 
 fore, as those influences remain without change will the form that has 
 been produced last without any alteration. For such a permanent form 
 in the case of man we may adopt the designation of an ethnical element. 
 
 An ethnical element is therefore necessarily of a dependent nature ; 
 its durability arises from its perfect correspondence with the conditions of 
 conditions by which it is surrounded. Whatever can affect ethnfeli'eir 
 that correspondence will touch its life. ™™'- 
 
 Such considerations carry us from individual man to groups of men 
 or nations. There is a progress for races of men as well marked as the 
 progress of one' man. There are thoughts and actions appertaining to 
 specific periods in the one case as in the other. Without dif- Progress of na- 
 ficulty we affirm of a given act that it appertains to a given rf SiaiYiduais. 
 period. We recognize the noisy sports of boyhood, the business appli- 
 cation of maturity, the feeble garrulity of old age. We express our sur- 
 prise when we witness actions unsuitable to the epoch of life. As it is 
 in this respect in the individual, so it is in the nation. The march of 
 individual existence shadows forth the march of race existence, being, 
 indeed, its representative on a little scale. 
 
 Groups of men, or nations, are disturbed by the same accidents, or 
 complete the same cycle as the individual. Some scarcely pass beyond 
 infancy, some are destroyed on a sudden, some die of mere old Communities, 
 age. In this confusion of events, it might seem altogether 'ixhibTSem- 
 hopeless to disentangle the law which is guiding them all, and eS rt%t^*rf' 
 demonstrate it clearly. Of such groups, -each may exhibit, at '^™'^^- 
 the same moment, an advance to a different stage, just as we see in the 
 same family the young, the middle-aged, the old. It is thus that Europe 
 
10 DETERMINATION OF THE TRUE REPRESENTATIVE OF SOCIETT. 
 
 shows in its different parts societies in very different states — here the 
 restless civilization of France and England, there the contentment and 
 inferiority of Lapland. This commingling might seem to render it dif- 
 ficult to ascertain the true movement of the whole continent, and still 
 more so for distant and successive periods of time. In each nation, 
 moreover, the contemporaneously different classes, tte educated and illit- 
 erate, the idle and industrious, the ricli and poor; tlie intelligent and su- 
 perstitious, represent different contemporaneous stages of advancement. 
 One may have made a great progress, another scarcely have advanced 
 at all. How shall we ascertain the real state of the case ? Which of • 
 these classes shall we regard as the truest and most perfect type ? 
 
 Though difficult, this ascertainment is not impossible. The problem 
 is to be dealt with in the same manner that we should estimate a family 
 in whicb there are persons of every condition from infancy to old age. 
 Each member of it tends to pursue a definite course, though some, cut 
 off in an untimely manner, may not complete it. One may be enfeebled' 
 by accident, another by disease ; but each, if his past and present circum- 
 stances be fully considered, will illustrate the nature of the general 
 movement that all are making. To demonstrate that movement most 
 satisfactorily, certain members of such a family suit our purpose better 
 than others, because they more closely represent its type, or have ad- 
 vanced most completely in their career. 
 
 So, in a family of many nations, some are more mature, some less ad-' 
 vanced, some die in early life, some are worn out by extreme old age ; 
 all sliow special peculiarities. There are distinctions among kinsmen, 
 The inteuectuai whcthcr wc consldcr them intellectually or corporeally. 
 S-eBeata™e ^^^^ry oue, nevertheless, illustrates in his own degree the 
 of a community, march that all are making, but some do it more, some less 
 completely. The leading, the intellectual class, is hence always the true 
 representative of a state. It has passed step by step through the lower 
 ■ stages, and has made the greatest advance. 
 
 In an individual, life is maintained only by the production and de- 
 struction of organic particles, no portion of the system being in a state 
 of immobility, but each displaying incessant change. Death is, there- 
 interstitM change fore, ueccssarily the condition of life, and the more ener- 
 dTaoi' of'iSSvidS: getic the function of a par1>-or, if we compare different 
 "i ^^ animals with one another— the more active the mode of 
 
 existence, correspondingly, the. greater the waste and the more numer- 
 ous the deaths of the interstitial constituents. 
 
 To the death of particles in the individual answers the death of per- 
 Particles in the in- sons in the uatiou, of which they are the integral constitu- 
 to"erson'Tthe ^^^- I^ ^oth cases, in a period of time quite inconsiderar, 
 ble, a total change is accomplished without the entire sys- 
 tem, which is the sum of these separate parts, losing its identity. Each 
 
DISTURBANCE OF THE COUESB OF AN ETHNICAL ELEMENT. 11 
 
 particle or eaeli person comes into existence, discharges an appropriate 
 d,uty, and then passes away, perhaps unnpticed. The production, con- 
 tinuance, and death of an organic molecule in the person answers to the 
 production, continuance, and death of a person in the nation, Nutrition 
 and, decay in one case, are equivalent to well-being and transformation 
 in the other, , . ' 
 
 In the same manner -that the individual is liable to changes through 
 the action of external agencies, and offers no resistance Epocha in national 
 
 o I 7 , . rt , . the same as m m- 
 
 thereto, nor any indication of the possession of a physio- dmduai ufe. 
 logical inertia, but submits at once to any impression, so likewise it is 
 with aggregates of men, constituting nations. A national type pursues 
 its vay physically and intellectually through changes and developments 
 answering to those of the individual, and being represented by Infancy, 
 Childhood, Youth, Manhood, Old Age, and Death respectively. 
 
 But this orderly process may be disturbed exteriorly or interiorly. 
 If from its oriednal seats a whole nation were transposed to some Disturbance 
 
 ■ ' *-■ ■*■ through em- 
 
 new abode, in which the climate, the seasons, the aspect of na- sgration. 
 
 ture 'were altogether different, it -v^ould appear spontaneously in all its 
 parts to commence a movement to come into harmony with the new 
 conditions — a movement of a secular nature, and implying the consump- 
 tion of many generations for its accomplishment. During such a period 
 of transmutation there would, of course, be an increased waste of life, a 
 risk, indeed, of total disappearance or national death ; but the change 
 once conipleted, the requisite correspondence once attained, things would 
 go forward again in an orderly manner on the basis of the new modifi- 
 cation that had been assumed. When the change to be accomplished 
 is very profound, involving extensive anatomical alterations not merely 
 in ,the appearance of the skin, but even in the structure of the skull, 
 long periods of time are undoubtedly required, and many generations 
 of individuals are consumed. 
 
 Or, by interior disturbance, particularly by blood admixture, with 
 more rapidity may a' national type be affected, the result And through 
 
 , . , f ■'.. •' , •' -^ ^ . , - '. , blood admix- 
 
 plainly depending on the extent to which admixture has t«re. 
 taken place. This is a disturbance capable of mathematical computa- 
 tion. If the blood admixture is only of limited amount, and transient 
 in its application, its effect will sensibly disappear in no very great pe- 
 riod of time, though never, perhaps, in absolute reality. This accords 
 with the observation of philosophical historians, who agree in the con- 
 clusion that a small tribe intermingling with a larger one will only dis- 
 turb it in a temporary manner, and, after the course of a few years, the 
 effect will cease to be perceptible. Neverth'eless, the influence must 
 really continue much longer than is outwardly apparent; and the 
 ^ result is the same as when, in a liquid, a drop of some other kind is 
 placed, and additional quantities of the first liquid then successively 
 
12 THE SECULAR VARIATIONS OF NATIONS. 
 
 added. Thougli it might have been possible at first to detect thie adul- 
 teration without trouble, it becomes every moment less and less possible 
 ' to do so, and before long it can not be done at all. But the drop is as 
 much present at last as it was at first : it is merely masked ; its proper- 
 ties overpowered. 
 
 Considering in this manner the contamination of a numerous nation, a 
 trifling amount of foreign blood admixture would appear to be indelible, 
 and the disturbance, at any moment, capable of computation by the ascer- 
 tained degree of dilution that has takea place. But it must not be for- 
 gotten that there is another agency at work, energetically tending to 
 bring about homogeneousness : it is the influence of external physical 
 conditions.- The intrusive adulterating element possesses in itself no 
 physiological inertia, but as quickly as may be is brought into corre- 
 spondence with the new circumstances to which it is exposed, herein 
 running in the same course as the element with which it had mingled 
 had itself antecedently gone over. » 
 
 National homogeneousness is thus obviously secured by the operation 
 of two distinct agencies : the first, gradual but inevitable dilution ; the 
 second, motion to come into harmony with the external natural state. 
 The two conspire in their effects. 
 
 We must therefore no longer regard nations or groups of men as of- 
 fering a permanent picture. Human affairs must be looked upon as in 
 Secular variations continuous movement, not wandering in an arbitrary man- 
 of nations. ^gj. jjgj.g ^^^ ^j^g^.^^ 1^^^. proceeding in a perfectly definite 
 
 course. Whatever may be the present state, it is altogether transient. 
 All systems of civil life are therefore necessarily ephemeral. Time 
 brings new external conditions ; the manner of thought is modified ; with 
 thought, action. Institutions of all kinds must hence participate in this 
 fleeting nature, and, though they may have allied themselves to political 
 power, and gathered therefrom the means of coercion, their permanency 
 is but little improved thereby; for, sooner or later, the population on 
 whom they have been imposed, following the external variations, spon- 
 "^^^^es^nl *a^^o"sly outgrows them, and their ruin, though it may 
 ingiy change. havc bccu delayed, is none the less certain. For the per- 
 manency of any such system it is essentially necessary that it should in- 
 clude within its own organization a law of change, and not of change 
 only, but change in the right direction— the direction in which the soci- 
 ety interested is about to pass, It is in an oversight of this last essen- 
 tial condition that we find an explanation of the failure of so many such 
 institutions. Too commonly do we believe that the affairs of men are. 
 determined by a spontaneous action or free will; we keep that over- 
 powering influence which really controls them in the background. In 
 individual bfe we also accept a like deception, living in the belief that 
 every thing we do is determined by the volition of ourselves or of those 
 
THE DEATH OF NATIONS. IS 
 
 around us, nor is it until the close of our days that we discern how great/ / 
 is the illusion, and that we have been swimming, playing, and strug-/,i 
 gling in a stream which, in spite of all our voluntary motions, has silent-' 
 ly and resistlessly borne us to a predetermined shore. 
 
 In the foregoing pages I have been tracing analogies between the life 
 of individuals and that of nations. There is yet one point more. 
 
 Nations, like individuals, die. Their birth presents an ethnical ele- 
 ment ; their death, which is the most solemn event that we can ^he death of 
 contemplate, may arise from interior or from external causes. °*''™=- 
 Empires are only sand-hills in the hour-glass of Time ; they crumble 
 spontaneously away by the process of their own growth. 
 
 A nation, like a man, hides from itself the contemplation of its final 
 day. It occupies itself with expedients for prolonging its present state. 
 It frames laws and constitutions Under the delusion that they will last, 
 forgetting that the condition of life is change. Yery able modem states- 
 men consider it to be the grand object of their art to keep ^things as 
 "they are, or rather as they were. But the human race is not at rest ; and 
 bands with which, for a moment, it may be restrained, break all the 
 more violently the longer they hold. No man can stop the march of 
 destiny. 
 
 Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute ; its du- 
 ration depends on the rate of thought and feeling. For the -i^ere is nothing 
 same reason that to the child the year is actually longer than absolute in time! 
 to the adult, the life of a nation may be said to be no longer than the 
 life of a person, considering the manner in which its affairs are moving. 
 There is a variable velocity of existence, though, the lapses of time may 
 be equable. ' 
 
 The origin, existence, and death of nations depend thus on physical ] 
 influences, whiph are themselves the result of immutable laws. Nations are ' 
 Nations are only transitional forms of humanity. They must ttaai &ml 
 undergo obliteration as do the transitional forms offered by the animal 
 series. There is no more an immortality for them than there is an im- 
 mobility for an embryo in any one of the manifold forms passed through 
 in its progress of development; 
 
 The life of a nation thus flows in a regular sequence, determined by 
 invariable law, and hence, in estimating different nations, we must not be 
 deceived by the casual aspect they present. The philosophical compar- 
 ison is made by considering their entire manner of career or Their conrseia 
 cycle of progress, and not their momentary or transitory state. i^g^^'S^r «(. 
 Though they may encounter disaster, their absolute course "'s^^«- 
 can never be retrograde; it is always onward, even if tending to disso- 
 lution. It is as with the individual, who is equally advancing in infan- 
 cy, in maturity, in old age. Pascal was more than justified in his asser- 
 tion that "the entire succession of men, through the whole course of 
 
14 PLAN OF THIS WORK. 
 
 ages, must be regarded as one man, always living and incessantly learn- 
 ings" In both cases, the manner of advance, though it may sometimes 
 be unexpected, can never be abriipt. At each stage events and ideas 
 emerge which not only necessarily owe their origin to preceding events 
 and ideas, but extend far ifito the future and influence it. As these are 
 crowded together, or occur more widely apart, national life, like indi- 
 variawe rapidity vidual, shows a Variable rapidity, depending upon the in- 
 of national ufe. tcnsity of thOught aiid actioii. But, no matter how great 
 that energy may be, nor with what rapidity modiflcEitions may' take 
 place — since eveilts are springiiig as c'onse^iiehces of preceding events, 
 knd ideas from preceding ideas — in the midst of the most violent intel- 
 lectual oscillations, a discerning observer will never fail to detect that 
 there exists a law of continuous variation of human opinions. 
 
 In the examination of the progress of Europe on which we now ei(- 
 pian of this t^r, it is, of couTse, to intellectiial phenomena that we must, for 
 ^'"^ the most part, refer'; material aggrandizement and political 
 power offering us less important though still valuable indications, and 
 Serving our purpose rather in a corroborative way. There are'ive 
 ihtellectual manifestations to which we iri^y'. resort — philosophy, sci- 
 ence, literature, religion, government. Our obvious course is, first, to 
 Selection among gtudv the progress of that member of the European familv, 
 
 European com- ^ ! -^^ ,^ ■*■. *? . n' ' ^ •» t ' . '' ' 
 
 munities. the clqest m point oi advancement, and to endeavor to as- 
 
 certain the characteristics of its mental unfolding. We may reasonably 
 expect that the younger members of the family, more or less distinctly, 
 will offer us illustrations of the same mode of advancement that we shall 
 thus find for Greece; and that the whole continent, which is the sum 
 of these different parts, will, in its secular progress, comport itself lii a 
 like way. 
 
 Of the early condition of Europe, since we have to consider it in its 
 prehistoric times; our information miist necessarily be imperfect. Pe;r- 
 haps, however, we may be disposed to accept that imperfection as a suf- 
 ficient token of its true nature. Since history can offer us no aid, our 
 guiding lights must be comparative theology and comparative philol- 
 ourinvestiga. ^gj- Procccding from these times, we shall, in detail, ex- 
 tteinteuectnai" ^.minc the intellectual or philosophical movement first exhib- 
 fngTriS™""' ited in Greece,' endeavoring 'to ascei-tain its character at suo- 
 Greece. ccssivc cpochs, and thereby to judge of its complete' nature. 
 
 Fortunately for our purpose, the information is here sufficient, both in , 
 amount and distinctness. It then remains to show that the mental 
 From thence movcment of the whole continent is essentially of the same 
 rSnaUoS^ kind, though, as must necessarily be the case, it is spread over 
 of au Europe, far longer periods of time. Our conclusions will constantly 
 .be found to gather incidental support and distinctness from illustrations 
 presented by the aged populations of Asia, and the aborigines of Africa 
 and America. 
 
THE FIVE EUROPEAN AGES. 15 
 
 The intellectual progress of Europe being of a nature answering to 
 that observed in the case of Greece, and this, in its turn, be- Thefiveageaof 
 ing like that of an individual, we may conveniently separate European iife. 
 it into arbitrary periods, sufficiently distinct from one another, though 
 imperceptibly merging into each other. To these successive periods I 
 shall give the titles of, 1, the Age of Credulity ; 2, the Age of Inquiry ; 
 3, the Age of Faith ; 4, the Age of Eeason ; 5, the Age of Decrepitude ; 
 and shall use these designations in the division of my subject in its 
 several cTiapters. 
 
 From the possibility of thus regarding the progress of a continent in 
 definite .and succ'essive stages, answering respectively to the 'periods of 
 individual life — infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age — we may 
 gather an instructive lesson. It is the same that we have learned .from 
 inquiries respecting the origin, maintenance, distribution, and extinction 
 of animals and plants, their balancing against each other; from the va- 
 riations of aspect and form of an individual man as determined by cli- 
 mate; from his social state, whether in repose or motion ; from the sec- 
 ular variations of his opinions, and the gradual dominion of The vovu ii 
 reason over society : this lesson is, that the government of tha "ledtyiav. 
 world is accomplished by immutable law. 
 
 Such a, conception commends itself to the intellect of man by its ma- 
 jestic grandeur. It makes him discern the eternal through the vanish- 
 ing of present events and through the shadows of time. From the life, 
 the pleasures, the sufferings of humanity, it points to the impassive ; 
 from our wishes, wants, and woes, to the inexorable. Leaving the in- 
 dividual beneath the eye of Providence, it shows society under the fiii- 
 ger of law.- And the laws of Nature never vary; in their application , 
 they never hesitate nor are wanting. 
 
 But in thus ascending to primordial' laws, and asserting their immu- 
 tability, universality, and paramount control in the government of this 
 world, there is nothing inconsistent with the free action of man. And yet there 
 The appearance of things depends altogether on the point of m»n. 
 view we occupy. He who is immersed in the turmoil of a crowded 
 city sees nothing but the acts of men, and, if he formed his opinion 
 from his experience alone, must conclude that the course of events alto- 
 gether depends on the uncertainties of human volition. But he who 
 ascends to a sufficient elevation loses sight of the passing conflicts, and 
 no longer hears the contentions. He discovers that the importance of 
 individual action is diminishing, as the panorama beneath him is ex- 
 tending. And if he could attain to the truly philosophical, the general 
 point of view, disengaging himself from all terrestrial influences and en- 
 tanglements, rising high enough to see the whole globe at a glance, his 
 acutest vision would fail to discover the slightest indication of man, his 
 
16 THE CONTBAST OF FOKMS AND OF LAW. 
 
 free-will, or his works. .In her resistless, onward sweep, in the clock- 
 like precision of her daily and nightly revolution,, in the well-known 
 pictured forms of her continents and seas, now no longer dark and 
 doubtful, but shedding forth a planetary light, well might he ask what 
 had become of all the aspirations and anxieties, the pleasures and agony 
 of life. As the voluntary vanished from his sight, and the irresistible 
 remained, and each moment became more and more distinct, well 
 might he incline to disbelieve his own experience,.and to question 
 whether the seat of so much undying glory could be the place of so 
 much human uncertainty, whether beneath the vastness, energy, and 
 immutable course of a moving world, there lay concealed the feebleness 
 and imbecility of man. Yet it is none the less true that these contra- 
 dictory conditions co-exist — Free-will and Fate, Uncertainty and Des- 
 tiny, and all are watched by the sleepless eye of Providence. It is only 
 the point of view that has changed, but on that how much has depend- 
 ed. A little nearer we gather the successive ascertainments of human 
 inquiry, a little farther off we realize the panoramic vision of the Deity. 
 Well has a Hindu philosopher remarked, that he who stands by the 
 bank of a flowing stream sees, in their order, the various parts as tney 
 successively glide by, but he who is placed on an exalted station views, 
 at a glance, the whole as a motionless silvery thread among the fields. 
 To the one there is the accumulating experience and knowledge of man 
 in time, to the other there is the instantaneous and unsuccessive knowl- 
 edge of God. 
 
 Is there an object presented to us which does not bear the mark of 
 changeaMiity ephemeral duration ? As respects the tribes of life, they are 
 SnchmgMbu- scarccly worth a moment's thought, for the term of the great . 
 ityofiaw. majority of them is so brief that we may say they are born 
 and die before our eyes. If we examine them, not as individuals, but 
 as races, the same conclusion holds good, only the scale is enlarged from 
 a few days to a few centuries. If from living we turn to lifeless nature, 
 we encounter again the evidence of brief continuance. The sea is ub- 
 ceasingly remoulding its shores; hard as they are, the mountains are 
 constantly yielding to frost and to rain; here an extensive tract of 
 country is elevated, there it is depressed. We fail to find any thing 
 that is not undergoing change. 
 
 Then forms are in their nature transitory, law is everlasting. If from 
 visible forms we turn to directing law, how vast is the difference. We 
 pass from the finite, the momentary, the incidental, the conditioned, to 
 the illimitable, the eternal, the necessary, the unshackled. 
 
 It is of law that I am to speak in this book. In a world com- • 
 The object of this posed of Vanishing forms I am to vindicate the imperisha- 
 theco'n'roronaw bility, the majesty of law, and to show how man proceeds, 
 in human affairs. ^^ ^g g^^jj^j mardh, lu obedicnce to it. I am to lead my 
 
DESCRIPTION OP EUKOPE. 17 
 
 reader, perhaps in a reluctant path, from the outward phantasmagorial 
 illusions which surround us, and so ostentatiously obtrude themselves 
 on our attention, to something that lies in sUence and strength behind. 
 t am to draw his thoughts frorn the tangible to the invisible, from the 
 limited to the universal, from the changeable to the invariable, from the 
 transitory to the eternal ; from the expedients and volitions so largely 
 amusing the life of man, to the predestined and resistless issuing from 
 the fiat of God. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 OF EUROPE : ITS TOPOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY. 
 
 ITS PEIMITIVE MODES OP THOUGHT, AND THEIK PROGRESSIVE VAEIATIONS, MANIFESTED IN 
 THE GREEK AGE OF CREDULITY. 
 
 Description of Europe ; its Topography, Meteorology, and secular geological Movements. — 
 Tneir Effect on its Inhabitants. 
 
 Its Ethnology determined thrcmgh its Vocabularies ; it was peopled from Asia. 
 
 Comparative Theology of Greece; the Stage of Sorcery, the Anthropocentric Stage. — Becomes 
 connected withfdUe Geography and Astronomy. — Heaven, the Earth, the Under World. — Or- 
 igin, continuous Variation and Progress of Greek Theology. — It issues in Ionic Philosophy. 
 
 Decline of Greek Theology, occasioned by the Advance of Geography and philosophical Criticism. 
 — Secession of Poets, Philosophers, Historians. — Abortive public Attempts to sustain it. — Du- 
 ration of its Decline. — Its Fall. 
 
 Europe is geographically a peninsula, and historically a dependency 
 of Asia. 
 
 It is constructed on the western third of a vast mountain axis, which 
 reaches in a broken and irregular course from the Sea of Japan Description 
 to the Bay of Biscay. On the flanks of this range, peninsular °f^"°p«- 
 slopes are directed toward the south, and extensive plateaus to the north. 
 The culminating point in Europe is Mont Blanc, 16,000 feet above the 
 level of the sea. The axis of elevation is not the axis of figure ; the in- 
 cline to the south is much shorter and steeper than that to the north. 
 The boundless plains of Asia are prolonged through Germany and Hol- 
 land. An army may pass from the Pacificto the Atlantic Ocean, a dis- 
 tance of more than six thousand miles, without encountering any eleva- 
 tion of more than a few hundred feet. The descent from Asia into Eu- 
 rope is indicated, in a general manner by the mean elevation of the two 
 continents above the level of the sea, that for Asia being 1132 feet, and 
 for Europe 671. Through the avenue thus open to them, the Oriental 
 hordes have again and again precipitated themselves on the The great 
 West. With an abundance of springs and head-waters, but i'»"'-™°^ 
 without any stream capable of offering a serious obstacle, this track has 
 
 B 
 
18 DESCEIPTION OF EUEOPE. 
 
 a temperature well suited to military movements. It coincides gener- 
 ally with the annual isothermal line of 50°, skirting the northern boun- 
 dary beyond which the vine ceases to grow, and the limiting region be- 
 yond which the wild boar does not pass. 
 
 Constructed thus, Europe is not only easily accessible from Asia, a 
 Exterior and inte- f3,ct of uo little moment in its ancient history, but it is also 
 rior acoessiijiuty. singularly acccssiblc interiorly, or from one of its parts to 
 another. Still more, its sea-line is so broken, it has so many intrusive 
 gulfs and bays, that, its surface considered, its maritime coast is -greater 
 than that of any other continent. In this respect it contrasts strikingly 
 with Africa. Europe has one mile of coast-line for every 156 square 
 miles . of surface, Africa has only one for every 623. This extensive 
 maritime contact adds, of course, greatly to its interior as well as exteri- 
 or accessibility. 
 
 The mean annual temperature of the European countries on the south- 
 ern slope of the mountain axis is from 60° to 70° F., but of those to the 
 north the heat gradually declines, until, at the extreme limit on the 
 shores of Zembla, the ground is perpetually frozen. As on the other 
 parts of the globe, the climate does not correspond to the latitud^'but 
 Distribution of is disturbed by several causes, among which may be distin- 
 heat in Europe, g^ig^ied the great Atlantic current-the Gulf Stream coming 
 from America — and the Sahara Desert. The latter gives to the south of 
 Europe an unduly high heat, and the former to Ireland, England, and 
 the entire west a genial temperature. Together they press into higher ,_ 
 latitudes the annual isothermal lines. If in Europe there are no deserts, 
 there are none of those impenetrable forests seen in tropical countries. 
 From the westerly shores of Portugal, France, and Ireland, the l^umidi- 
 ty diminishes as we pass to the east, and, indeed, if we advance into 
 Asia, disappears in the desert of Gobi. There are no vast homogene- 
 ous geographical areas as in Asia, and therefore no wide-spread uni- 
 formity in the races of men. 
 
 But not only is the temperature of the European continent elevated 
 by the Gulf Stream and the southwest w^ind, its luxuriance of vegetation 
 depends on them ; for luxuriance of vegetation is determined, among 
 Andthequan- ot^^er things, by the supply of rain. A profusion gives' to 
 titjrofrain. gouth America its amazing forests, a want to Australia its 
 shadeless trees, with their shrunken and pointed leaves. "With the di- 
 minished moisture the green gardens of France are replaced in Gobi by 
 ligneous plants covered with a gray down. Physical circumstances 
 control the vegetable as .well sis the animal world. 
 
 The westerly countries of Europe, through the influence of the south- 
 west wind, the Gulf Stream, and their mountain ranges, are supphed 
 with abundant rains, and have a favorable mean annual temperature; 
 but as we pass to the eastern confines the number of rainy days dimin- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF RAIN, SNOW, HEAT. 19 
 
 ishes, the absolute annual quantity of rain and snow is less, and the 
 mean annual temperature is lower. On the Atlantic face of the mount- 
 ains of Norway it is perpetually raining: the annual depth of water is 
 there 82 inches ; but on the opposite side of those mountains it is only 
 21 inches. • For similar reasons, Ireland is moist and green, and in Corn- 
 wall the laurel and camellia will bear the winter exposure. 
 
 There are six maximum points of rain — Norway, Scotland, South- 
 western Ireland and England, Portugal, Northeastern Spain, Lombardy. 
 They respectively correspond to mountains. In general, the amount of 
 rain diminishes from the equator toward the poles ; but it is greatly con- 
 trolled by the disturbing influence of elevated ridges, which in many 
 instances far more than compensate for the effects of latitude. The 
 Alps exercise an influence over the meteorology of aU Europe. 
 
 Not only do mountains thus determine the absolute quantity of rain, 
 they also affect the number of rainy days in a year. The occurrence 
 of a rainy season depends on the amount of moisture existing in the air, 
 and hence its frequency is greater at the Atlantic sea-board than in the 
 inte|[or, where the wind arrives in a drier state, much of its moisture 
 having been precipitated by the mountains forcing it to a great eleva- 
 tion. Thus, on the eastern coast of Ireland it rains 208 days Thenumherof 
 in a year; in England, about 150; at Kazan, 90; and in Si- "'"y «»?=; 
 beria only 60 days. 
 
 When the atmospheric temperature is sufficiently low, the condensed 
 water descends under the form of snow. In general, the annual depth 
 of snow and the number of snowy days increase toward the north. In 
 Home the snowy days are 1^; in Venice, 5^; in Paris, 12; in St. andofanow? 
 Petersburg, 171. Whatever causes interfere with the distribu- ^^°- 
 tion of heat must influence the precipitation of snow; among such are 
 the Gulf Stream and local altitude. Hence, on the coast of Portugal, 
 snow is of unfrequent occurrence ; in Lisbon it never snowed from 1806 
 to 1811. 
 
 From such facts as that the difference between the summer and win- 
 ter temperature increases toward the interior of the continent ; that the 
 amount of rain, greatest on the mountain axis, diminishes as we go 
 north or south, and also as we pass from the west to the east, and in 
 hke manner the number of rainy days; but snowy days, and- the dura- 
 tion of snow, in an opposite way ; we may learn how full of physical con- 
 trasts Europe is, and how many climates it presents. It necessarily fol- 
 lows that it is full of modified men. 
 
 If we examine the maps of monthly isothermals, we obse;rve how won- 
 derfully those lines change, becoming convex to the north vibrations of tiie 
 as summer approaches, and concave as the winter. They "°«'«™=^ "»««• 
 by no means observe a parallelism to the mean, but change their flex- 
 ures,- assurning new sinuosities. In their absolute transfer they move 
 
20 EUROPE IS FULL OF MODIFIED MEN. 
 
 with a variable velocity, and througb. spaces far from insignificant. The 
 line of 50° F., which in January passes through Lisbon and the south 
 of the Morea, in July has traveled to the north shore of Lapland, and 
 incloses the White Sea. As in some grand musical instrument, the 
 strings of which vibrate, the isothermal lines of Europe and Asia beat 
 back and forth, but it takes a year for them to accomplish one pulsa- 
 tion. 
 
 All over the world physical circumstances control the human race. 
 They make the Australian a savage ; incapacitate the negro, who can 
 Europe is fuu of ncvcr iuvcut an alphabet or an arithnietic, and whose theol- 
 
 meteorological " i t ji j_ j? mi 
 
 contrasts, and ogy ncvcr passcs beyond the stage oi sorcery. They cause 
 ified men. the Tartars to delight in a diet of milk, and the American 
 Indian to aboniinate it. They make the dwarfish races of Europe in- 
 stinctive miners and metallurgists. An artificial control over tempera- 
 ture by dwellings, warm for the wintfer and cool for the summer ; vari- 
 ations of clothing to suit the season of the year, and especially the 
 management of fire, have enabled man to maintain himself in all cli- 
 mates. The single invention of artificial light has extended the availa- 
 ble term of his life; by giving the night to his use, it has, by the social 
 intercourse it encourages, polished his manners and refined his tastes, 
 perhaps as much as any thing else has aided in his intellectual progress. 
 Indeed, these are among the primary conditions that have occasioned 
 his civilization. Variety of natural conditions gives rise to different na- 
 tional types, artificial inventions occasion renewed modifications. "Where 
 there are many climates there will be inany forms of men. Herein, as 
 we shall in due season discover, lies the explanation of the energy of 
 European life, and the development of its civilization. 
 
 Would any one deny the influence of rainy days on our industrial 
 habits and on our mental condition even in a civilized state? With 
 how much more force, then, must such meteorological incidents have 
 acted on the ill-protected, ill-clad, and ill-housed barbarian ! Would any 
 one deny the increasing difficulty with which life is maintained as we 
 pass from the southern peninsulas to the more rigorous climates of the 
 north? There is a relationship between the mean annual heat of a lo- 
 cality and the instincts of its inhabitants for food. The Sicilian is satis- 
 fied with a light farinaceous repast and a few fruits ; the Norwegian re- 
 quires a strong diet of flesh ; to the Laplander it is none the "less accept- 
 able if grease of the bear, or train oil, or the blubber of whales be add- 
 ed. Meteorology to no little extent influences the, morals ; the instinct- 
 ive propensity to drunkenness is a function of the latitude. Food, 
 houses, clothing, bear a certain relation to the isothermal lines. 
 
 For similar reasons, the inhabitants of Europe each year tend to more 
 complete homogeneousness. Climate and meteorological differences are 
 more and more perfectly equalized by artificial inventions ; nor is it 
 
THE MEDITERRANEAN PENINSULAS AND SEA. 21 
 
 alone a similarity of habits, but also a similarity of physio- f^.'^i*^™sh^^'|- 
 loffical constitution that is ensuing. The effect of such in- tendo to homoge- 
 
 D n 1 * 1 neousneaa in mod- 
 
 ventions is to equalize the influences to which men are ex- em times. 
 posed; they are brought more closely to the mean typical standard, 
 and — especially is it to be remembered — with this ■ closer approach to 
 each other in conformation, comes a closer approach in feelings and hab- 
 its, and even in the manner of thinking. 
 
 On the southern slope of the mountain axis project the historic penin- 
 sula's, Greece, Italy, Spain. To the former we trace un- The Medtemne- 
 mistakably the commencement of European civilization. ™peii™uias- 
 The first Greeks patriotically afl&rmed that their own climate was the 
 best suited for man; beyond the mountains to the north there reigned a 
 Cimmerian darkness, an everlasting winter. It was the realm of Boreas, 
 the shivering tyrant. In the early ages ma^ recognized cold as his 
 mortal enemy. Physical inventions have enabled him to overcome it, 
 and now he maintains' a more diiScult and doubtful struggle with heat. 
 
 Beyond these peninsulas, and bounding the continent on the south, is 
 the Mediterranean, nearly two thousand miles in length, iso- ^he Mediterra- 
 lating Europe from .Africa socially, JDut uniting them com- °<»'' sea. 
 mercially. ■ The Black Sea and that of Azof are dependencies of it. It 
 has, conjointly with them, a shore-line of 13,000 miles, and exposes a 
 surface of nearly a million and a quarter of square miles. It is subdi- • 
 vided into two basins, the eastern and western, the former being of high 
 interest historically, since it is the scene of the dawn of European in- 
 telligence ; the western is bounded by the Italian peninsula, Sicily, and 
 the African promontory of Cape Bon on one side, and at the other has as 
 its portal the Straits of Gibraltar. The temperature is ten or twelve de- 
 grees higher than the Atlantic, and, since much of the water is removed 
 by evaporation, it is necessarily more saline than that ocean. Its color 
 is green where shallow, blue where deep. 
 
 For countless centuries Asia has experienced, a slow upward move- 
 ment, not only affecting her own topography, but likewise Secular geological 
 that of her European dependency. There was a time when rope and Asia, and 
 the great sandy desert of Gobi was the bed of a sea which quencea. 
 communicated through the Caspian with the Baltic, as may be ptoved 
 not only by existing geographical facts, but also from geological consid- 
 erations. It is only necessary, for this purpose, to inspect the imperfect 
 maps that have been published of the sUurian and even tertiary pe- 
 riods. The vertical displacement of Europe, during and since the latter 
 period, has indisputably been more than 2000 feet in many places. The 
 effects of such movements on the flora and fauna of a region must, in 
 the course of time, be very important, for an elevation of, 350 feet is 
 equal to one degree of cold in the mean annual temperature, or to sixty 
 miles horizontally northward. Nor is this slow disturbance ended. 
 
22 _ SECULAE CHANGES OF LEVEL IN EUROPE. 
 
 Again and again, in historic times, liave its results operated fearfully on 
 Europe, by forcibly precipitating the Asiatic nomades along the great 
 path-zone ; again and again, through such changes of level, have they 
 been rendered waterless, and thus driven into a forced emigration. 
 Some of their rivers, as the Oxus and Jaxartes, have, within the records 
 of history, been dry for several years. To these topographical changes, 
 rather than to political influences, we should impute many of the most ' 
 celebrated tribal invasions. It has been the custom to refer these events 
 to an excessive overpopulation periodically occurring in Central Asia, 
 or to the ambition of warlike chieftains. Doubtless those regions are 
 well adapted to human life, and hence liable to overpopulation, consid- 
 ering the pursuits man there follows,, and doubtless there have been oc- 
 casions on which those nations have been put in motion by their princes, 
 but the modern historian can not too carefully bear in mind };he laws 
 which regulate the ptoduction of men, and also the body of evidence 
 which proves that the crust of the earth is not motionless, but rising in 
 one place and sinking in another. The grand invasions of Europe by 
 Asiatic hordes have been much more violent and abrupt than would 
 answer to a steady pressure resulting from overpopulation, and too ex-' 
 tensive for mere warlike incitement ; they answer more completely to 
 , the experience of some irresistible necessity arising from an insuperable 
 , physical cause, which could drive in hopeless despair from their homes 
 the young and the old, the vigorous and feeble, with their cattle,, and 
 wagons, and flocks. Such a cause is the shifting of the soil and dis- 
 \ turbance of the courses of water. The tribes compelled to migrate were 
 forced along the path-zone, their track being, therefore, on a parallel of 
 latitude, and not on a meridian ; and hence, for the reasons set forth in 
 the preceding chapter, their movements and journey of easier acccom- 
 plishment. 
 
 These geological changes enter then as an element in human history, 
 Eate ana extent of ^0* '^''^^J ^OT Asia, of which the great inland sea has dwin- 
 theae movements, (jjg^ ^^g^y ^q ^he Caspian, and lost its connection with the 
 Baltic, but for Europe also. The traditions of ancient deluges, which 
 are the primitive facts of Greek history, refer to such movements; per- 
 haps -the opening of the Thracian Bosphorus was one of them., In 
 much later times we are perpetually meeting with incidents depending 
 on geological disturbances ; the caravan trade of Asia Minor was de- 
 stroyed by changes of level and the accumulation of sands blown from 
 the encroaching deserts ; the Cimbri were impelled into Italy by the 
 invasion of the sea on their possessions. There is not a shore in Europe 
 which does not give similar evidence ; the mouths of the Ehine, as they 
 were in the Eoman times, are obliterated ; the eastern coast of England 
 has been cut away for miles. In the Mediterranean the shore-line is 
 altogether changed; towns, once on the coast, are far away inland; oth- 
 
THE ETHNOLOGY OF EUEOPE. 23 
 
 ers have sunk beneath the sea. Islands, like Ehodes, have risen from 
 the bottom. The North Adriatic, once a deep gulf, has now become 
 shallow ; there are leaning towers and inclining temples that have sunk 
 with the settling of the earth. On the opposite extremity of Europe, 
 the Scandinavian peninsula furnishes an instance of slow secular mo- 
 tion, the northern part rising gradually above the sea at the rate of 
 about four feet in a century. This elevation is observed through a 
 space of many hundred miles, increasing toward the north. The south- 
 ern extremity, on the contrary, experiences a slow depression. 
 
 These slow movements are nothing more than a continuation of what 
 has been going on for numberless ages. Since the tertiary period two 
 thirds of Europe have been lifted above the sea. The Norway coast 
 has been elevated 600 feet, the Alps have been upheaved 2000 to 3000, 
 the Apennines 1000 to 2000. The country between Mont Blanc and 
 Vienna has been thus elevated since the adjacent seas were peopled 
 with existing animals. So intimately are the interests and occupations 
 of men connected with the soil, that it is impossible for changes to take 
 place on the great scale in it without being promptly followed by an 
 equivalent political result. 
 
 At the earliest period Europe presents us with a double population. 
 An Indo-Germanic column had entered it from the east, and. had separ- 
 ated into two portions the occupants it had encountered^ driving one to 
 the north, the other to the southwest. These primitive tribes betray, 
 physiologically, a Mongolian origin; and there are indiea- Early inhawt- 
 tions of considerable weight that they themselves had been, ™'3 of Europe, 
 in ancient times, intruders, who, issuing from their seats in Asia, had in- 
 vaded and dislocated the proper autochthons of Europe. But, setting 
 this aside, we have, as our starting-point, a barbarian population, be- 
 lievers in sorcery, and, in some places, undoubtedly cannibals, maintain- 
 ing, in the central and northern parts of Europe, their existence with 
 difficulty by reason of the severity of the climate. In the southern, 
 more congenial conditions permitted a form of civilization to commence, 
 of which the rude Cyclopean structures here and there met with, such 
 as the ruins of Orchomenos, the lion gate of Mycense, the tunnel of 
 Lake Copais, are perhaps the vestiges. 
 
 At what period this intrusive Indo-Germanic column made its at- 
 tack can Hot be ascertained. The national vocabularies of Europe, to 
 which we must resort for evidence, might lead us to infer that the con- 
 dition of civilization of the conquering people was not very ,,,3;, ^^^^ 
 advanced. They were acquainted with the use of domestic '""'*i''°''- 
 animals, with farming implements, carts, and yokes;" they were also 
 possessed of boats, the rudder, oars, but were unacquainted with the 
 movement of vessels by sails. These conclusions seem to be established 
 by the facts that words equivalent to boat, rudder, oar, are common to 
 
24 ITS INDO-GERMANIC INVADERS. 
 
 the languagesof the ofiEshoots of the stock, though located very widely 
 asunder; but those for mast and sails are of special invention, and differ 
 in adjacent nations. 
 
 In nearly 5,11 the Indo-Germanic tongues, the family names, father, 
 mother, brother, sister, daughter, are the same respectively. A similar 
 Their civil state de- equivalencc may be observed in a great many familiar 
 Mtoiarie" *"™' objects, house, door, town, path. It has been remarked, 
 that while this holds good for terms of a peaceful nature, many of those 
 connected with warfare and the chase are different in different lan- 
 guages. Such facts appear to prove that the Asiatic invaders followed 
 a nomadic and pastoral life. Many of the terms connected with such an 
 avocation are widely, diffused. This is the case with plowing, grinding, 
 weaving, cooking, baking, se/wing, spinning; with such objects as com, 
 flesh, meat, vestment ; with wild animals common to Europe and Asia, 
 as the bear and the wolf. So, too, of words connected with social or- 
 ganization, despot, rex, queen. The numerals from 1 to 100 coincide in 
 Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic; but, this is not the case with 
 1000, a fact which has led comparative philologists to the conclusion 
 that, though at the time of the emigration a sufficient intellectual- ad- 
 vance had been made to invent the decimal system, perhaps from count- 
 ing upon the fingers, yet that it was very far from perfectiojj. To the 
 inhabitants "of Central Asia the sea was altogether unknown ; hence the 
 branches of the emigrating column, as they diverged north and south, 
 gave it different names. But, though unacquainted with the sea, they 
 wfere familiar with salt, as is proved by the recurrence of its name. 
 Nov is it in the vocabularies alone that these resemblances are remark 
 ed ; the same is to be said of the grammar. M. Max Muller shows thai 
 in Sanscrit, Zend, Lithuanian, Doric, Slavonic, Latin, Gothic, the forins. 
 of the auxiliary verb io -be are all varieties of one common type, and 
 that " the coincidences between the language of the Veda and the dia- 
 lect spoken at the present day by the Lithuanian recruit at Berlin are 
 greater by far than between French and Italian, and that the essential 
 forms of grammar had been fully framed and established before the first 
 separation of the Aryan family took place." 4 
 
 But it should not be overlooked that such interesting deduclioHB 
 founded on language, its vocabularies and grammar, must not be pressed 
 too closely. The state of civilization of the Indo-Germanic- column, as 
 thus ascertained, must needs have been ' inferior to that of the centre 
 from which it issued forth. Such we observe to be the case in all mi- 
 gratory movements. It is not the more, intellectual pr civilized por- 
 tions of a community which voluntarily participate therein, but those 
 in whom the physical and animal character predominates. There may 
 be a very rough offshoot from a very polished stock. Of course, the 
 movement we are here considering must have taken place at a period 
 
THEIR MODIFICATION BY CLIMATE. 25 
 
 chronologically remote, yet not so remote as might seem to be indicated 
 by the state of civilization of the invaders, used as an indication of the 
 state of civilization of the country from which they had come. In Asia, 
 social advancement, as far back as we can see, has ever been very slow; 
 but, at the first moment that we encounter the Hindu race historically 
 or philologically, it is dealing with philosophical and theological ques- 
 tions of the highest order, and settling, to its own satisfaction, problems 
 requiring a cultivated intellect even so much as to propose. All this 
 implies that in its social advancement there must have already been 
 consumed a very long period of time. 
 
 But what chiefly interests us is the relation which must have been 
 necessarily maintained between the intrusive people and those whom 
 thev thus displaced, the commingling of the ideas of the one commingung 
 
 *' li ^ 1 ■ • n 1 • • T n of blood and 
 
 with those of the other, arising from their commingnng oi of ideas. 
 blood. It is because of this that we find coexisting in the pre-Hellenic 
 times the sorcery of the Celt with the polytheism of the Hindu. There 
 can be no doubt that many of the philosophical lineaments displayed by 
 the early European mythology are not due to indigenous thought, but 
 were derived from an Asiatic source. 
 
 Moreover, at the earliest historic times, notwithstanding the disturb- 
 ance which must have lasted long after the successful and perhaps slow 
 advance of the Asiatic column, things had come to a state of equilibrium 
 or repose, not alone socially, but also physiologically. It takes a long 
 time for the conqueror and conquered to settle together, without farther : 
 disturbance or question, into their relative positions ; it takes a long time | 
 for the recollection of conflicts to die away. But far longer does it take 
 for a race of invaders to come into unison with the climate aimate-modifica- 
 
 „ , . , , • J .1 . o Hon of the Asiatic 
 
 01 the countries they nave seized, the system oi man accom- intruders, 
 modating itself only through successive generations, and therefore very 
 slowly, to new physical conditions. It takes long before the skin as- 
 sumes its determinate hue, and the skull its destined form. A period 
 aniply sufficient for all such changes to be accomplished in Europe had 
 transpired at the very dawn of history, and strands of population in 
 conformity with meteorological and geographical influences, though of 
 such origin as has been described, were already distributed upon it. A 
 condition of ethnical equilibrium had been reached. Along each iso- 
 thermal or climatic band wctc its correspondingly modified men, spend- 
 ing their lives in avocations dictated by surrounding circumstances. 
 These strands of population were destined to be dislocated, and some of 
 them to become extinct, by inventing or originating among themselves 
 new and unsuitable artificial physical conditions. 
 
 Already Europe was preparing a repetition of those events of which 
 Asia from time immemorial has been the scene. Already among the 
 nations bordering on the Mediterranean, inhabitants of a pleasant cli- 
 
26 OEIGIN OF GEEEK MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 mate, in which life could be easUy maintained— where the isothermal 
 First gieamB of of Januarj is 41° F., and of July 73^° F.— civilization was' 
 civilization commencing. There was an improving agriculture, an in- 
 creasing commerce, and, the necessary consequence thereof, germs of 
 art, the accumulation of wealth. The southern peninsulas were offering 
 to the warlike chieftains of middle Europe a tempting prize. So it had 
 
 been in Asia. 
 
 Under such influences Europe may be considered as emerging from 
 and first reii - ^^^ barbarian state. It had lost all recollection of its ancient 
 iou3 opinions, j-elatious with India, which have only been disclosed to us by 
 a study of the vocabularies and grammar of its diverse tongues. Upon 
 its indigenous sorcery an Oriental star-worship had been ingrafted, the 
 legends of which had lost their significance. What had at first been 
 feigned of the heavenly bodies had now assumed an air of persona;lity, 
 and had become attributed to heroes and gods. 
 
 The negro under the equinoctial line, the dwarfish Laplander beyond 
 the Arctic Circle — man every where, in his barbarous state, is a believer j 
 in sorcery, witchcraft, enchantments ; he is fascinated by the incompre^ '^ 
 hensible. Any unexpected sound or sudden motion he refers to invis- . 
 ible beings. Sleep and dreams, in which one third of his life is spent, 
 assure him that there is a spiritual world. He multiplies these unreal- 
 ities ; he gives to every grotto a genius, to every tree, spring, river, 
 mountain, a divinity. 
 
 Comparative theology, which depends on the law of continuous varia- 
 tion of human thought, and is indeed one of its expressions, universally 
 proves that, the moment man adopts the idea of an existence of invisible 
 ioadizumn of bciugs, he rccoguizes the necessity of places for their resi- 
 tho inTisibie. (je^ce, all nations assigning them habitations beyond the 
 boundaries of the earth. A local heaven and a local hell are found in 
 every > mythology. In Greece, as to heaven, there was a universal 
 agreement that it was situated above the blue sky; but as to hell, much 
 difference of opinion prevailed. There were many who thought that it 
 was a deep abyss in the interior of the earth, to which certain passages, 
 such as the Acherusian cave in Bithynia, led. But those who, with 
 Anaximenes, considered the earth to be like a broad leaf floating in the 
 air, and who accepted the doctrine that hell was divided into a Tartarus, 
 or region of night on the left, and an Elysium, or region of dawn on 
 the right, and that it was equally distant from all parts of the upper 
 surface, were nearer to the original conception, which doubtless placed it 
 on the under or shadowy side of the earth. The portals of descent were 
 then in the west, where the sun and stars set, though here and there 
 were passages leading through the ground to the other side, such as 
 those by which Hercules and Ulysses had gone. The place of ascent 
 was in the east, and the morning twilight a reflection from the Elysian 
 Fields. 
 
ITS GBADUAL DEVELOPMENT. 27 
 
 The picture of "Nature thus interpreted has for its centre the earth ; 
 for its most prominent object, man. Whatever there is has The anthropo- 
 been made for his pleasure, or to mmister to his use. io of thought, 
 this belief that every thing is of a subordinate value compared with 
 himself, he clings with tenacity even in his most advanced mental state. 
 
 Not without surprise do we trace the progress of the human mind. 
 The barbarian, the believer in sorcery, lives in incessant dread. All 
 nature seems to be at. enmity with him and conspiring for his hurt. 
 Out of the darkness he can not tell what alarming spectre may emerge; 
 he may, with reason, fear that injury is concealed in every stone, and 
 hidden behind every leaf. How wide is the interval from this terror- 
 stricken condition to that state in which man persuades himself of the 
 human destiny of the universe ! Yet, wonderful to be said, he passes 
 that interval at a single step. 
 
 In the infancy of the human race, geographical and astronomical ideas 
 are the same all over the world, for they are the interpretation of things 
 according to outward appearances, the accepting of phenomena as they 
 are presented, without any of the corrections that reason may offer. 
 This universality and homogeneousness is nothing more than a mani- 
 festation of the uniform mode of action of the human organization. 
 
 But such homogeneous conclusions, such similar pictures, are strictly 
 peculiar to the infancv of humanitv. The reasonins; fac- From homogeneouB 
 
 , , ,. .11 1 • tn n ^ ni* ■• ideas the compara- 
 
 ulty at length inevitably makes itseli lelt, and diversities tive sciences emerge. 
 of interpretation ensue. Comparative geography, comparative astrono- 
 my, comparative theology thus arise, homogeneous at first, soon esibit- 
 ing- variations, but ending in identity. 
 
 To that tendency for personification which marks the early life of 
 man are due many of the mythologic conceptions. It was thus that the 
 Hours, the Dawn, and Night, with her black mantle bespangled with 
 stars, received their forms. Many of the most beautifiil introduction of pcr- 
 legends were thus of a personified astronomical origin, soiled forms, 
 many were derived from physical nature. The clouds were thus made 
 to be animated things; a moving spirit was given toi the storm, the dew, 
 •the wind. The suij setting in the glowing clouds of the west becomes' 
 Hercules in the fiery pile; the morning dawn extinguished by the rising 
 sun is embodied in- the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. These legends 
 still survive in India. 
 
 But it must not be supposed that all Greek mythology can be thus 
 explained. It is enough for us to examine the circumstances under 
 which, for many ages, the European communities had been placed, to 
 understand that they had forgotten much that their ancestors had 
 brought from Asia. Much that was new had also sponta- The gradual and 
 neously arisen. The well-known variations of their the- of^Greektteoiiog! 
 ogony are not merely different legends of different locali- '"*' '^^^ 
 
28 ITS RESULTING COMPOSITE NATURE. 
 
 ties, they are more frequently successive improvements of the same 
 place. The general theme upon which they are based requires the ad- 
 mission of a primitive chaotic disturbance of incomprehensible gigantic 
 powers, brought into subjection by Divine agency, that agency dividing 
 and regulating the empire it had thus acquired in a harmonious way. 
 To this general conception was added a multitude of adventitious orna- 
 ments, some of which were of a rude astronpmical, some of a moral, 
 some, doubtless, of a historical kind. The primitive chaotic conflicts 
 appear under the form of the war of the Titans; their end is the confine- 
 ment of those giants in Tartarus ;■ their compulsory subjection is the 
 commencement of order : thus Atlas, the son of lapetos, is made to sus- 
 tain the vault of heaven in its western verge. The regulation of empire 
 is shadowed forth in the subdivision of the universe between ZeuS' and 
 The composite na- his brothers, he taking the heavens, Poseidon the sea, and 
 inrmytMo^." ' Hadcs the under world, all having the- earth as thfeir- com- 
 mon theatre of action. The moral is prefigured by such myths as those 
 of Prometheus and Epimetheus, the fore-thinker and the after-thinker; 
 the historical in the deluge of Deucalion, the sieges of Thebes and of 
 Troy. A harmony with human nature is established through the birth 
 and marriage of the gods, and likewise by their sufferings, passions, and 
 labors. The supernatural is gratified by Centaurs, Gorgons, Harpies, 
 and Cyclops. 
 
 It would be in vain to attempt the reduction of such a patchwork 
 system to any single principle, astronomical or moral, as some have tried 
 to do — a system originating from no single point as to country or to 
 time. The gradual growth of many ages, its diversities are due to many 
 local circumstances. Like the romances of a later period, it will not 
 bear an application of the ordinary rules of life. It recommended itself 
 to a people who found pleasure in accepting without any question state- 
 ments no matter how marvelous, impostures no matter how preposter- 
 ous. Gods, heroes, monsters, and men might figure together without 
 any outrage to probability when there was no astronomy, no geography, 
 no rule of evidence, no standard of belief. But the downfall of sueh a 
 system was inevitable as soon as men began to deal with facts — as soon 
 as history commenced to record, and philosophy to discuss. Yet not 
 without reluctance was the faith of so many centuries given up. The 
 || extinction of a religion is not the abrupt movement of a day, it is a sec- 
 jjular process of many well-marked stages — the rise of doubt among the 
 I candid; the disapprobation of the conservative; the defense of ideas fast 
 becoming obsolete by the well-meaning, who hope that allegory and 
 new interpretations may give renewed probability to what is almost in- 
 credible. But dissent ends in denial at last. - 
 
 Before we enter upon the history of that intellectual movement which 
 thus occasioned the ruin of the ancient system, we must bring to our- 
 
CONCEPTIONS OF HEAVEN, EARTH, HELL. 29 
 
 selves the ideas of tlie Greek of the eighth century before Christ, who 
 thought that the blue sky is the floor of heaven, the habitation of the 
 Olympian gods ; that the earth, man's proper seat, is flat, and ^'™^™^^«j 
 circularly extended, like a plate, beneath the starry canopy, geography. 
 On its rim is the circumfluous ocean, the source of the rivers, which all 
 flow to the Mediterranean, appropriately in after ages so called, since it 
 is in the midst, in the centre of the expanse of t\xe land. " The sea-girt 
 disk of the earth supports the vault of heaven." Impelled by a celestial 
 energy, the sun and stars, issuing forth from the east, ascend with diffi- 
 culty the crystalline dome, but down its descent they more readily has- 
 ten to their setting. No one can tell what they encounter in the land 
 of shadows beneath, nor what are the dangers of the way. In the morn- 
 ing the dawn mysteriously appears in the east, swiftly spreading over 
 the confines of the horizon ; in the evening the twilight fades gradually 
 • away. Besides the celestial bodies, the clouds are continually moving 
 over the sky, forever, changing their colors and their shape. No one 
 can tell whence the wind comes or whither it goes ; perhaps it is the 
 breath of that invisible divinity who launches the lightning, or of him 
 who rests his bow against the cloud. Not without delight might men 
 contemplate the emerald plane, the sapphire dome, the border of silvery 
 water, ever tranquil and ever flowing. Then, in the interior of the solid 
 earth, or perhaps on the other side of its plane — under world, as it was 
 well termed — is the realm of Hades or Pluto, the region of The under worm 
 Night. From the midst of his dominion, that divinity, crown- ""* "° Bpectres. 
 ed with a diadem of ebony, and seated on a throne iramed out of mass- 
 ive darkness, looks into the infinite abyss beyond, invisible himself to 
 mortal eyes, but made known by the nocturnal thunder which is his 
 weapon. The under world is also the realm to which ,the spirits retire 
 after death. At its portals, beneath .the setting sun, is stationed a nu- 
 merous tribe of spectres — Care, Sorrow, Disease, Age, Want, Fear, Fam- 
 ine, "War, Toil, Death, and her half-brother Sleep — Death, to whom it is 
 useless for man to offer either prayers or sacrifice. In that land of for- 
 getfulness and shadows there is the unnavigable lake Avernus, Acheron, 
 Styx, the groaning Cocytus, and Phlegethon, with its waves of fire. 
 There are all kinds of monsters* and forms of fearful import : Cerberus, 
 with his triple head'; Charon, freighting his boat- with the shades of the 
 dead ; the Fates, in their garments of ermine bordered with purple ; 
 the avenging Brinnys ; Rhadamanthus, before whom every Asiatic must 
 render his account ; ^acus, before whom every European ; and Minos, 
 the dread arbiter of the judgment-seat. There, too, are to be seen those 
 great criminals whose history is a warning to us : the giants, with drag- 
 ons' feet extended in the burn&g gulf for many a mile; Phlegyas, in 
 perpetual terror of the stone suspended over him, which never falls ; 
 Ixion chained to his wheel ; the daughters of Danaus still vainly try- 
 
30 THE AEGONAUTIC VOYAGE. 
 
 ing to fill their sieve ; Tantalus, immersed in the water to his chin, yet 
 tormented with unquenchable thirst ; Sisyphus despairingly laboring at 
 his ever-descending stone. Warned by such examples, we may learn 
 not to contemn the gods. Beyond these sad scenes, extending far to 
 the right, are the plains of pleasure, the Elysian Fields ; and Lethe, the 
 river of oblivion, of which whoever tastes, though he should ascend to 
 the eastern boundary of the earth, and return again to life and day, for- 
 gets whatever he has seen. 
 
 If the interior or the under side of the earth is thus occupied by 
 phantoms and half-animated shades of the dead, its upper surface, in- 
 habited by man, has also its wonders. In its centre is the Mediterranean 
 Sea, as we have said, round which are placed all the known countries, 
 each full of its own mysteries and marvels. Of these how many we 
 might recount if we. followed the wanderings of Odysseus, or the voy- 
 The Argonau- ^S^ of Jasou and his heroic comrades in the ship Argo, when 
 tic voyage, ^jj^ went to scize the golden fleece of the speaking ram. 
 "We might tell of the Harpies, flying women-birds of obscene form ; of 
 the blind prophet and the self-shutting rocks Symplegades, between 
 which, as if by miracle, the Argonauts passed, the colliding cliffs almost 
 entrapping the stern of their vessel, but destined by fate from that por- 
 tentous moment never to close again ; of the country of the Amazons, 
 and of 'Prometheus groaning on the rook to which he was nailed, of the 
 avenging eagle forever hovering and forever devouring ; of the land of 
 ^6tes, and of the bulls with brazen feet and flaming breath, and how 
 Jason yoked and made them plow ; of the enchantress Medea, and the 
 unguent she concocted from herbs that grew where the blood of Prome- 
 theus had dripped ; of the field sown with dragons' teeth, and the mail- 
 clad men that leaped out of the furrows ; of the magical stone that di- 
 vided them into two parties, and impelled them to fight each other; of 
 the scaly dragon that guarded the golden fleece, and how he was, lulled 
 with a charmed potion, and the treasure carried away ; of the -Eiver 
 Phasis, through whose windings the Argo sailed into the circumfluous 
 sea ; of the circumnavigation round that tranquil stream to the sources 
 of the Nile ; of the Argonauts carrying their sentient, self-speaking ship 
 on their shoulders through the sweltering Libyan deserts ; of the island 
 . of Circe, the enchantress ; of the rock, with its grateful haven, which in 
 the height of a tempest rose out of the sea to receive them ; of the arrow 
 shot by Apollo from his golden bow ; ,of the brazen man, the work of 
 Hephsestos, who stood on the shore of Crete, and hurled at them as 
 they passed vast fragments of stone ; of their combat with him and 
 their safe return to lolcos ; and of the translation of the ship Argo by 
 the goddess Athene to heaven. '^ 
 
 Such were some of the incidents of that celebrated voyage, the story 
 of which enchanted all Greece before the Odjssey was written. I have 
 
& 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL WONDEKS. 81 
 
 not space to tell of the wonders that served to decorate the geography 
 of those times. On the north there was the delicious country union of the 
 of the Hyperboreans, beyond the reach of winter; in the west SSS 
 the garden of the Hesperides, in which grew apples of gold ; in '™i™»- 
 the east the groves and dancing-ground of the sun ; in the south the 
 country of the blameless Ethiopians, whither the gods were wont to re- 
 sort. In the Mediterranean itself the Sirens beguiled the passers-by 
 with their songs near where Naples now stands ; adjoining were Scylla 
 and Charybdia; in Sicily were the one-eyed Cyclops and cannibal Laes- 
 trygons. In the island of Erytheia the three-headed giant Geryon tend- 
 ed his oxen with a double-headed dog. I need not speak of the lotus- 
 eaters, whose food made one forget his native country ; of the floating 
 island of ^olus ; of the happy fields in which the horses of the sun 
 were grazing ; of bulls and dogs of immortal breed ; of hydras, gor- 
 gons, and chimeras ; of the flying man Daedalus, and the brazen cham- 
 ber in which Danae was kept. There was no river, no gr6tto that had 
 not its genius ; no island, no promontory without its legend. 
 
 It is impossible to recall these antique myths without being satisfied 
 that they are, for the most part, truly indigenous, truly of European 
 growth. The seed may have been brought, as comparative philologists 
 assert, from Asia, but it had luxuriantly germinated and developed un- 
 der the sky of Europe. Of the legends, many are far from answering to 
 their reputed Oriental source; their barbarism and indel- Earuest Greek the- 
 
 1 p -n rrn j? ological ideas indi- 
 
 icacy represent the state ot Europe. Tne outrage oi cate a savage state. 
 Kronos qn his father Uranos speaks of the savageism of the times ; the 
 story of Dionysos tells of man-stealing and piracy ; the rapes of Europa 
 and Helen, of the abduction of women. The dinner in which Itys was 
 served up assures us that cannibalism was practiced ; the threat of La- 
 omedon that he would sell Poseidon and Apollo for slaves shows how 
 compulsory labor might be obtained. The polygamy of many heroes 
 often appears in its worst form under the practice of sister-marriage, a 
 crime indulged in from the King of Olympus downward. Upon the 
 whole, then, we must admit that Greek mythology indicates a barbaric 
 social state, man -stealing, piracy, human sacrifice, polygamy, cannibal- 
 ism, and crimes of revenge that are unmentionable. A personal inter- 
 pretation, such as man in his infancy resorts to, is embodied in circum- 
 stances suitable to a savage time. It was not until a later period that 
 allegorical phantasms, such as Death, and Sleep, and Dreams were intro- 
 duced, and still later when the old system was aflfected by Lydian, 
 Phrygian, Assyrian, and Egyptian ideas. 
 
 Not only thus from their intrinsic nature, but also from their record- 
 ed gradual development, are we warranted in imputing to the greater 
 part of the myths an indigenous origin. The theogony xheii- gradual im- 
 of Homer is extended by Hesiod in many essential points, historic times. 
 
S2 SUCCESSIVE TEAJSrSFORMATIONS OJ) GREEK MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 He prefixes the dynasty of Uranos, and differs in minor conceptions, as 
 in the character of the Cyclops. The Orphic theogony is again another 
 advance, having new fictions and new personages, as in the case of Za- . 
 'greus, the horned child of Jupiter by his own daughter Persephonei' " 
 Indeed, there is hardly one of the great and venerable gods of Olympus 
 whose character does not change with his age, and, seen from this point 
 of view, the origin of the Ionic philosophy becomes a necessary step in 
 The inevitable tend- the advauce. That philosophy, as we shall soon find, was 
 ^SKphV' '°™ due not only to the expansion of the Greek intellect and 
 the necessary improvement of Greek morals; an extraneous cause, the 
 sudden opening of the Egyptian ports, 670 B.C., accelerated it. Euro- 
 pean religion became more mysterious and more solemn. European 
 philosophy learned the error of its chronology, and the necessity of ap- 
 plying a more strict and correct standard of evidence for ancient events. 
 
 It was an ominous circumstance that the Ionian Greeks, who first he- 
 gan to philosophize, commenced their labors by depersonifying the ele- 
 ments, and treating not of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, but of Air, Water, 
 Fire'. The destruction of theological conceptions led irresistibly to the 
 destruction of religious practices. To divinities whose existence he de- 
 nied, the philosopher ceased to pray. Of what use were sacrificial offer- 
 ings and entreaties directed to phantasms of the imagination ? but advan- 
 tages might accrue from the physical study, of the impersonal elements. 
 
 Greek religion contained within itself the principles of its own de- 
 struction. It is for the sake of thoroughly appreciating this that I have 
 been led into a detail of what some of my readers rftay be disposed to 
 Inevitable destruo regard as idle and useless myths. Two circumstances of 
 ii™ ideas'^ " '^" inevitable occurrence insured the eventual overthrow of 
 the whole system ; they were geographical discovery and the rise of 
 philosophical criticism. Our attention is riveted by the fact that, two 
 thousand years later, the same thing again occurred on a greater scale. 
 
 As to geographical discovery, how was it possible that all the marvels 
 by geographi- of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the sorcerers, enchanters, 
 cai discovery, gjants, and monsters of the deep, should survive when those 
 seas were daily crossed in- all directions ? how was it possible that the 
 notion of a flat earth, bounded by the horizon and bordered by the cir- 
 cumfluous ocean, could maintain itself when colonies were being found- 
 ed in Gaul, and the Phoenicians were bringing tin from beyond the Pil- 
 lars of Hercules? Moreover, it so happened that many of the most as- 
 tounding prodigies were affirmed to be in the track which circumstances 
 had now made the chief pathway of commerce. Not only was there s^| 
 certainty of the destruction of mythical geography as thus presented on' 
 the plane of the earth looking upward to day ; there was also an immi- 
 nent risk, as many pious persons foresaw and dreaded, that what had 
 been asserted as respects the interior, or the other face looking down- 
 
EFFECT OF GEOGRAPHICAL" DISCOVERY. 33 
 
 ward into night, would be involved in the ruin too. Well, therefore, 
 might they make the struggle they did for the support of the ancient 
 doctrine, taking the only course possible to them, of converting what 
 had been affirmed to be actual events into allegories, under which, they 
 said, the wisdom of ancient times had concealed many sacred and mys- 
 terious things. But it is apparent that a system which is forced to this 
 necessity is fast hastening to its end. 
 
 Nor was it maritime discovery only that thus removed fabulous 
 Drodigies and gave rise to new ideas. In due course of Fictitious marvels 
 
 r D o _ replaced by gi'and 
 
 time the Macedonian expedition opened a new world to actualities, 
 the Greeks, and presented them with real wonders ; climates in marvel- 
 ous diversity, vast deserts, mountains covered with eternal snow, salt 
 seas far from the ocean, colossal animals, and men of every shade of 
 color and every form of religion. The numerous Greek colonies found- 
 ed all over Asia gave rise to an incessant locomotion, and caused these 
 natural objects to make a profound and permanent impression on the 
 Hellenic mind. If through the Bactrian empire European ideas were 
 transmitted to the far East, through that and other similar channels 
 Asiatic ideas found their way to Europe. 
 
 At the dawn of reliable tradition the Phoenicians were masters of the 
 Mediterranean Sea. Europe was altogether barbarous. On Dereiopment of 
 the very verge of Asiatic civilization the Thracians scalped commerce, 
 their enemies and tattooed themselves ; at the other end of the continent 
 the Britons daubed their bodies with ochre and woad. Contemporane- 
 ous Egyptian sculptures show the Europeans dressed in skins like sav- 
 ages. It was the instinct of the Phoenicians every where to establish 
 themselves on islands and coasts, and thus, for a long time, they main- 
 tained a maritime supremacy. By degrees a spirit of adventure was en- 
 gendered among the Greeks. In 1250 B.C. they sailed round the Eus- 
 ine, giving rise to the myth of the Argonautic voyage, and creating a 
 profitable traffic in gold, dried fish, and corn. They had also become 
 infamous for their freebooting practices. From every coast they stole 
 away men, women, and children, thereby maintaining a considerable 
 slave-trade, the relic of which endures to our time in the traffic for Cir- 
 cassian women. Minos, king of Crete, tried to suppress these piracies. 
 His attempts to obtain the dominion of the Mediterranean were imi- 
 tated in succession by the Lydians, Thracians, Ehodians, the latter being 
 the inventors of the first maritime code, subsequently incorporated into 
 Eoman law. The manner in which these and the inhabitants of other 
 towns and islands supplanted one another shows on what trifling cir- 
 cumstances the dominion of the eastern basin depended. Meantime 
 Tyrian seamen stealthily sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, visiting 
 the Canaries and Azores, and bringing tin from the British islands. 
 They used every precaution to keep their secret to themselves. The 
 
 C 
 
34 EFFECT OF PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 adventurous Greeks followed those mysterious, navigators step by step, 
 but in the time of Homer they were so restricted to the eastern basin 
 that Italy may be said to have been to them an unknown land. The 
 Phocseans first explored the western basin ; one of their colonies built Mar- 
 seilles. At length Coleus of Samos passed through the frowning gate- 
 way of Hercules into the circumfluous sea, the Atlantic Ocean. No 
 little interest attaches to the first colonial cities ; they dotted the shores 
 from Sinope to Saguntum, and were at once trading-depots and foci of 
 wealth. In the earliest times the merchant was his own captain, and 
 sold his commodities by auction at the place to which he camg. The 
 primitive and profitable commerce of the Mediterranean was peculiar- 
 it was for slaves, mineral products, and articles of manufacture ; for, run- 
 ning coincident with parallels of latitude, its agricultural products were 
 not very varied, and the wants of its populations the same. But tin 
 was brought from the Cassiterides, amber from the Baltic, and dyed 
 goods and worked metals from Syria. Wherever these trades centred 
 the germs of taste and intelligence were developed ; thus the Etruscans, 
 in whose hands was the amber trade across Germany, have left many 
 relics of their love of art. Though a mysterious, they were hardly a 
 gloomy race, as a great modern author has supposed, if we may judge 
 from those beautiful remains. 
 
 Added to the effect of geographical discovery was the development 
 Effect of phiioaoph- of philosopMcal criticism. It is observed that soon after 
 icai criticism. ^j^^ Q^^ Olympiad the Greek intellect very rapidly ex- 
 panded. Whenever man reaches a certain point intis mental progress, 
 he will not be satisfied with less than an application of existing rules to 
 ancient events. Experience has taught him that the course of the world 
 to-day is the same as it was yesterday ; he unhesitatingly beheves tkt 
 this will also hold good for to-morrow. He will not bear to contem- 
 plate any break in the mechanism of history ; he will not be satisfied ; 
 with a mere uninquiring faith, but insists upon having the same voucli- j 
 er for an old fact that he requires for one that is new. Before the face 
 of History Mythology can not stand. 
 
 The operation of this principle is seen in all directions throughout 
 Greek literature after the date that has been mentioned, and this the 
 ?a^men?r*om°' "^°^® Strikingly as thc time is later. The national intellect 
 the public faith, became more and more ashamed of the fables it had be- 
 lieved in its infancy. Of the legends, some are allegorized, some are 
 modified, some are repudiated. The great tragedians accept the myths 
 in the aggregate, but decline them in particulars ; some of the poets 
 transform or allegorize them ; some use them ornamentally, as gracefiil 
 decorations. It is evident that between the educated and the vulgar 
 classes a divergence is taking place, and that the best men of the times 
 see the necessity of either totally abandoning these cherished fictions to 
 
SECESSIOK OF LITEEARY MEN ASD PHILOSOPHERS. 35 
 
 the lower orders, or of gradually replacing them with something more 
 suitable. Such a frittering away of sacired things was, however, very 
 far from meeting with public approbation in Athens itself, although so 
 many people in that city had reached that state of mental development 
 in which it was impossible for them to continue to accept the national 
 faith. They tried to force themselves to believe that there must bis ' 
 something true in that which had been believed by so many great and 
 pious men of old, which had approved itself by lasting so many centu- 
 ries, and of which it was by. the common people asserted that absolute 
 demonstration could be given. But it was in vain ; intellect had out- 
 grown faith. They had come into that condition to which all men are 
 liable — aware of the fallacy of their opinions, yet angry that another 
 should remind them thereof. When the social state no longer permit- | 
 ted them to take the life of a philosophical offender, they found means 
 to put upon him such an invisible pressure as to present him the choice 
 of orthodoxy or beggary. Thus they disapproved of Euripides permit- 
 ting his characters to indulge in' any skeptical reflections, and discounte- 
 nanced the impiety so obvious in the Prometheus Bound of ^schylus. 
 It was by appealing to this sentiment that Aristophanes added no little 
 to the excitement against Socrates. Those who are doubting them- \ 
 selves are often loudest in public denunciations of a similar state in 
 others. 
 
 K thus the poets, submitting to common sense, had so rapidly fallen 
 away from the national belief, the philosophers pursued the same course. 
 It sopn became ttie universal impression that there was an intrinsic op- 
 position between philosophy and religion, and herein pub- ana of philosophers. 
 lie opinion was not mistaken ; the fact that polytheism furnished a re- 
 ligious explanation for every natural event made it essentially antago- 
 nistic to science. . It was the uncontrollable advancement of knowledge 
 that overthrew Greek religion. Socrates himself never hesitated to de- 
 nounce physics for that tendency, and the Athenians extended his prin- 
 ciples to his own pursuits, their strong common sense telling them that 
 the philosophical cultivation of ethics must be equally bad. He was 
 not loyal to science, but sought to support his own views by exciting a 
 theological odium against his competitors — a crime that educated men 
 ought never to forgive. In the tragedy that ensued the Athenians only 
 paid him in his own coin. The immoralities imputed to the gods were 
 doubtless strongly calculated to draw the attention of reflecting men, 
 but the essential nature of the pursuit in which the Ionian and Italian 
 schools were engaged bore directly on the doctrine of a providential 
 government of the world. It not only turned into a fiction the time- 
 honored dogma of the omnipresence of the Olympian divinities — ^it even 
 struck at their very existence, by leaving them nothing to do. For 
 those personifications it introduced impersonal nature or the elements. 
 
36 SEOESSiosr of histokians. 
 
 Instead of uniting scientific interpretations to ancient traditions, it mod- 
 ified and moulded the old traditions to suit the apparent requirements 
 of science. We shall subsequently see what was the necessary issue of 
 this, that the Divinity became excluded from the world he had made, 
 the supernatural merged in natural agency ; Zeus was superseded by the 
 air, Poseidon by the water; and, while some of the philosophers received 
 in silence the popular legends, as was the case with Socrates, or, like 
 Plato, regarded it as a patriotic duty to accept the public faith, others, 
 like Xenophanes, denounced the whole as an ancient blunder, convert- 
 ed by time into a national imposture. 
 
 As I shall have in a detailed manner occasion to speak of Greek phi- 
 losophy, it is unnecessary to enter into other particulars here. For the 
 present purpose it is enough to understand that it was radically opposed 
 Antagonism of to the national faith in all countries and at all times, from its 
 poi^thefeSi. origin with Thales down to the latest critic of the Alexandri- 
 an school. 
 
 As it was with philosophers, so it was with historians ; the rise of 
 Secession of t^ue Mstory brought the same result as the rise of true philos- 
 historians, ophy. lu this instance there was added a special circumstance 
 which gave to the movement no little force. Whatever might be the , 
 feigned facts of the Grecian foretime, they were altogether outdone in 
 antiquity and wonder by the actual history of Egypt. What was a pi- 
 ous man like Herodotus to think when he found that, at the very period 
 he had supposed a superhuman state of things in his native country, the 
 ordinary passage of affairs was taking place on the banks of the Nile? 
 And so indeed it had been for untold ages. To every one engaged in 
 recording recent events, it must have been obvious that a chronology- 
 applied where the actors are superhuman is altogether without basis, 
 and that it is a delusion to transfer the motives and thoughts of men to 
 those who are not men. Under such circumstances there is a strong 
 inducement to decline traditions altogether ; for no philosophical mind 
 wni ever be satisfied with different tests for the present and the past, 
 but will insist that actions and their sequences were the same in the fore- 
 [ time as now. 
 
 Thus for many ages stood affairs. One after another, historians, phi- 
 losophers, critics, poets, had given up the national faith, and lived under 
 a pressure perpetually laid upon them by the public, adopting general- 
 ly, as their most convenient course, an outward compliance w ^k^ 
 Universal dis- rcligious rec|uiiements,c£.the state.^ Herodotus can not recon- 
 
 belief of tlie ".V "i • — *-=Sr^;S»-^= -__~_-!^==— .-' .•,,., i i 
 
 learned. cilc the mconsistencics of the Trojan War with his knowledge 
 of human actions ; Thucydides does not dare to express his disbelief of 
 it ; Eratosthenes sees contnadictions between the voyage of Odysseus 
 and the truths of geography ; Anaxagoras is condemned to death for 
 impiety, and only through the exertions of the chief of the state is his 
 
ATTEMPTS AT A REFOEMATION. 37 
 
 sentence mercifully commuted to banishment. Plato, seeing things 
 from a Very general point of view, thinks it expedient, upon the whole, 
 to prohibit the cultivation of the higher branches of physics. Euripides 
 tries to free himself from the imputation of heresy as best he may. ^s- 
 chylus is condemned to be stoned to death for blasphemy, and is only 
 saved by his brother Aminias raising his mutUated arm — he had lost his, 
 hand in the battle of Salamis. Socrates stands his trial, and has to drink 
 hemlock. Even great statesmen like Pericles had become entangled in 
 the obnoxious opinions. No one has any thing to say in explanation 
 of the marvelous disappearance of demigods and heroes, why miracles 
 are ended, or why human actions alone are now to be seen in the world. 
 An ignorant public demands the instant punishment of every suspected 
 man. In their estimation, to distrust the traditions of the past is to be 
 guilty of treason to the present. 
 
 But all this confusion and dissent did not arise without an attempt 
 among well-meaning men at a reformation. Some, and they attempts at a 
 were, perhaps, the most advanced intellectually, wished that ^formation, 
 the priests should abstain from working any more miracles ; that rel- 
 ics should be as little used as was consistent with the psychical de- 
 mands of the vulgar, and should be gradually abandoned ; that philos- 
 ophy should no longer be outraged with the blasphemous anthropo- 
 morphisms of the Olympian deities. Some, less advanced, were disposed 
 to reconcile all difficulties by regarding the myths as allegorical ; some 
 wished to transform them so as to bring them in harmony with the ex- 
 isting social state ; some would give them altogether new interpreta- 
 tions. With one, though the fact of a Trojan War is' not to be denied, 
 it was only the eidolon of Helen whom Paris carried away ; with an- 
 other, expressions, perhaps once intended to represent actual events, are 
 dwindled into mere forms of speech. Unwilling to reject the attributes 
 of the Olympian divinities, their human passions and actions, another as- 
 serts that they must once have all existed as men. While one dp- 
 nounces the impudent atheists who find fault with the myths of the 
 Iliad, ignorant of its allegorical meanifig, another resolves all its heroes 
 into the elements ; and still another, hoping to reconcile to the improved 
 moral sense of the times the indecencies and wickednesses of the gods, 
 imputes them all to demons ; an idea which found much favor at first, 
 but became singularly fatal to polytheism in the end. 
 
 In apparent inconsistency with this declining state of belief in the 
 higher classes, the multitude, without concern, indulged in the most sur- 
 prising superstitions. With them it was an age of relics, of inveterate su- 
 
 • 1.1- • mi n • 1 1 • 1 peratitionof 
 
 weepmg statues, and wmkmg pictures. The tools with which the vulgar, 
 the Trojan horse was made might still be seen at Metapontum, the 
 sceptre of Pelops was still preserved at Chasroneia, the spear of Achilles 
 at Phaselis, the sword of Memnon at Nicomedia; the Tegeates could still 
 
38 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF POLYTHEISM. 
 
 show the hide of the Calydonian boar, very many cities boasted their 
 possession of the true palladium from Troy. There were staitues of 
 Athene that could brandish spears, paintings that could blush, images 
 that could sweat, and endless shrines and sanctuaries at which, miracle- 
 cures were performed. Into the hole through which the deluge of 
 Deucalion receded the Athenians still poured a customary sacrifice of 
 honey and meal. He would have been an adventurous man who risk- 
 ed any observation as to its inadequate, size. And', though the sky had 
 been proved to be only space and stars, and not the firm floor of Olym- 
 pus, he who had occasion to refer to the flight of the gods from mount- 
 Their ieaious intoi- ^i^ t°ps into heavcn would find it to his advantage to 
 eranceofdouMs. make no astrouomical remark. No a;dverse allusions to 
 the poems of Homer, Arctinus, or Lesches- were tolerated ; he who per- 
 petrated the blasphemy of depersonifying the sun went in peril of 
 death. They would not bear that natural laws should be substituted 
 for Zeus and Poseidon ; whoever was suspected of believing that Helios 
 and Selene were not gods, would do well to purge himself to public sat- 
 isfaction. The people vindicated their superstition in spite of all geo- 
 graphical and physical difficulties, and, far from concerning themselves 
 with those contradictions which had exerted such an influence on the 
 thinking classes, practically asserted the needlessness of any historical 
 evidence. 
 
 It is altogether erroneous to suppose that polytheism maintained its 
 Slowness of the ground as a living force until the period of Constantino and 
 
 dBcliDB and fa>Il 
 
 of Polytheism. Juliau. Its downfall commenccd at the time of the opening 
 of the Egyptian ports. Nearly a thousand years were required for a 
 consummation. The change first occurred among the higher classes, 
 and made its way slowly through the middle ranks of society. For 
 many centuries the two agencies — geographical discovery, arising from 
 increasing commerce and the Macedonian expedition, and philosophical 
 criticism — silently continued their incessant work, and yet it does not 
 appear that they could ever enforce a change on the lowest and most 
 numerous division of the social grade. In process of time, a third influ- 
 ence was added to the preceding two, enabling them to address them- 
 selves even to the humblest rank of life; this influence was the rise of 
 The Bccondary the Eomau powcr. It produced a wonderful activitv all over 
 downfall. the Mediterranean Sea and throughout the adjoining coun- 
 tries. It insured perpetual movements in all directions. Where there 
 had been oply a single traveler there were now a thousand legionaries, 
 merchants, government officials, with their long retinues of dependents 
 and slaves. Where formerly it was only the historian or philosopher 
 in his retirement who compared together the different laws and creeds, 
 habits and customs of different; nations incorrectly reported, now the same 
 things were vividly brought under the personal observation of multi- 
 
KEPETITION OF THESE EVENTS IN EUROPE. 39 
 
 tudes. The crowd of gods and goddesses congregated in Eome served 
 only to bring one another into disrepute and ridicule. 
 ' Long, therefore, previous to the triumph of Christianity, paganism 
 must be considered as having been irretrievably ruined. Doubtless it 
 was the dreadful social prospect before them— the apparent impossibili- 
 ty of preventing the whole world from falling into a totally godless 
 state, that tiot only reconciled so many great men to give Theaiannofgooa 
 their support to the ancient system, but even to look with- aodraiigio^B men. 
 out disapprobation on that physical violence to which the uneducated 
 multitude, incapable of judging, were so often wUling to resort. They 
 never anticipated that any new system could be introduced which should 
 take the place of the old, worn-out one ; they had no idea that relief in 
 this respect was so close at hand ; unless, perhaps, it might have been 
 Plato, who, profoundly recognizing that, though it is a hard piato-s remedy 
 and tedious process to change radically the ideas of common '"'■"'ee^ 
 men, yet that it is easy to persuade them to accept new names if they 
 are permitted to retain old things, proposed that a regenerated system 
 should be introduced, with ideas and forms suited to the existing social 
 state, prophetically asserting that the world would very soon become ac- 
 customed to it, and give to it an implicit adhesion. 
 
 In this description of the origin and decline of Greek religion I have 
 endeavored to bring its essential features into strong relief. Its fall was 
 not sudden, as many have supposed, neither was it accomplished by ex- 
 traneous violence. There was a slow, and, it must be emphatically add- 
 ed, a spontaneous decline. But, if the affairs of men pass in recurring 
 cycles — if the course of events with one individual has a resemblance to 
 the course of events with another — ^if there are analogies in The Greet movc- 
 
 ,^ J} J.- T ii • i7i 1 ■ ment has been 
 
 the progress of nations, and things reappear after due pen- repeated on the ■ 
 ods of time, the succession of circumstances thus displayed ^^pe!^ ° ^ " 
 before us in the intellectual history of Greece may perhaps be recog- 
 nized again in grander proportions on the theatre of all Europe. If 
 there is for the human mind a predetermined order of development, may 
 we not reasonably expect that the phenomena we have thus been- no- 
 ticing on a small scale in a single nation will reappear on the great scale 
 in a continent ; that the' philosophical study of this history of the past 
 will not only serve as an interpretation of many circumstances in the 
 history of Europe in the Dark and Middle Ages, but will also be a guide 
 to us in pointing out future events as respects aU mankind ?' For, though 
 it is true that the Greek intellectual movement was anticipated, as re- 
 spects its completion, by being enveloped and swallowed up in the slow- 
 er but more gigantic movements of the southern European mind, just 
 as a little expanding circle upon the sea may be obliterated and borne 
 away by more imposing and impetuous ;waves, so even the movement 
 of a continent may be lost in the movement of a world. It was criti- 
 
40 THE OEGANIZATION OF HYPOCEIST. 
 
 cism, and physical discovery, and intellectual activity, arising from po- 
 litical concentration, ihat""go profoundly affected the modes of Grecian 
 thought, and criticism and discovery have within the last four hundred 
 years done the same in all Europe. To one who forms his expectations 
 of the future from the history of the past — who recalls the effect pro- 
 duced by the establishment of the Eoman empire, in permitting free per- 
 sonal intercommunication among all the Mediterranean nations, and 
 thereby not only destroying the ancient forms of thought, which for cen- 
 jturies had resisted all other means of attack, and replacing them by a 
 homogeneous idea, it must be apparent that the wonderfully increased 
 facilities for locomotion, the inventions of our own*age, are the ominous 
 
 'precursors of a vast philosophical revolution. 
 
 Between that period during which a nation has been governed by its 
 imagination and that in which it submits to reason, there is a melan- 
 choly interval. The constitution of man is such that, for a long time 
 The organization ^'^^r hc has discovcrcd the incorrectness of the ideas pre^ 
 ofhyjocrisy. yaUing arouud him, he shrinks from .openly emancipating 
 himself from their dominion, and, constrained by the force of circuni' 
 stances, he lives a hypocrite, publicly applauding what his private judgJ 
 ment condemns. Where a nation is making this passage, so universal 
 do these practices become that it may be truly said that hypocrisy is 
 organized. It is possible that whole communities might be found liv- 
 ing in this deplorable state. Such, I conceive, must have been the, case 
 in many parts of the Eoman empire just previously to the introduction 
 of Christianity. Even after ideas have given way in public opinion, 
 their political power may outlive their intellectual, and produce the dis- 
 graceful effect we here consider. 
 
 It is not to be concealed, however, that, to some extent, this evil is in- 
 cident to the position of things. Indeed, it would be unfortunate if 
 national hypocrisy could not find a better excuse for itself than indivii 
 ual. In civilized life, society is ever under the imperious necessity of 
 moving onward in legal forms, nor can such forms be avoided without 
 the most' serious disasters forthwith ensuing. To absolve communities 
 too abruptly from the restraints of ancient ideas is not to. give them 
 liberty, but to throw them into political vagabondism, and hence it is 
 that great statesmen will authorize and even compel observances the es- 
 sential significance of which has disappeared, and the intellectual basis 
 of which has been undermined. Truth reaches her fuU action by de- 
 grees, and not at once ; she first operates upon the reason, the influence 
 being purely intellectual and individual ; she then extends her spheif • 
 
 : exerting a moral control, particularly through public opinion ; at last 
 she gathers for herself physical and political force. It is in the time 
 consumed in this gradual passage, that organized hypocrisy prevails. 
 To bring nations to surrender themselves to new ideas is not the affair 
 of a day. 
 
INDIAN AND EGYPTIAN INFLUENCES. 41 
 
 CHAPTER III. , 
 
 DIGRESSION ON HINDU THEOLOGY AND EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Comparative Theology of India ; its Phase of Sorcery ; its Anthropocemtric Phase. 
 
 Vedaism the Contemplation of Matter, or Adoration of Nature, set forth in the Vedas and 
 Institutes of Menu. — The Universe is God. — Transmutation of the World. — Doctrine of 
 Emanation. — Transmigration. — Absorption. — Penitential Semces. — The Happiness of abso- 
 lute Quietude. 
 
 Buddhism the Contemplation of Force. — The supreme impersonal Power. — Nature of the 
 World — of Man. — ITie Passage of every thing to Nonentity. — Development of Buddhism into 
 a vast monastic System marked by intense Selfishness. — Its practical Godlessness. 
 
 Egypt a mysterious Country to the old Europeans. — Its History, great public Works, and for. 
 eignBelations — its Fall. — Antiquity of its Civilization and Art. — Its Philosophy, hieroglyphic 
 lAterature, and peculiar Agriculture. 
 
 Rise of Civilization in rainless Countries. — Geography, Geology, and Topography of Egypt. — 
 The Inundations of the Nile lead to Astronomy. 
 
 Comparative Theology of Egypt. — Animal Worship, Star Worship. — Impersonation of Divine 
 Attributes — Pantheism. — The Trinities of Egypt. — Incarnation. — Redemption. — Future Judg- 
 ment. — Trial of the Dead. — Rituals and Ceremonies. 
 
 At tMs stage of our inTestigation of European intellectual develop- 
 ment, it will be proper to consider briefly two foreign influences — Indian 
 and Egyptian — which affected it. - , 
 
 From the relations existing between the Hindu and European fam- 
 ilies, as described in the preceding chapter, a comparison of their intel- 
 lectual progress presents no little interest. The movement of ofjjindu 
 the elder branch indicates the path through which the younger p'^o^"?''?- 
 is traveling, and the goal to which it tends. In the advanced condition 
 under which we live we notice Oriental ideas perpetually emerging in 
 a fragmentary way from the obscurities of modern metaphysics — ^they 
 are the indications of an intellectual phase through which the Indo-Eu- 
 ropean mind must pass. And when we consider the ready manner in 
 which these ideas have, been adopted throughout China and the entire 
 Bast, we may, perhaps, extend our conclusion from the Indo-European 
 family to the entire human race. From hence we may also infer how 
 unphilosophical and vain is the expectation of those who would attempt 
 to restore the aged populations of Asia to our state. Their intellectual 
 condition has passed onward, never more to return. It remains for them 
 only to advance as far as they may in their own line and to die, leaving 
 their place to others of a different constitution and of a renovated blood. 
 In life there is no going back ; the morose old man can never resume 
 
42 VEDAISM AND BUDDHISM. 
 
 the genial confidence of maturity ; the youth can never return to the 
 idle and useless occupations, the frivolous amusements of boyhood; 
 even the boy is parted by a long step from the innocent credulity of 
 the nursery. , 
 
 The earlier stages of the comparative theology of India are now in- 
 accessible. At a time so remote as to be altogether prehistoric the 
 The phase of aor- phasc of sorccry had been passed through. In the most 
 poMntricphMe™' ancient records remaining the Hindu mind is dealing with 
 anthropocentric conceptions, not, however, so much of the physical as 
 of the moral kind. Man had come to the conclusion that his chief con- 
 cern is with himself. "Thou wast alone at the time of thy birth, thou 
 wilt be alone in the moment of death ; alone thou must answer at the 
 bar of the inexorable Judge." 
 
 From this point there are two well-marked steps of advance. The 
 Comparative theoio- ^^st reachcs the Consideration of material nature ; the 
 toerttons-jSntCT" second, which is very grandly and severely philosophical, 
 ^0"^™- contemplates the universe under the conceptions of space 
 
 and force alone. The former is exemplified in the Vedas and Institutes 
 of Menu, the latter in Buddhism. In neither of these stages do the 
 vedaiam contem- idcas lie idle as mere abstractions ; they introduce a moral 
 Buadhism force, plan, and display a constructive power not equaled even by 
 the Italian papal system. They take charge not only of the individual, 
 but regulate society, and show their influence in accomplishing pohtical 
 organizations, commanding our attention' from their' prodigious extent, 
 and venerable for their a,ptiquity. 
 
 I shall, therefore, briefly refer, first, to the older, Vedaism, and then 
 to its successor, Buddhism. 
 
 Among a people possessing many varieties of climate, and familiar 
 with some of the grandest aspects of Nature — ^mountains the highest 
 upon earth, noble rivers, a vegetation incomparably luxuriant, periodical 
 rains, tempestuous monsoons, it is not surprising that there should have 
 vedaijm is the ado- ^^^cu an admiration for the material, and a .tendency to the 
 ration of Nature, worship of Naturc. Thesc spectacles leave an indeUble 
 impression on the thoughts of man, and, the more cultivated the mind, 
 the more profoundly are they appreciated. 
 
 The Vedas, which are the Hindu Scriptures, and of which there are 
 four, the Eig, Yagust, Saman, and Atharvan, are asserted to have been 
 The Vedas and TCvcaled by Brahma. The fourth is, however, rejected by 
 uieir doctrines. gQjjjg^ ^nd 'bears internal evidence of a later composition, at a 
 time when hierarchical power had become greatly consolidated. These 
 works are written in an obsolete Sanscrit, the parent of the more recent 
 idiom. They constitute the basis of an extensive literature, TJpavedas, 
 Angas, etc., of connected works and commentaries. For the most part 
 they consist of hymns suitable for public and private occasions, prayers, 
 
THE VEDA DOCTRnSTE OF GOD AND THE WORLD. 43 
 
 precepts, legends, and dogmas. The Eig, wHcIl is the oldest, is com- 
 posed chiefly of hymns, the other three of liturgical formulae. They 
 are of different periods and of various authorship, internal evidence 
 seeming to indicate that if the later were composed by priests, the ear- 
 lier were the production of military chieftains. They answer to a state 
 of society advanced from the nomade to the municipal condition. They 
 are based upon an aoknowledgnient of a universal Spirit pervading all 
 things. Of this God they therefore necessarily acknowledge ^he veda doc- 
 the unity: "There is in truth but one Deity, the Supreme tam«°fG»'i, 
 Spirit, the Lord of the universe, whose' work is the universe." " The God 
 above all gods, who created the earth, the heavens, the waters." The 
 world, thus considered as an emanation of God, is there- and of the world. 
 fore a part of him; it is kept in a manifest state by his energy, and 
 would instantly disappear if that energy were for a moment withdrawn. 
 Even as it is, it is undergoing unceasing transformations, every thing 
 being in a transitory condition. The moment a given phase is reached, 
 it is departed from, or ceases. In these perpetual movements the pres- 
 ent can scarcely be said to have any existence, for as the Past is ending 
 the Future has begun. 
 
 In such a never-ceasing career all material things are urged, their 
 forms continually changing, and returning, as it were, through revolving 
 cycles to similar states. For this reason it is that we may- regard our 
 earth, and the various celestial bodies, as having had a mo- its transformation, 
 ment of birth, a time of continuance, in which they are passing onward 
 to an inevitable destruction, and that after the lapse of countless ages 
 similar progresses will be made, and similar series of events will occur 
 again and again. 
 
 But in this doctrine of universal. transformation there is something 
 more than appears at first. The theology of India is underlaid with 
 Pantheism. " God is One because he is All." The Yedas, in speaking 
 of the relation of nature to God, make use of the expression n is the visi- 
 that he is the Material as well as the Cause of the universe, of ooa. 
 "the Clay as well as the Potter." They convey the idea that while 
 there is a pervading spirit existing every where of the same nature as 
 the soul of man, though differing from it infinitely in degree, visible na- 
 ture is essentially and inseparably connected therewith ; that as in man 
 ' the body is perpetually undergoing changes, perpetually decaying and 
 being renewed, or, as in the case of the whole human species, nations 
 come into existence and pass away, yet still there continues to exist what 
 may be termed the universal human mind, so forever associated and for- 
 'ever connected are the material and the spiritual. And under this as- 
 pect we must contemplate the Supreme Being, not merely as a presiding 
 intellect, but as illustrated by the parallel case of man, whose mental 
 principle shows no tokens except through its connection with the body ; 
 
44 OF THE SOUL — ^ABSORPTION AND TEANSMIGBATION. 
 
 SO matter, or nature, or the visible universe, is to be looked upon as the 
 corporeal manifestation of God. 
 
 Secular, changes taking place in visible objects, especially those of 
 an astronomical kind, thus stand as the gigantic counterparts both as 
 The nature to space and time of the microscopic changes which we recog- 
 ehS'Ss.'""' nize as occurring in the body of man. However, in adopting 
 these views of the relations of material nature and spirit, we must con- 
 tinually bear in mind that matter " has no essence independent of men- 
 tal perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms ;^ 
 that external appearances and sensations are illusory, and would Vanish 
 into nothing if the divine energy which alone sustains them were sus- 
 pended but for a moment." 
 
 As to the relation between the Supreme Being and man, the soul is 
 Of the soul ^ portion or particle of that all-pervading principle, the Uni' 
 of man. yersal Intellect or Soul of the World, detached for a while from 
 its primitive source, and placed in connection to the bodily frame, hut 
 destined by an inevitable necessity sooner or later to be restored and re- 
 joined — as inevitably as that rivers run back 40 be lost in the ocean 
 from which they arose. " That Spirit," says Varuna to his son, " from 
 which all created beings proceed, in which, having proceeded, they live, 
 Its final absorp- toward which they tend, and in which they are at last ah- 
 tioninGod. sorbed, that Spirit study to know: it is the Great One." 
 Since a multitude of moral considerations assure us of the existence of 
 evil in the world, and since it is not possible for so holy a thing as the 
 spirit of man to be exposed thereto without undergoing contamination, 
 it comes to pass that an unfitness may be contracted for its rejoining 
 the infinitely pure essence from which it was derived, and hence arises 
 Of penances the neccssity of its undergoing a course of purification. And 
 as the life of man is often too short to afford the needful opportunity, 
 and, indeed, its events, in many instances, tend rather to increase than to 
 diminish the stain, the season of purification is prolonged by perpetua- 
 and tranamigra- tjug the councction of the sinful Spirit with other forms, and 
 tionofaouiB. permitting its transmigration to other bodies, in which, hy 
 the penance it undergoes, and the trials to which it is exposed, its ini- 
 quity may be washed away, making it fit for absorption in the ocean of 
 infinite purity. Considering thus the relation in which all animated nar 
 ture stands to us, being a mechanism for purification, this doctrine of the 
 transmigration of the soul leads necessarily to other doctrines of a moral 
 kind, more particularly to' a profound respect for life under every form, 
 human, animal, or insect. 
 
 The forms of animal life, therefore, furnish a grand penitential mech- 
 The religious use auism for man. Such, on these principles,, is their teleolog- 
 of animal ufe. ^^^^ explanation. In European philosophy there is no 
 equivalent or counterpart of this view. With us animal life is purpose- 
 
OF DEVOTION AND OBJECTS OF ADORATION. 45 
 
 less. Hereafter we sliall find that in Egjrpt, thoilgh the doctrine of 
 transmigration must of course have tended to similar suggestions, it be- 
 came disturbed in its practical application by the base fetich notions of 
 the indigenous African population. Hence the doctrine was cherished 
 by the learned for philosophical reasons, and by the multitude for the 
 harmony of its results with their idolatries. 
 
 From such theological dogmas a religious system obviously springs 
 having for its object to hasten the purification of the soul, that it may 
 the more quickly enter on absolute happiness, which is only to be found 
 in absolute rest. The methods of shortening its wanderings and bring- 
 ing it to repose are by the exercises of a pious life, penance, of proper moaea 
 and prayer, and more especially by a profound contempla- "' d^™''""- 
 tion of the existence and attributes of the Supreme Being. In this pro- 
 found contemplation many holy men have passed their lives. 
 
 Such is a brief statement of Vedic theology, as exhibited in the con- 
 nected doctrines of the Nature of God, Universal Animation, Transmuta- 
 tion of the World, Emanation of the Soul, Manifestation of Visible 
 Things, Transmigration,* Absorption, the uses of Penitential Services, and 
 Contemplation for the Attainment of Absolute Happiness in Absolute 
 Eest. The Vedas also recognize a series of creatures superior to man, 
 the gods of the elements and stars ; they likewise personify the attri- 
 butes of the Deity. The three Vedic divinities, Agni, Indra, and Sur- 
 ya, are not to be looked upon as existing independently, for all spirits 
 are comprehended in the Universal Soul. The later Hindu Minor veaic 
 trinity, Brahma, Yishnu, and Siva, is not recognized by them, ^o"**"^'- 
 They do not authorize the worship of deified men, nor of images, nor 
 of any visible forms. They admit the adoration of subordinate spirits, 
 as those of the planets, or of the dernigods who inhabit the air,- the wa- 
 ters, the woods ; these demigods are liable to death. They inculcate 
 universal charity — charity even to an enemy : " The tree doth not with-/;. 
 j draw its shade from the woodcutter." Prayers are to be made thrice a 
 day, morning, noon, evening ; fasting is ordained, and ablution before 
 meals; the sacrificial offerings consist of flowers, fruits, money. Consid- 
 ered as a whole, their religious tendency is selfish: it puts in prominence 
 the baser motives, and seeks the gratification of the animal appetites, as 
 food, pleasure, good fortune. They suggest no proselyting spirit, but 
 rather adopt the principle that all religions must be equally acceptable 
 to God, since, if it were otherwise, he would have instituted a single 
 one, and, considering his omnipotence, none other could have possibly 
 prevailed. They contain no authorization of the division of castes, 
 which probably had arisen in the necessities of antecedent conquests, 
 but which have imposed a perpetual obstacle to any social progress, 
 keeping each class of society in an immovable state, and concentrating 
 knowledge and power in a hierarchy. Neither in them, nor, it is affirm- 
 
46 THE INSTITUTES OF MENU. 
 
 ed, ia the whole Indian literature, is there a single passage indicating a 
 love of liberty. The Asiatics can not understand what value there is in 
 It. They have balanced Freedom against Security ; they have deliber- 
 ately preferred the latter, and left the former for Europe to sigh for. 
 [ Liberty is alone appreciated in a life of action ; but the life of Asia is es- 
 sentially passive, and its desire is for tranquillity. Some have affirmed 
 that this imbecility is due to the fact that that continent has no true 
 temperate zone, and that thus, for ages, the weak nations have been in 
 contact with the strong, and therefore the hopeless aspirations for person- 
 al freedom have become extinct. But nations who are cut off from the 
 \ sea, or who have accepted the dogma that to travel upon it is unholy, 
 1 can never comprehend liberty. From the general tenor of the Vedas, 
 it would appear that the condition of women, was not so much restrain- 
 ed as it became in later times, and that monogamy was the ordinary 
 state. From the great extent of these works, their various dates" and 
 authorship, it is not easy to deduce from them consistent principles, 
 and their parts being without any connection, complete copies are very 
 scarce. They have undergone mutilation and restoration, so that great 
 discordances have arisen. 
 
 In the Institutes of Menu, a code of civil and religious law, written 
 The Institutes ^bout the ninth century before Christ, though, like the Vedas, 
 of Menu. betraying a gradual origin, the doctrine of the Divine unity 
 becomes more distinctly mixed up with Pantheistic ideas. They pre- 
 sent a description of creation, of the nature of God and the soul, and 
 contain prescribed rules for the djity of man in every station of life, 
 from the moment of birth to death. Their imperious regulations in all 
 these minute details are a sufficient proof of the great development and 
 pa,ramount power to which the priesthood had now attained, but their 
 morality is discreditable. They indicate a high civilization and demor- 
 alization, deal with crimes and a policy such as are incident to an ad- 
 vanced social condition. Their, arbitrary and all-reaching spirit reminds 
 one of the papal system ; their recommendations to sovereigns, their au- 
 thorization of immoralities, recall the state of Italian society as reflected 
 in the works of Machiavelli. They hold learning in the most signal 
 esteem, but concede to the prejudices of the illiterate in a worship of the 
 gods with burnt-offerings of clarified butter and libations of the juices 
 of plants. As respects the constitution of man, they make a distinction 
 between the soul and the vital principle, asserting that it is the latter 
 only which expiates sin by transmigration. They divide society into 
 four castes— the priests, the military, the industrial, the servile. They 
 make a Brahman the chief of all created things, and order that his life 
 shall be divided into four parts — one to be spent in abstinence, one in 
 marriage, one as an anchorite, and one in profound meditation ; he may 
 then " quit the body as a bird Ipves the branch of a tree." They vest 
 
CHANGES IN VEDAISM. 47 
 
 the government of society in an absolute monarch, having seven coun- 
 cilors, who directs the internal administration by a chain of of&cials, the 
 revenue being derived from a share of agricultural products, taxes on 
 commerce, imposts on shopkeepers, and a service of one day in the 
 month from laborers. : 
 
 In their essential principles the Institutes therefore follow the Yedas, 
 though, as must be the case in every system intended for men in the 
 various stages of intellectual progress from the least advanced to the 
 highest, thev show a leaning toward popular delusions. Both Both the vedas 
 
 ° ,,.«TTTT. , . anil Institutes 
 
 are pantheistic, for both regard the universe as the mam- are pantheistic. 
 festation of the Creator ; both accept the doctrine of Emanation, teach- 
 ing that the universe lasts only for a definite period of time, and then, 
 the Divine energy being withdrawn, absorption of every thing, even of 
 the created gods, takes place, and thus, in great cycles of prodigious dura-i 
 tion, many such successive emanations and absorptions of universes occur. ' 
 The changes that have taken place among the orthodox in India 
 since the period of^the Institutes are in consequence of the diminution 
 or disappearance of the highly philosophical classes, and Disappearance of 
 the comparative predominance of the vulgar. They are cMss^^fanTioni 
 stated by Mr. Elphinstone as a gradual oblivion of mono- nen"rof'a''ntt,ro- 
 theism, the neglect of the worship of some gods and the in- p"™"'™ i^^^- 
 troduction of others, the worship of deified mortals. The doctrine of 
 human deification is carried to such an extent that Indra and other 
 mythological gods are said to tremble lest they should be supplanted by 
 men. This introduction of polytheism and use of images has probably 
 been connected with the fact that there have been no temples to the 
 Invisible God, and the uneducated mind feels the necessity of some re- 
 cognizable form. Inthis manner the Trinitarian conception of Brahma, 
 Vishnu, and Siva, with fourteen other chief gods, has been introduced. 
 Vishnu and Siva are never mentioned in the Institutes, but they now 
 engross the public devotions ; besides these there are angels, genii, pe- 
 nates, and lares, like the Eoman. Brahma has only one temple in all 
 India, and has never been much worshiped. Chrishna is the great fa- 
 vorite of the women. The doctrine of incarnation has also become 
 prevalent; the incarnations of Vishnu are innumerable. The opinion 
 has also been spread that faith in a particular god is better than contem- 
 plation, ceremonial, or good works. A new ritual, instead of the Vedas, 
 has come into use, these scriptures being the eighteen Puranas, com- 
 posed between the eighth and sixteenth centuries. They contain the- 
 ogonies, accounts of the creation, philosophical speculations, fragmentary^ 
 history, and may be brought to support any sectarian view, having 
 never been intended as one general body, but they are received as in- 
 controvertible authority. In former times great ef&cacy was attached 
 to sacrifice and religious austerities, but the objects once accomplished 
 
48 THE EISE OF BUDDHISM. 
 
 in that way are now compassed by mere faitli. In the Baghavat Gita, 
 the text-book of the modern school, the sole essential for salvation is de- 
 pendence on some particular teacher, which makes up for every thing 
 else. The efficacy which is thus ascribed to faith, and the facility with 
 which ,sin may be expiated by penance, have led to great mental debility 
 and superstition. It has added force to thc'doctrine of a material para- 
 dise of trees, flowers, banquets, hymns ; and to a hell, a dismal place of 
 flames, thirst, torment, and horrid spectres. 
 
 If such has been the gradual degradation of religion, through the sup- 
 pression or disappearance of the most highly cultivated minds, t^e tend-, 
 Thephuosoph- ency of philosophy is not less strikingly marked. It is said 
 ioai schools, ^jjg^^ gyg^ ^ ancient times not less than six distinct philosoph- 
 ical schools may be recognized : 1, the prior Mimansa ; 2, the later Mi- 
 mansa, or Yedanta, founded by Vyasa about 1400 B.C., having a Vedan- 
 ta literature of prodigious extent; 3, the Logical school, bearing a, close 
 resemblance to that of Aristotle, even in its details ; 4, the Atomic 
 school of Canade; 5, the Atheistical school of Capila; 6, the Theistical 
 school of Patanjali. 
 
 This great theological system, enforced by a tyrannical hierarchy, did 
 The rise of 1^0* maintain itself without a conflict. Buddhism arose as its 
 Buddhism, antagonist. By an inevitable necessity, Vedaism must pass on- 
 ward to Buddhism. The prophetic foresight of the great founder of 
 this system was justified by its prodigious, its unparalleled, its enduring 
 , success — a success that rested on the assertion of the dogma of the ab- 
 [ solute ,^c|ua]it^:5£jiLffl®) ^^*i t^is in a country that for ages had been 
 1 oppressed iy castes. If the Buddhist admits the existence of God, it is 
 not as a Creator, for matter is equally eternal ; and since it possesses a 
 property of inherent organization, even if the universe should perish, 
 this quality would quickly restore it, and carry it on to new regeneial^ 
 tions and new decays without any external agency. It also is endued 
 with intelligence and consciousness. The Buddhists agree with the 
 Brahmins in the doctrine of, Quietism, in the care of animal life, in 
 transmigration. They deny the Vedas and Puranas, have no castes, and, 
 agreeably to their cardinal principle, draw their priests from all classes 
 like the European monks. They live in monasteries, dress in yellow, 
 go barefoot, their heads and beards being shaved ; they have constant 
 services in their chapels, chanting, incense, and candles ; erect monu- 
 ments and temples over the relics of holy men. They put an especial 
 merit in celibacy ; renounce all the pleasures of sense ; eat in one hall; 
 , receive alms. To do these things is incident to a certain phase of hu- 
 man progress. 
 
 Buddhism arose ^bout the tenth century before Christ, its founder be- 
 ing Arddha Chiddi, a native of Capila, near Nepaul. Of his epoch there 
 are, however, many statements. The Avars, Siamese, and Cingalese fix 
 
THE LIFE OP ITS FOUNDER. 49 
 
 him B.C. 600; the Cashmerians, B.C. 1332 ; the Chinese, Mon- iifeofArd. 
 gols, and Japanese, B.C. 1000. The Sanscrit words occurring *»-«"<>'"• 
 in Buddhism attest its Hindu origin, Buddha itself being the Sanscrit for 
 intelligence. After the system had spread widely in India, it was car- 
 ried by missionaries into Ceylon, Tartary, Thibet, China, Japan, Burmah, 
 and is now professed by a greater portion of the human race than any 
 other religion. Until quite recently, the history of Arddha Chiddi and 
 the system he taught have, notwithstanding their singular interest, been 
 very imperfectly known in Eurppe. He was born in affluence and of a 
 royal family. In his twenty-ninth year he retired from the world, the 
 pleasures of which he had tasted, and of which he had become weary. 
 The spectacle of a gangrened corpse first arrested his thoughts. Leav- 
 ing his numerous wives, he became a religious mendicant. It is said 
 that he walked about in a shroud, drawn from the body of a female 
 slave. Profoundly impressed with the vanity of all human affairs, he 
 devoted himself to philosophical meditation, by severe self-denial eman- 
 cipating himself from all worldly hopes and cares. When a man has 
 brought himself to this pass he is able to accomplish great things. For 
 the name by which his parents had called him he substituted that of 
 Gotama, or " he who kills the senses," and subsequently Chakia Mouni, 
 or the Penitent of Chakia. Under the shade of a tree Gotama was born ; 
 under the shade of a tree he overcame the love of the world and the 
 fear of- death ; under the shade of a tree he preached his first sermon in 
 the shroud ; under the shade of a tree he died, In four months after he 
 cordmenced his ministry he had five disciples ; at the close of the year 
 they had increased to twelve hundred. In the twenty-nine centuries 
 that have passed since that time, they have given rise to sects counting 
 millions of souls, outnumbering the followers of all other religious 
 teachers. The system still seems to retain much of its pristine vigor ; 
 yet religions are perishable. There is no country, except India, which 
 has the same religion now that it had at the birth of Christ. 
 
 Gotama died at the advanced age of eighty years; his corpse was 
 burnt eight days subsequently. But several years before this event 
 his system must be considered as thoroughly established. It shows how 
 little depends upon the nature of a doctrine, and how much ^^e organizauoa 
 upon effective organization, that Buddhism, 'the principles °f Buddhism, 
 of which are far above the reach of popular thought, should have been 
 propagated with so much rapidity, for it made its converts by preach- 
 ing, and not, like Mohammedanism, by the sword. Shortly after Gota- 
 ma's death, a council of five hundred ecclesiastics assembled for the 
 purpose of settling the religion. A century later a second council met 
 to regulate the monastic institution ; and in B.C. 241, a third council, 
 for the expulsion of fire-wof shipers. Under the auspices of King Aso- 
 ka, whose character presents singular points of resemblance to that of 
 
 D 
 
50 CONFLICT OF VEDAISM AND BUDDHISM. 
 
 the Eoman emperor who" summoned the Council of Nicea, for he, too, 
 was the murderer of his own family, and has been handed down to pos- 
 terity, because of the success of the policy of his party, as a great, a vir- 
 tuous, and a pious sovereign — under his auspices missionaries were sent 
 out in all directions, and monasteries richly endowed were every where 
 established. The singular efficacy of monastic institutions was redis- 
 covered in Europe many centuries subsequently. 
 
 In proclaiming the equality of all men in this life, the Buddhists, as 
 we have seen, came into direct colliston with the orthodox creed of 
 India, long carried out into practice in the institution of castes — a collis- 
 ion that was embittered by the abhorrence the Buddhists displayed for 
 any distinction between the clergy and laity. To be a Brahman a man 
 must be born one, but a Buddhist priest might voluntarily come from 
 any rank — from the very dregs of society. In the former system mar- 
 riage was absolutely essential to the ecclesiastical caste ; in the latter it 
 -was not, for the priestly ranks could be recruited without it. And 
 hence there followed a most important advantage, that celibacy and 
 chastity might be extolled as the greatest of all the virtues. The expe- 
 contest between riencc of Europc, as well as of Asia, has shown how powers 
 and Buddhists, ful is the control obtained by the hierarchy in that way. In 
 India there was, therefore, no other course- for the orthodox than to 
 meet the danger with bloody persecutions, and in the end, the Bud- 
 dhists, expelled from their native seats, were scattered throughotttEast- 
 ern Asia. Persecution is the mother of proselytes. 
 
 The fundamental principle of Buddhism is that there is a supreme 
 Buddhism is founded power, but uo Supreme Being. From this it might be 
 
 on the conception oft„ i,i..i i jl ^ j i. x. 
 
 Power or Force. interred that they who adopt such a creed can not be 
 pantheists, but must be atheists. It is a rejection of the idea of Being, 
 an acknowledgment of that of Force. If it admits the existence of God, 
 it declines him as a Creator. It asserts an impelling power in the uni- 
 verse, a self-existent and plastic principle, but not a self-existent, an 
 It does not recognize eternal, a personal God. It rejects inquiry into first 
 a personal God, causcs as bciug unphilosophical, and considers that phe- 
 nomena alone can be dealt with by our finite minds. Not without an air 
 of intellectual majesty, it tolerates the Asiatic time-consecrated idea of 
 a trinity, pointing out one not of a corporeal, but of an impersonal kind, 
 Its trinity is the Past, the Present, the Future. For the sake of aiding 
 our thoughts, it images the Past with his hands folded, since he has at- 
 tained to rest, but the others with their right hands extended in token 
 of activity. Since he has no God, the Buddhist can not expect absorp- ' 
 tion; the pantheistic Brahman looks forward to the return of his soul 
 to the Supreme Being as a drop of rain returns to the sea. The Bud- 
 dhist has no religion, but only a ceremonial. How can there be a relig- 
 ion where there is no God ? 
 
ITS IDEAS OF aOD, PROVIDHNCB, LAW, THE WOELD, MAN. 51 
 
 In all this it is plain that the impersonal and immaterial predomin- 
 ates, and that Gotama is contemplating the existence of pure n„r a providential 
 Force without any association of Substance. He neces- s"™™"™*. 
 sarily denies the immediate interposition of any such agency as Provi- 
 dence, maintaining that the system of nature, once arising, must proceed 
 irresistibly according to the laws which brought it into being, and that 
 from this point of view the universe is merely a gigantic engine. To 
 the Brahnian priesthood such ideas were particularly obnoxious ; they 
 were hostile to any philosophical system founded on the ^t refers aii events 
 principle that the world is governed by law, for they sus- '" ■■^™"<'s» ^'^■ 
 pected that its tendency would be to leave them without any mediatory 
 functions, and therefore without any claims on the faithful. Equally 
 does Gotama deny the existence of chance, saying that that which we 
 call chance is nothing but the effect of an unknown, unavoidable cause. 
 As to the external world; we can not tell how far it is a phantasm, how 
 far a reality, for our senses possess no reliable criterion of fi°g'2jtj*go''/J^ 
 truth. They convey to the mind representations of what visible woria. 
 we consider to be external things, by which it is furnished with mate- 
 rials for its various operations; but, unless it acts in conjunction with the 
 senses, the operation is lost, as in that absence which takes place in deep 
 contemplation. It is owing to our inability to determine what share 
 these internal and external conditions take in producing a result that 
 the absolute or actual state of nature is incomprehensible by us. Nev-, 
 ertheless, conceding to our 'mental infirmity the idea of a real existence 
 of visible nature, we may consider it as offering a succession of imper- 
 manent forms, and as exhibiting an orderly series of transmutations, in- 
 numerable universes in periods of inconceivable time emerging one aft- 
 er another, and creations and extinctions of systems of worlds taking 
 place according to a primordial law. 
 
 Such are his doctrines of a Supreme Force, and of the origin and his- 
 tory of the visible world.' With like ability Gotama deals of the nature 
 with his inquiry into the nature of man. "With Oriental o^™™- 
 imagery he bids us consider what becomes of a grain of salt thrown into 
 the sea ; but, lest we should be deceived herein, he tells us that there is 
 no such thing as individuality or personality — that the Ego is altogether 
 a nonentity. In these profound considerations he brings to bear his 
 conception of force, in the light thereof asserting that all sentient beings 
 are homogeneous. K we fail to follow him in these exalted thoughts, 
 bound down to material ideas by the infirmities of the human constitu- 
 tion, and inquire of him how the spirit of man, which obviously displays 
 so much energy, can be conceived of as being without form, without a 
 past, without a future, he demands of us what has become of the flame 
 of a lamp when it is blown out, or to tell him in what obscure condition 
 it lay before it was kindled. Was it a nonentity? Has it been anni- 
 
52 OF THE PASSAGE TO NIE-WANA OE NONENTITT. 
 
 Mlated? By the aid of sucli imagery lie tries to depict the nature of 
 existence, and to convey a vivid idea of the metamorphoses it under- 
 goes. Outward things are to him phantasms ; the impressions they make 
 on the mind are phantasms too. In this sense he receives the doctrine 
 of transmigration, conceiving of it very much as we conceive of the ac- 
 cumulation of heat successively in different things. In one sense it 
 may be the same heat which occupies such objects one after another, 
 but in another, since heat is force and not matter, there can be no such 
 individuality. Viewed, however, in the less profound way, he is not 
 oftranBimgratto Unwilling to adopt the doctrine of the transmigration of 
 and penance, ^^^g gQ^j through various forms, admitting that there may 
 accumulate upon it the effect of all those influences, whether of merit or 
 demerit, of good or of evil, to which it has been exposed. The vital 
 flame is handed down from one generation to another ; it is communi- 
 cated from one animated form to aiiother. He thinks it may carry with 
 it in these movements the modifications which may have been impress- 
 ed on it, and require opportunity for shaking them off and regaining its 
 original state. At this point the doctrine of Gotama is assuming the as- 
 pect of a moral system, and is beginning to suggest means of deliver--- 
 ance -from the accumulated evil and consequent demerit to which the 
 spirit has been exposed. He will not, however, recognize any vicarious 
 action. Each one must work out for himself his own salvation, remem- 
 bering that death is not necessarily a deliverance from worldly ills, it 
 may be only a passage to new miseries. But yet, as the light of the 
 taper must come at last to an end, so there is at length, though it may 
 be after many transmigrations, an end of life. That end he calls Nir- 
 wana, a word that has been for nearly three thousand years of solemn 
 import to countless millions of .men. Nirwana, the end of successive 
 existences, that state which has no relation to matter, or space, or time, 
 and the passage to wMch the departing flame of the extiriguished taper has 
 to nonentity, gone. It is the supremc cud, Noucutity. The' attaining of 
 this is the object to which we ought to aspire, and for that purpose we 
 should seek to destroy within ourselves all cleaving to existence, wean- 
 ing ourselves from every earthly object, from every earthly pursuit. 
 We should resort to monastic life, to penance, to self-denial, self-mortifi- 
 cation, and so gradually learn to sink into perfect quietude or apathy; , 
 in imitation of that state to which we must come at last, and to which, 
 by such preparation, we may all the more rapidly approach. The pan- 
 theistie Brahman expects absorption in God ; the Buddhist, having no 
 God, expects extinction. 
 
 India has thus given to the world two distinct philosophical systems: 
 Vedaism, which takes as its resting-point the existence of matter, and 
 Philosophical esti- Buddhism, of which the resting-point is force. The philo- 
 mate of Buddhism. gopHcal ability displayed in the latter is very great; in- 
 
GRADUAL DEBASEMENT OP BUDDHISM. 53 
 
 deed it may be doubted whether Europe has produced its metaphysical 
 equivalent. And yet, if I have correctly presented its principles, it wUl 
 probably appear that its primary conception is hot altogether consistent- 
 ly carried out in the development of the details. Great as was the in- 
 tellectual ability of its author-^so great as to extort our profoundest, 
 though it may be reluctant admiration — there are nevertheless moments 
 in which it appears that his movement is becoming wavering and un- 
 steady — that he is failing to handle his ponderous weapon with self-bal- 
 anced power. This is particularly the case in that point in which he isC 
 passing from the consideration of pure force to the unavoidable consid-/ 
 eration of visible nature, the actual existence of which he seems to be\ 
 obliged to deny. But then I am not sure that I have caught with pre- ) 
 cision his exact train of thought, or have represented his intention with 
 critical correctness. Considering the extraordinary power he elsewhere 
 displays, it is more probable that I have failed to follow his meaning, / 
 than that he has been, on the points in question, incompetent to' deal 
 with his task. 
 
 The works of Gotama, under the title of " Verbal Instructions," are 
 published by the Chinese government in four languages — Thibetan, Mon- 
 gol, Mantchou, Chinese-^from the imperial press at Pekin, in eight hund- 
 red large volumes. They are presented to* the Lama monasteries — a 
 magnificent gift. 
 
 In speaking of Vedaism, I have mentioned the manner in which its 
 more elevated conceptions were gradually displaced by those Displacement of 
 
 n 1 -I • • , •' 1 1 ' • I its liighei ideas 
 
 of a base grade coming mto prommence; and here it may ty base ones. 
 be useful in like- manner to speak of the corresponding debasement of 
 Buddhism. Its practical working was the introduction of an immense 
 monastic system, offering many points of resemblance to the subsequent 
 one of Europe. Since its object was altogether of a personal kind, the 
 attainment of individual happiness, it was not possible that it should do 
 otherwise than engender extreme selfishness. It impressed on its anthropo- 
 each man to secure his own salvation, no matter what became remains, its 
 of all others. Of what concern to him were parents, wife, chil- declining, 
 dren, friends, country, so long as he attained Nirwana ? 
 
 Long before Buddhism had been expelled from India by the victori- 
 ous Brahmans, it had been overlaid with popular ornaments. It had its \ 
 fables, legends, miracles. Its humble devotees implicitly be- jjs i^geass and 
 lieved that Mahamaia, the mother of Gotama, an immaculate "™'=i«=- 
 virgin, conceived him through a divine influence, and that thus he was 
 of the nature of God and man conjoined ; that he stood upon his feet 
 and spoke at the moment of his birth ; that at five months of age he sat 
 unsupported in the air; that at the moment of his conversion he was at- 
 tacked by a legion of demons, and that in his penance-fasting he reduced 
 himself to the allowance of one pepper-pod a day ; that he had been in- 
 
54 ITS VAST DIFFUSION OVER EASTERN ASIA. 
 
 Icarnate many times before, and that on his ascension through the air to 
 heaven he left his footprint on a mountain in Ceylon, which is to be 
 worshiped ; that there is a paradise of gems, and flowers, and feasts, and 
 music for the good, and a hell of sulphur, and flames, and torment for 
 the wicked ; that it is lawful to resort to the worship of images, but that 
 those are in error who deify men, or pay respect to relics ; that there 
 are spirits, and goblins, and other superhuman forms ; that there is a 
 queen of heaven ; that the reading of the Scriptures is in itself an actual 
 imerit, whether its precepts are followed or not ; that prayer may be of- 
 Ifered by saying a formula by rote, or even by turning the handle of a 
 mill from which invocations written on paper issue forth ; that the re- 
 vealer of Buddhism is to be regarded as the religious head of the world. 
 
 The reader can not fail to remark the resemblance of these ideas to 
 some of those of Jhe Eoman Church. "When a knowledge of the Ori-. 
 ental forms of religion was first brought into Europe, and their real ori- 
 gin was not understood, it was supposed that this coincidence had arisen 
 in the labors of Nestorian, or other ancient missionaries from the West, 
 and hopes were entertained that the conversion of Eastern Asia would 
 be promoted thereby. But this expectation was disappointed, and that 
 which many good men regarded as a preparation for Christianity 
 proved to be a stumbling-ttock in its way. It is not improbable that 
 the pseudo-Christianity of the Chinese revolters, of which so much has 
 recently been said, is of the same nature, and will end with the same 
 result. 
 
 Decorated with these extraneous but popular recommendations. Bud- 
 dhism has been embraced by four tenths of the human race. It has a 
 prodigious literature, great temples, many monuments. Its monasteries 
 The great diffusion ^'^^ Scattered from the north of Tartary almost to the equi- 
 of BaddMBm. noctial line. In these an education is imparted not unlike 
 that of the European monasteries of the Middle Ages. It has been esti- 
 mated that in Tartary one third of the population are Lamas. There 
 are single convents containing more than two thousand individuals ; the 
 wealth of the country voluntarily pours into them. Elementary educa- 
 I tion is more widely diffused than in Europe ; it is rare to meet with a 
 ' person who can not read. Among the priests there are many who are 
 devout, and, as might be expected, many who are impostors. It is a 
 melancholy fact that, in China, Buddhism has led the entire population 
 Its practical ^0* OTxlj into indiffereutism, but into absolute godlessness. 
 godieBsnesa. Tj^gy have comc to regard religion as merely a fashion, to he 
 followed according to one's own taste; that as professed by the state it is 
 a civil institution necessary for the holding of office, and demanded^hy 
 society, but not to be regarded as of the smallest philosophical impor- 
 tiance ; that a man is entitled to indulge his views on these matters just 
 as he is entitled to indulge his taste in the color and fashion of his gar- 
 
EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 55 
 
 ments ; that he has no more right, however, to live without some relig- 
 ious profession than he ha*s a right to go naked. The Chinese can not 
 comprehend how there should be animosities arising on matters of such 
 doubtful nature and trivial concern. The formula under which they 
 I live is: "Eeligions are many; reason is one; we are brothers." They 
 smile at the credulity of the good-natured Tartars, who believe in the 
 wonders of miracle-workers, for they have miracle-workers who can per- 
 form the most supernatural cures, who can lick red-hot iron, who can 
 cut open their bowels, and, by passing their hand over the wound, make 
 themselves whole again — who can raise the dead. In China, these mir- 
 acles, with all their authentications, have descended to the conjuror, and 
 are performed for the amusement of children. The common expressions 
 of that country betray the materialism and indifferentism of the people, 
 and their consequent immorality. "The prisons," they say, "are locked 
 night and day, but they are always full ; the temples are always open, 
 and yet there is nobody in them." Of the dead they say, with an ex- 
 quisite refinement of politeness, "He has saluted the world." The Laz- 
 arist Hue, on whose authority many of these statements are made, tes- 
 tifies that they die, indeed, with incomparable tranquillity, just as ani- 
 mals die; and adds, with a bitter, and yet profoundly true sarcasm, they 
 are what many in Europe are wanting to be. 
 
 From the theology of India I turn, in the next place, to the civiliza- 
 tion of Egypt. 
 
 The ancient system of isolation which for many thousand years had 
 been the policy of Egypt was overthrown by Psammetichus about 
 B.C. 670. Up to that time the inhabitants of that country had been 
 shut out from all Mediterranean or European contact by a rigorous ex- 
 clusion exceeding that until recently practiced in China and Japan. 
 As from the inmates of the happy valley, in Easselas, no tidings escaped 
 to the outer world, so, to the European, the valley of the Nile Egypt » myste- 
 
 „. T 1 A • 1 n riou3 country to 
 
 was a region of mysteries and marvels. At intervals of cen- Europe, 
 turies, individuals, like Cecrops and Danaus, had fled to other countries, 
 and had attached the gratitude of posterity to their memories for the 
 religion, laws, or other institutions of civilization they had conferred. 
 The traditions connected with them served only to magnify those un- 
 certain legends met with all . over Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Sicily, of 
 the prodigies and miracles that adventurous pirates reported hb reported 
 they had actually seen in their stealthy visits to the enchanted ^"""i™- 
 valley — great pyramids covering acres of land, their tops rising to the 
 heavens, yet each pyramid nothing more than the tomb-stone of a king ; 
 colossi sitting on granite thrones, the images of Pharaohs who lived in 
 the morning of the world, still silently looking upon the land which 
 thousands of years before they had ruled ; of these, some, obedient to the 
 
56 OPENING OF THE EGYPTIAN PORTS TO EUEOPE. 
 
 sun, saluted his approach when touched by his morning rays ; obelisks 
 of prodigious height, carved by superhuman* skill from a single block 
 of stone, and raised by superhuman power erect on their everlasting 
 pedestals, their faces covered with mysterious hieroglyphs, a language 
 unknown to the vulgar, telling by whom and for what they had beeu 
 constructed ; temples, the massive leaning and lowering walls of which 
 were supported by countless ranges of statues ; avenues of sphinxes, 
 through the shadows of which, grim and silent, the portals of fanes 
 might be approached; catacombs containing the mortal remains of 
 countless generations, each corpse awaiting, in mysterious embalmment, 
 a future life ; labyrinths of many hundred chambers and vaults, into 
 which whoso entered without a clew never again escaped, but in the 
 sameness and solitude of those endless windings found his sepulchre, 
 It is impossible for us to appreciate the sentiment of religious awe with 
 which the Mediterranean people looked upon the enchanted, the hoary, 
 the civilized monarchy on the banks of the Nile. As Bunsen says, 
 " Egypt was to the Greeks a sphinx with an intellectual human coun- 
 tenance.'.' 
 
 Her solitude, however, had not been altogether .unbroken. After a 
 Its history : the old duration of 1076 ycars, and the reign of thirty-eight kings; 
 
 empire; the Hyck- .,, " , , ^ ' , . ? , . -^ ° .° ' 
 
 aos; the new empire, illustrated by the production 01 the most stupendous 
 works ever accomplished by the hand of man, some of which, as the 
 Pyramids, remain to our times, the old empire, which had arisen from 
 the union of the upper and lower countries, had been overthrown by 
 the Hycksos, or shepherd kings, a race of Asiatic invaders. These, in 
 their turn, had held dominion for more than five centuries, when an in- 
 surrection put an end to their power, and gave birth to the new empire, 
 some of the monarchs of which, for their great achievements, are still re- 
 membered. In the middle period of this new empire those events |j 
 early Hebrew history took place — the visit of Abram and the elevation 
 of Joseph — which are related with such simplicity in the Holy Scripturess* 
 "With varied prosperity, the new empire continued until the time of 
 Psammetichus, who, in. a civil war, having attained supreme power by 
 the aid of Greek mercenaries, overthrew the time-honored policy of all 
 the old dynasties, and occasioned the first grand impulse in the intellec^ 
 Opening of the ^^^ lif^ of Europe by opening the ports of Egypt, and mak- 
 Egyptian ports, jjjg ^^^^ couutry acccsslble to the blue-eyed and red-haired 
 barbarians of the North. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the influence of this event upon 
 the progress of Europe. An immense extension of Greek commerce by 
 the demand for the products of the Euxine as well as of the Mediterra- 
 nean was the smallest part of the advantage. As to Egypt herself, it 
 toheramefS" ®'^t^i^^d;a Complete change in her policy, domestic and for* 
 itune state, eigu. In the former respect, the employment of the mer> 
 
THE GREAT CANAl AND CIBCUMNAVIGATION OF AFRICA. 57 
 
 cenaries was the cause of the entire emigration of the warrior caste, and 
 in the latter it brought things to such a condition that, if Egypt would 
 continue to exist; she must become a maritime state. Her geographical 
 position for the purposes of commerce was excellent ; with the Eed Sea 
 to the east and the Mediterranean to the north, she was the natural en- 
 trepot between Asia and Europe, as, was shown by the prosperity of Al- 
 exandria in later ages. But there was a serious difficulty in the way of 
 her becoming a naval power ; no timber suitable for ship-building grew 
 in the country — ^indeed, scarcely enough was to be found to satisfy the 
 demands for the construction of houses and coffins for the dead. The 
 early Egyptians, like the Hindus, had a religious dread of the sea, but 
 their exclusiveness was, perhaps, not a little dependent on their want of 
 material for ship-building. Egypt was therefore compelled to enter on 
 a career of foreign conquest, and at all hazards possess herself of the 
 timber-growing districts of Syria. It was this urgent necessity which 
 led to her collisions with the Mesopotamian kings, and drew andtringo on mi- 
 
 . •, , • J. i1 • 1 T jj -J.- liBioDs with the 
 
 in its tram oi consequences the sieges, sacks, and captivities Bahyioniana. 
 of Jerusalem, the metropolis of a little state lying directly between the 
 contending powers, and alternately disturbed by each. Of the necessity 
 of this Course of policy in the opinion of the Egyptian kings, we can 
 have no better proof than the fact that Psammetichus himself continued 
 the siege of Azotus for twenty -nine years ; that his son Necho reopened 
 the canal between the Nile at Bubastes and the Eed Sea at openmgofthe 
 Suez — ^it was wide enough for two ships to pass — and on be- ^"'^ *^™'^- 
 ing resisted therein by the priests, who feared that it might weaken the 
 country strategically, attempted the circumnavigation of Africa, and ac- 
 tually succeeded in it. In those times such expeditions were not under- 
 taken as mere matters of curiosity. Though this monarch also dispatch- 
 ed investigators to ascertain the sources of the Nile, and determine the 
 causes of its rise, it was doubtless in the hope of making such knowl- 
 edge of use in a material or economical point of view, and therefore it 
 may be supposed that the circumnavigation of Africa was un- circumnaviga. 
 dertaken upon the anticipated or experienced failure of the "™°f^"»»- 
 advantages expected to arise from the reopening of the canal ; for the 
 great fleets which Necho and his father had built could not be advan- 
 tageously handled unless they could be transferred as circumstances re- 
 quired, either by the circumnavigation or by the canal, from one sea to 
 the other. The time occupied in passing round the continent, which 
 appears to have been three years, rendered the former method of little 
 practical use. But the failure experienced, so far from detracting from 
 the estimation in which we must hold those kings who could thus dis- 
 play such a breadth of conception and vigor of execution, must even en- 
 hance it. They resumed the policy of the conqueror Eameses II., who 
 had many centuries before possessed the timber-growing countries, and 
 
58 THE FALL OF EGYPT. 
 
 whose engineers originally cut the canal from the Nile to the Eed Sea, 
 HiBtoryofthe though the work cost 120,000 lives and countless treasuries 
 Great canaL ^f money. The canal of Eameses, which, in the course of so 
 piany centuries, had become filled up with sand, was thus cleaned out, 
 as it was again in the reign of the Ptolemies, and again under the khalifs, 
 and galleys passed from sea to sea. The Persians, under Darius Hys- 
 taspes, also either repaired it, or, as some say, attempted a new work of 
 the kind ; but their engineering must have been very defective, for they 
 were obliged to abandon their enterprise after carrying it as far as the 
 bitter lakes, finding that salt water would be introduced into the Delta. 
 The Suez mouth of the canal of Eameses was protected by a system of 
 hydraulic works, to meet difficulties arising from the variable levels both 
 of the Nile and the Eed Sea. Well might the Egyptians, whose coun- 
 try was the scene of such prodigious works of civil engineering, smile 
 when the conceited Greeks boasted that Thales had taught them to meas- 
 ure the height of their own Pyramids. 
 
 The Egyptian policy continued by Pharaoh Hophra, who succeeded 
 in the capture of Sidon, brought on hostilities with the Babylonian 
 kings, now become thoroughly awakened to what was going on in 
 Egypt — a coUision which occasioned the expulsion of the Egyptiai]? 
 from Syria, and the seizure of the lower country by Nebuchadnezzar, 
 who also took vengeance on King Zedekiah for the assistance Jerusa- 
 lem had rendered to the Africans in their projects: that city was razed 
 Attempts of the to the ground, the eyes of the king put out, and the people 
 fouaMedL?;" carried captive to Babylon, B.C. 568. It is a striking ex- 
 ranean shore, emplificatiou of the manner in which national policy will en- 
 dure through changes of dynasties, that after the overthrow of Baby- 
 lon by the Medes, and the transference of power to the Persians, the 
 policy of controlling the Mediterranean was never for an instant lost 
 sight of. Attempts were continually made, by operating alternately on 
 the southern and northern shores, to push to the westward. The subse- 
 quent history of Eome shows what would have been the consequences 
 of an uncontrolled possession of the Mediterranean by a great maritime 
 Egypt overthrown power. Ou the occasiou of a revolt of Egypt, the Persian 
 bycamhyses. -^^^^ Cambyses so utterly crushed and desolated it, that 
 from that day to this, though twenty-four centuries have intervened, it 
 has never been able to recover its independence. The Persian ad- 
 vance on the south shore toward Carthage failed because of the indis- 
 position of the Phoenicians to assist in any operations against that city. 
 We must particularly remark that the ravaging of Egypt by Cambyses 
 was contemporaneous with tl}e cultivation of philosophy in the south- 
 ern Italian towns — somewhat more than five hundred years feefore 
 Christ. 
 
 Among the incidents occurring during these struggles between the 
 
THE FALL OF TYKE. 59 
 
 Egyptian and Babylonian kings there is one deserving to be brougbt 
 into conspicuous prominence, from the importance of its consequences 
 in European history. It was the taking of Tyre by Nebu- Fan c* Tyre, 
 chadnezzar. So long as that city dominated in the Mediterranean, it 
 was altogether impossible for Greek maritime power to be developed. 
 The strength of Tyre is demonstrated by her resistance to the whole 
 Babylonian power for thirteen years, until " every head was bald and 
 every shoulder peeled." The place was, in the _end, utterly destroyed. 
 It was made as "bare as the top of a rock on which the fisherman spreads 
 his nets. The blow thus struck at the heart of Tyrian commerce could 
 not but be felt at the utmost extremities. Well might it be said that 
 " the isles of the sea were troubled at her departure." It was during 
 this time that Greece fairly emerged as a Mediterranean naval power. 
 Nor did the inhabitants of New Tyre ever recover the ancient position. 
 Their misfortunes had given them a rival. A re-establishment in an 
 island on the coast was not a restoration of their supremacy. Carry- 
 ing out what Greece instinctively felt to be her national policy, one of - 
 the first acts of Alexander's Asiatic campaign, two hundred and fifty 
 years subsequently, was the siege of the new city, and, after almost su- 
 perhuman exertions, its capture, by building a mole from the main land. 
 He literally leveled the place to the ground, a countless multitude was 
 massacred, two thousand persons were crucified, and Tyrian influence 
 disappeared forever from the Mediterranean. 
 
 In early Greek history there are, therefore, two leading foreign events : 
 1st, the opening of the Egyptian ports, B.C. 670; 2d, the roreign epochs m 
 downfall of old Tyre, B.C. 573. The effect of the first was '^'■''"' '^'=""7. 
 chiefly intellectual ; that of the second was to permit the commence- 
 ment of commercial prosperity and give life to Athens. 
 
 At the dawn ©f European civilization, Egypt was, therefore, in process 
 of decadence, gradually becoming less and less able to resist Antiquity of civ- 
 
 . n T ■ T ^ ■ ilization and art 
 
 its own interior causes of destruction, or the attempts of its in Egypt. 
 Asiatic rivals, who eventually brought it to ruin. At the first histori- 
 cal appearance of the country of the Nile it is hoary and venerable with 
 age. The beautiful Scripture pictures of the journey of Abram and 
 Sarai in the famine, the going down of Joseph, the exodus of the Israel- 
 ites, all point to a long-settled system, a tranquil and prosperous state. 
 Do we ask any proof of the condition of art to which the Egyptians had 
 attained at the time of their earliest monuments, the masonry of the 
 Great Pyramid, built thirty -four hundred years before Christ, has never 
 yet been surpassed. So accurately was that wonder of the world laid 
 down and constructed, that at this day the variation of the compass 
 may«,ctually be determined by the position of its sides ; yet, when Jacob 
 went into Egypt, that pyramid^ had been built as many centuries as 
 have intervened from the birth of Christ to the present day. If we 
 
60 INFLUENCE OF EGYPT ON EUROPE. 
 
 turn from the monnments to their inscriptions, there are renewed evi. 
 dences of antiquity. The hieroglyphic writing had passed through all 
 its stagesof formation ; its. principles had become ascertained and settled 
 long before we gain the first glimpse of it ; the decimal and duodecimo 
 systems of arithmetic were in use ; the arts necessary in hydraulic engi- 
 neering, massive architecture, and the ascertainment of the boundaries 
 of land, had reached no "insignificant degree of perfection. Indeed, 
 there would be but yery little exaggeration in affirming that we are 
 practically as near the early Egyptian ages as was Herodotus himself. 
 \ Well might the Egyptian priests say to the earliest Greek philosophers, 
 "You Greeks are mere children, talkative and vain; you know nothing 
 at all of the past." 
 
 Traces of the prehistoric, premonumental life of Egypt are still pre- 
 Prehistoric life Served in the relics of its language, and the well-known prin- 
 of Egypt. ciples of its religion. Of the former, many of the words are 
 referable to Indo-Germanic roots, an indication that the country at an 
 early period must have been conquered from its indigenous African pos- 
 sessors by intrusive expeditions from Asia, and this is supported by the 
 remarkable principles of Egyptian religion. The races of Central Asia 
 had at a very early time attained to the psychical stage of monotheism; 
 Africa is only now emerging from the basest fetichism ; the negro priest 
 is still a sorcerer and rain-maker. The Egyptian religion, as is well 
 known, provided for the vulgar a suitable worship of complex idolatry, 
 but for those emancipated from superstition it offered true and even 
 noble conceptions. The coexistence of these apparent incoiflpatibilities 
 in the same faith seems incapable of any other explanation than that 
 of an amalgamation of two distinct systems, just as occurred again many 
 ages subsequently under Ptolemy Soter. '■ 
 
 As a critical attention is being bestowed by modern scholars upon 
 inflaence of Egypt Egyptian rcmaius, we learn more trulv what is the place 
 
 on tlie knowledge .:; F „ , , , ^ . , . , '^ , 
 
 and art of Europe, m history 01 that venerable country, It is their boast that 
 the day is not distant when there will be no more difficulty in translate : 
 ing a page of hieroglyphics than in translating one of Latin or Greek 
 
 I Even now, what a light has been thrown on all branches of ancient lit- 
 erature, science, art, mythology, domestic life, by researches which it may 
 
 I be said commenced only yesterday ! From Egypt, it now appears, were 
 derived the prototypes of the Greek architectural orders, and even their 
 ornaments and conventional designs; thence came the models of the' 
 Greek and Etruscan vases ; thence came many of the ante-Homerio le- 
 
 , gends — the accusation of the dead, the trial before the judges of hell; 
 
 \ the reward and punishment of every nian, from the Pharaoh who had 
 ^descended from his throne to the slave who had escaped from his chain j 
 the dog Cerberus, the Stygian stream, .the Lake of Oblivion, the piece 
 of money, Charon and his boat, the fields of Aahlu or Elysium, and the 
 
THE HIEEOGLYPHICS. 61 
 
 islands of the blessed ; thence came the first ritual for the dead, litanies to 
 the sun, and painted or illuminated missals ; thence came the dogma of 
 a,queen of heaven. What other country can offer such noble and en- 
 during edifices to the gods ; temples with avenues of sphinxes ; massive 
 pylons adorned with obelisks in front, which even imperial Eome and 
 modern. Paris have not thought it beneath them to appropriate; porti- 
 coes and halls of columns, on which were carved the portraits of kings 
 and ef&gies of the gods? On the walls of the tombs still remain Pthah, 
 the creator, and Neph, the divine spirit, sitting at the potter's wheel, 
 turning clay to form men ; and Athor, who receives the setting sun into 
 her arms; and Osiris, the judge of the dead. The granite statues have ■ 
 outlived the gods ! 
 
 Moreover, the hieroglyphics furnish us with intrinsic evidence that 
 among this people arose the earliest attempts at the per- The hierogiypHcs. 
 petuation and imparting of ideas by writing. Though doubtless it was 
 in the beginning a mere picture-writing, like that of the Mexicans of 
 our continent, it had already, at the first moment we meet with it, un- 
 dergone a twofold development — ideographic and phonetic ; the one ex- 
 pressing ideas, the other sounds. Under -the Macedonian kings the 
 hieroglyphics had become restricted to religious uses, showing con- 
 clusively that the old priesthood had never recovered the terrible blows 
 struck against it by Cambyses and Ochus. From that time forth they 
 were less and less known. It is said that one of the Eoman emperors 
 was obliged to offer a reward for the translation of an obelisk. To the 
 early Christian the hieroglyphic inscription was an abomination, as full 
 of the relics of idolatry, and indicating an inspiration of the devil. He t 
 defaced the monuments wherever he could make them yield ; and we are f 
 indebted to the excess of his zeal for hiding the diabolical records on I 
 the temples by plastering them over, which has preserved them for us. // 
 
 In those enigmatical characters an extensive literature once existed, 
 of which the celebrated books of Hermes were perhaps a corruption or 
 a relic ; a literature embracing compositions on music, astronomy, cos- 
 mogony, geography, medicine, anatoniy, chemistry, magic, and ipany 
 other subjects that have amused the curiosity of man. Yet of those 
 characters the most singular misconceptions have been entertained al-y 
 most to our own times. Thus, in 1802, Palin. thought that the papyri 
 were the Psalms of David done into Chinese, Lenoir that they wei'e He- 
 brew documents ; it was even asserted that the inscriptions in the tem- 
 ple of Denderah were the 100th Psalm, a pleasant ecclesiastical conceit, 
 reminding him who has seen in Egyptian museums old articles of brass 
 and glass, of the story delivered down from hand to hand, that brass 
 was fifst made at the burning of Corinth, and glass first discovered by 
 shipwrecked mariners, who propped their kettle, while it boiled, on pieces 
 of nitre. 
 
62 ANTIQUITY OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Thousands of years have passed since the foundation of the first Egjrp. 
 Antiquity of tiau dynastj. The Pyramids have seen the old empire, the 
 monaSy!'"' Hycksos mouarchs, the New Empire, the Persian, the Macedo- 
 nian, the Eoman, the Mohammedan. They have stood while the heav- 
 ens themselves have changed. They were already " five hundred years 
 old when the Southern Cross disappeared from the horizon of the coun- 
 tries of the Baltic." The pole-star itself is a new-comer to them. Well 
 may Humboldt, referring to these incidents, remark, that "the past 
 seems to be visibly nearer to us when we thus connect its measurement 
 with great and memorable events." No country has had such a varied 
 history as this birthplace of European civilization. Through the dark- 
 ness of fifty centuries we may not be able to discern the motives of men, 
 but through periods very much longer we can demonstrate the condi- 
 kions of Nature. If nations, in one sense, depend on the former, in a 
 nigher sense they depend on the latter. It was not without reason that 
 Causes of the rise the Egyptians took the lead in Mediterranean civihzation. 
 of civilization, rpj^g geographical structure of their country surpasses even 
 its hoary monuments in teaching us the conditions under which that 
 people were placed. Nature is a surer guide than the traces of man, 
 , whose works are necessarily transitory. The aspect of Egypt has 
 I changed again and again; its structure, since man has inhabited it, nev- 
 \ler. The fields have disappeared, but the land remains. 
 
 Why was it that civilization thus rose on the banks of the Nile, and 
 not upon those of the Danube or Mississippi? Civilization depends 
 on climate and agriculture. In Egypt the harvests may ordinarily be 
 foretold and controlled. Of few other parts of the world can the same 
 be said. In most countries the cultivation of the soil is uncertain. 
 From seed-time to harvest, the meteorological variations are so numer- 
 ous and great, that no skill can predict the amount of yearly produce. 
 Without any premonition, the crops may be cut off by long-continued 
 droughts, or destroyed by too much rain. Nor is it sufficient that a 
 requisite amount of water should fall ; to produce the proper effect, it 
 must fall at particular periods. The labor of the farmer is at the mercy 
 of the winds and clouds. 
 
 With difficulty, therefore, could a civilized state originate under sucli 
 circumstances. So long- as life is a scene of uncertainty, the hope of 
 yesterday blighted by the realities of to-day, man is the maker of expe- 
 dients, but not of laws. In' his solicitude as to his approaching lot, he 
 has neither time nor desire to raise his eyes to the heavens to watch and 
 record their phenomena ; no leisure to look upon himself, and consider 
 what and where he is. In the imperious demand for a present support, 
 he dares not venture on speculative attempts at ameliorating his state; ie 
 is doomed to be a helpless, isolated, spell-bound savage, or, if not isola- 
 ted, the companion of other savages as care-worn as himself. Under 
 
BEGINNING OF CIVILIZATION IN RAINLESS COUNTEIES. 63 
 
 such circumstances, if, however, once the preliminary conditions and mo- 
 mentum of civilization be imparted to him, the very things which have 
 hitherto tended to depress him produce an opposite effect. ' Instead of re- 
 maining in sameness and apathy, the vicissitudes to which he is now ex- 
 posed urge him onward ; and thus it is that, though the civilization of Eu- 
 rope depended for its commencement on the sameness and stability of 
 an African climate, the conquests of Nature which mark its more ad- 
 vanced stage have been made in the trying life of the tempej-ate zone. 
 
 There is a country in which man is not the sport of thf seasons, in 
 which he need have no anxieties for his future well-being — ■ igncuiture in a 
 a country in which the sunshines and heats vary .very littk ''^^'^^^ '=°™'^- 
 from year to year. In the Thebaid heavy rain is said to be a prodigy. 
 But, at the time when- the Dog-star rises with the sun, the river begins 
 to swell ; a tranquil inundation by degrees covering the land, at once wa- 
 tering and enriching it. If the Kilometer which measures the height \ 
 of the flood indicates eight cubits, the crops will be scanty ; but if it \ 
 reaches fourteen cubits, there will be a plentiful harvest. In the spring 1 
 of the year it may be known how the fields will be in the autumn. Ag- I 
 riculture is certain in Egypt, and there man first became civilized. The f 
 date, moreover, furnishes to Afirica a food almost without expense. | 
 The climate renders it necessary to use, for the most part, vegetable diet, j 
 and but little clothing is required. It is said that it costs less than three i 
 dollars to raise a child to maturity. 
 
 The American counterpart of Egypt in this physical condition is 
 Peru, the 'coast of which is also a rainless district. Peru is RaMess countries 
 the Egypt of civilization of the Western continent. There "f 'he west, 
 is also a rainless strand on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It is an incident / 
 full of meaning in the history of human progress, that, in regions far/// 
 apart, civilization thus commenced in rainless countries. 
 
 It is the hydrographic state of Upper Egypt, the cradle of civilization, 
 that interests us. Here the influence of atmospheric water is altogether 
 obliterated, for, in an agricultural point of view, the country is rainless. 
 Variable meteorological conditions are here eliminated. 
 
 Where the Mle breaks through the mountain gate at Essouan, it is 
 observed that its waters begin to rise about the end of the inundations 
 month of May, and in eight or nine weeks the inundation is at ""^eNUe. 
 its height. This flood in the river is due to the great rains which have 
 fallen in the mountainous countries among which the Nile takes its rise, 
 and which have been precipitated from the trade-winds that blow, ex- 
 cept where disturbed by the monsoons, over the vast expanse of the 
 tropical Indian Ocean, Thus dried, the east wind pursues its solemn 
 course over the solitudes of Central Africa, a cloudless and a rainless 
 wind, its track marked by desolation and deserts. At first the river 
 becomes red, and then green, because the flood of its great Abyssinian 
 
64 GEOLOGICAL AGE OF EGYPT. 
 
 brancli, the Blue Nile, arrives first ; but, soon after, that of the White Kile 
 makes its appearance, and from the overflowing banks not only water, 
 Gradual rise but Sb rich and fertilizing mud, is discharged. It is owing to 
 
 of the whole , ,., . i i i in i i • t ' ■ 
 
 country. the soiid material thus brought down that the river has raised 
 its own bed in countless ages, and has embanked itself with shelving 
 deposits that descend on either side toward the desert. For this reason 
 it is that the inundation is seen on the edge of the desert first, and, as 
 the flood rises, the whole country up to the river itself is laid under wa- 
 ter. By the middle of September the supply begins to fail and the wa- 
 ters abate; by the end of" October the stream has returned to its usual 
 limits. The fields are left covered with a fertile deposit, the maximum 
 quantity of which is about six inches thick in a hundred years. It is 
 thought that the bed of the river rises four feet in a thousand years, and 
 the fertilized land in its width continually encroaches on the desert. 
 Since the reign of Amenophis III. it has increased by one third. He 
 lived B.C. 1430. There have accumulated round the pedestal of his Co- 
 lossus seven feet of mud. 
 
 In the recent examinations made by the orders of the Viceroy of 
 Egypt, close by the fallen statue of Eameses II., at Memphis, who reign- 
 Geological age ed, accordiug to Lepsius, from B.C. 1394 to B.C. 1328, a shaft 
 of Egypt. ^g^g gjjj^]^ ^Q j^Qj.g ^-j^^^ 24 feet. The water which then infil- 
 trated compelled a resort to boring, which was continued until 41 feet 
 4J inches were reached. The whole consisted of Nile deposits, alternate 
 layers of loam and sand of the same composition throughout. Froih the 
 greatest depth a fragment of pottery was obtained. Ninety-five of these 
 borings were made in various places, but on no occasion was solid rook 
 reached. The organic remains were all recent ; not a trace of an ex- 
 tinct fossil occurred, but an abundance of the residues of burnt bricks 
 and pottery. In their examination from Essouan to Cairo, the French 
 estimated the mud deposit to be five inches for each century. From an 
 examination of the results at Heliopolis, Mr. Homer makes it 3.18 inch- 
 es. The Colossus of Eameses II. is surrounded by a sediment nine feet 
 four inches deep, fairly estimated. Its date of erection was about 3215 
 years ago, which gives 3^- inches per century. But beneath it similar 
 I layers continue to the depth of 30 feet, which, at the same rate, would 
 1 give 13,500 years,' to A.D. 1854, at which time the examination was 
 Imade. Every precaution seems to have been l^ken to obtain accurate 
 results. 
 
 The extent of surface affected by the inundations of the Nile is, in a 
 Its geography aba geographical point of view, altogether insignificant! yet, 
 topography. ^^^-^ ^ -^ ^^^ j^ constitutcd Egypt. Commencing at the 
 Cataract of Essouan, at the sacred island of Philse, on which to this day 
 here and there the solitary palm-tree looks down, it reached to the Medi- ' 
 terranean Sea, from 24° 3' N. to 31° 37' N. The river runs in a valley, 
 
THE NILE. 65 
 
 bounded on one side by the eastern and on the other by the Libyan 
 chain of mountains, and of which the average breadth is about seven 
 miles, the arable land, however, not averaging more than five and a half 
 At the widest place it is ten and three quarters, at the narrowest two. 
 The entire surface of irrigated and fertile land in the Delta is 4500 
 square miles ; the arable land of Egypt, 2255 square miles ; and in the 
 Eyoom, 340 — a surface quite insignificant, if measured by the American | 
 standard, yet it supported seven millions of people. 
 
 Here agriculture was so precise that it might almost be pronounced 
 a mathematical art. The disturbances arising from atmospheric condi- 
 tions were eliminated, and the variations, as connected with the supply 
 of river-water, ascertained in advance. The priests proclaimed how the 
 flood stood on the Nilometer, and the husbandman made corresponding 
 preparations for a scanty or an abundant harvest. 
 
 In such a state of things, it was an obvious step to improve upon the 
 natural conditions by artificial means ; dikes, and canals, and flood- 
 gates, with other hydraulic apparatus, would, even in the beginning of 
 society, unavoidably be suggested, that, in one locality the water might 
 be detained longer ; in another, shut off. when there was danger of ex- 
 cess; in another, more abundantly introduced. 
 
 There followed, as a consequence of this condition of things, the es- 
 tablishment of a strong government, having a direct control control of agri- 
 over the agriculture of the state by undertaking and sup- govMnmlnt. ° 
 porting these artificial improvements, and sustaining itself by a tax cheer- 
 fully paid, and regulated in amount by the quantity of water supplied 
 from the river to each estate. Such, indeed, was the fundamental polit- 
 ical system of the country. The first king of the old empire undertook 
 to. turn the river into a new channel he made for it, a task which might 
 seem to demand very able engineering, and actually accomplished it. 
 It is more than five thousand years since Menesjived. There must have 
 preceded his times many centuries, during which knowledge and skill 
 had been increasing, before such a work could even have been contem- 
 plated. 
 
 I shall not indulge in any imaginary description of the manner in 
 which, under such favorable circumstances, the powers of the TopograpMe- 
 human mind were developed and civilization arose. In inac- oJ^j^^lf ^ 
 cessible security, the inhabitants of this valley were protected ""^ '^"«- 
 on the west by a burning sandy desert, on the east by the Eed Sea. 
 Nor shall I say any thing more of those remote geological times when 
 the newly-made river first flowed over a rocky and barren desert on its 
 way to the Mediterranean Sea ; nor how, in the course of ages, it had 
 by degrees laid down a fertile stratum, embanking itself in the rich soil 
 it had .borne from the tropical mountains. Yet it is none the less true 
 that such was the slow construction of Egypt as a habitable country ; 
 
 E 
 
66 ITS INUNDATIONS LEAD TO STAE-WORSHIP. 
 
 such were the gradual steps by which it was fitted to become the seat 
 of man. The pulse of its life-giving artery makes but one laeat in a 
 
 "'''^'year ; what, then, are a few hundreds of centuries in such a process? 
 The Egyptians had, at an early period, observed that the rising of the 
 The inundations Nilc coiucided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog- 
 oTaStrottomy" '' star, and hence they very plausibly referred it to celestial 
 agencies. Men are ever prone to mistake coincidences for causes ; and 
 thus it came to pass that the appearance of that star on the horizon at 
 the rising of the sun was not only viewed as the signal, but as the cause 
 of the inundations. Its coming to the desired position might, therefore, 
 be well expected, and it was soon observed that this took place witli 
 regularity at periods of about 360 days. This was the first determina- 
 tion of .the length of the year. It is worthy of remark, as showing how 
 astronpmy and religious rites were in the beginning connected together, 
 that the priests of the mysterious temple of Philse placed before the 
 tomb of Osiris every morning 360 vases of milk, each one commemora- 
 ting one day, thus showing that the origin of that rite was in those re- 
 mote ages when it was thought that the year was 360 days long. It 
 iwas doubtless such circumstances that led the Egyptians to the cultivaf 
 tion of historical habits. In this they differed from the Hindus, who 
 kept no records of occurrences. 
 
 The Dog-star Sirius is the most splendid star in the heavens ; to the 
 Tiie philosophy Egyptian the inundation was the most important event upon 
 of star-worship, earth. Mistaking a coincidence foi; a cause, he was led to the 
 belief that when that brilliant star emerged in the morning from the 
 rays of the sun, and began to assert its own inherent power, the sympa- 
 thetic river, moved thereby, commenced to rise. A false inference lite 
 this soon dilated into a general doctrine ; for if one star could in this way 
 manifest a direct control over the course of terrestrial affairs, why should 
 not another— indeed, why should not all ? Moreover, it could not have 
 escaped notice that the daily tides of the Eed Sea are connected with the 
 movements ^nd position of the sun and moon, following those luminaries 
 in the time of their occurrence, and being determined by their respect- 
 ive position for amount at spring and at neap. But the necessary result 
 of such a view is no other than the admission of the a'^trological influ- .; 
 ence of the heavenly bodies ; first, as respects inanimate nature, and then 
 as respects the fortune and fate of men.' It is not until the vast distance 
 
 ; of the starry bodies is suspected that man begins to feel the necessity of 
 a mediator between him and them, and star-worship passes to its second 
 phase. 
 
 To what part of the world could the Egyptian travel without seeing 
 in the skies the same constellations? Far from the banks of the Nile, ift , 
 the western deserts, in Syria, in Arabia, the stars are the same. They 
 are omniprasent; for we may lose sight of the things of the earth, but 
 
EGYPTIAN THEOLOGY AND' RELIGION. 67 
 
 not of those of the heavens. The air of fate-like precision with which 
 their appointed movements are accomplished, their solemn silence, their 
 incomprehensible distances, might satisfy an observer that they are far 
 removed from the influences of all human power, though, perhaps, they 
 may be invoked by human prayer. 
 
 Thus star -worship found for itself a plausible justification. The 
 Egyptian system, at its highest development, combined the adoration of 
 the heavenly bodies — the sun, the moon, Venus, etc., with prfncipieB of Egyp. 
 the deified attributes of God. The great and venerable ""-i theology.- 
 divinities, as Osiris, Pthah, Amun, were impersonations of such attri- 
 butes, just as we speak of the Creator, the Almighty. It was held that 
 not only has God never appeared -upon earth in the human form, but 
 that such is altogether an impossibility, since he is the animating prin- 
 ciple of the entire universe, visible nature being only a manifestation 
 of him. 
 
 These impersonated attribiites were arranged in various trinities, in 
 each of which the third member is a procession from the goi Trinities 
 other two, the doctrine and even expressions in this respect ™'i"'™ pei-sona. 
 being full of interest to one who studies the gradual development of 
 comparative theology in Europe. Thus from Amun by Maut proceeds 
 Khonso, from Osiris by Isis proceeds Horus, from Neph by Sat^ pro- 
 ceeds Anouk^. While, therefore, it was considered unlawful to repre- 
 sent God except by his attributes, these trinities and their persons offer- 
 ed abundant means of idolatrous worship for the vulgar. It was ad- 
 mitted that there had been terrestrial manifestations of these divine at- 
 tributes for the salvation of men. Thus Osiris was incarnate in the 
 flesh : he fell a sacrifice to the evil principle, and, after his death and res- 
 urrection, became the appointed judge of the dead. In his capacity of j 
 President of the West, or of the region of the setting stars, he dwells in ' 
 the under world, which is traversed by the sun at night. 
 
 The Egyptian priests affirmed that nothing is ever annihilated ; to die 
 is therefore only to assume a new form. Herodotus says that they were 
 the first to discover that the soul is immortal, their conception of it be- 
 ing that it is an emanation from or a particle of the universal soul, which 
 ■in a less degree animates all animals and plants, and even inorganic 
 things. Their dogma that there had been divine incarnations incamations: 
 
 ,»- . ° ^ _ ° - . fall of man ; 
 
 obliged them to assert that there had been a fall of man, this redemption, 
 seeming to be necessary to obtain a logical argument in justification of ; 
 •prodigies so great. For the relief of the guilty soul, they prescribed in 
 this life fasts and penances, and in the future a transmigration through 
 animals for purification. At death, the merits of the soul were ascer- 
 tained by a formal trial before Osiris in the shadowy region of Tj^g f^^^^ 
 Amenti — the under world — in presence of the four genii of that J"^s™™*- 
 realm, and of forty -two assessors. To this judgment the shade was con- 
 
68 THE TBIAL OF THE DEAD — CEEEMONIES, 
 
 ducted by Horus, who carried him past Cerberus, a hippopotamus, the 
 gaunt guardian of the gate. He stood by in silence while Anubis weigh- 
 ed his heart in the scales of justice. If his good works preponderated, 
 he was dismissed to the fields of Aahlu— the Elysian Fields ; if his evil, 
 he was condemned to transmigration. 
 
 But that this doctrine of a judgment in another world might not d&. 
 cline into an idle legend, it was enforced by a preparatory trial in this 
 ,^a trial of fearful and living import. From the sovereign to the mean- 
 / The trial of ^st subjgct,* evcry man underwent a sepulchral inquisition. As 
 1 dead. gQQ^ ag any one died, his body was sent to the embalmer's, who 
 kept it for forty days, and for thirty-two in addition the family mourn- 
 ed ; the mummy, in its coffin, was placed erect in an inner chamber of 
 the house. Notice was then sent to the forty-two assessors of the dis- 
 trict ; and on an appointed day, the corpse was carried to the sacred 
 lake, of which every nome, and, indeed, every large town, had one to- 
 ward the west. Arrived on its shore, the trial commenced; any person 
 might bring charges against the deceased, or speak in his behalf; but 
 woe to the false accuser. The assessors then passed sentence according 
 to the evidence before them ; if they found an evil life, sepulture was 
 denied, and, in the midst of social disgrace, the friends bore back the 
 mummy to their home, to be redeemed by their own good works in fu- 
 ture years ; or, if too poor to give it a place of refuge, it was buried on 
 Origin of the ^^ margin of the lake, the culprit ghost waiting and wander-' 
 Greek Hades, jjjg -f-Qj, g^ hundred ycars. On these Stygian shores the bones 
 of some are still dug up in our day ; they have remained unsepulckred 
 for more than thirty times their predestined century. Even to wicked 
 tings a burial had thus .been denied. But, if the verdict of the assess- 
 ors was favorable, a penny was paid to the boatman Charon for fer- 
 riage ; a cake was provided for the hippopotamus Cerberus ; they row- 
 ed across the lake in the baris, or death-boat, the priest announcing to 
 Osiris and the unearthly assessors the good deeds of the deceased. Ar- 
 riving on the opposite shore, the procession walked in solemn silence, 
 and the mummy was then deposited in its final resting-place — ^thecata- 
 combs. 
 
 From this it may be gathered that the Egyptian religion did not t^, 
 main a mere speculative subject, but was enforced on the people by the 
 Ceremonies, creeds, i^ost solcmn cercmonies. Morcover, in the great tem- 
 oracies, prc^heoy. pjgg^ grand proccssional services were celebrated, the pr& 
 cursors of some that still endure. There were sacrifices of meat-offf '_ 
 ings, libations, incense. The national double creed, adapted in one 
 branch to the vulgar, in the other to the learned, necessarily implied 
 mysteries ; some^ of these were avowedly transported to Greece. The 
 machinery of oracles was resorted to. The Greek oracles were of Egyp- 
 tian origin. » So profound was the respect paid to their commands that 
 
GREEK AGE OP INQUIRY. 69 
 
 even, the sovereigns were obliged to obey them. It was thus that a 
 warning from the oracle of Amun caused Necho to stop the construc- 
 tion of his canal. For the determination of future events, omens were 
 studied, entrails inspected, and nativities were cast. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 GREEK AGE OF INQUIRY. 
 
 EISE AHD DECLISE OF PHYSICAL SPECULATION. 
 
 Ionian Philosophy, commencing from Egyptian Ideas, identifies in Water, or Air, or Fire, the 
 First Principle. — Emerging /rom the Stage of Sorcery, itjbunds Psychology, Biology, Cos- 
 mogony, Astronomy, and ends in doubting whether there is any Criterion of Truth. 
 
 Italian Philosophy depends on Numbers and Harmonies. — It reproduces the Egyptian and 
 Hindu 'Doctrine of Transmigration. 
 
 Eleatic VmLOSOVST presents a great Advance, indicating a rapid Approach to Oriental Ideas. 
 — It assumes a Pantheistic Aspect. 
 
 Rise op Philosophy in European Gkeece — Relations and Influence of the Mediterranean 
 Commercial and Colonial System. — Athens attains to commercial Supremacy. — Her vast 
 Progress in Intelligence and Art. — Her Demoralization. — She becomes the Intellectual Centre 
 of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Commencement of the Athenian higher Analysis. — It is conducted by the Sophists, who reject 
 Philosophy, Heligion, and even Morality, and end in Atheism. 
 
 Political Dangers of the higher Analysis.— -Illustration from the Middle Ages. 
 
 In Chapter II. I have described the origin and decline of Greek My- 
 thology ; in this, I am to relate the first European attempt at 0,^^,^ „( Greek 
 philosophizing. The Ionian systems spring directly out of p'''ic=°p''y- 
 the contemporary religious opinions, and appear as a, phase in Greek 
 comparative theology. 
 
 Contrasted with the psychical condition of India, we can not but be 
 struck with the feebleness of these first European efforts. They corre- 
 spond to that moment in which the mind has shaken off its ideas of sor- 
 cery, but has not advanced beyond geocentral and anthropocentral con- 
 ceptions. As is uniformly observed, as soon as man has ita imperfections. 
 collected what he considers to be reliable data, he forthwith applies them 
 to a cosmogony, and develops pseudo-scientific systems. It is not until 
 a later period that he awakens to the suspicion that we have no absolute 
 knowledge of truth. 
 
 The reader, who might, perhaps, be repelled by the apparent worth- 
 lessness of the succession of Greek opinions now to be described, will 
 find them as^lJhie an interest, if considered in the aggregate, or viewed 
 as a series of steps or stages of European approach to conclusions long 
 before arrived at in Egypt and India. Far in advance of any thing 
 that Greece can offer, the intellectual history of India furnishes systems 
 
70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THALES. 
 
 \ 
 
 at once consistent and imposing — systems not remaining useless specu- 
 lations, but becoming inwoven in social life. 
 
 Greek philosophy is considered as having originated with Thales, 
 Commences in "^^^i though of Phoenician descent, was born at Miletus, a 
 Asia Minor, (jj-gek colouy iu Asia Minor, about B.C. 640. At that time, 
 as related in the last 'chapter, the Egyptian ports had been opened to 
 foreigners by Psammetichus. In the civil war which that monarch had 
 been waging with his colleagues, he owed his success to the Ionian and 
 Other Greek mercenaries whom he had employed ; but, though proving 
 victor in the contest, his political position was such as to compel him to ' 
 depart from the -maxims followed in his country for so many thousand 
 years, and to permit foreigners to have access to it. Hitherto the Euro- 
 peans had been only known to the Egyptians as pirates and cannibals. 
 
 Prom the doctrine of Thales, it may be inferred that, though he had 
 Doctrine of "visited Egypt, he had never been in communication with its 
 Thales sources of learning, but had merely mingled among the vulgar, 
 from whom he had gathered the popular notion that the first principle 
 is water. The state of things in Egypt suggests that this primitive 
 is derived dogma of Buropcau philosophy was a popular notion in that 
 from Egypt. couhtTy. "With but little care on the part of men, the fertiliz- 
 ing Nile-water yielded those abundant crops which made Egypt the 
 granary of the Old World. It might therefore be said, both philosoph- 
 ically and facetiously, that the first principle of all things is water. 
 Importance of The harvcsts depended on it, and, through them, animals and 
 waterinEgypt. ^^^^ rpj^g government of the country was supported by 
 it, for the financial system was founded on a tax paid by the proprietors 
 of the .land for the use of the public sluices and aqueducts. There was 
 not a .peasant to whom it was not apparent that water is the first prin- 
 ciple of all things, even of taxation ; and, since it was not only neces- 
 sary to survey lands to ascertain the surface that had been irrigated, 
 but to redetermine their boundaries after the subsidence of the flood, 
 even the scribes and surveyors might concede that geometry itself was 
 indebted for its origin to water. 
 
 If, therefore, in- any part of the Old World, this doctrine had both a 
 vulgar and a philosophical significance, that country was Egypt. We 
 may picture to ourselves the inquisitive but ill-instructed Thales carried 
 in some pirate-ship or trading-bark to the mysterious Nile, respecting 
 which Ionia was full of legends and myths. He saw the aqueducts, 
 canals, flood-gates, the great Lake Mceris, dug by the hand of man as 
 many ages before his day as have elapsed from his day to ours; he saw 
 on all sides the adoration paid to the river, for it had a(?hially become 
 deiEed ; he learned from the vulgar, with whom he alone came in'cto- 
 ^toirthe'tot *'^°*' *^^^^ universal beUef that all things arise from water- 
 principie. from the vulgar alone, for, had he ever been taught by the 
 
IT IS DERIVED FROM EGYPT. 71 
 
 priests, we should have found traces in his system of the doctrines of 
 emanation, transmigration, and absorption, imported into Greece in later 
 times. We may interpret the story of Thales on the principles which 
 would apply in the case of some intelligent Indian who should find his 
 way to the outposts of a civilized country. Imperfectly acquainted 
 with the language, and coming in contact with the lower class alone, he 
 might learn their vulgar philosophy, and carry back the fancied treasure 
 to his home. 
 
 As to the profound meaning some have been disposed to extract 
 from the dogma of Thales, we shall, perhaps, be warranted in rejecting 
 it altogether. It has been affirmed that he attempted to concentrate all 
 supernatural powers in one ; to reduce all possible agents to unity ; in 
 short, out of polytheism to bring forth monotheism ; 'to determine the 
 invariable in the variable ; and to ascertain the beginning of things : 
 that he observed how infinite is the sea ; how necessary moisture is to 
 growth ; nay, even how essential it was to the well-being of himself; 
 " that without moisture his own body would not have been what it was, 
 
 . but a dfy husk falling to pieces." Nor can we adopt the opinion that 
 the intention of Thales was to establish a coincidence betweeii. philoso- 
 phy and the popular theology as delivered by Hesiod, who affirms that 
 Oceanus is one of the parent-gods of Nature. The imputation of irre- 
 ligion made against him shows at what an early period the antagonism 
 of polytheism and scientific inquiry was recognized. But it is possible I, 
 to believe that all things are formed out of one primordial substance,!'' 
 without denying the existence of a creative power. Or, to use the In- 
 dian illustration, the clay is not the potter. 
 
 Thales is said to have predicted the solar eclipse which terminated a 
 battle between the Medes and Lydians, but it has been suggestively re- 
 marked that it is not stated that he predicted the day on which it should 
 occur. He had an idea that warmth originates from or is other doownea 
 nourished by humidity, and that even the sun and stars de- °fi''^i^<*- 
 rived their aliment out of the sea at the time of their rising and setting. 
 Indeed, he regarded them as living beings ; obtaining an argument from 
 the phenomena of amber and the magnet, supposed by him to possess a 
 living soul, because they have a moving force. Moreover, he taught 
 that the whole world is an insouled thing, and that it is full of demons. 
 Thales had, therefore, not completely passed out of the stage of sorcery. 
 His system obtained importance not only from its own plausibility, 
 but because it was introduced under favorable auspices and at a favora- 
 ble time. It came into Asia Minor as a portion of the wisdom of Egypt, 
 
 . and therefore with a prestige sufficient to assure for it an attentive re- 
 ception. But this would have been of little avail had not the mental 
 culture of Ionia been advanced to a degree suitable for offering to it con- 
 ditions of development. Under such circumstances the Egyptian dog- 
 ma formed the starting-point for a special method of philosophizing. 
 
ill 
 
 72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANAXIMENES. 
 
 The manner in which that development took place illustrates the vig. 
 They constitute the Or of the Grecian mind. In Egypt a doctrine might exist 
 loS^ISSphy. for thousands of years, protected by its mere antiquity 
 from controversy or even examination, and' hence sink with the lapse 
 of time into an ineffectual and lifeless state ; but the same doctrine 
 brought into a young community full of activity would quickly be made 
 productive and yield new results. As seeds taken from the coffins of 
 mummies, wherein they have been shut up for thousands of years', when 
 placed under circumstances favorable for development in a rich soil, and 
 ' 'nfeupplied with moisture, have forthwith, even in our own times, germi- 
 ' ^ated, borne flowers, and matured new seeds, so the rude philosophy of 
 Thales passed through a. like development. Its tendency is shown, in 
 the attempt it at once made to describe the universe, even before the 
 parts thereof had been determined. 
 
 But it is not alone the water or ocean that seems to be infinite, and 
 capable of furnishing a supply for the origin of all other things. The 
 air, also, appears to reach as far as the stars. On it, as Anaximenes of 
 Miletus remarks, "the very earth itself floats like a broad leaf.", Ac- 
 Anaximenes ' cordiugly, this Ionian, stimulated doubtless by the hope of 
 airTs'thtfirst sharing in or succeeding to the celebrity that Thales had en-, 
 prmcipie. joycd for a century, proposed to substitute for water, as the 
 primitive source of things, a'tmospheric air. And, in truth, there seem 
 to be reasons for bestowing upon it such a pre-eminence. To those who 
 
 ihave not looked closely into the matter, it would appear that water it- 
 self is generated from it, as when clouds are formed, and from them 
 rain-drops, and springs, and fountains, and rivers, and even the sea. He 
 , also attributes infinity to it, a dogma scarcely requiring any exercise of 
 '/the imagination, but being rather the expression of an ostensiblejfact; 
 ' for who, when he looks upward, can discern the boundary of the atmos- 
 ; phere. Anaximenes also held that even the human soul itself is^ noth- 
 it is also the souL ing but air, since life consists in inhaling and exhaling it, 
 and ceases as soon as that process stops. He taught also that warmth 
 ; and cold arise from mere rarefaction and condensation, and gave as a 
 I proof the fact that when we breathe with the lips drawn together the 
 I air is cold, but it becomes warm when we breathe through the widely- 
 opened mouth. Hence he concluded that, with a sufficient rarefaction, 
 air might turn into fire, and that this probably was the origin of the sun < 
 and stars, blazing comets, and other meteors ; but if by chance it should 
 undergo condensation, it would turn into wind and clouds, or, if th^ 
 operation should be still more increased, into water, snow, hail, and, at 
 last, even into earth itself And since it is seen from the results d 
 breathing that the air is a life-giving principle to man, nay, even is ac- 
 The air is God. tually his soul, it would appear to be a just inference that the 
 infinite air is God, and that the gods and goddesses have sprung from it 
 
THE Philosophy op diogenes of apollonia. 73 
 
 Such was the philosophy of Anaximenes. It was the beginning of 
 that stimulation of activity by rival schools which played so distin- 
 guished a part in the Greek intellectual movement. Its superiority 
 over the doctrine of Thales evidently consists in this, that it not only 
 assigns a primitive substance, but even undertakes' to show by observa- 
 tion and experiment how others arise from it, and transformations occur. 
 As to the discovery of the obliquity of the ecliptic by the aid of a gno- 
 mon imputed to Anaximenes, it was merely a boast of his vainglorious 
 coimtrymen. It was altogether beyond the scientific grasp of one who 
 had no more exact idea of the nature of the earth than that it was 
 "like a broad leaf floating in the air." 
 
 The doctrines of Anaximenes received a very important development 
 in the hands of Diogenes of ApoUonia, who asserted that all things 
 originate from one essence, which, undergoing continual changes, be- 
 coming different at different times, turns back again to the same state. 
 He regarded the entire world as a living being, spontane- Diogenes asserts 
 
 , ° . . . . . • ,n 1 1 ■ 1 that air ia the 
 
 ously evolvmg and transiormmg itseli, and agreed with souioftheworia. 
 Anaximfenes that the soul of man is nothing but air, as is also the soul 
 of the world. From this it follows that the air must be eternal, imper- 
 ishable, and endowed with consciousness. "It knows much; for with- 
 out reason it would be impossible for all to be arranged so duly and 
 proportionately as that all should maintain its fitting measure, winter 
 and summer, night and day, the r^in, the wind, and fair weather; and 
 whatever object we consider will be found to have been ordered in the 
 -best and most beautiful manner possible." " But that which has knowl- 
 edge is > that which men call air; it is it that regulates aijd governs all, 
 and hence it is the use of air to pervade all, and to dispose aU, and to be 
 in all, for there is nothing that has not part in it." 
 
 The early cultivator of philosophy emerges with difiiculty from fe- 
 tichism. The harmony observed among the parts of the Difficulty of risiug 
 world is easily explained on the hypothesis of a spiritual *''°™ fetichiam. 
 principle residing in things, and arranging them by its intelligent voli- 
 tion. It is not at once that he rises to the conception that all this beau- 1, 
 ty and harmony are due to the operation of law. "We are so prone to*^ 
 judge of the process of external things from the modes of our own per- 1 
 sonal experience, our acts being determined by the exercise of our will, 1/ 
 that it is with difficulty we disentangle ourselves from such notions in 
 the explanation of natural phenomena. Fetichism may be observed in 
 the infancy of many of the natural sciences. Thus the electrical power 
 of amber was imputed to a soul residing in that substance, a similar ex- 
 planation being also given of the control of the magnet over iron. The 
 movements of the planetary bodies. Mercury, Yenus, Mars, were attrib- 
 uted to an intelligent principle residing in each, guiding and controlling 
 the motions, and ordering all things for the best. It was an epoch in 
 
74 OEIGIN OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 the history of the human mind when astronomy set an example to all 
 other sciences of shaking off its fetichism, and showing that the intricate 
 Astronomy and ohem- movcments of the heavcnlv bodies were all capable not 
 yond the fetich stage, only of being explained, but even foretold, if once was 
 admitted the existence of a simple, yet universal, invariable, and eternal 
 law. 
 
 Not without difficulty do men perceive that there is nothing incon- 
 sistent between invariable law and endlessly varying phenomena, and 
 that it is a more noble view of the government of this world to im- 
 pute its order to a penetrating primitive wisdom, which could foresee 
 consequences throughout a future eternity, and provide for them in the 
 original plan at the outset, than to invoke the perpetual intervention of 
 an ever-acting spiritual agency for the purpose of warding off niisfor- 
 tunes that might happen, and setting things "to rights. Chemistry, in 
 like manner, furnishes us with a striking example — ;an example vew 
 opportune in the case we are considering — of the doctrine of Diogenes 
 of ApoUonia, that the air is actually a spiritual being ; for, on the dis- 
 covery of several of the gases by the earlier experimenters, they were 
 not. only regarded as of a spiritual nature, but actually received ty 
 name under yyhich they pass to this day, gheist or gas, from a beUef that 
 they were ghosts. If a laborer descended into a well and was suffo- 
 cated, as if struck dead by some invisible hand ; if a lamp lowered down 
 burnt for a few moments with a lurid flame, and was then extinguished; 
 if, in a coal mine, when the unwary workman exposed a light, on a sud- 
 den the place was filled with flashing flames and thundering explosions, 
 tearing down the rocks and destroying every living thing in the way, 
 often, too, without leaving on the dead any marks of violence; what 
 better explanation could be given of such catastrophes than to impute 
 them to some supernatural agent? Nor was there any want, in those 
 times, of well-authenticated stories of unearthly faces and forms seen in 
 such solitudes. 
 
 The modification made by Diogenes in the theory of Anaximenes, by 
 Origin of converting it from a physical into a psychological system,.is im- 
 psyciioiogy. portant, as marking the beginning of the special philosophy of 
 Greece. The investigation of the intellectual development of the uni- 
 verse led Greeks to the study of the intellect itself. In his special 
 doctrine, Diogenes imputed the changeability of the air to its mobility; 
 a property in which he thought it excelled all other substances, because 
 It IS among the rarest or thinnest of the elements. It is, however, said 
 by some, who are disposed to transcendentalize his doctrine, that he did 
 not mean the common atmospheric air, but something more attenuated 
 and warm ; and since, in its purest state, it constitutes the most perfect 
 intellect, inferior degrees of reason must be owing to an increase of its 
 density and moisture. Upon such a principle, the whole earth is ani- 
 
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EELATIONS OF THE AIB. . 75 
 
 mated by the breath of life ; the souls of the brutes, -vvhich differ from 
 one another so much in intelligence, are only air in its various condi- 
 tions of moisture and warmth. He explained the production of the 
 world through condensation of the earth by cold from air, the warmth 
 rising upward and forming the sun ; in the stars he thought he recog- 
 nized the respiratory organs of the world. From the preponderance of 
 moist air in the constitution of brutes, he inferred that they were, like 
 the insane, incapable of thought, for thickness of the air impedes respira- 
 tion, and therefore quick apprehension. From the fact that plants have 
 no cavities wherein to receive the air, and are altogether unintelligent, 
 he was led to the principle that the thinking power of man arises from 
 the flowing of that substance throughout the body in the blood. He 
 also explained the superior intelligence of men from their breathing a 
 purer air than, the beasts, which carry their nostrils near the ground. 
 In these crude aiid puerile speculations we have the beginning of men- 
 tal philosophy. 
 
 I can not dismiss the system of the Apollonian without setting in 
 contrast with it the discoveries of modern science respect- Modem discover- 
 ing the relations of the air. Toward the world ot^life it tionspftheair. 
 stands in a position of wonderful interest. Decomposed intp its con- ■ 
 stituents by the skill of chemistry, it is no longer looked upon as a 
 homogeneous body ; its ingredients have not only been separated, but 
 the functions they discharge have been ascertained. From one of these, 
 carbonic acid, all the various forms of plants arise ; that substance being 
 decomposed by the rays of the sun, and furnishing to vegetables carbon, 
 their chief solid ingredient. For this it may be said, that all those 
 beautifully diversified organic productions, from the mosses of the icy 
 regions to the characteristic palms of the landscapes of the tropioe — all 
 those we cast away as worthless weeds, and those for the obtaining of 
 which we expend the sweat of our brow-* all, without any exception, 
 are obtained from the atmosphere by the influence of the sun. And 
 since without plants the life of animals could not be main- Dependence of an- 
 tained, they constitute the means by which the aerial ma- '""^ ""'' '"'""'• 
 terial, vivified, as it may be said, by the rays of the sun, is conveyed 
 even into the composition of man himself. As food, they serve to re- 
 pair the wastes of the body necessarily 'occasioned in the acts of moving 
 and thinking. For a time, therefore, these ingredients, once a part of 
 the structure of plants, enter as essential constituents in the structure of 
 animals. Yet it is only in a momentary way, for the essential condition 
 of animal activity is that there shall be unceasing interstitial death ; not 
 a finger can be lifted without the waste of muscular material ; not a 
 thought arise without the destruction of cerebral substance. From the 
 animal system the products of decay are forthwith removed, often by 
 mechanisms of the most exquisite construction ; but their uses are not 
 
76 , THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEEACLITUS. 
 
 ended, for sooner or later they find their way back again into the air, 
 and again serve for the origination of plants. It is needless to trace 
 these changes in all their details ; the same order or cycle of progress 
 holds good for the water, the ammonia ; they pass from the inorganic 
 to the living state, and back to the inorganic again ; now the same par- 
 ticle is found in the air, next aiding in the composition of a plant, then 
 in the body of an animal, and.back in the air once more. In this per- 
 petual revolution material particles run, the dominating influence de- 
 termining and controlling their movement being in that great centre of 
 Agency of our systcm, the sun. From him, in the summer days, plants re- 
 the sun. ceivc, and, as it were, store up that warmth which, at a subse- 
 quent time, is to reappear in the glow of health of man, or to be rekin- 
 dled in the blush of shame, or to consume in the burning fever. *Nor 
 is there any limit of time. The heat we derive from the combustion of 
 stubble came from the sun as it were only yesterday ; but that with 
 which we moderate the rigor of winter when we burn anthracite or bi- 
 tuminous coal was also derived from the same source in the ultra-trop- 
 ical climate of the secondary times, perhaps a thousand centuries ago. . 
 / In such perpetually recurring cycles are the movements of material 
 things accomplished, and all takes place under the dominion of invaria- 
 ble law. The air is the source whence all organisms have come ; it is 
 the receptacle to which they all return. Its parts are awakened into 
 life, not hj the influence of any terrestrial agency or principle concealed 
 in itself, as Diogenes supposed, but by a star which is a hundred millions 
 of miles distant, the source direct or indirect of every terrestrial move- 
 ment, and the dispenser of light and life. 
 
 To Thales and Diogenes, whose primordial elements were water and 
 air r«spectively, we must add Heraclitus of Ephesus, who maintained 
 Heraciitus as- that the first principle is fire. He illustrated the tendency 
 Tthe'tot*''^ which Greek philosophy had already assumed of oppositioii;to 
 principle. Polytheism and the idolatrous practices of the age. It is said 
 that in his work, ethical, political, physical, and theological subjects were 
 so confused, and so great was the difdculty of understanding his mean- 
 ing, that he obtained the surname of " the Obscure." In this respect he 
 has had among modern metaphysicians many successors. He' founds 
 his system, however, upon the simple axiom that "all is convertible into- 
 fire, and fire into all." Perhaps by the term fire he understood what is 
 at present meant by heat, for he expressly says that he does not mean 
 flame, but something merely dry and warm. He considered that this 
 principle is in a state of perpetual activity, forming and absorbing every 
 Tiie fictitious per- individual thing. He says, " All is and' is not ; for, though 
 
 manence of sue- . - ^ 7 J o 
 
 cesBive fonna. it docs m truth comc luto- being, yet it forthwith ceases tp 
 be." " No one has ever been twice on the same stream, for different 
 waters are constantly flowing down. It dissipates its waters and gath- 
 
HIS PHYSIOLOGICAL DOOTEINES. 77 
 
 ers them again, it approaches and recedes, overflows and fails." And to 
 teach lis that we ourselves are changing and have changed, he says, " On 
 the same stream we embark and embark not, we are and we are not." 
 By snch illustrations he implies that life is only an unceasing motion, 
 and we can not fail to remark that the Greek turn of thought is fast fol- 
 lowing that of the Hindu. 
 
 But Heraclitus totally fails to free himself from local conceptions. 
 He speaks of the motion of the primordial principle in the upward and 
 downward directions, in the higher and lower regions. He says that the 
 chief accumulation thereof i/ above, and the chief deficiency below, and 
 hence he regards the soul of man as a portion of fire migrated from 
 heaven. He carries his ideas of the transitory nature of all phenomena 
 to tkeir last consequences, and illustrates the noble doctrine that all 
 which appears to us to be permanent is only a regulated and self-renew- 
 ing concurrence of similar and opposite motions by such extravagances 
 as that the sun is daily destroyed and renewed. 
 
 In the midst of many wild physical statements many true axioms are 
 dehvered. " All is ordered by reason and intelligence, though physical and 
 all is subject to Fate," Already he perceived what the meta- Snef^' 
 physicians of our own times are illustrating, that "man's, mind n«''i»<'i''°«- 
 can produce no certain knowledge from its own interior resources alone." 
 He regarded the organs of sense as being the channels through which 
 the outer life of the world, and therewith truth, enters into the mind, and 
 that in sleep, when the organs of sense are closed, we are shut out from 
 all communion with the surrounding universal spirit. In his view ev- 
 ery thing is animated and insouled, but to different degrees, organic ob- 
 jects being most completely or perfectly. His astronomy may be antic- 
 ipated from what has been said respecting the sun, which he moreover 
 regarded as being scarcely more than a foot in diameter, and, like all 
 other celestial objects, a mere meteor. His moral system was altogeth> 
 er based upon the physical, the fundamental dogma being the excellence 
 of fire. Thus he accounted for the imbecility of the drunkard by hia 
 having a moist soul, and drew the inference that a warm or dry soul is 
 the wisest and best ; with a justifiable patriotism asserting that the no- 
 blest souls must belong to a climate that is dry, intending thereby to in. 
 dicate that Greece is man's fittest and truest country. There can be no 
 doubt that in Heraclitus there is a strong tendency to the doctrine of a 
 soul of the world. If the divinity is undistinguishable from heat, whith- 
 er can we go to escape its influences? And in the restless, activity and 
 incessant changes it produces in every thing within our reach, do we not 
 recognize the tokens of the illimitable and unshackled ? 
 
 I have lingered on the chief features of the early Greek philosophy 
 as exhibited in the physical school of Ionia. They serve to impress 
 upon us its intrinsic imperfection. It is a mixture of the physical, met- 
 
78- THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANAXIMANDEE. 
 
 aphysical, and mystical, which, upon the whole, has no other value to us 
 ■. Thepueriutyofio- ttan this, that it shows us how feeble were the beginnings 
 man phuoaophy. ^f q^j, knowledge — ^that we commenced with the importa- 
 tion of a few vulgar errors from Egypt. In presence of the utilitarian 
 philosophy of that country and the theology, of India, how vain and 
 even childish are these germs of scien'ce in Greece! Yet this very im- 
 perfection is not without its use, since it warns us of the inferior posi- 
 tion in which we stand as respects the time of our civilization when 
 , compared with those ancient states, and teaches us to reject the doctrine 
 : which so many European scholars have wearied themselves in estab- 
 I lishing, that Greece led the way to all human knowledge of any value. 
 ( Above all, it impresses upon us more appropriate, because more humhle 
 I views of our present attainments and position, and gives us to xiMei- 
 j stand that other races of men not only preceded us in intellectual cul- 
 ture, but have equaled, and perhaps surpassed every thing that we have 
 i yet done in mental philosophy. 
 ' Of the other founders of Ionic sects it may be observed that, though' 
 they gave to their doctrines ^different forms, the method of reasonifig 
 was essentially the same in them all. Of this a better illustration could 
 not be given than in the philosophy of Anaxiniander of Miletus, who 
 was contemporary with Thales. He started with the postulate that 
 Anarimander's thiugs arosc by Separation from a universal mixture of all : 
 Infinite. his primordial principle was therefore chaos, though he veil- 
 
 ed it in the metaphysically obscure designation "The Infinite." The 
 want of precision in this respect gave rise to much difference of opinion 
 as to his tenets. To his. chaos he imputed an internal energy, by which 
 its parts spontaneously separated from each other; to those parts he 
 imputed absolute unchangeability. He taught that the earth is of a 
 cylindrical form, its base being one third of its altitude ; it is retained 
 in the centre of the world by the air in an equality of distance from all 
 the boundaries of the universe ; that the fixed stars and planets re- 
 volved round it, each being fastened to a crystalline ring; and beyond 
 them, in like manner, the moon, and, still farther off, the sun. He con- 
 origin of C03- ccivcd of an opposition between the central and circumferen- 
 mogony. ^^^-^ rogions, the former being naturally cold, and the latter 
 hot; indeed, in his opinion, the settling of the cold parts to the centre, 
 and the ascending of the hot, gave origin, respectively, to the formation 
 of the earth and shining celestial bodies ; the latter first existing as a 
 complete shell or sphere, which, undergoing destruction, broke up into . 
 stars. Already we perceive the tendency of Greek philosophy to shape 
 itself into systems of cosmogony, founded upon the disturbance of the 
 chaotic matter by heat and cold. , Nay, more, Anaximander explained 
 Origin of biology, the Origin of living creatures on like principles, for the 
 sun's heat, acting upon the primal miry earth, produced filmy bladders 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANAXAGOEAS. 79 
 
 or bubbles, and these, becoming surrounded with a prickly rind, at 
 length burst open, and, as from an egg, animals came forth. At first 
 they were ill formed and imperfect, but subsequently elaborated and 
 developed. As to man, so far from being produced in his perfect shape, 
 he was ejected as a fish, and under that folfai continued in the muddy 
 water until he was capable of supporting himself on dry land. Besides 
 "the Infinite" being thus the cause of generation, it was also the cause 
 of destruction : '^ things must all return whence they came, according to 
 destiny; for they must all, in order of time, undergo due penalties and 
 expiations of wrong-doing." This expression obviously contains a 
 moral consideration, and is an exemplification of the commencing feeble 
 interconnection between physical and moral philosophy. 
 
 Agt to the. more solid discoveries attributed to this philosopher, we 
 may dispose of them in the same manner that we have dealt with the 
 like facts in the biographies of his predecessors — ^they are idle inven- 
 tions of his vainglorious countrymen. That he was the first to make 
 maps is scarcely consistent with the well-known fact that the Egyptians 
 had cultivated geometry for that express purpose thirty centuries before 
 he was born. As to his inventing sun-dials, the shadow had gone back 
 -on that of Ahaz a long time before. In reality, the sun-dial was a very- 
 ancient Oriental invention. And as to his being the first to make an 
 exact calculation of the size and distance of the heavenly bodies, it need 
 only be remarked that those who have so greatly extolled his labors 
 must have overlooked how incompatible such discoveries are with a, 
 system which assumes that the earth is cylindrical in shape, and kept in 
 the midst of the heavens by the atmosphere ; that the sun is farther off 
 than the fixed stars; and that each of the heavenly bodies is made to 
 revolve by means of a crystalline wheel. 
 
 The philosopher whose views we have next to consider is Anaxago- 
 ras of Clazomene, the friend and master of Pericles, Euripides, and 
 Socrates. Like several of his predecessors, he had visited Egypt. 
 •Among his disciples were numbered some of the most eminent men of 
 those times. 
 
 The fundainental principle of his philosophy was the recognition of 
 the unchangeability of the universe as a whole, the varie- Anaxagoma teaches 
 
 J. J? ^ ii i 1 • 111 *^^ unchangeability 
 
 ty 01 lorms that we see being produced by new arrange- oftheumverBe. 
 ments of its constituent parts. Such a doctrine includes, of course, the 
 idea of the eternity of matter. Anaxagoras says, "Wrongly do the 
 Greeks suppose that aught begins or ceases to be, for nothing comes into 
 being or is destroyed, but aU is an aggregation or secretion of pre-exist- 
 ent things, so that all-becoming might more correctly be called becom- 
 ing-mixed, and all corruption becoming-separate." In such a state- 
 ment we can not iail to remark that the Greek is fast passing into the 
 track of the Egyptian and the Hindu. In some respects his views re- 
 
80 COSMOGONY OF ANAXAGOBAS. 
 
 call those of the chaos of Anaximander, as -when he says, " Together 
 were all things infinite in number and smallness ; nothing was distin- 
 guishable. Before they were sorted, while all was together, there was 
 The primal ^° quality noticeable." To the first moving force which ar- 
 inteiieot. ranged the parts dS things out of the chaos, he gave the desig- 
 nation of " the Intellect," rejecting Fate as an empty name, and imput- 
 ing all things to Reason. He made no distinction between the Soul and 
 Intellect. His tenets evidently include a dualism indicated by the mov- 
 ing force and the moved mass, an opposition between the corporeal and 
 mental. This indicated that for philosophy there are two separate 
 routes, the physical and intellectual. "While Eeason is thus the prime 
 mover in his philosophy, he likewise employed many subordinate agents 
 in the government of things — for instance, air, water, and fire, being ev- 
 idently unable to explain the state of nature in a satisfactory way by 
 Cosmogony of ^^^ Operation of the Intellect alone. We recognize in the de- 
 Anaxagoras. ^g^jjg ^f j^jg gygtem idcas dcrivcd from former ones, such as tlie 
 settling of the cold and dense below, and the rising of the warm and 
 light above. In the beginning the action of Intellect was only partial; 
 that which was primarily moved was only imperfectly sorted, and con- 
 tained in itself the capability of many separations. From this point liis 
 system became a cosmogony, showing how the elements and fogs, 
 stones, stars, and the sea, were produced. These explanations, as might 
 be anticipated, have no exactness. Among his primary elements are 
 many incongruous things, such as cold, color, fire, gold, lead, corn, mar- 
 row, blood, etc. This doctrine implied that in compound things there 
 was not a formation, but an arrangement. It required, therefore, many 
 elements instead of a single one. Flesh is made of fleshy particlejj 
 bones of bony, gold of golden, lead of leaden, wood of wooden, etc. 
 . These analogous constituents are homoeomerise. Of an infinite number 
 of kinds, they composed the infinite all, which is a mixture of theuif 
 From such conditions Anaxagoras proves that all the parts of an atf 
 mal body pre-exist in the food, and are merely collected therefrom.' As' 
 to the phenomena of life, he explains it on his doctrine of dualism be- 
 tween mind and matter ; he( teaches that sleep is produced by the reac- 
 tion of the latter on the former. Even plants he regards as only rooted 
 animals, motionless, but having sensations and desires ; he imputes the 
 superiority of man to the mere fact of his having hands. He explains 
 our mental perceptions upon the hypothesis that we have naturally 
 within us the contraries of all the qualities of external things; and 
 that, when we consider an object, we become aware of the preponder- 
 ance, of those qualities in our mind which are deficient in them. Hence 
 all sensation is attended with pain. His doctrine of the production of 
 animals was founded on the action of the sunlight on the miry earth. 
 The earth he places in the centre of the world, whither it was carried 
 
PKESECUTIGN' OF ANAXAGOKAS. 81 
 
 by a whirlwind, the pole being originally in the zenith ; but, when ani- 
 mals issued from the mud, its position was changed by the Intellect, so 
 that there might be suitable climates. In some particulars his crude 
 guesses present amusing anticipations of subsequent discoveries. Thi^s 
 he maintained that the moon -has mountains, valleys, and inhabitants 
 like the earth ; that there have been grand epochs in the history of our 
 globe, in which it has been successively modified by fire and water ; 
 that the hills of Lampsacus would one day be under the sea, if time did 
 not too soon fail. 
 
 As to the nature of human knowledge, Anaxagoras asserted that by 
 the Intellect alone do we become acquainted with the douMs whether we 
 
 . ■ ■^_. - ._. .^^ have any criterion 
 
 truth, the senses bemg altogether unreliable. He ilius- of truth. 
 trated this by putting a drop of colored liquid into a quantity of clear 
 water, the eye being unable to recognize any change. Upon such prin- 
 ciples also he ^serted that snow is not white, but black, since it is com- 
 posed of water, of which the color is black ; and hence he drew such 
 conclusions as that " things are to each man according as they seem to 
 him." It was doubtless the recognition of the unreliability of the senses 
 that extprted from him the well-known complaint : " Nothing can be 
 known ; nothing can be learned ; nothing can be certain ; sense is lim- 
 ited ; intellect is weak ; life is short." 
 
 The biography of Anaxagoras is not without interest. Born in afilu- 
 ence, he devoted all his means to philosophy, and in his old age encouii- 
 tered poverty and want. He was accused by the superstitious Athe- 
 nian populace of Atheism and impiety to the gods, since he asserted 
 that the sun and moon consist of earth and stone, and that the so-called 
 divine miracles of the times were nothing more than common natural 
 effects. For these reasons, and also because of the Magianism of his 
 doctrine — ^for he taught the antagonism of mind and matter, a dogma 
 of the detested Persians — he was thrown into prisou, con- Anaxagoras is 
 demned to death, and barely escaped through the influence s«"«™'^^- 
 of Pericles. He fled to Lampsacus, where he ended his days in exile. 
 His vainglorious countrymen, however, conferred honor upon his mem- 
 ory in their customary exaggerated way, boasting that he was the first" 
 to explain the phases of the moon, the nature of solar and lunar eclipses, 
 that he had the power of foretelling future events, and had even pre- 
 dicted the fall of a meteoric stone. 
 
 From the biography of Anaxagoras, as well as of several of his con- 
 temporaries and successors, we may learn that a popular opposition was 
 springing up against philosophy, not limited to a mere social protest, 
 but carried out into political injustice. The antagonism between learn- 
 ing and Polytheism was becoming every day more distinct. Of the phi- 
 losophers, some were obliged to fly into exile, some suffered death. The 
 natural result of such a state of things was to force them to practice con- 
 
 F 
 
82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF PYTHAGOEAS. 
 
 cealment and mystification, as is strikingly shown in the history of the 
 Pythagoreans. 
 
 Of Pythagoras, the founder of this sect, but little is known with cer- 
 pythagoraa, tainty ; even the date of his birth is contested. Probably he 
 biography of. ^^ j^qj.^ ^^ Samos about B.C. 540. If we were not expressly 
 told so, we should recognize from his doctrines that he had been in Egypt 
 and India. Some eminent scholars, who desire on all occasions to mag- 
 nify the learning of ancient Europe, depreciate as far as they can the 
 universal testimony of antiquity that such was the origin of the knowl- 
 edge of Pythagoras, asserting that the constitution of the Egyptian priest- 
 hood rendered it impossible for a foreigner to become initiated. They 
 forget that the ancient system of that country had been totally destroyed 
 in the great revolution which took place more than a century before 
 those times. If it were not exphcitly stated by the ancients that Py- 
 thagoras lived for twenty-two years in Egypt, there is suf&cient internal 
 evidence, in his story to prove that he had been there for a long time. 
 Just as a connoisseur can detect the hand of a master by the style of a 
 painting, so one who has devoted attention to the old systems of thought 
 sees the Egyptian in the philosophy of Pythagoras at a glance. 
 
 He passed into Italy during the reign of Tarquin the Proud, arid set- 
 tled at Crotona, a Greek colonial city on the Bay of Tarentum. At first 
 he established a school, but, favored by local dissensions, he gradually 
 organized from the youth who availed themselves of his instructions a 
 secret political society. Already it had passed into a maxim among the 
 learned Greeks that it is not advantageous to communicate knowledge 
 too freely to the people — a bitter experience in persecutions seemed to 
 demonstrate that the maxim was founded in truth. The step from a L 
 jsecret philosophical society to a political conspiracy is but short. Py- 
 thagoras appears to have taken it. The disciples who were admitted to 
 his scientific sedrets after a period of probation and process of examina- 
 tion constituted a ready instrument of intrigue against the state, the is- 
 sue, of which, after a time, appeared in the supplanting of the ancient 
 senate and the exaltation of Pythagoras and his club to the adminisf a- 
 tion of government. The actions of men in all times are determined by 
 similar principles ; and as it would be now with such a conspiracy, so it 
 was then ; for, though the Pythagorean influence spread from Crotona to 
 other Italian towns, an overwhelming reaction soon set in, the innova- 
 tors were driven into exile, their institutions destroyed, and their found- 
 er fell a victim to his enemies. 
 
 The organization attempted by the Pythagoreans is an exception to 
 the general policy of the Greeks. The philosophical schools had been 
 merely points of reunion for those entertaining similar opinions; but in 
 the state they can hardly be regarded as having had any political exist- 
 ence. 
 
CHAEACTEE OF PYTHAGOEAS. 83 
 
 It is difficult, when the political or religious feelings of men have 
 been engaged, to ascertain the truth of events in which they have been 
 concerned ; deception, and even falsehood, seem to be licensed. In the 
 midst of the troubles befalling Italy as the consequence of these Pytha- 
 gorean machinations, it is impossible to ascertain facts with certainty. 
 One party exalts Pythagoras to a superhuman state ; it pictures him 
 majestic and impassive, clothed in robes of white, with a golden coro- 
 net around his brows, listening to the music of the spheres, or seeking 
 relaxation in the more humble hymns of Homer, Hesiod, and Thales ; 
 lost in the contemplation of Nature, or rapt in' ecstasy in his medita- 
 tions on God ; manifesting his descent from Apollo or Hermes by the 
 working of miracles, predicting future events, and con vers- His miracles, 
 ing with genii in the solitude of a dark cavern, and even surpassing the 
 wonder of speaking simultaneously in different tongues, since it was es- 
 tablished, by the most indisputable testimony, that he had accomplished 
 the prodigy of being present with and addressing the people in several 
 different places at the same time. It seems not to have occurred to his 
 disciples that such preposterous assertions can not be sustained by any 
 evidence whatsoever ; and that the stronger and clearer such evidence 
 is, instead of supporting the fact for which it is brought forward, it only 
 serves to shake our confidence in the truth of man, or impresses on us 
 the conclusion that he is easily led to the adoption of falsehood, and is 
 readily deceived by imposture. 
 
 By his opponents he was denounced as a quack, or, at the best, a 
 visionary mystic, who had deluded the young with the mum- hib character. . 
 meries of a free-masonry; had turned the weak-minded into shallow 
 enthusiasts and grim ascetics ; that he had conspired against a state 
 •which had given him an honorable refuge, aiid had brought disorder 
 and bloodshed upon it. Between such contradictory statements, it is 
 difficult to determine how much we should impute to the philoso- 
 pher and how much to the trickster. In this uncertainty, the Pythago- 
 reans reap the fruit of one of their favorite maxims, " ISTot unto all 
 should all be made known." Perhaps at the bottom of these political 
 movements lay the hope of establishing a central point of union- for the 
 numerous Greek colonies of Italy, which, though they were rich and 
 highly civilized, were, by reason of their isolation and antagonism, es- 
 sentially weak:'^ Could they have been united together in a powerful 
 federation hy the aid of some political or religious bond, they might 
 have exerted a singular influence on the rising fortunes of Eome, and 
 thereby on humanity. Pythago'rism did indeed exert an influence on 
 Eome, but it was in a different way, through Numa, the second king, 
 who was of this sect, and who introduced into the Eoman system many 
 Pythagorean rites. 
 
 The fundamental dogma of the Pythagoreans was that "number is 
 
84 THE PYTHAGOEEANS ASSERT THE POWEE OF NUMBEES. 
 
 Pythagoras asserfa the essence OT first principle of tilings." It led them at 
 first pSoi^ie? ^ once to the study of the mysteries of figures and of arith- 
 metical relations, and plunged them into the wildest fantasies when it 
 took the absurd form that numbers are actually things. 
 
 The approval so generally expressed for the doctrines of Pythagoras 
 was doubtless very much due to the fact that they supplied an intel- 
 lectual void. Those who had been in the foremost ranks of philosophy 
 had come to the conclusion that, as regards external things, and even 
 ourselves, we have no criterion of truth ; but in the properties of num- 
 bers and their relations, such a criterion does exist. 
 
 It would scarcely repay the reader to pursue this system in its details; 
 a very superficial representation of it is all that is necessary for our pur- 
 pose. It recognizes two species of numbers, the odd and even ; and 
 since one, or unity, must be at once both odd and even, it must be the 
 very essence of number, and the ground of all other numbers } hence 
 the meaning bf the Pythagorean expression, "All comes from one;" 
 which also took form in the mystical allusion, "God embraces all and 
 actuates all, and is but one." To the number ten extraordinary import- ■ 
 ance was imputed, since it contains in itself, or arises from the addition 
 of, 1, 2, 3, 4 — that is, of even and odd numbers together ; hence it re- 
 ceived the name of the grand tetractys, because it so contains the first 
 four numbers. Some, however, assert that that designatio(n was imposed 
 Pythagorean ^^ ^^^ uumbcr thirty-six. To the triad the Pythagoreans like- 
 phuosophy. ^jg^ attached much significance, since it has a beginning, a. 
 middle, and an end. To unity, or one, they gave the designation of the 
 even-odd, asserting that it contained the property both of the even and 
 o"dd, as is plain from the fact that if ohe is added to an even num- 
 ber it becomes odd, but if to an odd number it becomes even. They. 
 arranged the primary elements of nature in a table of ten contraries, of 
 which the odd and even are one, and light and darkness another. They 
 say that "the nature and energy of number may be traced not only in 
 divine and demonish things; but in human works and words every 
 where, and in all works of art and in music." They even linked their 
 arithmetical views to morality, through the observation that numbers, 
 never lie ; that they are hostile to falsehood ; and that, therefore, truth be- 
 longs to their family : their fanciful speculations led them to infer that 
 in the limitless or infinite, falsehood and envy must reign. Prora simi- 
 lar reasoning, they concluded that the number one contained not only 
 the perfect, but also the imperfect; hence it follows that the, most goody 
 most beautiful, and most true are not at the beginning, but that they 
 are in the process of time evolved. They held that whatever we know 
 must have had a beginning, a middle, and an end, of which the hegin- 
 iiing and end are the boundaries or limits ; but the middle is unUmited, 
 and, as a consequence, may be subdivided ad infinitum. They therefore 
 
PYTHAGOEEAN COSHOGONT. 85 
 
 resolved corporeal existence into points, as is get forth in their maxim that 
 " all is composed of points or spacial units, which, taken together, consti- 
 tute a number." Such being their ideas of the limiting which constitutes 
 the extreme, they understood by the unlimited the intermediate space or 
 interval. By the aid of these intervals they obtained a conception of 
 space ; for, since the units,' or monads, as they were also called, are mere- 
 ly geometrical points, no number of them could produce a line, but by 
 the union of monads and intervals conjointly a line can arise, and also 
 a surface, and also a solid. As to the interval thus existing between 
 monads, some considered it as being mere aerial breath, but the orthodox 
 regarded it as a vacuum ; hence we perceive the meaning of their ab- 
 surd affirmation that all things are produced by a vacuum. As it is not 
 to be overlooked that the monads are merely mathematical points, and 
 have no dimensions or size, substances actually contain no matter, and 
 are nothing more than forms. 
 
 The Pythagoreans applied these principles to account for the origin 
 of the world, saying that, since its very existence is an illusion, it could 
 not have any origin in time, but only seemingly so to human pythagprean 
 thought. As to time itself, they regarded it as " existing only ""^"sow- 
 by the distinction of a series of different moments, which, however, are 
 again restored to unity by the limiting moments." The diversity of re- 
 lations we find in the world they supposed to be occasioned by the bond 
 of harmony. " Since the principles of things are neither similar nor 
 congenerous, it is impossible for them to be brought into order except 
 by the intervention of harmony,- whatever may have been the manner 
 in which it took place. Like .and homogeneous things, indeed, would 
 not have required harmony ; but, as to the dissimilar and unsymmetrical. 
 Such must necessarily be held together by harmony if they are to be 
 contained in a world of order." In this manner they confused together 
 the ideas of number and harmony, regarding the world not only as a 
 combination of contraries, but as an orderly and harmonical combination 
 thereof. To particular numbers they therefore imputed great signifi- 
 cance, asserting that "there are seven chords or harmonies, seven pleiads, 
 seven vowels, and that certain parts of the bodies of animals change in 
 the course of seven years." They carried to an extreme the numerical 
 doctrine, assigning certain numbers as the representatives of a bird, a 
 horse, a man. This doctrine may be illustrated by facts familiar to 
 chemists, who, in like manner, attach significant numbers to the names 
 of things. Taking hydrogen as unitv, 6 belongs to carbon, Modem py- 
 o to oxygen, 16 to sulphur. Carrying these prmciples out, in chemistry, 
 there is no substance, elementary or compound, inorganic or organic, to 
 which an expressive number does not belong. Nay, even an archetypal 
 form, as of man or any other such composite structure, may thus pos- 
 sess a typical number, the sum of the numbers of its constituent parts. 
 
86 PYTHAGOREAIT PHYSIOS AND PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 It signifies nothing what interpretation we give to these numbers, wheth- 
 er we regard them as atoniic weights, or, declining the idea of atoms, 
 consider them as the representatives of force. As in the ancient philo- 
 sophical doctrine, so in the modem science, the number is invariably 
 connected with the name of a thing, of whatever description the thing 
 may be. 
 
 The grand standard of harmonical relation among the Pythagoreanfe 
 was the musical octave. Physical qualities, such as color and tone, 
 were supposed to appeirtain to the surface of bodies. Of the elements 
 they enumerated five — earth, air, fire, water, and ether, connecting there- 
 with the fact that man has five organs of sense. Of the planets they 
 numbered five, which, together with the sun, moon, and earth, are placed 
 apart at distances determined by a musical law, and in their movements 
 through space give rise to a sound, the harmony of the spheres, unno- 
 . Pythagorean ticed by US bccausc WO habitually hear it. They place the sun 
 psychology. ' in the centre of the system, round which, with the other plan- 
 ets, the earth revolves. At this point the geocentric doctrine is being 
 abandoned and the heliocentric taking its place. As the circle is the 
 most perfect of forms, the movements of the planets are circular. They 
 maintained that the moon is inhabited, and like the earth, but the peo- 
 ple there are taller than men, in the proportion as the moon's periodic 
 rotation is greater than that of the earth. They explained the MOky 
 Way as having been occasioned by the fall of a star, or that it was for- 
 merly the path of the sun. They asserted that the world is eternalybnt 
 the earth is transitory and liable to change, the universe being in the 
 shape of a sphere. They held that the soul of man is merely an efflux 
 of the universal soul, and that it. comes into the body from without, 
 From dreams and the events of sickness they inferred the existence of 
 good and evil demons. They supposed that souls can exist without the 
 body, leading a kind of dream-life, and identified the motes in the sun- 
 beam with them. Their heroes and demons were souls not yet become 
 imbodied, or who had ceased to be so. The doctrine of transmigration 
 which they had adopted was in unison with such views, and, if it does 
 not imply the absolute immortality of the soul, at least asserts its exist 
 ence after the death of the body, for the disembodied spirit becomes in- 
 carnate again as soon as it finds a tenement which fits it. To their Hfe 
 after death the Pythagoreans added a doctrine of retributive rewards 
 and punishments, and, in this respect, what has been said of the anima- 
 ted world forming a penitential mechanism in the theology of India and 
 Egypt, holds good for the Pythagoreans too. 
 
 Of their system of politics nothing can now with certainty; be affirm- 
 ed beyond the fact that its prime element was an aristocracy." Of theii 
 rule of private life, but little beyond its including a recommendation' of 
 moderation In all things, the cultivation of friendship, the observance 
 
THE ELEATIO PHILOSOPHY. 87 
 
 of faith, and the practice of self-denial, promoted by ascetical exercises. 
 It was a maxim with them that a right education is not only of impor- 
 tance to the individual, but also to the interests of the state. Pythago- 
 ras himself, as is well known, paid much attention to the determination 
 of extension and gravity, the ratios of musical tones, astronomy, and 
 medicine. He inculcated on his disciples, in their orgies or secret wor- 
 ship, to practice gymnastics, dancing, music. In correspondence with 
 his principle of imparting to men only such knowledge as they were fit- 
 ted to receive, he communicated to those who were less perfectly pre- 
 pared only exoteric doctrines, reserving the esoteric for the privileged 
 few who had passed five years in silence, had endured humiliation, and 
 been purged by self-denial and sacrifice. 
 
 We have reached now the consideration of the Eleatic philosophy. 
 It differs from the preceding in its neglect of material things, ^he Euatic 
 and its devotion to the supra-sensible. It derives its name phuosopny. 
 from Elea, a Greek colonial city of Italy, its chief authors being Xe- 
 nophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno. 
 
 Xenophanes was a native of Ionia, from which having been exiled, 
 he appears to have settled at last in Elea, after leading for many years 
 the life of a v/andering rhapsodist. He gave his doctrines a poetical 
 form for the purpose of more easily diffusing them. ' To xenoptanes repre. 
 the multitude he became conspicuous from his opposition oaopWcai advance. 
 to Homer, Hesiod, and other popular poets, whom he denounced for 
 promoting the base polytheism of the times, and degrading the idea 
 of the divine by the immoralities they attributed to the gods. He 
 proclaimed God as an all-powerful Being, existing from eternity, and 
 without any likeness to man. A strict monotheist, he denounced the 
 pluraHty of gods as an inconceivable error, asserting that of the all- 
 powerful and all-perfect there could not, in, the nature of things, be more 
 than one ; for, if there were only so many as two, those attributes could 
 not apply to one of them, much less, then, if there were many. This one 
 principle or power was to him the same as the universe, the substance 
 of which, having existed from all eternity, must necessarily be identical 
 with God ; for, since it is impossible that there should be two Omnipre's- 
 ents, so also it is impossible that there should be two Eternals. Well, 
 therefore, may it be said that there is a tincture of Orientalism in his 
 ideas, since it would scarcely be possible to offer a more succinct and lu- 
 minous exposition of the pantheism of India. 
 
 The reader who has been wearied with the frivolities of the Ionian 
 philosophy, and lost in the mysticisms of Pythagoras, can ift approaches the 
 not fail to recognize that here we have something of a very ii^iai' ideas; 
 different kind. To an Oriental dignity of conception is added an ex- 
 traordinary clearness and precision of reasoning. 
 
 To Xenophanes all revelation is a pure fiction ; the discovery of the 
 
88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF XENOPHANES. 
 
 invisible is to be made by the intellect of man alone. The vulgar be- 
 lief which imputes to the Deity the sentiments, passions, and crimes of 
 Theology of ™^^i ^^ blasphemous and accursed. He exposes the impiety 
 xenophanes. Qf thosc who would figure the Great Supreme under the form 
 of a man, telling them that if the ox or the lion could rise to the cou- 
 jception of the Deity, they might as well embody him under their own 
 [shape; that the negro represents him with a flat nose and black face; 
 j the Thracian with blue eyes and a ruddy complexion. " There is but 
 one God ; he has no resemblance to the bodily form of man, nor are his 
 thoughts like ours." He taught that God is without parts, and through- 
 out alike; for, if he had parts, some would be ruled by others, and oth- 
 ers would rule, which is impossible, for the very notion of God implies 
 his perfect and thorough sovereignty. Throughout he must be Eeason, 
 and Intelligence, and Omnipotence, "ruling the universe without trouble 
 by Eeason and Insight.". He conceived that the Supreme understands 
 by a sensual perception, and not only thinks, but sees and hears through- 
 out. In a symbolical manner he represented God as a sphere, like the 
 heavens, which encompass man and all earthly things. 
 
 In his natural philosophy it is said that he adopted the four elements, 
 Earth, Air, Fire, "Water ; though by some it is asserted that, from ob- 
 serving fossil fish on the tops of mountains, he was led to the belief that 
 His- physical views, the earth itsclf arose from water; and, generally, that the 
 phenomena of nature originate in combinations of the primary elements. 
 From such views he inferred that all things are necessarily transitoiy, 
 and that men, and even the earth itself, must pass away. As to the 
 latter, he regarded it as a flat surface, the inferior region of which ex- 
 tends indefinitely downward, and so gives a solid foundation.' His 
 physical views he, however, held with a doubt almost borderingt on 
 skepticism : " No mortal man ever did, or ever shall know God and the 
 universe thoroughly ; for, since error is so spread over all things, it is 
 impossible for us to be certain even when we utter the true and the 
 perfect." It seemed to him hopeless that man could ever ascertain the 
 truth, since he has no other aid than truthless appearances. 
 
 I can not dismiss this imperfect account of Xenophanes, who was, 
 undoubtedly, one of the greatest of the Greek philosophers, without an 
 allusion to his denunciation of Homer, and other poets of his country, ' 
 because they had aided in degrading the idea of the Divinity ; and also 
 to his faith in human nature, his rejection of the principle of concealing 
 truth from the multitude, and his self devotion in diffusing it among all 
 at a risk of liberty and life. He wandered from country to country, 
 withstanding polytheism to its face, and imparting wisdom in rhapso- 
 dies and hymns, the form, of all others, calculated most quickly in those 
 times to spread knowledge abroad. To those who are disposed to de- 
 preciate his philosophical conclusions, it may be remarked that, in some 
 
THE •PHILOSOPHY OF PAEMENIDES. 89 
 
 of their most striking features they have been reproduced in modern 
 times, and I would offer to them a quotation from the General Scholium 
 at the end of the third book of the Principia of ISTewton : " The Supreme 
 God exists necessarily, and by the same necessity he ex- someofhisthoughtB 
 ists always and every where. Whence, also, he is all sim- '""'^■^'^' ^ **'='"°"- 
 ilar, all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to under- 
 stand, and to act, but in a manner not at all human, not at all corporeal; 
 in a manner utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of 
 colors, so have we no idea of the ijianner by which the all- wise God 
 perceives and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body 
 and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor 
 touched, nor ought to be worshiped under the representation of any cor- 
 poreal thing. We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real sub- 
 stance of any thing is we know not." 
 
 To the Eleatic system thus originating with Xenophanes is to be at- 
 tributed the dialectic phase henceforward so prominently exhibited by 
 Greek philosophy. It abandoned, for the most part, the pursuits which 
 had occupied the lonians — the investigation of visible nature, the phe- 
 nomena of material things, and the. laws presiding over them ; conceiv- 
 ing such to be merely deceptive, and attaching itself to what seemed to 
 be the only true knowledge — an investigation of Being and of God. 
 By the Eleats, since all change appeared to be an impossibility, the 
 phenomena of succession presented by the world were regarded as a pure 
 illusion, and they asserted that Time, and Motion, and Space are phan- 
 tasms of the imagination, or vain deceptions of the senses. They there- 
 fore separated reason from opinion, attributing to the for- panneniaes on rea- 
 mer conceptions of absolute truth, and to the latter imper- son ana opinion, 
 fections arising from the fictions of sense. It was on this principle that 
 Parmenides divided his work on " Nature" into two books, the first on 
 Eeason, the second on Opinion. Starting from the nature of Being, the 
 uncreated and unchangeable, he denied altogether the idea of succession 
 in time, and also the relations of space, and pronounced change and 
 motion, of whatever kind they are, to be mere illusions of opinion. 
 His pantheism appears in the declaration that the All is phiiosopiiybeoom, 
 thought and intelligence ; and this, indeed, constitutes the '"^ PamheiBm. 
 essential feature of his doctrine ; for, by thus placing thought and being 
 in parallelism with each other, and interconnecting them by the concep- 
 tion that it is for the sake of being that thought exists, he showed that 
 they must necessarily be conceived of as one. 
 
 Such profound doctrines occupied the first book of the poem of Par- 
 menides ; in the second he treated of opinion, which, as we have said, 
 is altogether dependent on the senses, and therefore unreliable, not, how- 
 ever, that it must necessarily be absolutely false. It is scarcely possi- 
 ble for us to reconstruct from the remains of his works the details of 
 
90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ZENO THE.ELEAT. 
 
 his theory, or to show his approach to the Ionian doctrines by the as- 
 sumption of the existence in nature of two opposite species — ethereal 
 fire and heavy night ; of an equal proportion of which all things con- 
 sist, fire being the -true, and night the phenomenal. From such an un- 
 substantial and delusive basis it would not repay us, even if we had the 
 means of accomplishing it, to give an exposition of his physical system. 
 In many respects it degenerated into, a wild vagary ; as, for example, 
 when he placed an overruling demon in the centre of the phenomenal 
 world. Nor need we be detained by his extravagant reproduction of 
 the old doctrine of the generation of animals from miry clay, nor Follo\r 
 his explanation of the nature of man, who, since he is composed of light 
 and darkness, participates in both, and can never ascertain absoluft; 
 truth. By other routes, and upon far less fanciful principles, modem 
 philosophy has at last come to the same melancholy conclusion. ■ ' 
 The doctrines of Paripenides were carried out by Zeno the Eleatic, 
 Doctrines of Par- -vrho is Said to havc been his adopted son. He brought 
 out ty Zeno into usfe the method of refuting error by the reductio adab- 
 surdum. His compositions were in prose, and not' in poetry, as were 
 those .of his predecessors. As it had been the object-of Parmenides to 
 establish the existence of " the One," it was the object of Zeno to estab- 
 lish the non-existence of " the Many." Agreeably to such principles, 
 he started from the position that only one thing really exists, and that 
 all others are mere modifications or appearances of it. He denied mo- 
 tion, but admitted the appearance of it ; regarding it as a name given to 
 , a series of conditions, each of which is necessarily rest. This dogma 
 " against the possibility of motion he maintained by four arguments; the 
 ] second of them is the celebrated Achilles puzzle. It is thus stated: 
 , " Suppose Achilles to run ten times as fast as a tortoise, yet, if the tor- 
 \ toise has the start, Achilles can never overtake him ; for, if they are sep- ; 
 . arated at first by an interval of a thousand feet, when Achilles has run 
 these thousand feet the tortoise will have run a hundred, and when 
 ■ Achilles has run these hundred the tortoise will have got on ten, and so 
 t on forever ; therefore Achilles may run forever without overtaking the 
 - tortoise." Such were his arguments against the existence of motion; ■ 
 t his proof of the existence of One, the indivisible and infinite, may. thus 
 ' be stated : " To suppose that the One is divisible is to suppose it finite. 
 I If divisible, it must be infinitely divisible. But suppose two thin^ to 
 -^ exist, then there must necessarily be an interval between those two— 
 ^something separating and limiting them. What is that something? It 
 is some other thing. But then if not the same thing, it also, must be sep- 
 % arated and limited, and so on ad infinitum. Thus only one thing caii 
 .exist as the substratum for all manifold appearances." Zeno furnishes 
 ius with an illustration of the unreliability of the indications of sense in 
 ~ his argument against Protagoras. It may be here introduced as a speot 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MELISSUS AND OP EMPBDOCLES. 91 
 
 men of his method: "He asked if a grain of corn, or the ten thousandth 
 part of a grain would, when it fell to the ground, make a noise. Being 
 answered in the negative, he farther asked whether, then, would a meas- 
 ure of corn. This being necessarily af&rmed, he then demanded wheth- 
 er the measure was not in some determinate ratio to the single grain ; 
 as this could not be denied, he was able to conclude, either, then, the 
 bushel of corn makes no noise on falling, or else the very smallest por- 
 tion of a grain does the same." 
 
 To the names already given as belonging to the Eleatic school may 
 be added that of Melissus of Samos, who also founded his ^^^ ^j, Meiiasus 
 argument on the nature of Being, deducing its unity, un- of samos. 
 changeability, and indivisibility. He denied, like the rest of his school, 
 all change and motion, regarding them as mere illusions of the senses. 
 From the indivisibility of being he inferred its incorporeality, and there- 
 fore denied all bodily existence. 
 
 The list of Eleatic philosophers is doubtfully closed b^ the name of 
 Empedocles of Agrigentum, who in legend almost rivals Py- Biography of 
 thagoras. In the East he learned medicine and magic, the art Empedooiea. 
 of working miracles, of producing rain and wind. He decked himself 
 in priestly garments, a golden girdle, and a crown, proclaiming himself 
 to be a god. . It is said by some that he never died, but ascended to the 
 skies in the midst of a supernatural glory. By some it is related that 
 he leaped into the crater of Etna, that, the manner of his death being 
 unknown, he might still continue to pass for a god — an expectation dis- 
 appointed by an eruption which cast out one of his brazen sandals. 
 
 Agreeably to'^rhe school to which he belonged, he looked to Eeason 
 and distrusted the Senses. Prom his fragments it has. been inferred 
 that he was skeptical of the guidance of the former as well as of the 
 latter, founding his distrust on the imperfection the soul has contracted, 
 and for which it has been condemned to existence in this world, and even 
 to transmigration from body to body. Adopting the Eleatic doctrine 
 that like can be only known by like, fire by fire, love by love, the 
 recognition of the divine by man is sufficient proof that the Divine ex- ' 
 ists. His primary elements were four^-Earth, Air, Fire, and "Water ; 
 to these he added two principles. Love and Hate. The He mingiea mysti- 
 four elements he regarded as four gods, or divine eternal p™ '" ' ' °°°" 
 forces, siiice out of them all things are made. Love he regards as the 
 creative power, the destroyer or modifier being Hate. It is obvious, 
 therefore, that in him the strictly philosophical system of Xenophanes 
 had degenerated into a mixed and mystical view, in which the physical, 
 the metaphysical, and the moral were confounded together ; and that, as 
 the necessary consequence of such a state, the principles of knowledge 
 were becoming ufisettled, a suspicion arising that all philosophical sys- 
 tems were unreliable, and a general skepticism was already setting in. 
 
92 ' THE PHILOSOPHY OF , DEMOCBITUS. 
 
 To this result, in bo small degree, the labors of Democritus of Ahdera 
 also tended. He had had the advantages derived from wealth in the 
 procurernent of knowledge, for it is said that his father was rich enough 
 to be able to entertain the Persian King Xerxes, who was so gratified 
 thereby that he left several Magi and Chaldeans to complete the edu- 
 cation of the youth. On their father's death, Democritus, dividing with 
 his brothers the estate, took as his portion the share consisting of 
 money, leaving to them the lands, that he might be better able to de- 
 vote himself to traveling. He passed into Egypt, Ethiopia, Persia, and 
 India, gathering knowledge from all those sources. 
 
 According to Democritus, "Nothing is true, or, if so, is not certain to 
 Democritus asserts US." Ncverthcless, as in his system sensation constitutes 
 knowMga ' ^ ° thought, and, at the same time, is but a change in the sen- 
 tient being, "sensations are of necessity true;" from which somewhat 
 obscure passage we may infer that, in the view of Democritus, though 
 sensation is tMe subjectively, it is not true objectively. The sweet, the 
 bitter, the hot, the cold, are simply creations of the mind ; but in the 
 outer object to which we append them, atoms and space alone exist, and 
 our opinion of the properties of such objects is founded upon images 
 emitted by them falling upon the senses. Confounding in this manner 
 sensation with thought, and making them identical, he, moreover, in- 
 cluded Eeflection as necessary for true knowledge. Sensation by itseK 
 being unreliable. Thus, though Sensation may indicate to us that 
 sweet, bitter, hot, cold, occur in bodies, Eeflection teaches us that this is- 
 altogether an illusion, and that, in reality, atoms and space alone exist 
 
 Devoting his attention, then, to the problem of perception — how the 
 mind becomes aware of the existence of external things — he resorted to- 
 the hypothesis that they constantly throw off images of themselves, 
 which are assimilated by the air through which they have to pass, and 
 enter the soul by pores in its sensitive organs. Hence such imageSj, 
 being merely of the superficial form, are necessarily imperfect and un- 
 true,, and so, therefore, must be the knowledge yielded by them. De- 
 mocritus rejected the one element of the Eleatics, affirming that there 
 must be many ; but he did not receive the four of Empedocles, nor his 
 principles of Love and Hate, nor the homoeomerije of Anaxagoras. He 
 He introduces the ^^^o denied that the primary elements had any sensible qual- 
 afomic theory, j^jgg -^iiatcver. Hc couceived of all things as being com- 
 posed of invisible, intangible, and indivisible particles or atoms, which, 
 by reason of variation in their configuration, combination, or position, 
 Ijgive rise to the varieties of forms : to the atom he imputed self-exist- 
 fence and eternal duration. His doctrine, therefore, explains how it is 
 ; that the many can arise from the one, and in this particular he tecon- 
 .' ciled the apparent contradictions of the lonians and Eleatics. The the- 
 ory of chemistry, as it now exists, essentially includes his views. The 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ACTION OP EUEOPEAK GREECE. 93 
 
 t ' » 
 
 general formative principle of Nature he regarded as be- Destiny, Fate, ana 
 ing Destiny or Fate; but there are indications' that by this 'esistieaB law.' 
 he meant nothing more than irreversible law. 
 
 A system thus based upon severe mathematical considerations, end 
 taking as its starting-point a vacuum and atoms — the former actionless 
 and passionless; which considers the. production of new things as- only 
 new aggregations, and the decay of the old as separations ; which recog- 
 nizes in compound bodies specific arrangements of atoms to one another; 
 which can rise to the conception that even a single atom may constitute 
 a world — such a system may commend itself to our attention for its re- 
 sults, but surely not to our approval, when we find it carrying us to the 
 conclusions that even mathematical cognition is a mere semblance ; that ! ■; 
 the soul is only a finely-constituted form fitted into the grosser bodily 
 frame ; that even to reason itself there is an absolute im- is m to atheism, 
 possibility of all certainty; that skepticism is to be indulged in to that i 
 degree that we may doubt whether, when a cone has been cut asunder, jlj 
 its two surfaces are alike ; that the final result of human inquiry is the 
 absolute demonstration that man is incapable of knowledge ; that, even 
 if the truth is in his possession, he can never be certain of it ; that the 
 world is an illusive phantasm, and that there is np God. 
 
 I need scarcely refer to the legendary stories related of Democritus, 
 as that he put out his eyes with a burning-glass that he might legends of ' 
 no longer be deluded with their false indications, and more Democritus. 
 tranquilly exercise his reason — a fiction bearing upon itg face the con- ' 
 temptuous accusation of his antagonists, but, by the stolidity of subse- ' 
 quent ages, received as an actual fact instead of a sarcasm. As to his 
 habit of so constantly deriding the knowledge and follies of men that 
 Tie universally acquired the epithet of the laughing philosopher, we may 
 receive the opinion of the great physician Hippocrates, who, being re- 
 quested by the people of Abdera to cure him of his madness, after long 
 discoursing with him,'expressed himself penetrated with admiration, and 
 even with the most profound veneration for him, and rebuked those 
 who had sent him with the remark that they themselves were the more 
 distempered of the two. 
 
 Thus far European Greece had done but little in the cause of philos- 
 ophy. The chief schools were in Asia Minor, or among the Greek col- 
 onies of Italy. But the time had now arrived when the Rise of philosophy in 
 mother country was to enter upon a distinguished career, ^^p^"" "^^ece. 
 though, it must be confessed, from a most unfavorable beginning. This | 
 was by no means the only occasion on which the intellectual activity 
 of the Greek colonies made itself felt in the destinies of Europe. The 
 mercantile character in a community has ever been found conducive to 
 mental activity and physical adventure ; it holds in light esteem pre- 
 scriptive .opinion, and puts things at the actual value they "at the time 
 
94 INFLUENCE OP THE GBEEK COLONIES. 
 
 * 
 
 possess. If the Greek colonies thus discharged the important function 
 of introducing and disseminating speculative philosophy, we shall find 
 them again, five hundred . years later, occupied with a similar task on 
 the advent of that period in which philosophical speculation was about 
 to be supplanted by religious faith. For there can be no doubt that, 
 humanly speaking, the cause of the rapid propagation of Christianityj 
 Commercial com- in its first ages, lay in the extraordinary facilities existine; 
 
 munitiefl favorable ., .-, •,• i.xjn n 
 
 to new, ideas. among the Commercial communities scattered, all around 
 the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, from the ports of the Levant to 
 those of France and Spain. An incessant intercourse was kept up 
 among them during the five centuries before Christ ; it became, under 
 Eoman influ^ce, more and more active, and of increasing political im- 
 portance. Such a state of things is in the highest degree conducive to 
 the propagation of thought, and, indeed, to its origination, through the 
 constant excitement it furnishes to intellectual activity. Commercial 
 communities, in this respect, present a striking contrast to agricultural. 
 By their aid speculative philosophy was rapidly disseminated every 
 where, as was subsequently Christianity. But the agriculturists stead- 
 fastly adhered with marvelous stolidity to their ancestral traditions and 
 polytheistic absurdities, uhtU the very designation — paganism— under 
 which their system passes was given as a nickname derived from them- 
 selves. 
 
 The intellectual condition of the Greek colonies of Italy and Sicily 
 phnoaophicai has not attracted the attention of critics in the manner it 
 
 influence of the ., _, - , . ^, . ^ , 
 
 Greek colonies, descrves. 1 Or, though its political result may appear to 
 those whose attention, is fixed by mere material aggrandizement to "have 
 been totally eclipsed by the subsequent power of the Eoman republic, 
 to one who looks at things in a more general way it may be a, probable 
 inquiry whether the philosophy cultivated in those towns has not, in 
 the course of ages, produced as solid and lasting results as the military 
 achievements of the Eternal City. The relations of the Italian penin- 
 sula to the career of European civilization are to be classified under 
 three epochs, the first corresponding to the philosophy generated in 
 the southern Greek towns : this would have attained the' elevation long 
 before reached in the advanced systems of India had it not been prevent- 
 ed by the rapid development of Eoman power ; the second*presents the 
 military influence of republican and imperial Eome ; to the third belongs 
 the agency of ecclesiastical Eome ; for the production of the last we shall 
 find hereafter that the two preceding conspire. The Italian effect upon 
 the whole has therefore been philosophical, material, and mixed. We 
 are greatly in want of a history of the first, for which doubtless many 
 facts still remain to a painstaking and enlightened inquirer. 
 
 It was on account of her small territory and her numerous population 
 that Greece was obliged to colonize. To these motives must be added 
 
THE GEEEK COLONIAL SYSTEM. 95 
 
 internal dissensions, and particularly the consequences of unequal mar- 
 riages. So numerous did these colonies and their offshoots become, that 
 a great Greek influence pervaded all the Mediterranean ongin of the Greek 
 shores and many of the most important islands, attention ^lo-^i By^t™. 
 more particularly being paid to the latter, from their supposed strategi- 
 cal value ; thus, in the opinion of Alexander the Great, the conamand 
 of the Mediterranean lay in the possession of Cyprus. The Greek col- 
 onists were filibusters ; they seized by force the women wherever they 
 settled, but their children were taught to speak the paternal language, as 
 has been the case in more recent times with the descendants of the 
 Spaniards in America. The wealth of some of these Greek colonial 
 towns is said to have been incredible. Croton was more than twelve 
 miles in circumference ; and Sybaris, another of the Italiot cities, was so 
 luxurious and dissipated as even to give rise to a proverb. The pros- 
 perity of these places was due to two causes: they were not only the 
 centres of great agricultural districts, but carried on an active com- 
 merce in all directions, the dense population of the mother country offer- 
 ing them a steady and profitable market; they also maintained an active 
 traffic with all the Mediterranean cities ; thus, if they furnished Athens 
 with corn, they also furnished Carthage with oil. In the Greek cities 
 connected with this colonial system, especially in Athens, the business 
 of ship-building and navigation were so extensively prosecuted as to 
 give a special character to public life. In other parts of Greece, as 
 in Sparta, it was altogether different. In that state the laws of Lycur- 
 gus had abolished private property; all things were held in common ; it 
 was savage life reduced to a system, and therefore there was no object in 
 commerce. But in Athens, so far from being dishonorable was com- 
 merce regarded, that some of the most illustrious men, whose names 
 have descended to us as philosophers, were occupied with mercantile 
 pursuits. Aristotle kept a druggist's shop in Athens, and Plato sold oil 
 in Egypt. 
 
 It was the intention of Athens, had she succeeded in the conquest 
 of Sicily, to make an attempt upon Carthage, foreseeing therein the do- 
 minion of the Mediterranean, as was actually realized subsequently by 
 Eome. The destruction of that city constituted the point of ascendency 
 in the histoiy of the Great Eepublic. Carthage stood upon a peninsula 
 forty-five miles round, with a neck only three miles across. Her terri- 
 tory has been estimated as having a sea-line of not less than 1400 miles, 
 and containing 300 towns ; she had also possessions in Spain, in Sicily, 
 and other Mediterranean islands, acquired, not by conquest, but by col- 
 onization. In the silver mines of Spain she employed not less than 
 forty thousand men. In these respects she was guided by the maxims 
 of her Phoenician ancestry, for the Tynans had coltinized for depots, and 
 had forty stations of that kind in the Mediterranean; Indeed, Carthage 
 
96 THE PEESIAN WAE. 
 
 herself originated in that way, owing her development to the position 
 Carthaginian su- she held at the junction of the east and west basins. The 
 'ESanean^ Carthaginian merchants did not carry for hire, but dealt in 
 their commodities. This implied an extensive system of dep6ts and 
 bonding. They had anticipated many of the devices of modern com- 
 merce. They effected insurances, made loans on bottomry, and it hag 
 been supposed that their leathern money may have been_ of the nature 
 of our bank notes. 
 
 In the preceding chapter we have spoken of the attempts of the Asi- 
 Attemptsofthe ^'tics ou Egypt and the south shore of the Mediterranean; we 
 minio™ta°'thr lia^ve now to turn to their operations on the north shore, the 
 Mediterranean, conscqucnces of wMch are of the utmost interest in the his- 
 tory of philosophy. It appears that the cities of Asia Minor, after their 
 contest with the Lydian kings, had fallen an easy prey to the Persian 
 power. It remained, therefore, only for that power to pass to the Eu- 
 ropean continent. A pretext is easily found where the policy is so clear. 
 So far as the internal condition of Greece was concerned, nothing could 
 be more tempting 'to an invader. There seemed to be no bond of union 
 between the different towns, and, indeed, the more prominent ones might 
 be regarded as in a state of chronic revolution.- In Athens, since B.C. 
 622, the laws of Draco had been supplanted by those of Solon ; and 
 again and again the government had been seized by violence or gained 
 through intrigue by one adventurer after another. Under these cir- 
 oontest between cumstauccs the Persian king passed an army into Europe. 
 Greeks. The military events of both this and the succeeding inva- 
 
 sion under Xerxes have been more than sufficiently illustrated bj the 
 brilliant imagination of the lively Greeks. It was needless, however, 
 to devise such fictions as the million of men who crossed into Europe, 
 or the two hundred thousand who lay dead upon the field after the 
 battle of Platsea. If there were not such stubborn facts as the capture 
 The fifty years' ^.nd buming of Athens, the circumstance that these wars last- 
 uK°prema?y ed for fifty ycars would be sufficient to inform us that all 
 of Athena. ^t^q advantages were not on one side. Wars do not last so 
 long without bringing upon both parties disasters as well as conferring 
 glories ; and had these been as exterminating and overwhelming as 
 classical authors have supposed, our surprise may well be excited that 
 the Persian annals have preserved so little memory thereof Greece 
 did not perceive that, if posterity must take her accounts as true, thef: 
 must give the palm of glory to Persia, who could, with unfaltering 
 perseverance, persist in attacks illustrated by such unparalleled catas- 
 trophes. She did not perceive that the annals of a nation may be more 
 splendid from thejr exhibiting a courage which could bear up for half 
 a century against continual disasters, and extract victory at last from 
 defeat. 
 
RESULTS OF THE PERSIAN WAR. 97 
 
 In pursuance of their policy, the Persians extended their dominion to 
 Gyrene and Barca on the south, as -well as to Thrace and Macedonia on 
 the north. The Persian wars gave rise to that wonderful development 
 in Greek art which has so worthily excited the admiration of subse- 
 quent ages. The assertion is quite true that after those wars the Greeks 
 could form in sculpture living men. On the part of the Persians, these a 
 military undertakings were not of the base kind so common in antiq-j jj 
 uity ; they were the carrying out of a policy conceived with great abil-| v 
 ity, their object being .to obtain countries for tribute and not for devas- \ ' 
 tation. The great critic Niebuhr, by whose opinions I am guided in the 
 views I express of these events, admits that the Greek accounts, when 
 examined, present little that was possible. The Persian empire does 
 not seem to have suffered at all ; and Plato, whose opinion must be con- 
 sidered, as of very great authority, says that, on the whole, the Persian 
 wars reflect extremely little honor on the Greeks. It was asserted that 
 only thirty-one towns, and most of them small ones, were faithful to 
 Greece. Treason to her seems for years in succession to have infected 
 all her ablest men. It was not Pausanias alone who wanted to be king 
 under the supremacy of Persia. Such a satrap would have boi^ie about 
 the same relation to the great king as the modem pacha does to the 
 grand seignior. However, we must do justice to those able men. A 
 king was what Greece in reality required ; had she secured one at this 
 time strong eribugh to hold her conflicting interests in check, she 
 would have become the mistress of the world. Her leading men saw 
 this. 
 
 The elevating effect of the Persian wars was chiefly felt in Athens. 
 It was there that the grand development of pure art, litera- The consequence 
 ture, and science took place. As to Sparta, she remained leotnai progress. 
 barbarous as she had ever been ; the Spartans continuing robbers and 
 impostors, in their national life 'exhibiting not a single feature that can 
 be commended. Mechanical art reached its perfection at Corinth ; real 
 art at Athens, finding a multitude not only of true, but also of new ex- 
 pressions. Before Pericles the only style of architecture was the Doric; 
 his became at once the age of perfect beauty. It also became the age 
 of freedom in thinking and departure from the national faith. ^^^ progress 
 In this respect the history of Pericles and of Aspasia is very ™ "'• 
 significant. His, also, was the great age of oratory, but of oratory lead- 
 ing to delusion, the demoeratical forms of Athens being altogether de- 
 ceptive, power ever remaining in the hands of a few leading men, who 
 did every thing. The true popular sentiment, as was almost always the 
 case under those ancient republican institutions, could find for itself no 
 means of expression. The great men were only too prone to regard 
 their fellow-citizens as, a rabble, mere things to be played off against one 
 another, and to consider that the objects of life are dominion and lust j 
 
 G 
 
98 SUPEEMACY OF ATHENS. 
 
 that love, self-sacrifice, and devotion are fictions ; that oaths are only 
 good for deception. 
 
 T^hough the standard of statesinanship, at the period of the Persian 
 wars, -was very low, there can be no doubt that among the Greek lead- 
 ers were those who clearly understood the causes of the Asiatic attack 
 and hence, with an instinct of self-preservation, defensive alliances were 
 continually maintained with Egypt. "When their valor and endurance 
 The treaty with ^^ givBu to the Grccks a glorious issue to the war, the arti- 
 Persia. g|gg contained in the final treaty manifest clearly the mo- 
 
 tives and understandings of both parties. No Persian vessel was to 
 appear between the Cyanean Eocks and Chelidonian Islands ; no Per- 
 sian army to approach within three days' journey of the Mediterranean 
 Sea, B.C. 449. 
 
 To Athens herself the war had given political supremacy. "We need 
 only look at her condition fifty years after the battle of Platsea. She 
 was the mistress of more than a thousand miles of coast along Asia 
 Minor; she held as dependencies more than forty 'islands; she controlled 
 the straits between Europe and Asia ; her fleets ranged the Mediterra- 
 nean and the Black Seas uncontrolled ; she had monopolized the trade 
 of all the adjoining countries; her magazines were full of the most valu- 
 able objects of commerce. From the ashes of the Persian fire she had 
 risen up so supremely beautiful that her temples, her statues, her works 
 She becomes the of art, iu their exquisite perfection, have since had no paral- 
 ^"dphiioB^phyf lei in the world. Her intellectual supremacy equaled her 
 political. To her, as to a focal point, the rays of light from every di- 
 rection converged. The philosophers of Italy and Asia Minor directed 
 their steps to her as to the acknowledged centre of mental activity. As 
 to Egypt, an utter ruin had befallen her since she was desolated by the 
 Persian arms. Yet we must not therefore infer that though, as con- 
 querors, the Persians had trodden out the most aged civilization on the 
 globe, as sovereigns they were haters of knowledge, or merciless 8fl 
 kings. "We must not forget that the Greeks of Asia Minor were satis- 
 fied with their rule, or, at all events, preferred rather to remain their 
 subjects than to contract any permanent political connections with. the 
 conquering Greeks of Europe. 
 
 In this condition of political glory, Athens became not only the birth- 
 place of new and beautiful productions of art, founded on a more just 
 appreciation of the true than had yet been attained to in any previous 
 age of the world, and which, it may be added, have never been sur- 
 passed, if, indeed, they have been equaled since, but she also became 
 the receptacle for every philosophical opinion, new and old. Ionian, 
 Italian, Egyptian, Persian, all were brought to her, and contrasted and 
 compared together. Indeed, the philosophical celebrity of Greece is al- 
 together due to Athens. The rest of the country participated but little 
 
CHARACTER OF HER PHILOSOPHY. 99 
 
 in the cultivation of learning. It is a popular error that Greece, in the 
 aggregate, was a learned country. 
 
 We have already seen how the researches of individual inquirers, 
 passing from point to point, had conducted them, in many instances, to 
 a suspicion of the, futility of human knowledge ; and looking at the re- 
 sults reached by the successive philosophical schools, we can not fail to 
 remark that there was a general tendency to skepticism, state of phuosopiy 
 We have seen how, from the material and tangible begin- »'t«"a™ment. 
 nings of the lonians, the Bleatics land us not only in a blank atheism, 
 but in a disbelief of the existence of the world. And though it may be 
 said that these were only the isolated results of special schools, it is not 
 to be forgotten that they were of schools the most advanced. . The time 
 had now arrived when the name of a master was no more to usurp the 
 place of reason, as had been hitherto the case ; when these last results 
 of the different methods of philosophizing were to be brought together, 
 a criticism of a higher order established, and conclusions of a higher or- 
 der deduced. 
 
 Thus it will ever be with all human investigation. The primitive 
 philosophicar elements from which we start are examined, commencement; 
 
 „ , -,-,■, 1 1 1 • 1 . of the Mgher 
 
 first by one and then by another, each drawing his own spe- analysis, 
 cial conclusions and deductions, and each firmly believing in the truth 
 of his inferences. Each analyst has seen the whole subject from a par- 
 ticular point of view, without concerning himself with the discordances, 
 cpntradictions, and incompatibilities obvious enough when his conclu- 
 sions come to be compared with those of other analysts as skillful as 
 himself In process of time, it needs must be that a new school of ex- 
 aminers will arise, who, taking the results at which their predecessors 
 have, arrived from an examination of thfe primary elements, will institute 
 a secondary comparison ; a comparison of results with results ; a com- 
 parison of a higher order, and more likely to lead to absolute truth. 
 
 Perhaps I can not better convey what I here mean by this secondary 
 and higher analysis of philosophical questions than by introducing, as 
 an illustration, what took place subsequently in Eome niustrationfrom 
 through her policy of universal religious toleration. The man history, 
 priests and followers of every god and of every faith were permitted to 
 pursue without molestation their special forms of worship. Of these, it 
 may be su|)posed that nearly all were perfectly sincere in their adhesion 
 to their special divinity, and, if the occasion bad arisen, could have fur- 
 nished unanswerable arguments in behalf of his supremacy and of the 
 truth of his doctrines. Yet it is very clear that, by thus bringing these 
 several primary systems into contact, a comparison of a secondary and 
 of a higher order, and therefore far more likely to approach to absolute 
 truth, must needs be established between them. It is very well known, 
 that the popular result of this secondary examination was the philo- 
 sophical rejection of polytheism. 
 
100 THE SOPHISTS— THEIR DOCTEINES. 
 
 So, in Athens, the result of the secondary examination of philosophical 
 systems and deductions was skepticism as regards them, all, and the rise 
 The Sophists, of 3, ncw Order of men — the Sophists — ^who not only rejected 
 the validity of all former philosophical methods, but carried their infi. 
 delity to a degree plainly not warranted by the facts of the case, in this, 
 that they not only denied that human reason had thus far succeeded in 
 ascertaining any thing, but even af&rmed that it is incapable, from its 
 very nature, as dependent on human organization, or the condition un- 
 der which it acts, of determining the truth at all ; nay, that even if the 
 truth is actually in its possession, since it has no criterion by which to 
 recognize it, it can not so much as be certain that it is in such possession 
 of it. From these principles it follows that, since we have no standard 
 of the true, neither can we have any standard of the good, and that our 
 ideas of what is good and what is evil are altogether produced by edu- 
 cation or by convention. Or, to use the phrase adopted by the Sophists, 
 " it is might that makes right." Eight and wrong are hence seen to be 
 mere fictions created by society, having no eternal or absolute existence 
 in nature. The will of a mona];ch, or of a majority in a community, 
 declares what the law shall be ; the law defines what is right and what 
 is wrong ; and these, therefore, instead of having an actual existence, are 
 I mere illusions, owing their birth to the exercise of force. It is might 
 j that has determined and defined what is right. And hence it follows 
 1 They r^ect phiios- that it is needless for a man to, trouble himself with the 
 morality. monitious of consciencc, or to be troubled thereby, for con- 
 
 science,, instead of being any thing real, is an imaginary fiction, or, at the 
 ■ best, owes its origin to education, and is the creation of our social state. 
 Hence the wise will give himself no concern as to a meritorious act or 
 a crime, seeing that the one is intrinsically neither better nor worse 
 than the other ; but he will give hirnself sedulous concern as respects his 
 outer or external relations— his position in society ; conforming his acts 
 to that standard which they in their wisdom or folly,' but in the exercise 
 of their might, have declared shall be regarded as right. Or, if his oc- 
 casions are such as to make it for his interest to depart from the social 
 rule, let him do it in secrecy ; or, what is far better, let him cultivate 
 rhetoric, that noble art by which the wrong may be made to appeal '^ 
 the right ; by which he who has committed a crime may so mystify so- 
 ciety as to delude it into the belief that he is worthy of praise ; and by 
 which he may prove that his enemy, who has really performed some 
 meritorious deed, has been guilty of a crime. Animated by such con- 
 i siderations, the Sophists passed from place to place, offering to sell, for a 
 i sum of money, a knowledge of the rhetorical art, and disposed of their 
 services in the instruction of the youth of wealthy and noble families. 
 
 What shall we say of such a system and of such a state of things? 
 Simply this : that it indicated a complete mental and social demorali^a- 
 
IMPIETY AND IMMOEALITY OF THE SOPHISTS. 101 
 
 tion — mental demoralization, for the principles of knowledge were sap-,' 
 ped, and man persuaded that his reason was no guide; social demoral-i 
 ization, for he was taught that right ^nd wrong, virtue and vice, con- \ 
 science, and law, and God, are imaginary fictions ; that there is no harm 
 in the commission of sin, though there may be harm, as assuredly there 
 is folly, dn being detected therein ; that it is excellent for a man to sell 
 his country to the Persian king, provided that the sum of money he re- 
 ceives is large enough, and that the transaction is so darkly conducted 
 that the public, and particularly his enemies, can never findit out. Let 
 him never forget that patriotism is the first delusion of a simpleton, and 
 the last refuge of a knave. 
 
 Such were the results of the first attempt to correct the partial philos- 
 ophies, by submitting them to the measure of a more universal one ; such 
 the manner in which, instead of only losing their exclusiveness and im- 
 perfections by their contact with one another, they were wrested from 
 their proper object, and made subservient to the purpose of deception. 
 ISTor was it alone science that was affected ; already might be discerned 
 the foreshadowings of that conviction which many centuries later occa- 
 sioned the final destruction of polytheism in Eome. Already, in Athens, 
 the voice of philosophers was heard, that among so many gods and so 
 many different worships it was impossible for a man to They reject the na- 
 ascertain what was true. Already, many even of the edu- """"^ "'^"sta- 
 cated were overwhelmed with the ominous suggestion that, if ever it 
 had been the will of heaven to reveal any form of faith to the world, 
 such a revelation, considering its origin, must necessarily have come 
 with such power as to override all opposition ; that if there existed only 
 as many as two forms of faith synchronous and successful in the world, 
 that fact would of itself demonstrate that neither of them is true, 
 and that there never had been any revelation from an all- wise and om- 
 nipotent Grod. Nor was it merely among the speculative men that 
 these infidelities were cherished ; the leading politicians and statesmen 
 had become deeply infected with them. It was not Anaxagoras alone 
 who was convicted of atheism ; the same charge was made- against Per- 
 icles, the head of the republic — he who had done so much spread of their opin- 
 for the glory of Athens— the man who, in practical life, e8rciaTa™f " ^ ' 
 was, beyond all question, the first of his age. With difficulty he suc- 
 ceeded, by the use of what influence remained to him, in saving the life 
 of the guilty philosopher his friend, but in the public estimation he was 
 universally viewed as a participator in his crime. If the foundations of 
 philosophy and those of religion were thus sapped, the foundations of 
 law experienced no better fate. The Sophists, who were wandering all 
 over the wOrld, saw that each nation had its own ideas of merit and de- 
 merit, and therefore its own system of law ; that even in different towns 
 there were contrary conceptions of right and wrong, ^nd therefore op- 
 
102 CONDEMNATION OF THEIE DOCTRINES, 
 
 posing codes. It is evident that in snchi examinations they applied the 
 same principles which had guided them in their analysis of philosophy 
 and religion, and that the result could be no otherwise than it was, to 
 bring them to the conclusion that there is nothing absolute in justice or 
 in law. To what an appa,lling condition has society arrived, when it 
 reaches the positive conclusion that there i-s no truth, no religion, no jus- 
 tice, no virtue in the world ; that the only object of human exertion is 
 unrestrained physical enjoyment; the only standard of a man's position, 
 wealth ; that, since there is no possibility of truth, whose eternal prin- 
 ciples might serve for an uncontrovertible and common guide, we should 
 resort to deception and the arts of persuasion, that we may dupe others 
 to our purposes ; that there is no sin in undermining the social contract; 
 no crime in blasphemy, or rather there is no blasphemy at all, since 
 there are no gods; that "man is the measure of all things," as' Protago- 
 ras teaches,, and that "he is the criterion of existence;" that "thought 
 is only the relation of the thinking subject to the object thought of, and 
 that the thinking subject, the soul, is nothing more than the sum of the 
 different moments of thinking." It is no wonder that that Sophist who 
 was the author of such doctrines should be condemned to death to sat- 
 Theycndin isfy the clamors of a populace who had not advanced suffi- 
 ism. " ciently into the depths of this secondary, this higher phi- 
 losphy, and that it was only by flight that he could save himself from 
 the punishment awaiting the opening sentiment of his book : " Of the 
 gods I can not tell whether they are or not, for much hinders- us from 
 knowing this — both the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of 
 life." It is no wonder that the social demoralization spread apace, when 
 men like Gorgias, the disciple of Empedocles, were to be found, who 
 laughed at virtue, made an open derision of morality, and proved; by 
 metaphysical demonstration, that nothing at all exists. 
 
 From these statements respecting the crisis to which ancient philoso- 
 phy had arrived, we might be disposed to believe that . the result was 
 unmitigated evil, for it scarcely deserves mention that the quibbles and 
 disputes of the Sophists occasioned an extraordinary improvement of 
 the Greek language, introducing a precision into its- terms, and a won- 
 derful dialectical skill in its use. For us there may be extracted from 
 these melancholy conclusions at least one instructive lesson — ^that It is 
 not during the process of decomposition of philosophies, and especially 
 Political dangers of religions, that social changes occur, for such breakings- 
 
 of the higher \ ■ • i ■•■,•,« . 
 
 analysis. Up commouly go ou in an isolated, and therefore innocuous 
 
 way; but if by chance the fragments and decomposed portions are 
 brought together, and attempts are made by fusion to incorporate them 
 anew, or to extract from them, by a secondary analysis, what truth they 
 contain, a crisis is at once brought on, and — such is the course of events 
 — in the catastrophe that ensues they are commonly all absolutely de- 
 
ILLUSTRATION FROM THE MIDDLE AGES. 103 
 
 stroyed. It was doubtless their foresight of such consequences that in- 
 spired the Italian statesmen of the Middle Ages with a resolute pur- 
 pose of crushing in the hud every encroachment on ecclesiastical au- 
 thority, and every attempt at individual interpretation of religious doc- 
 trines. For it is not to be supposed that men of clear in- mustrstions from 
 tellect should be insensible to the obvious unreasonable- ^e Middle Ages, 
 ness of many of the dogmas that had been consecrated by authority. 
 But if once permission were accorded to human criticism and human in- 
 terpretation, what other issue could there be than that doctrine upon 
 doctrine, and sect upon sect should arise; that theological principles 
 should undergo a total decomposition, until scarcely two men could be 
 found whose views coincided ; nay, even more than that, that the same 
 man should change his opinion with the changing incidents of the dif- 
 ferent periods of his life. No matter what might be the plausible guise 
 of the beginning, and the ostensibly cogent arguments for its necessity, 
 once let the decomposition commence, and no human power could ar- 
 rest it until it had become thorough and complete. Considering the 
 prestige, the authority, and the mass of fact to be dealt with, it might 
 take many centuries for this process to be finished, but that that result 
 would at length be accomplished no enlightened man could doubt. The 
 experience of the ancient European world had shown that in the act of 
 such decompositions there is but little danger, since, for the time being, 
 each sect, and, indeed, each individual, has a guiding rule of life. But as 
 soon as the period of secondary analysis is reached a crisis must inev- 
 itably ensue, in all probability involving not only religion, but also the 
 social contract. And though, by the exercise of force on the part of the 
 interests that are disturbed, aided by that popular sentiment which is 
 abhorrent of anarchy, the crisis might, for a time, be put Danger of inteueot 
 off, it could not be otherwise than that Europe should ^If feiSf °™°" 
 be left in that deplorable state which must be the result when the Intel- 1 
 lect of a people has outgrown its formulas of jTaith. A fearful condition 
 to contemplate, for such a dislocation mustalso'affect political relations, 
 and necessarily implies revolt against existing law. Nations plunged in 
 the abyss of ^religion must necessarily be nations in anarchy. For a 
 time their tendency to explosion may be kept down by the firm appli- 
 cation of the hand of power ; but this is simply an antagonism, it is no 
 cure. The social putrefaction proceeds, working its way downward into 
 classes that are lower and lower, until at length it involves the institu- 
 tions that are relied on for its arrest. Armies, the machinery of com- 
 pression, once infected, the end is at hand, but no human foresight can 
 predict what the event shall be, especially if the contem- Absolute necesaity 
 poraneous ruling powers have either ignorantly or willfully mSea'&f S 
 neglected to prepare society for the inevitable trial it is "'^■'s^- 
 about to undergo. It is the most solemn of all the duties of govern- 
 
104 SUMMARY OF THE GREEK: PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 ments, when once they have become aware of such a momentous condi- 
 tion, to prepare the nations for its fearful consequences. For this it 
 may, perhaps, be lawful for them to dissemble in a temporary manner, 
 as it is sometimes proper for a physician to dissemble with his patient; 
 it may be lawful for them even to resort to the use of force, but never 
 should such measures of doubtful correctness be adopted without others 
 directed to a- preparation of the mass of society for the trials through 
 which it is about to pass. Such, doubtless, were the profound views of 
 the great Italian statesmen of the Middle Ages ; such, doubtless, were 
 the arguments by which they justified to themselves resistance against 
 the beginning of the evil — a course for which Europe has too often and 
 unfairly condemned them. 
 ' It remains for us now to review the details presented in the foregoing 
 Summary of the pagcs for the purpose of determining the successive phases 
 prcce ng eo- ^^ development through which the Greek mind passed; It 
 is not with the truth or fallacy of these details that we have to do, but 
 with their order of occurrence. They are points enabling us to describe 
 graphically the curve of Grecian intellectual advance. 
 
 The starting-point of Greek philosophy is physical and geocentral. 
 The earth is the grand object of the universe, and, as the necessary re- 
 sult, erroneous ideas are entertained as to the relations and dimensions 
 of the sea and air. This philosophy was hardly a century old before it 
 commenced to cosmogonize, using the principles it considered itself sure 
 of. Long before it was able to get rid of local ideas, such as upward 
 and downward in space, it undertook to explain the origin of the 
 world. 
 
 But, as advances were made, it was recognized that creation, in its 
 various parts, displays intention and design, the adaptation of means to 
 secure proposed ends. This suggested a reasoning and voluntary 
 agency, like that of man, in the government of the world ; and from a 
 continual reference to human habits and acts, Greek philosophy passed 
 through its stage of anthropoid conceptions. 
 
 A little farther progress awakened suspicions that the mind of man 
 can obtain no certain knowledge ; and the opinion at last prevailed that 
 we have no reliable criterion of truth. In the skepticism thus setting 
 in, the approach to Oriental ideas is each successive instant more and 
 more distinct. 
 
 This period of doubt was the immediate forerunner of more correct 
 cosmical opinions. The heliocentric mechanism of the planetary sys- 
 tem was introduced, the earth deposed to a subordinate position. The 
 doctrines, both physical and intellectual, founded on geocentric ideas, 
 were necessarily endangered, and, since these had connected themselves 
 with the prevailing religious views, aiid were represented by important 
 material interests, the public commenced to practice persecution and the 
 
THE MODE OF PEOGKESS. 105 
 
 philosophers hypocrisy. Pantheistic notions of the nature of the world 
 became more distinct, and, as their necessary consequence, Approach to on. 
 the doctrines of Emanation, Transmigration, and Absorption *'"^' **'^'- 
 were entertained. From this it is but a step to the suspicion that mat- 
 ter, and motion, and time are phantasms .of t&e imagination — opinions 
 embodied in the atomic theory, which asserts that atoms and space 
 alone exist; and which became more refined when it recognized that 
 atoms are only mathematical points ; and still more so when it consid- 
 ered them as mere centres of force. The brink of Buddhism was here 
 approached. 
 
 As must necessarily ever be the case where men are coexisting in 
 different psychical stages of advance, some having made a less, some a 
 greater intellectual progress, all these, which we have described succes- 
 sively, were at last contemporaneously entertained. At this point com- 
 menced the action of the Sophists, who, by setting the doctrines of one 
 school in opposition to those of another, and representing them all as of 
 equal value, occasioned the destruction of them all, and the philosophy 
 founded on physical speculation came to an end. 
 
 Of this phase of Greek intellectual life, if we may compare the begin- 
 ning with the close, we can not fail to observe how great is unifonnityintiie 
 
 _ . fj,, , . T , . .. , - manner of intel- 
 
 the improvement. The thoughts dealt with at the later leotuai progress. 
 period are intrinsically of a higher order than those at the outset. Ftom 
 the puerilities and errors with which we have thus been occupied, we 
 learn that there is a definite mode of progress for the mind of man ; 
 from the history of later times we shall find that it is ever in the same 
 direction. 
 
106 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCEATES. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GREEK AGE OF FAITH. 
 
 RISE AKD DECLINE OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 SoCEATES rejects Physical and Mathematical Speculations, and asserts the Importance ofVirlm 
 and MoraUty, thereby inaugurating an Age of Faith. — His Life and Death. — Tlie Schools 
 originating from his Movement teach the Pursuit of Pleasure and Gratification of Self. 
 
 Flato founds the Academy. — His three primal Principles. — The Existence of a personal God. 
 — Nature of the World and the Soul. — The ideal Theory, Generals or Types. — Reminiscence, 
 — Transmigration. — Plato's political Institutions. — His Republic. — His Proofs of the Im- 
 mortality of the Soul. — Criticism on his Doctrines. 
 
 EiSE OF THE Skeptics, who conduct the higher Analysis of Ethical Philosophy. — Pyrrho de- 
 monstrates the Uncertainty of Knowledge. — Inevitable Passage into tranquil Indifference, 
 Quietude, and Irreligion, as recommended by Epiowrus. — Decomposition of the Socratic and 
 Platonic Systems in the later Academies. — Their Errors and Duplicities. — End of the Greek 
 Age of Faith. , 
 
 The Sophists had brought on an intellectual anarchy. I^t is not in 
 Greek philosophy the naturc of humanity to be contented with such a state, 
 ethics. Thwarted in its expectations from physics, the Greek mind 
 
 (turned its attention to morals. In the progress of life, it is but a step 
 from the age of Inquiry to the age of Faith. * 
 
 Socrates, who led the way in this movement, was born B.C. 469. He 
 has exercised an influence in some respects felt to our times. Having 
 experienced the unprofitable results arising from physical speculation, 
 he set in contrast therewith the solid advantages to be enjoyed from the 
 cultivation of virtue and morality. His life was one perpetual combat 
 Socrates: his mode '^^'^^ t^® Sophists. His manner of instruction was by con- 
 oftcachiDg. versation, in which, according to the uniform testimony 
 
 of all who heard him, he singularly excelled. He resorted to definitions, 
 and therefrom drew deductions, conveying his argument under the form' 
 of a dialogue. Unlike his predecessors, who sought for truth in the in- 
 vestigation of outward things, he turned his attention inward, asserting 
 the supremacy of virtue and its identity with knowledge, and the neces- 
 sity of an adherence to the strict principles of justice. Considering the 
 depraved condition to which the Sophists had reduced society, he insist- 
 ed on a change in the manner of educatjon of youth, so as to bring itm 
 accordance with the principle that happiness is only to be found in the 
 pursuit of virtue and goodness. Thus, therefore, he completely substi- 
 tuted the moral for the physical, and in this essentially consists the phil- 
 osophical revolution he effected. He had no school, properly speaking, 
 
HIS ETHICAL SYSTEM. 107 
 
 nor did lie elaborate any special ethical system ; for to those who in- 
 quired how they should know good from evil and right from wrong, he 
 recommended the decisions of the laws of their country. It does not 
 appear that he ever entered on any inquiry respecting the na- The doctrines 
 ture of God, simply viewing his existence as a fact of which "' Socrates, 
 there was abundant and incontrovertible proof. Though rejecting the 
 crude religious ideas of his nation, and totally opposed to anthropomor- 
 phism, he carefully avoided the giving of public offense by improper 
 allusions to the prevailing superstition ; nay, even as a good citizen, he 
 set an example of conforming to its requirements. In bis judgment, the 
 fault of the Sophists consisted in this, that they had subverted useless 
 speculation, but had substituted no scientific convictions for it. Never- 
 theless, if man did not know, he might believe, and demonstration might 
 be profitably supplanted by faith. He therefore insisted on the great 
 doctrines of the immortality of the soul and the government of the 
 world by Providence ; but it is not to be denied that there are plain in- 
 dications, in some of his sentiments, that the Supreme Being is the soul 
 of the world. He professed that his own chief wisdom consisted in the 
 knowledge of his own ignorance, and dissuaded his friends from the 
 cultivation "of mathematics and physics, since he affirmed opposes mathemat. 
 that the former lead to vain conclusions, the latter to i™ and physics, 
 atheism. In his system every thing turns on the explanation of terms ; 
 but his processes of reasoning are often imperfect, his conclusions, there- 
 fore, liable to be incorrect. In this way, he maintained that no one 
 would knowingly commit a wrong act, because he that knew a thing to 
 be good would do it ; that it is only involuntarily that the bad are bad ; 
 that he who knowingly teUs a lie is a better man than he who tells a lie 
 in ignorance ; and that it is right to injure one's enemies. 
 
 From such a statement of the philosophy of Socrates, we can not fail 
 to remark how superficial it must have been ; it perpetually superficiality 
 mistakes differences of words for distinctions of things; it ofi"'™''^- 
 also possessed little novelty. The enforcement of morality can not be 
 regarded as any thing new, since probably there has never been an age 
 'in which good men were not to be found, who observed, as their rule 
 of life, the maxims taught by Socrates ; and hence we may reasonably 
 inquire what it was that has spread over the name of this great man 
 such an unfading lustre, and why he stands out in such extraordinary 
 prominence among the benefactors of his race. 
 
 Socrates was happy in two things: happy in those who recorded hisp^,, 
 life, and happy in the circumstances of his death. It is causes of the ceieb-'''' 
 not given to every great man to have Xenophon and "'yofsocrates. 
 Plato fpr his biographers; it is not given to every one who has over- 
 passed the limit of life, and, in the natural course of events, has but a 
 little longer to continue, to attain the crown of martyrdom in behalf of 
 
108 THE DEATH OF SOCRATES. 
 
 virtue and morality. In an evil hour for the glory of Athens, his coun- 
 trymen put him to death. It was too late when they awoke and saw 
 that they could give no answer to the voice of posterity, demanding 
 why they had perpetrated this cfime. With truth Socrates said, at the 
 close of his noble speech to the judges who had condemned him, "It is 
 now time that we depart — ^I to die, you to live ; but which has the bet- 
 ter destiny is unknown to all except God." The future has resolved 
 that doubt. For Socrates there was reserved the happier lot. 
 
 No little obscurity still remains upon the true nature of this dart 
 transaction. The articles of accusation were three : he rejects the gods 
 The ostensible of his couutry ; he introduces new ones ; he perverts the ed- 
 againsthim. ucation of youth. With truth might his friends say that it 
 was wonderful that he should be accused of impiety, the whole tenor of 
 whose life was reverence for God — a recognition not only of the divine 
 existence, but of the divine superintendence. "It is only a madman," 
 he wouldf say, " who imputes success in life to human prudence ;" and 
 as to the necessity of a right education for the young, "It is only the 
 wise who are fit to govern men." We must conclude that the accusa- 
 tions were only ostensible or fictitious, and that beneath them lay some 
 reality which could reconcile the Athenians to the perpetration, of so 
 great a crime. 
 
 Shall we find in his private life any explanation of this mysteiy? 
 Unfortunately, the fragments which have desfiended to us are few. To 
 the investigations of classical criticism we can scarcely look with any 
 hope, for classical criticism has hitherto been in a state of singular inno- 
 cence, so far as the actual affairs of life are concerned. It regards Athe- 
 nians and Eomans not as men and women like ourselves, but as the per- 
 sonages presented by fictitious literature, whose lives are exceptions to 
 the common laws of human nature ; who live in the midst of scenes of 
 endless surprises and occurrences ever bordering on the marvelous. 
 
 If we examine the case according to every-day principles, we can not 
 The character fail to remark that the Socrates of our imagination is a very 
 Athens. different man from the Socrates of contemporaneous: Athe- 
 nians. To us he appears a transcendent genius, to whom the greal 
 names of antiquity render their profound homage ; a martyr in behalf 
 of principles, of which if society is devoid, life itself is scarcely of any 
 worth, and for the defense of which it is the highest glory that a man 
 should be called upon to die. To them Socrates was no more than an 
 idle lounger in the public places and comers of the streets; grotesque, 
 and even repulsive in his person ; affecting in the oddities of his walk- 
 ing and in his appearance many of the manners of the mountebank. 
 Neglecting the pursuit of an honest calling, for his trade seems to have 
 been thaf of a stone-cutter, he wasted his time in discoursing with such 
 youths as his lecherous countenance and satyr-like person could gather 
 
HIS CHABACTEE. 109 
 
 around him, leading them astray from the gods of his country, the 
 flimsy veil of his hypocrisy being too transparent to conceal his infidel- 
 ity. Nevertheless, he was a very brave soldier, as those who serveS 
 with him testify. It does not appear that he was observant of those 
 cares which by most men are properly considered as paramount, giving 
 himself but little concern for the support of his children and wife. The 
 good woman Xantippe is, to all appearance, one of those charac- xantippe 
 ters who are unfairly judged of by the world. Socrates married ^ "'"'^ 
 her because of her singular conversational powers ; and though he him- 
 self, according to universal testimony, possessed extraordinary merits in 
 that respect, he found to his cost, when too late, that so commanding 
 were her excellencies that he was altogether her inferior. Among the 
 amusing instances related of his domestic dif&culties were the conse- 
 quences of his invitations to persons to dine with him when there was 
 nothing in the house wherewith to entertain them, a proceeding severely 
 trying to the temper of Xantippe, whose cause would unquestionably 
 be defended by the matrons of any nation. It was nothing but the 
 mortification of a high-spirited woman at the acts of a man who was 
 too shiftless to have any concern for his domestic honor. He would not 
 gratify her "urgent entreaties by accepting from those upon whom he lav- 
 ished his time the money that was so greatly needed at home. After his 
 condemnation, she carried her children with her to his prison, and was 
 dismissed by him, as he told his friends, from his apprehension of her 
 deep distress. To the last we see her bearing herself in a manner hon- 
 orable to a woman and a wife. There is surely something wrong in a 
 man's life when the mother of his children is protesting against his con- 
 duct, and her complaints are countenanced by the community. In view 
 of all the incidents of the history of Socrates, we can come to no other 
 conclusion than that the Athenians regarded him as an unworthy, and 
 perhaps troublesome member of society. There can be no doubt that 
 his trial and condemnation were connected with political measures. He 
 himself said that he should have suffered death previously. He is reaiiy the 
 in the. affair of Leon of Salamis, had not the government cai animosity. 
 been broken up. His bias was toward aristocracy, not toward democ- 
 racy. . In common with his party, he had been engaged in undertakings 
 tha]t could not do otherwise than entail mortal animosities ; and it is not 
 to be overlooked that his indictment was brought forward by Anytus, 
 who was conspicuous in restoring the old order of things. The mistake 
 made by the Athenians was in applying a punishment altogether be- 
 yond the real offense, and in adding thereto the persecution of those who 
 had embraced the tenets of Socrates by driving them into exile. Not 
 alone admiration for the memory of their master, but a recollection of 
 their own wrongs, made these men eloquent eulogists. Had Socrates 
 appeared to the Athenians as he appears to us, it is not consistent with 
 
110 
 
 human proceedings that they should have acted in so barbarous and 
 totally indefensible a manner. 
 
 ' If by the Daemon to whose suggestions Socrates is said to have list- 
 The Damon ^ued any thing more was meant than conscience, we must in- 
 of Socrates, fgj, ^-^^^ ^^ labored under that mental malady to which those 
 are liable who, either through penury or designedly, submit to extreme 
 abstinence, and, thereby injuring the brain, fall into hallucination. Such 
 cases are by no means of infrequent occurrence. Mohammed was affect- 
 ed in that manner. 
 
 After the death of Socrates there arose several schools professing to 
 be founded upon his principles. The divergences they exhibited when 
 compared with one another prove how little there was of precision in 
 The Megaric school, thosc principles. Amouff these imitators is numbered 
 insensible to pain. Euclid of Mcgara, who had been in the habit of incurring 
 considerable personal risk for the sake of listening to the great teacher, 
 it being a capital offense for a native of Megara to be found in Athens; 
 Upon their persecution, Plato and other disciples of Socrates fled to 
 Euclid, and were well received by him. His system was a mixture of 
 the Eleatic and Socratic, the ethical preponderating in his doctrine. He 
 maintained the existence of one Being, the Good, having various as- 
 pects — Wisdom, God, Reason, and showed an inclination to the tend- 
 ency afterward fully developed by the Cynical school in his dogma ' 
 that the wise man should be insensible to pain. 
 
 With the Megaric school is usually classified the Cyrenaic, founded ' 
 Tjhe Cyrenaic ^J Aristippus. Like Socratcs, he held in disdain physical 
 nre°i3 the^^'- spcculatious, and directed his attention to the moral. In his 
 jectof ufe. opinion, happiness consists in pleasure ; and, indeed, he rec- 
 ognized in pleasure and pain the criteria of external things. He denied 
 that we can know any thing with certainty, our senses being so liable 
 to deceive us ; but, though we may not perceive things truly, it is true 
 that we perceive. With the Cyrenaic school, pleasure is the great end 
 and object of life. 
 
 To these may be added the Cynical school, founded by Antisthenes, 
 The Cynical school: whose systcm is personal and ferocious: it is a battle of 
 errand'^atmcatn the miud agaiust the body; it is a pursuit of pleasure of 
 "^^^^^ a mental kind, corporeal enjoyment being utterly un- 
 
 worthy of a man. Its nature is very well shown in the character of ite 
 founder, who abandoned all the conveniences and comforts of life, vol- 
 untarily encountering poverty and exposure to the inclemency of the 
 seasons. His garments were of the meanest kind, his beard neglected, 
 his person filthy, his diet bordering on starvation. To the passers-hy 
 this fagged misanthrope indulged in contemptuous language, and offend- 
 ed them by the indecency of his gestures. Abandoned at last by 
 every one except Diogenes of Sinope, he expired in the extreme of 
 
THE DOCTEINES OF CYNICISM. Ill 
 
 •wretcliedness. It had been a favorite doctrine with him that Antiathenes. 
 friendship and patriotism are altogether worthless ; and in his last 
 agony, Diogenes asking him whether he needed a friend, " Will a friend 
 release me from this pain?" he inquired. Diogenes handed him a dag- 
 ger, saying, " This will." " I want to be free from pain, but not from 
 life." Into such degradation had philosophy fallen, as represented by 
 the Cynical school, that it may be doubted whether it is right to include 
 a man like Antisthenes among those who derive their title from their 
 love of wisdom — a man who condemned the knowledge of reading and 
 writing, who depreciated the institution of marriage, and professed that 
 he saw no other advantage from philosophy than that it enabled him to 
 keep company with himself 
 
 The wretched doctrines of Cynicism were carried to their utmost ap- 
 plication by Diogenes of Sinope. In early life he had been Diogenes of 
 accustomed to luxury and ease ; but his father, who was a ^"^°^^- 
 wealthy banker, having been convicted of debasing the coinage, Dioge- 
 nes, who in some manner shared in the disgrace, was in a very fit state 
 of mind to embrace doctrines implying a contempt for the goods of the 
 world and for the opinions of men. He may be considered as the pro- 
 totype of the hermits of a later period in his attempts at the subjuga- 
 tion of the natural appetites by means of starvation. Looking upon the 
 body as a mere clog to the soul, he mortified it in every possible man- 
 ner, feeding it on raw meat and leaves, and making it dwell in a tub. 
 He professed that the nearer a man approached to suicide the nearer he 
 approached to virtue. He wore no other dress than a scanty cloak ; a 
 wallet, a stick, and a drinking-cup completed his equipment : the cup 
 he threw away as useless on seeing a boy take water in the hollow of 
 his hand.' It was his delight to offend every idea of social decency by 
 performing all the acts of life publicly, asserting that whatever is not 
 improper' in itself ought to be done openly. It is said that his death, 
 which occurred in his ninetieth year, was in consequence of devouring 
 a neat's foot raw. Prom his carrying the Socratic notions to an ex- 
 treme, he merits the designation applied to him, " the mad Socrates." 
 His contempt for the opinions of others, and his religious disbelief, are 
 illustrated by an incident related of him, that, having in a moment of 
 weakness made a promise to some friends that he would offer a sacrifice 
 to Diana, he repaired the next day to her temple, and, taking His iiTeverema. 
 a louse from his head, cracked it upon her altar. 
 
 What a melancholy illustration of the tendency of the human mind 
 do these facts offer. What a quick, yet inevitable descent from j^^j^ „f 
 the morality of Socrates. . Selfishness is enthroned ; friendship =""a"ty- 
 and patriotism are looked upon as the affairs of a fool : happy is the 
 man who stands in no need of a friend ; still happier he who has not 
 one. No action is intrinsically bad ; even robbery, adultery, sacrilege, 
 
112 PLATO. 
 
 are only crimes by public agreement. The sage will take care how he 
 indulges in the weakness of gratitude or benevolence, or any other such 
 sickly sentiment. If he can find pleasure, let him enjoy it ; if pain is 
 inflicted on him, let him bear it ; but, above all, let him remember that 
 death is just as desirable as life. 
 
 If the physical speculations of Greece had ended in sophistry and 
 atheism, ethical investigations, it thus appears, had borne no better fruit. 
 Both systems, when carried to their consequences, had been found to be 
 not only useless to society, but actually prejudicial to its best interests. 
 As far as could be seen, in the times of which we are speaking, the pros- 
 pects for civilization were dark and discouraging ; nor did it appear 
 possible that any successful attempts could be made to extract from 
 philosophy any thing completely suitable to the wants of man. Yet, in 
 the midst of these discreditable delusions, one of the friends and disci- 
 ples of Socrates — indeed, it may be said, his chief disciple, Plato, was lay- 
 ing the foundation of another system, which, though it contained much 
 that was false and more that was vain, contained also some things vigor- 
 ous enough to descend to our times. 
 
 Plato was bom about B.C. 426. Antiquity has often delighted to cast 
 
 j^^'Birth of Plato, a halo of mythical glory around its illustrious names. The 
 immortal works of its great philosopher seemed to entitle him to more 
 
 ^■^than mortal honors. A legend, into the authenticity of which we will 
 abstain from inquiring, asserted that his mother Perictione, a pure vir^ 
 gin, suffered an immaculate conception through the influences of ApoEo. 
 The god declared to Ariston, to whom she was about to be married, the 
 parentage of the child. The wisdom of this great writer may justify 
 such a noble descent, and, in some degree, excuse the credulity of his 
 admiring and affectionate disciples, who gave a ready ear to the stu- 
 pendous and idle story. 
 
 To the knowledge acquired by Plato during the eight or ten years he 
 had spent with Socrates, he added all that could be obtained from-|ke 
 philosophers of Egypt, Gyrene, Persia, and Tarentum. With every ad- 
 vantage arising from wealth and an illustrious parentage, if even it was 
 only of an earthly kind, for he numbered Solon among his ancestors, k 
 Hia education availed himself of the teaching of the chief philosophers- of the 
 and teaching, g^gg^ ^^^ ^^ length, retumiug to his native country, founded a 
 school in the grove of Hecademus. Thrice during his career as a teach- 
 er he visited Sicily, on each occasion returning to the retirement' of his 
 academy. He attained the advanced age of eighty -three years. It has 
 been given to few men to exercise so profound an influence on the opin- 
 ions of posterity, and yet it is said that during his lifetime Plato had na 
 friends. He quarreled with most of those who had been his fellow-dte- " 
 ciples of Socrates ; and, as might be anticipated from the venerable' age 
 to which he attained, and the uncertain foundation upon which, his doc- 
 
PLATO'S DOCTRINES, THE PRIMAL PRINCIPLES, GOB, THE SOUL. 113 
 
 trines reposed, his opinions were very often contradictory, and his phi- 
 losophy exhibited many variations. To his doctrines we must now 
 attend. 
 
 It was the belief of Plato that matter is coeternal with God, ,and that, 
 indeed, there are three primary principles — God, Matter, The doctrines of 
 Ideas ; all animate and inanimate things being fashioned by pdmaiy pdnd'° 
 God from' matter, which, being capable of receiving any im- '*""• 
 press, may be designated with propriety the Mother of Forms. He held 
 that intellect existed before such forms were produced, but not antece- 
 dently to matter. To matter he imputed a refractory or resisting qual- 
 ity, the origin of the disorders and disturbances occurring in the world ; 
 he also regarded it as the cause of evil, accounting thereby for the pre- 
 ponderance of evil, which must exceed the good in proportion as matter 
 exceeds ideas. It is not without reason, therefore, that Plato has been 
 accused of Magianism. These doctrines are of an Oriental cast. 
 
 The existence of God, an independent and personal maker of the 
 world, he inferred from proofs of intelligence and design pre- Heasaertsthe 
 sented by natural objects. "All in the world is for the sake personal God. 
 of the rest, and the places of the singje parts are so ordered as to sub- 
 serve to the preservation and excellency of the whole ; hence all things 
 are derived from the operation of a Divine intellectual cause." From 
 the marks of unity in that design he deduced the unity of God, whom 
 he regarded as the Supreme Intelligence, incorporeal, without beginning, 
 end, or change. His god is the fashioner and father of the universe, in 
 contradistinction to impersonal Nature. In one sense, he taught that 
 the soul is immortal and imperishable ; in another, he denied that each 
 individual soul either has had or will continue to have an everlasting 
 duration. From what has been said on a former page, it will be under- 
 stood that this psychological doctrine is essentially Indian. His views 
 of thB ancient condition and former relations of the soul en- N„mrg„fu,e 
 abled Plato to introduce the celebrated doctrine of Eeminis- °™'- 
 cence, and to account for what have otherwise been termed innate ideas. 
 They are the recollections of things with which the soul was once 
 familiar. 
 
 The reason of God contemplates and comprehends the exemplars or 
 original models of all natural forms, whatever they may be ; for visible 
 things are only fleeting shadows, quickly passing away ; ideas or ex- 
 emplars are everlasting. With so much power did he set forth pi^^to's iaeai 
 this theory of ideas, and, it must be added, with so much ob- "'*°'^- 
 scurity, that some have asserted an extramundane space in which exist 
 incorporeal beings, the ideas or original exemplars of all organic and in- 
 organic forms. An illustration may remove some of the obscurity of 
 these views. Thus all men, though they may present different appear- 
 ances when compared with each other, are obviously fashioned upon the 
 
 H 
 
114 THE IDEAL THEOEY. 
 
 same model, to which they all more or less perfectly conform. All 
 trees of the same kind, though they may differ from one another, are, 
 in like manner, fashioned upon a common model, to which they more 
 Exempiaraor ^T Icss perfectly couform. To such models, exemplars or 
 types- types, Plato gave the designation of Ideas. Our knowledge 
 
 thereof is clearly not obtained from the senses, but from reflection. 
 Now, Plato asserted that these ideas are not only conceptions of the 
 mirid, but actually perceptions or entities having a real existence ; nay, 
 niore, that they are the only real existences.. Objects are thus only ma- 
 terial embodiments of ideas, and in representation are not exact ; for cor- 
 respondence between an object and its model is only so far as circum- 
 stances will permit. Hence we can never determine all the properties 
 or functions of the idea from an examination of its imperfect material 
 representation, any liiore than we could discover the character or quali- 
 ties of a man from pictures of him, no matter how excellent those pic- 
 tures might be. 
 
 The Ideal theory of Plato, therefore, teaches that, beyond this world 
 of delusive appearances, this world of material objects, there is another 
 world, invisible, eternal, and essentially true ; that, though we can not 
 trust our senses for the correctness of the indications they yield, there 
 are other impressions upon which we may fall back to aid us in coming 
 Doctrine of Rem- to the truth, the reminiscenccs or rccoUections Still abiding ' 
 inisceDce. ^^ ^]^g gQy][ q^ ^j^q thiugs it formerly knew, either in the 
 
 realm of pure ideas, or in the states of former life through which it has 
 passed. For Plato says that 'there are souls which, in pferiods of many 
 thousand years, have successively transmigrated through bodies of var 
 Beconections rious kinds. Of these various conditions they retain a reoot 
 
 during trans- , n-i • • it i in 
 
 migration. Icctiou, moro faintly or vividly, as the case may be. ideas 
 seeming to be implanted in the human mind, but certainly never com- 
 municated to us by the senses, are derived from those former states. If 
 this recollection of ancieiit events and conditions were absolutely pre- 
 cise and correct, then man would have an innate means for determ- 
 ining the truth. But such reminiscences being, in their nature, imper- 
 (fect and uncertain, we never can attain to absolute truth.' With Plato, 
 
 ' ; the Beautiful is the perfect image of the true. Love is the longing of 
 the soul for beauty, the attraction of like for like, the longing of the di- 
 'vinity within us for the divinity beyond us; and the Good, which is . 
 
 ft beauty, truth, justice, is God — God in his abstract state. 
 
 From the Platonic system it therefore followed that science is impos- 
 sible to man, and possible only to God ; that, however, recollecting ^Bf -i 
 origin, we ought not to despair, but elevate our intellectual aim as far# 
 we may ; that all knowledge is not attributable to our present senses; 
 for, if that were the case, all men would be equally wise, their senses be- 
 ing equal in acuteness ; but a very large portion, and by far the surest 
 
THE NATURE OF THE GODS AND OF THINGS. 115 
 
 portion, is derived from reminiscence of our former states ; that each in- 
 dividual soul is an idea; and that, of ideas generally, the low- (}„j ^ 4^^ ,^ 
 er are held together by the higher, and hence, finally, by one ""*''=■'• 
 which is supreme ; that God is the sum of ideas, and is therefore eternal 
 and unchangeable, the sensuous conditions of time and space having no 
 relation to him, and inapplicable in any conception of his attributes; 
 that he is the measure of all things, and not man, as Protagoras sup- 
 posed ; that the universe is a type of him ; that matter itself is an abso- 
 lute negation, and is the same as space ; that the forms presented by our 
 senses are unsubstantial shadows, and nojeality ; that, so far from there 
 being an infinitv of worlds, there is but one, which, as the The nature of 
 
 ° ■' ' , ' ' , .the world and 
 
 work of God, is neither subject to age nor decay, and that it of the gods, 
 consists of a body and a soul ; in another respect it may be said to be 
 composed of fire and earth, which can only be made to cohere through 
 the intermedium of air and water, and hence the necessity of the exist- 
 ence of the four elements ; that, of geometrical forms, the pyramid cor- 
 responds to fire, the cube to earth, the octahedron to air, these forms 
 being produced from triangles connected by certain numerical ratios ; 
 that the entire sum tif vitahty is divided by God into seven parts, an- 
 swering to the divisions of the musical octave, or to the seven planets ; 
 that the world is an animal having within it a soul; for man is warm, 
 and so is the world ; man is made of various elements, and so is the 
 world ; and, as the body of man has a soul, so too must the world have 
 one ; that there is a race of created, generated, and visible- gods, who 
 must be distinguished from the eternal, their bodies being composed 
 for the most part of fire, and in shape spherical ; that the earth is the 
 oldest and first of the starry bodies, its place being in the centre of the 
 universe, or in the axis thereof, where it remains, balanced by its own 
 equilibrium; perhaps it is an ensouled being and a generated god; 
 that the mortal races are three, answering .to Earth, Air, and "Water ; 
 that the male man was the first taade of mortals, and that from him the 
 female, and beasts, and birds, and fishes issued forth ; that the superi- 
 ority of man depends upon his being a religious animal ; that each mor- 
 tal consists of two portions, a soul and a body — their separation consti- 
 tutes death ; that of the soul there are two primitive component parts, 
 a mortal and an iinmortal, the one being made by the ere- Triple comtitu- 
 ated^gods, and the other by the Supreme; that for the pur- «oaofthe«id. 
 pose of uniting these parts together it is necessary that there should be 
 an intermedium, and that this is the dEemonic portion or spirit ; that our 
 mental struggles arise from this triple constitution of Appetite, Spirit, 
 and Eeason ; that Eeason alone is immortal, and the others die ; that 
 the -number of souls in the universe is invariable or constant; that the 
 sentiment of pre-existence proves the soul to have existed before the 
 body ; that, since the soul is the cause of motion, it can neither be pro- 
 
116 PHYSIOLOGY OF PLATO. 
 
 duced nor deoay, else all motion must eventually cease ; that, as to the 
 Transmigration and condition of departed souls, thev liover as shades around 
 
 future rewards and , . . „ , ,. . .i • t^ i it 
 
 punishments. the gravcs, pmmg for restoration to tneir lileless bodies, or 
 migrating through various human or brute shapes, but that an unem- 
 bodied life in God is reserved for the virtuous philosopher ; that valor 
 is nothing but knowledge, and virtue a knowledge of good ; that the 
 soul, on entering the body, is irrational or in a trance, and that the god, 
 the star who formed its created part, influences its career, and hence its 
 fortunes may be predicted by. astrological computations; that there are 
 future rewards and punishments, a residence being appointed for the 
 righteous in his kindred star ; for those whose lives have been less pure 
 there is a second birth under the form of a woman, and, if evil courses 
 are still persisted in, successive transmigrations through various brutes 
 are in reserve — ^the frivolous passing into birds, the unphilosophical into 
 beasts, the ignorant into fishes; that the world undergoes periodical 
 revolutions by fire and water, its destructions and reproductions depend- 
 ing upon the coincidences of the stars. Of Plato's views of human 
 physiology I can offer no better statement than the following from Eit- 
 The physioio- ^^r : "All in the human body is formed for the sake of the 
 gyot Plato. Reason, after certain determinate ends. Accordingly, first of 
 all, a seat must be provided for the god-like portion of the soul, the 
 head, viz., which is round, and similar to the perfect shape of the whole, 
 furnished with the organs of cognition, slightly covered with flesh, 
 which impedes the senses. To the head is given the direction of the 
 whole frame, hence its position at the top ; and, since the mortal crea- 
 tion possesses all the six irregular motions, and the head ought not to 
 roll upon the ground, the human form is long in its form, with legs for 
 walking and arms for serving the body, and the anterior part is fash- 
 ioned differently from the posterior. Now, the reason being seated in 
 the head, the spirit or irascible soul, has its seat in the breast, under the 
 head, in order that it may be within caTl and command of the Eeason, 
 but yet separated from the head hj the neck, that it might not mix 
 with it. The concupiscible has likewise its particular seat in the lower 
 part of the trunk, the abdomen, separated by the diaphragm from that 
 of the irascible, since it is destined, being separate from both, to be gov- 
 erned and held in order both by the spirit and the Eeason. For this 
 end God has given it a watch, the liver, which is dense, smooth, and 
 shining, and, containing in combination both bitter and sweet, is fitted 
 to receive and reflect, as in a mirror, the images of thoughts. When- 
 ever the Eeason disapproves, it checks inordinate desires by its bitter- 
 ness, and, on the other hand, when it approves, all is soothed into gentle 
 repose by its sweetness ; moreover, in sleep,- or sickness, or in inspira- 
 tion '^t becomes prophetic, so that even the vilest portion of the body is 
 in a certain degree participant of truth. In other respects the lower 
 
THE EEPUBLiO OF PLATO. 117 
 
 portion of the trunk is fashioned with equal adaptation for the ends it 
 has to serve. The spleen is placed on the left side of the liver, in order 
 to secrete and carry off the impurities which the diseases of the body 
 might produce and accumulate. The intestines are coiled many times, 
 in order that the food may not pass too quickly through the body, and 
 so occasion again an immoderate desire for more; for such a constant 
 appetite would render the pursuit of philosophy impossible, and make 
 man disobedient to the commands of the divinity within him." 
 
 The reader will gather from the preceding paragraph how much of 
 wisdom and of folly, of knowledge and of ignorance, the doctrines of 
 Plato present. I may be permitted to continue this analysis of his writ- 
 ings a little farther, with the intention of exhibiting the manner in which 
 he carried his views into practice ; for Plato asserted that, though the 
 supreme good is unattainable by our reason, we must try to re- mj ^^^^^^i 
 semble God as far as it is possible for the changeable to copy ''^'^'"'• 
 the eternal ; remembering that pleasure is not the end of man, and, 
 though the sensual part of the soul dwells on eating and drinking, 
 riches and pleasure, and the spiritual on worldly honors and distinc- 
 tions, the reason is devoted to knowledge. Pleasure, therefore, can not 
 be attributed to the gods, though knowledge may ; pleasure, which is 
 not a good in itself, but only a means thereto. Each of the three parts 
 of the soul has its own appropriate virtue, that of reason being wisdom ; 
 that of the spirit, courage ; that of the appetite, temperance ; and, for the 
 sake of perfection, justice is added for the mutual regulation of the oth- 
 er three. 
 
 In carrying his ethical conceptions into practice, Plato insists that the 
 state is every thing, and that what is in opposition to it ought his proposed 
 to be' destroyed. He denies the right of property ; strikes at BtStutioM."' 
 the very existence of the family, pressing his doctrines to such an ex- 
 treme as to consider women as public property, to be used for the pur- 
 poses of the state ; he teaches that education should be a governmental 1 
 duty, and that religion must be absolutely subjected to the politician ; 
 that children do not belong to their parents, but to the state ; that the 
 aim of government should not be the happiness of the individual, but 
 that of the whole ; and that men are to be considered not as men, but 
 as eletnents of the state, a perfect subject differing from a slave only in 
 this, that he has the state for his master. He recommends the exposure 
 of deformed and sickly infants, and requires every citizen to be initiated 
 into every species of falsehood and fraud. Distinguishing between mere 
 social unions and true polities, and insisting that there shall be an anal- 
 ogy between the state and the soul as respects triple constitution, he 
 establishes a division of ruler, warriors, and laborers, preferring, there- 
 fore, a monarchy reposing on aristocracy, particularly of talent. Tholigh 
 he considers music essential to education, his opinion of the fine arts is 
 
118 CEITICISM ON HIS DOCTEINES. 
 
 SO low that he would admit into his state painters and musicians onlj 
 under severe restrictions, or not at all. It was for the sake of having 
 TheEepubiic ^^^^ chimerical republic realized in Sicily that he made a jour- 
 of Plato. _ jjgy ^Q Dionysius ; an^ it may be. added that it was well for 
 those whom he hoped to have subjected to the experiment that his wild 
 and visionary scheme was never permitted to be carried into effect. In 
 our times, extravagant social plans have been proposed, and some have 
 been attempted ; but we have witnessed nothing so absurd as this vaunt- 
 ed republic of Plato. It shows a surprising ignorance of the acts and 
 wants of man in his social condition. 
 
 Some of the more important doctrines of Plato are worthy of farther 
 reflection. I shall therefore detain the reader for a short time to offer 
 a few remarks upon them. 
 
 It was a beautiful conception of this philosophy that ideas are con- 
 Grandenrof Plato's nectcd together by others of a higher order, and these, in 
 oonceptionsof God ^j^gj^. ^^^.^^ ^y othcrs Still higher, their generality and pow- 
 er increasing as we ascend, until finally a culminating point is reached 
 — a last, a supreme, an all-ruling Idea, which is God. Approaching in 
 this elevated manner to the doctrine of an Almighty Being, we are free 
 from those fallacies we are otherwise liable to fall into when we mingle 
 notions derived from time and space with the attributes of God; we 
 also avoid those obscurities necessarily encountered when we attempt 
 the consideration of the illimitable and eternal. 
 
 Plato's views of the immortality of the -soul offer a striking contrast 
 and of the souL to thoso of the popular philosophy and superstition of his 
 time. They recall, in many respects, the doctrines of Iridia. In Greece, 
 those who held the most enlarged views entertained what might be 
 termed a doctrine of semi-immortality. They looked for a continuance 
 of the soul in an endless futurity, but gave themselves no concern about 
 ■the, eternity which is past. But Plato considered the soul as having 
 already eternally existed, the present life being only a moment in our 
 career ; he looked forward, with an undoubting faith, to the changes 
 through which we must hereafter go. As sparks issue forth from a 
 flame, so doubtless to his imagination did the soul of man issue forth 
 from the soul of the world. Innate ideas and the sentiment of pre-ex- 
 The sentiment of istcnce indicate our past life. By the latter is meant ttat 
 pre-exiatence. qj^ some occasiou perhaps of trivial concern, or perhaps^n 
 some momentous event, it suddenly occurs to us that we have been in 
 like circumstances, and surrounded by the things at that instant present 
 on some other occasion before; but the recollection, though forcibly im- 
 pressing us with surprise, is misty and confused. With Plato shall we 
 say it was in one of our prior states of existence, and the long-forgott61i 
 transactions are now suddenly flashing upon us? •"■ 
 
 But Plato did not know the double structure and the double action 
 
DOUBLE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 119 
 
 of the braia of man ; he did not remember that the mind may lose all 
 recognition of the lapse of time, and, with equal facility, compress into 
 the twinkling of an eye events so numerous that for their occurrence 
 days and even years would seem to be required: or, con- But this arisea 
 
 J *' . • 1 - 1 1 ' 1 from the ana- 
 
 verselv, that it can take a smgle, a simple idea, which one tomicai con- 
 
 ■/' ,,.. in' 11 11 strnction o£the 
 
 would suppose might be disposed ot in a moment, and dwell train, 
 upon it, dilating or swelling it out, until all the hours of a long night 
 are consumed. Of the truth of these singular effects we have not only 
 such testimony as that offered by those who have been restored from 
 death, by drowning, who describe the flood of memory rushing upon 
 them in the last moment of their mortal agony, the long train of all the 
 affairs in which they have borne a part seen in an instant, as we see 
 the landscape, with all its various objects, by a flash of lightning at 
 night, and that with appalling distinctness, but also from our own es- 
 perience in our dreams. It is shown in my Physiology how the phe- 
 nomena of the sentiment of pre-existence may, upon these principles, be 
 explained, each hemisphere of the brain thinking for itself, and the mind 
 deluded as respects the lapse of time, mistaking these simultaneous ac- 
 tions for successive ones, and referring one of the two impressions to an 
 indistinct and misty past. To Plato such facts as these afforded copious 
 proofs of the prior existence of the soul, and strong foundations for a 
 faith in its future life. 
 
 Thus Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the soul implies a double 
 immortality ; the past eternity, as well as that to come, falls The aouwe im- 
 within its scope. In the national superstition of his time, andfuturk^'^ 
 the spiritual principle seemed to arise wjthout author or generator, find- 
 ing its chance residence in the tabernacle of the body, growing with its 
 growth and strengthening with its strength, acquiring for each period 
 of life a correspondence of form and of feature, with its companion the 
 body, successively assuming the appearance of the infant, the youth, the 
 adult, the white-bearded patriarch. The shade who wandered in the 
 Stygian fields, or stood before the tribunal of Minos to receive his doom, 
 was thought to correspond in aspect with the aspect of the body at 
 death. It was thus thai Ulysses recognized the forms of Patroclus and 
 Achilles, and other heroes of the ten years' siege ; it was thus that the 
 peasant recognized the ghost of his enemy or friend. As a matter of 
 superstition, these notions had their use, but in a philosophical sense it 
 is impossible to conceive any thing more defective. 
 
 The state of man differs from that of a lifeless body or a brute in this,- 
 that it is not alone with the present moment that he has to Eeiationsofthe 
 deal, or that the past, when gone, is clean gone forever, and toman, 
 that the future, before it approaches, is as if it was never to be. Man, 
 by his recollection, makes the past a part, of the present, and his fore- 
 knowledge adds the future thereto, thereby coalescing the three in one. 
 
120 CEITICISM ON THE IDEAL THEORY. 
 
 Some of the illustrations commonly given of Plato's Ideal theory may 
 Criticism on tiie ^Iso be instructively used for showing the manner in which 
 weaitiieoiy. jjjg fg^^^g ^^q ^gg^j^ yjyij^ by the methods of modem science. 
 Thus Plato would say that there is contained in every acorn the ideal 
 type of an oak, in accordance with which, as soon as suitable circum- 
 stances occur, the acorn will develop itself into an oak, and into no oth- 
 er tree. In that act of development of such a seed into its final growth 
 there are, therefore, two things demanding attention, the intrinsic char- 
 acter of the seed and the external forces acting upon it. The Platonic 
 doctrine draws such a distinction emphatically ; its essential purpose is 
 to assert the absolute existence and independence of that innate type 
 and its imperishabijity. Though it requires the agency of external cir- 
 cumstances for its complete realization, its being is altogether irrespeet' 
 ive of them. There are, therefore, in such a case, two elements con- 
 cerned — an internal and an external. A like duality is perceived in 
 many other physiological instances, as in the relationship of miud and 
 matter, thought and sensation. It is the aim of the Platonic philosophy 
 to magnify the internal at the expense of the external in the case of 
 man, thereby asserting the absolute supremacy of intellect ; this being 
 the particular in which man is distinguished from the brutes and lower 
 organisms, in whom the external relatively predominates. The devel- 
 opment of any such organism, be it plant or animal, is therefore nothing 
 but a manifestation of the Divine idea of Platonism. Many instances 
 of natural history offer striking illustrations, as when that which might 
 have been a branch is developed into a flower, the parts thereof show- 
 ing a disposition to arrange themselves by fives or by threes. The per- 
 sistency with which this occurs in organisms of the same species is, in 
 the Platonic interpretation, a proof that, though individuals may perish, 
 the idea is immortal. How else, in this manner, could the like extricate 
 itself from the unlike ; the one deliver itself from, and make itself mani- 
 fest among the many ? 
 
 Such is an instance of Plato's views ; but the very illustration, thus 
 serving to bring them so explicitly before us, may teach us another, and, 
 perhaps, a more correct doctrine. For, considering the duality present 
 ed by such cases, the -internal and external, the immortal hidden type • 
 and' the power acting upon it without, the character and the circum- 
 stances, may we not pertinently inquire by what authority does Plato 
 diminish the influence of the latter and enhance the value of the for- 
 mer ? Why are facts to be burdened with such hypothetical creations, 
 when it is obvious that a much simpler explanation is sufiBcient ? Let 
 I us admit, as our best physiological views direct, that the starting-point 
 \ of every organism, low or high, vegetable or animal, or whatever else, is 
 I a simple cell, the manner of development of which depends altogether 
 on the circumstances and influences to which it is exposed ; that, so 
 
THE IDEAL THEORY COMPABED WITH THE DOCTRINE OF LAW. 121 
 
 long as ttose circumstances are the same tlie resulting form will be 
 the same, and that as soon as those circumstances differ the resulting 
 form differs too. The offspring is like its parent, not because it in- 
 cludes an immortal typical form, but because it is exposed in develop- 
 ment to the same conditions as was its parent. Elsewhere I have en- 
 deavored to show that we must acknowledge this absolute dominion of 
 physical agents over organic forms as the fundamental principle in all 
 the sciences of organization ; indeed, the main object of my work on 
 Physiology was to enforce this very doctrine. But such a doctrine is' al- 
 together, inconsistent with the Ideal theory of Platonism. It is no la- 
 tent imperishable type existing from eternity that is dominating in such 
 developments, but they take place as the issue of a resistless law, variety 
 being possible under variation of circumstances. Hence we may per- 
 haps excuse ourselves from that suprasensual world in which reside 
 typical forms, universals, ideas of created things, declining this com- 
 plex machinery of Platonism, and substituting for it a simple notion of 
 law. N"or shall we find, if from this starting-point we direct our 
 thoughts upward, as Plato did from subordinate ideas to the First Idea, 
 any thing incompatible with the noble conclusion to which he eventual- 
 ly came, any thing incompatible with the majesty of God, whose exist- 
 ence and attributes may be asserted with more precision and distinct- 
 ness from considerations of the operation of immutable law than they 
 can be from the starting-point of fantastic, imaginary, ideal forms. 
 
 "We have seen how the pre-Socratic philosophy ended in the Soph- 
 ists; we have now to see how the post-Socratic ended in the Skeptics. 
 Again was repeated the same result exhibited in former times, that the 
 doctrines of the different schools, even those supposed to be mat- Eiseof the 
 ters of absolute demonstration, were not only essentially differ- steptica. 
 ent, but in contradiction to one another. Again, therefore, the opinion 
 was resumed that the intellect of man possesses no criterion of the 
 truth, being neither able to distinguish among the contradictions of the 
 impressions of the senses, nor to judge of the correctness of philosophi- 
 cal deductions, nor even to determine the intrinsic morality of acts. 
 And, if there be no criterion of truth, there can be no certain ground of 
 science, and there remains nothing for us but doubt. Such was the 
 conclusion to which Pyrrho, the founder of the Skeptics, came. He 
 lived about B.C. 300. His philosophical doctrine of the necessity of 
 suspending or refusing our assent from want of a criterion of judgment 
 led by a natural transition to the moral doctrine that virtue and happi- 
 ness consist in perfect quiescence or freedom from all mental perturba- 
 tion. This doctrine, it is said, he had learned in India from the Brah- 
 mans, whither he had been in the expedition of Alexander. On his re- 
 turn to Europe he taught these views in his school at Elis ; but Greek 
 philosophy, in its own ordet of advancement, was verging on the dis- 
 covery of these conclusions. 
 
122 THE PHILOSOPHY. OF PYEEHO. 
 
 The Skeptical school was thus founded on the assertion that man 
 can never ascertain the true among phenomena, and therefore can never 
 know whether things are in accordance or discordance with their ap- 
 pearances, for the same object appears differently to us in different po- 
 sitions and at different times. Doubtless it also appears differently to 
 various individuals. Among such appearances, how shall we select the 
 true one, and, if we make a selection, how shall we be absolutely certain 
 that we are right? Moreover, the properties we impute to things, such 
 as "color, smell, taste, hardness, and the like, are dependent upon our 
 senses ; but we very well know that our senses are perpetually yielding 
 to us contradictory indications, and it is iii vain that we expect Eeason 
 seoondaiT anaiy- to enable US to distinguish with correctness, or furnish us a 
 losophy. criterion of the truth. The Skeptical school thus made use 
 
 of the weapon which the Sophists had so destructively employed, di- 
 recting it, however, chiefly against ethics. But let us ascend a step 
 higher. If we rely -upon Eeason, how do we know that Eeason itself is 
 reliable? Do we not want some criterion for it? And, even if such 
 a criterion existed, must we not have for it, in its turn, some higher cri- 
 terion ? The Skeptic thus justified his assertion that to man there is no 
 criterion of truth. 
 
 In accordance with these principles, the Skeptics denied that we can 
 ever attain to a knowledge of existence from a knowledge of phenomena. 
 The doctrines They Carried their doubt to such an extreme as to assert that 
 of pyrrho. ^g q^-j^ ncvcr know the truth of any thing that we have as- 
 serted, no, not even the truth of this very assertion itself " We assert 
 nothing," say they; "no, not even that we assert nothing." They de- 
 clare that the system of induction is at best only a system of probabil- 
 ity, for an induction can only be certain when every one and all of the 
 No certainty in individual things have been examined and demonstrated to 
 knowledge. agree with the universal. If one single exception among 
 myriads of examples be discovered, the induction is destroyed. But 
 how shall we be sure, in any one case, that we have examined all the in- 
 dividuals? therefore we must ever doubt. As to the method of defini- 
 tions, it is clear that it is altogether useless ; for, if we are ignorant of a 
 thing, we can not define it, and if we know a thing, a definition adds 
 nothing to our knowledge. In thus destroying definitions and induc- 
 tions they destroyed all philosophical method. 
 
 But if there be this impossibility of attaining knowledge, what is the 
 use of man giving himself any trouble about the matter ? Is it not best 
 to accept life as it comes, and enjoy pleasure while he may ? And this 
 is what Epicurus, B.C. 842, had already advised men to do. Like Soc- 
 rates, he disparages science, and looks upon pleasure as the main object 
 of life and the criterion of virtue. Asserting that truth can not- be de- 
 termined by Eeason alone, he gives up philosophy in despair, or regards 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF EPKURUS. 123 
 
 it as an inferior or ineffectual means for contributing to happiness. In 
 his yiew the proper division of philosophy is into Ethics, The doctrines 
 Canonic, and Physics, the two latter being of very little im- »f i^picurua. 
 portance comp'ared with the first. The wise man or sage must seek in 
 an Oriental quietism' for the chief happiness of life, indulging himself in 
 a temperate manner as respects his present appetite, and adding thereto 
 the recollection of similar sensual pleasures that are past, and the ex- 
 pectation of new ones" reserved for the future. He must look on phi- 
 losophy as the art of enjoying life. He should give himself no concern 
 as to death or the power of the gods, who are only a delusion ; none as 
 respects a future state, remembering that the soul, which is nothing 
 more than a congeries of atoms, is resolved into those constituents at 
 death. There can be no doubt that such doctrines were very well suit- 
 ed to the times in which they were introduced ; for so great was the so- 
 cial and political disturbance, so great the uncertainty of the tenure of 
 property, that it might well be suggested what better could a man do 
 than enjoy his own while it was yet in his possession ? nor was the in- 
 ducement to such a course lessened by the extravagant dissipations 
 when courtesans and cooks, jesters and buffoons, splendid attire and 
 magnificent appointments had become essential to life. Demetrius Po- 
 liorcetes, who understood the condition of things thoroughly, says, 
 " There was not, in my time, in Athens, one great or noble mind." In 
 such a social state, it is not at all surprising that Epicurus had many 
 followers, and that there Were many who agreed with him in thinking 
 that happiness is best found in a tranquil indifference, and in Tmnqnuindif- 
 helieving that there is nothing in reality good or bad ; that for man. 
 it is best 'to decide upon nothing, but to leave affairs to chance; that 
 there is, after all, little or no difference between life and death ; 'that a 
 ■wise man will regard philosophy as an activity of ideas and arguments 
 which may tend to happiness ; that its physical branch is of no other 
 use than to correct superstitious fancies as to death, and remove the fear 
 of meteors, prodigies, and other phenomena by explaining their nature ; 
 that the views of Democritus anad Aristotle may be made to some ex- 
 tent available for the procurement of pleasure ; and that we may learn 
 from the brutes, who pursue pleasure and avoid pain, what ought to be 
 our course. Upon the whole, it will be found that there is a connection 
 between pleasure and virtue, especially if we enlarge our views and 
 seek for pleasure, not in the gratification of the present moment, but in 
 the aggregate offered by existence. ' The pleasures of the soul all orig- 
 inate in the pleasures of the flesh ; not only those of the time being, but 
 also those recollected in the past and anticipated in the future. The sage 
 will therefore provide for all these, and, remembering that pain is in its 
 nature transient, but pleasure is enduring, he will not hesitate to encoun- 
 ter the former if he can be certain that it will procure him the latter ; 
 
1.24 ITS CONTEADICTIONS AND IMMORALITIES. 
 
 he will dismiss from his mind all idle fears of the gods and of destiny, 
 for these are 011I3;. fictions beneficial to women and the vulgar; yet 
 since they are the objects of the national superstition, it is needless to 
 procure one's self disfavor by openly deriding them. It will therefore 
 be better for the sage to treat them with apparent solemnity, or at least 
 outward respect, though he may laugh at the imposition in his heart, 
 As to the fear of death, he will be especially careful to rid himself 
 therefrom, remembering that death is only a deliverer from the miseries 
 of life. 
 
 Under the title of Canonic Epicurus delivers his philosophical views; 
 Imperfections thcv are, however,of a very superficial kind. He insists that 
 
 of theCanonic ■' ' . ' . , • ■ n i ■• , 
 
 of Epicurus, our scnsuous impressions are the criterion 01 truth, and that 
 even the sensations of a lunatic and dreamer are true. But, besides the 
 impressions of the moment, memory is also to be looked upon as a cri- 
 terion — memory, which is the basis of experience.. 
 
 In his Physics he adopts the Atomic theory of Democritus, though 
 and contradictions ^'^ many respccts it ill accords with his Ethics or Canonic; 
 of his Physics. -[j^^ gQ jow is his cstccm of its value that he cares nothing 
 for that. Though atoms and a void are in their nature imperceptible 
 to the senses, he acknowledges their existence, asserting the occurrence 
 of an infinite number of atoms of different kinds in the infinite void, 
 which, because of their weight, precipitate themselves perpendicularly 
 downward with an equable motion ; but some of them, through an un- 
 accountable internal force, have deviated from their perpendicular path, 
 and, sticking together after their collision, have given rise to the world. 
 Not much better than these vague puerilities are his notions about the 
 size of the sun, the nature of eclipses, and other astronomical phenom- 
 ena; but he justifies his contradictions and superficiality by asserting 
 that it is altogether useless for a man to know such things, and that the 
 sage ought to give himself no trouble about them. As to the soul, he 
 says that it must be of a material or corporeal nature, for this simple rea- 
 son, that there is nothing incorporeal but a vficuunf ; he inclines to the 
 belief that it is a rarefied body, easily movable, and somewhat, of the na- 
 ture of a vapor ; he divides it into four activities, corresponding to the 
 four elements entering into its constitution ; and that, so far from being 
 immortal, it is decomposed into its integral atoms, dying when the body 
 dies. "With the atomic doctrines of Democritus Epicurus adopts the 
 notions of that philosopher respecting sensation, to the effect that eidola 
 or images are sloughed off from all external objects, and find access to 
 the brain through the eye. In his theology he admits, under the cir- 
 cumstances we have mentioned, anthropomorphic gods, pretending to 
 account for their origin in the chance concourse of atoms, and suggest- 
 ing that they display their quietism and blessedness by giving them- 
 His iireiigion. sclvcs no concsm about man or his affairs. By such derisive 
 
MODERN EPICUEEAKS — THE MIDDLE AND NEW ACADEMIES. 125 
 
 promptings does Epicurus mock at the religion of his country — ^its rit- 
 uals, sacrifices, prayers, and observances. He offers no better evidence 
 of the existence of God than that there is a general belief current among 
 men in support of such a notion ; but, when brought to the point, he 
 does not hesitate to utter his disbelief in the national theology, and- to 
 declare that, in his judgment, it is blind chance that rules the world. 
 
 Such are the opinions to which the name of Epicurus has been attach- 
 ed ; but there were Epicureans ages before that philosopher was born, 
 and Epicureans there will be in all time to come. They abound in 
 our own days, eves characterized by the same features — an upicureana of 
 intense egotism in their social relations, superficiality in their """J^™ '™«=- 
 philosophical views, if the term philosophical can be justly applied to 
 intellects so narrow ; they manifest an accordance often loud and particu- 
 lar with the religion of .their country, while in their hearts and in their 
 lives they are utter infidels. These are they who constitute the most 
 specious part of modem society, and are often the self-proclaimed guard- 
 ians of its interests. They are to be found in every grade of life ; in 
 the senate, in the army, in the professions, and especially in commercial 
 pursuits, which, unhappily, tend too frequently to the development of 
 selfishness. It is to them that society is indebted for more than half 
 its corruptions, all its hypocrisy, and more than half its sins. It is they 
 who infuse into it falsehood as Respects the past, imposture as respects 
 the present, fraild as respSbts the future ; who teach it by example that 
 the course of a man's life ought to be determined upon principles of 
 selfishness ; that gratitude and afiection are well enough if displayed for 
 effect, but that they should never be felt ; that men are to be looked upon 
 not as men, but as things to be used ; that knowledge and integrity, 
 patriotism and virtue, are the delusions of simpletons ; and that wealiu 
 is the only object which is really worthy of the homage of man. 
 
 It now only remains in this chapter to speak of the later Platonism. 
 The Old Academy, of which Plato was the founder, limited its labors to 
 the illustration and defense of his doctrines. The Middle The Middle Ao^a- 
 Academy, originating with ArcesUaus, born B.C. 316, main- «my"f ArccsoauB. 
 , tained a warfare with the Stoics, developed the doctrine of the uncer- 
 tainty of sensual impressions and the nothingness of human knowledge. 
 The New Academy was founded by Carneades, born B.C. TieNew Academy 
 213, and participated with the preceding in many of its »f cameades. 
 fundamental positions. On the one side Carneades leans to skepticism, 
 on the other he accepts probability as his guide. This school so rapid- 
 ly degenerated that at last it occupied itself with rhetoric alone. The 
 gradual increase of skepticism .and indifierence throughout this period 
 is obvious enough ; thus Arcesilaus said that he knew nothing, not even 
 his own ignorance, and denied both intellectual and sensuous knowl- 
 edge. Carneades, obtaining his views from the old philosophy, found 
 
126 ENC OF THE GREEK AGE OF FAITH. 
 
 therein arguments suitable for his purpose against necessity, God, sootli- 
 saying ; he did not admit that there is any such thing as justice in the 
 abstract, declaring that it is a purely conventional thing ; indeed, it was 
 The dupucity of his rhetorical display, alternately in praise of justice and 
 micians. ' agaiust it, ou the occasion of his visit to Eome, that led Cato 
 to have him expelled from the city. Though Plato had been the repre- 
 sentative of an age of faith, a secondary analysis of all his works, imply- 
 ing an exposition of their contradictions, ended in skepticism. If we 
 may undertake to determine the precise aim of a philosophy whose rep- 
 resentatives stood in such an attitude of rhetorical duplicity, it may be 
 said to be the demonstration that there is no criterion of truth in this 
 world. Persuaded thus of the impossibility 'of philosophy, Cameades 
 was led to recommend his theory of the probable. " That which has 
 been most perfectly analyzed and examined, and found to be devoid of 
 improbability, is the most probable idea." The degeneration of phi- 
 losophy now became truly complete, the labors of so many great men 
 being degraded to rhetorical and artistic purposes. It was seen by all 
 that Plato had destroyed all trust in the indications of the senses, and 
 substituted for it the Ideal theory. Aristotle had destroyed that, and 
 The fourth and thcrc was nothing left to the world but skepticism. A fourth 
 fifth Academies. Academy was founded by Philo of Larissa, a fifth by Anti- 
 ochus of Ascalon. It was reserved for this teacher to attach the .Porch 
 to the Academy, and to merge the doctrines of Plato in those of the 
 Stoics. Such a heterogeneous mixture demonstrates the pass to which 
 speculative philosophy had come, and shows us clearly that her disciples 
 had abandoned her in despair. 
 
 So ends the Greek age of Faith. How strikingly does its history re- 
 End of the Greek Call the Corresponding period of individual life — ^the trust- 
 age of Faith. jjjg spirit and the disappointment of youth. We enter on 
 it full of confidence in things and men, never suspecting that the one 
 may disappoint, the other deceive. Our early experiences, if consid- 
 ered at all, afford only matter of surprise that we could ever have been 
 seriously occupied in such folly, or actuated by motives now seeming so 
 inadequate. It never occurs to us that, in our present state, though 
 the pursuits may have changed, they are none the less vain, the objects 
 none the less delusive. 
 
 The second age of Greek philosophy ended in sophism, the third in 
 skepticism. Speculative philosophy strikes at last upon a limit which 
 it can not overpass. This is its state even in our own times. It rever- 
 berates against the wall that confines it without the least chance of mak- 
 ing its way through. 
 
THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGN. 127 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 THE GKEEK AGE OF EEASON. 
 
 KISE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 The Macedonian Campaign. ^Z)isasiroMs in its political Effects to Greece, but ushering in 
 the Age of Reason. 
 
 Aristotle founds the Inductive Philosophy. — His Method the Inverse of that of Plato. — Its 
 great Power. — In his own hands it fails for want df Knowledge, but is carried out by the 
 Alexandrians. 
 
 Zeno. — His Philosophical Aim is the Cultivation of Virtue and Knowledge. — He is in the Eth- 
 ical Branch the Counterpart of Aristotle in the Physical. 
 
 Foundation op the Museum op Alexandria. — The great Libraries, Observatories, Botani- 
 cal Gardens, Menageries, Dissecting Houses. — Its Effect on the rapid Development of exact 
 Knowledge. — Influence of Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, ApoUmius, Ptolemy, Hip- 
 parchus, on Geometry, Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, Chronology, Geography. 
 
 Decline of the Greek Age of Reason. 
 
 The conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great is a most important 
 event in European history. That adventurer, carrying out the inten- 
 tions of his father Philip, commenced his attack with apparently very 
 insignificant means, having, it is said, at the most, only The Greek inva- 
 thirty-four thousand infantry, four thousand cavalry, and s'™"'!'''^™- 
 seventy talents in money. The result of his expedition was the ruin 
 of the Persian empire, and also the ruin of Greece. It was not without 
 reason that his memory was cursed in his native country. Her life- 
 blood was drained away by his successes. In view of the splendid for- 
 tunes to be made in Asia, Greece ceased- to be the place for an enter- 
 • prising man. To such an extent did military emigration go, that Greek 
 recruits were settled all over the Persian empire; their number was 
 sufficient to injure irreparably the coiintry from which they had parted, 
 but not sufficient to hellenize the dense and antique populations among 
 whom they had settled. 
 
 Not only was it thus by the drain of men that the Macedonian expe- 
 dition was so dreadfully disastrous to Greece, the political consequences 
 following those successful campaigns added to the baneful its ruinous effect 
 result. Alexander could not have more effectually ruined ™ <'^^™- 
 Athens had he treated her as he did Thebes, which he leveled with the 
 ground, massacring six thousand of her citizens, and selling thirty thou- 
 sand for slaves. The founding of Alexandria was the commercial end 
 of Athens, the finishing stroke to her old colonial system. It might 
 have been well for her had he stopped short in his projects with the 
 
128 ALEXANDER THE GEEAT AND AEISTOTLB. 
 
 downfall of Tyre, destroyed, not from any vindictive reasons, as is some- 
 injury to Athens times said, b.ut because he discovered that that city was an 
 ing'^of MexaS?" essential part of the Persian system. It was never his in- 
 ^"''- tention that Athens should derive advantage from the an- 
 
 nihilation of her Phoenician competitor ; his object was effectually car- 
 ried out by the building and prosperity of Alexandria. 
 
 Though the military celebrity of this great soldier may be diminished 
 by the history of the last hundred years, which shows a uniform result 
 of victory when European armies are brought in contact with Asiatic, 
 even under the most extraordinary disadvantages, there can not be de- 
 nied to him a profound sagacity and statesmanship excelled by no other 
 conqueror. Before he became intoxicated with success, and, unfortu- 
 nately, too habitually intoxicated with wine, there was much that was 
 noble in his character. He had been under the instruction of Aristotle 
 for several years, and, on setting out on his expedition, took with him so 
 many learned men as almost to justify the remark applied to it, that it 
 Scientific tendency was as much 3. Scientific as a military undertaking. Among 
 
 of tliG MfLCBdoniarii "^ •/ o o 
 
 campaigns. thosc who thus accompauied him was Callisthenes, a rela^ 
 
 tion and pupil of Aristotle, destined for an evil end. Perhaps the as- 
 sertion that Alexander furnished to his master nearly a million of dol 
 lars, and the services of several thousand men, for the purpose of ob 
 taining and examining the specimens required in the composition of his 
 work on the " History of Animals" may be an exaggeration, but there 
 can be no doubt that in these transactions was the real beginning of that 
 policy which soon led to the institution of the Museum at Alexandria. 
 Origin of the infla- The importance of this event, though hitherto little under- 
 througVAiexaif- stood, admits of no exaggeration, so far as the intellectual 
 ^"- progress of Europe is concerned. It gave to the works of 
 
 Aristotle their wonderful duration ; it imparted to them not alone a Gre- 
 cian celebrity, but led to their translation into Syriac by the Nestorians 
 in the fifth century, and from Syriac by the Arabs into their tongue 
 four hundred years later. They exercised a living influence over Chris- 
 tians and Mohammedans indifferently, from Spain to Mesopotamia. 
 
 If the letter quoted by Plutarch as having been written by Alexan-' 
 der to Aristotle, is authentic, it not only shows how thoroughly the pu- 
 pil had been indoctrinated into the wisdom of the master, but warns us 
 how liable we are to be led astray in the exposition we are presently to 
 give of the Aristotelian philosophy. There was then, as unfortunately 
 there has been too often since, a private as well as a public doctrine. 
 Alexander upbraids the philosopher for his indiscretion in revealing 
 things that it was understood should be concealed. Aristotle defends 
 himself by asserting that the desired concealment had not been broken. 
 By many other incidents of a trifling kind the attachment of the con- 
 queror to philosophy is indicated; thus Harpalus and Nearchus, the 
 
THE MEKITS AND CEIMES OF ALEXANDER. 129 
 
 companions of his youth, were the agents employed in scientific training 
 some of his scientific undertakings, the latter being engaged of Alexander. 
 in sea explorations, doubtless having in the main a political object, yet 
 full of interest to science. Had Alexander lived, Nearchus was to have 
 repeated the circumnavigation of Africa. Harpalus, whUe governor of 
 Babylon, was occupied in the attempt to exchange the vegetation of 
 Europe and Asia; he intertransplanted the productions of Persia and 
 Greece, succeeding, as is related, in his object of making all European 
 plants that he tried grow in Mesopotamia except the ivy. The journey 
 to the Caspian Sea, the expedition into the African deserts, indicate 
 Alexander's personal taste for natural knowledge ; nor is it without sig- 
 nificance that, while on his deathbed, and, indeed, within a few days of 
 his decease, he found consolation and amusement in having Nearchus 
 by his bedside relating the story of his voyages. Nothing shows more 
 strikingly how correct was his military perception than the intention 
 he avowed of equipping a thousand ships for the conquest of Carthage, 
 and thus securing his supremacy in the Mediterranean. Notwithstanding 
 all this, there were many points of his character, and many events of his 
 life, worthy of the condemnation with which they have been visited ; 
 the drunken burning of Persepolis, the prisoners he slaugh- his unbridiea 
 tered in honor of Hephsestion, the hanging of Callisthenes, iniquities, 
 were the results of intemperance and unbridled passion. Even so 
 steady a mind as his was incapable of withstanding the influence of such 
 enormous treasures as those he seized at Susa, amounting, it is said, to 
 four hundred millions of dollars; the plunder of the Persian empire ; the 
 inconceivable luxury of Asiatic life ; the uncontrolled power to which 
 he attained. But he was not so imbecile as to believe hiniself the de- 
 scendant of Jupiter Ammon ; that was only an artifice he permitted for 
 the sake of influencing those around him. We must not forget that he 
 lived in an age when men looked for immaculate conceptions and celes- 
 tial descents. These Asiatic ideas had made their way into Europe. 
 The Athenians themselves were soon to be reconciled to the appointment 
 of divine honors to such as Antigonus and Demetrius, adoring them as 
 gods — savior gods — and instituting sacrifices and priests for their wor- 
 ship. 
 
 Great as were the political results of the Macedonian expedition, they 
 were equaled by the intellectual. The times were marked ^he Greek age of 
 by the ushering in of a new philosophy. Greece had gone k^^™ "stared"- 
 through her age of Credulity, her age of Inquiry, her age of Faith; she 
 had entered on her age of Eeason, and, had freedom of action been per- 
 mitted to her, she would have given a decisive tone to the forthcoming 
 civilization of Europe. As will be seen in the following pages, that 
 great destiny did not await her. From her eccentric po- its inability to ac- 
 sition at Alexandria she could not civUize Europe. In her uatioa o{ Europe. 
 
130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE. 
 
 old age, the power of Europe, concentrated in the Eoman empire, over- 
 threw her. There are very few histories of the past of more interest to 
 modern times, and none, unfortunately, more misunderstood, than this 
 Greek age of Eeason manifested at Alexandria. It illustrates, in the 
 most signal manner, that affairs control men more than men control af- 
 fairs. The scientific associations of the Macedonian conqueror directly 
 arose from the contemporaneous state of Greek philosophy in the act 
 of reaching the close of its age of faith, and these influences ripened 
 under the Macedonian captain who became King of Egypt. As it was 
 the learning of Alexandria, though diverted from its most appropriate 
 and desirable direction by the operation of the Byzantine system, in 
 the course of a few centuries acting forcibly upon it, was not without 
 an influence on the future thought of Europe. Even at this day Eu- 
 rope will not bear to be fully told how great that influence has been. 
 
 The age of Eeason, to which Aristotle is about to introduce us, stands 
 in striking contrast with the preceding ages. It can not escape the 
 reader that what was done by the men of science in Alexandria resem- 
 bles what is doing in our own times ; their day was the foreshadowing 
 of ours. And yet a long and dreary period of almost twenty centuries 
 parts us from them. Politically, Aristotle, through his friendship with 
 The writings of Alexander and the perpetuation of the Macedonia influence 
 
 Aristotle are it8.-^,\ ,■*•*■ . -,.-, i^i 
 
 prelude. m ftolcmy, was the connecting Imk between the Greek age 
 
 of Faith and that of Eeason, as he was also philosophically bythe na- 
 ture of his doctrines. He offers us an easy passage from the speculative 
 methods of Plato to the scientific methods of Archimedes and Euclid. 
 The copiousness of his doctrines, and the obscurity of many of them, 
 might, perhaps, discourage a superficial student, unless he steadily bears 
 in mind the singular authority they maintained for so many ages, and 
 the brilliant results in all the exact parts of human knowledge to which 
 they so quickly led. The history of Aristotle and his philosophy is 
 therefore our necessary introduction to the grand, the immortal achieve- 
 ments of the Alexandrian school. 
 
 Aristotle was born at Stagira, in Thrace, B.C. 384. His father was 
 Biography of ^^ eminent author of those times on subjects of Natural His- 
 Aristotle. ^Qpy . ^j profession he was a physician. Dying while his son 
 was yet quite young, he bequeathed to him not only very ample means, 
 but also his own tastes. Aristotle soon found his way to Athens, and 
 entered the school of Plato, with whom it is said he remained for nearly 
 twenty years. During this period he spent most of his patrimony, and 
 in the end was obliged to support himself by the trade of a druggist 
 At length differences arose between them, for, as we shall soon find, % 
 great pupil was by no means a blind follower of the great master. Id 
 a fortunate moment, Philip, the King of Macedon, appointed him pre- 
 ceptor to his, son Alexander, an incident of importance in the intel 
 
COMPARISON OF ARISTOTLE WITH PLATO. 131 
 
 lectual history of Europe. It was to the friendship arising through 
 this relation that Aristotle owed that effectual assistance to which we 
 have alluded from the conqueror during his Asiatic expedition for the 
 composition of "the Natural History," and also gained that prestige 
 which gave his name such singular authority for more than fifteen cen- 
 turies. He eventually founded a school in the Lyceum at Athens, and, 
 as it was his habit to deliver his lectures while walking, his disciples 
 received the name of Peripatetics, or walking philosophers. These lec- 
 tures were of two kinds, esoteric and exoteric, the former being deliv- 
 ered to the more advanced pupils only. He wrote a very large number 
 of works, of which about one fourth remain. 
 
 The philosophical method of Aristotle is the inverse of that of Plato, 
 whose starting-point was universals, the very existence of Hefoundathe 
 which was a matter of faith, and from which he descended to losophyr '' 
 particulars or details. Aristotle, on the contrary, rose from particulars 
 to universals, advancing to them by inductions ; and his system, thus an 
 inductive philosophy, was in reality the true beginning of science. 
 
 Plato therefore trusts to the Imagination, Aristotle to Eeason. The 
 contrast between them is best seen by the attitude in which they stand 
 as respects the Ideal theory. Plato regards universals, types, or ex- 
 emplars as having an actual existence; Aristotle declares hib method mm- 
 that they are mere abstractions of reasoning. For the omato? 
 fanciful reminiscences derived from former experience in another life 
 by Plato, Aristotle substitutes the reminiscences of our actual experi- 
 ence in this. These ideas of experience are furnished by the memory, 
 which enables us not only to recall individual facts and events witness- 
 ed by ourselves, but also to collate them with one another, thereby dis- 
 covering their resemblances and their differences. Our induction be- 
 comes the more certain as our facts are more numerous, our experience 
 larger. "Art commences when, from a great number of experiences, 
 one general conception is formed which will embrace all similar cases." 
 "If we properly observe celestial phenomena, we may demonstrate the 
 laws which regulate them." With Plato, philosophy arises from faith 
 in the past ; with Aristotle, reason alone can constitute it from exist- 
 ing facts. Plato is analytic, Aristotle synthetic. The philosophy of 
 Plato arises from the decomposition of a primitive idea into particu- 
 lars, that of Aristotle from the union of particulars into a general con- 
 ception. The former is essentially an idealist, the latter a materialist. 
 
 From this it will be seen that the method of Plato was capable of 
 producing more splendid, though they were necessarily more The results of 
 unsubstantial results ; that of Aristotle was more tardy in its Aristoteiia^ 
 operation, but much more solid. It implied endless labor in the collec- 
 tion of facts, the tedious resort to experiment and observation, the appli- 
 cation of demonstration. In its very nature it was such that it was im- 
 
182 THE PEBIPATETIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 possible for its author to carry by its aid the structure of science toward 
 (iompletion. The moment that Aristotle applies his own principles we 
 find him compelled to depart from them through the want of a sufficient 
 experience and sufficient precision in his facts. The philosophy of 
 Plato is a gorgeous castle in the air, that of Aristotle is a solid structure, 
 laboriously, and, with many failures, founded on the solid rock. 
 
 Under logic Aristotle treats of the methods of arriving at general 
 Aristotle's propositions, and of reasoning from them. His logic is at once 
 >»s'° the art of thinking and the instrument of thought. The com- 
 pleteness of our knowledge depends on the extent and completeness of 
 our experience. His manner of reasoning is by the syllogism, an argu- 
 ment consisting of three propositions, such that the concluding one fol- , 
 lows of necessity from the two premises, and of which, indeed, the whole 
 theory of demonstration is only an example. Eegarding logic as the 
 instrument of thought, he introduces 'into it, as a fundamental feature, 
 the ten categories. These predicaments are the genera to which every 
 thing may be reduced, and denote the most general of the attributes 
 which may be assigned to a thing. 
 
 His metaphysics overrides all the branches of the physical sciences. 
 It undertakes an examination of the postulates on which each one of 
 and metaphysics, them is fouudcd, determining their truth or fallacy. Considj 
 ering that all science must find a support for its fundamental conditions 
 in an extensive induction from facts, he puts at the foundation of his 
 system the consideration of the individual ; in relation to the world of 
 sense, he regards four causes as necessary for the production of a fact— 
 the material cause, the substantial cause, the ef&cient cause, the final 
 cause. 
 
 But as soon as we come to the Physics of Aristotle we see at once his 
 Temporary faUuie wcakness. The knowledge of his age does not famish him 
 of his system. fg^^^g enough whcrcon to build, and the consequence is that 
 he is forced into speculation. It will be sufficient for our purpose to 
 allude to a few of his statements, either in this or in his metaphysical 
 branch, to show how great is his uncertainty and confusion. Thus he 
 asserts that matter contains a triple form — simple substance, higher sub- 
 stance, which is eternal, and absolute substance, or God himself; that 
 the universe is immutable and eternal, and, though in relation with'thei 
 The Peripatetic vicissitudcs of the world, it is unaffected thereby; thatthd 
 philosophy. primitive force which gives rise to all the motions and changes 
 we see is Nature ; it also gives rise to Eest ; that the world is a living 
 being, having a soul; that, since every thing is for some particular end, 
 suhstance, Motion, the soul of man is the end of his body ; that Motion is the 
 Space, Time. ' condition of all nature; that the world has a definite 
 boundary and a limited magnitude ; that Space is the immovable ves- 
 sel in which whatever is may be moved ; that Space, as a whole, is with- 
 
THE PEEIPATETIO PHILOSOPHY. 133 
 
 out motion, though its parts may move ; that it is not to be conceived 
 of as without contents ; that it is impossible for a vacuum to exist, and 
 hence there is not beyond and surrounding the world a void which con- 
 tains the world ; that there could be no such thing as Time unless there 
 was a soul, for time' being the number of motion, number is impossible 
 except there be one who numbers ; that, perpetual motion in a finite 
 right line being impossible, but in a curvilinear path possible, the world, 
 which is limited and ever ia motion, must be of a spherical Theworid. 
 form ; that the earth is its central part, the heavens the circumferential, 
 hence the heaven is nearest to the prime cause of motion ; that the or- 
 derly, continuous, and unceasing movement of the celestial bodies im- 
 plies an unmoved mover, for the unchangeable alone can give birth to 
 uniform motion ; that unmoved existence is God ; that the stars are 
 passionless beings, having attained the end of existence, and worthy 
 above other things of human adoration ; that the fixed stars are in the 
 outermost heaven, and the sun, moon, and planets beneath : the former 
 receive their motion from the prime moving cause, but the planets are 
 disturbed by the stars ; that there are five elements — earth, air, fire, wa- 
 ter, and ether ;■ that the earth is in the centre of the universe, since 
 earthy matter settles uniformly round a central point ; that fire seeks 
 the circumferential region, and intermediately wajer floats upon the 
 earth, and air upon water ; that the elements are transmu table into one 
 another, and hence many intervening substances arise ; that each sphere 
 is in interconnection with the others ; the earth is agitated and disturbed 
 by the sea, the sea by the winds, which are movements of the air, the 
 air by the sun, moon, and planets. Each inferior sphere is controlled 
 by its outlying or superior one, and hence it follows that the earth, 
 which is thus disturbed by the conspiring or conflicting action of all 
 above it, is liable to the most irregularities ; that, since animals are nour- 
 ished by the earth, it needs must enter into their composition, but that 
 water is required to hold the earthy parts together ; that every element 
 nkist be looked upon as living, since it is pervaded by the soul of the 
 world ; that there is an unbroken chain from the simple element through 
 the plant and animal up to man, the different groups merging by insen- 
 sible shades into one another : thus zoophytes partake partly organic beings. 
 of the vegetable and partly of the animal, and serve as an intermedium 
 between them ; that plants are inferior to animals in this, that they do 
 not possess a single principle of life or soul, but many subordinate ones, 
 as is shown by the circumstance that, when they are cut to pieces, each 
 piece is capable of perfect or independent growth or life. Their inferi- 
 ority is likewise betrayed by their belonging especially to the earth to 
 which they are rooted, each root being a true mouth ; and this again dis- 
 plays their lowly position, for the place of the mouth is ever an indica- 
 tion of the grade of a creature : thus in man, who is at the head of the 
 
134 aeistotle's physiology, 
 
 scale, it is in the upper part of the body ; that in proportion to the heat 
 of an animal is its grade higher : thus those that are aquatic are cold, 
 and therefore of very little intelligence, and the same may be said of 
 plants; but of man, whose warmth is very great, the soul is much more 
 excellent ; that the possession of locomotion by an organism always im- 
 plies the possession of sensa,tion ; that the senses of taste and touch in-. 
 dicate the qualities of things in contact with the organs of the animal, 
 but that those of smell, hearing, and sight extend the sphere of its exist- 
 ence, and indicate to it what is at a distance ; that the place of reception 
 PhyBioiogioai of the various sensations is the soul, from which issue forth 
 conciusionB. the motious ; that the blood, as the general element of nutri- 
 tion, is essential to the support of the body, though insensible itself: it is 
 also essential__to the activity of the soul ; that the brain is not the recip- 
 ient of sensations : that function belongs to the heart ; all the animal ac- 
 tivities are united in it ; it contains the principle of life, being the prin- 
 ciple of motion ; it is the first part to be formed and the last to die ; that 
 the brain is a mere appendix to the heart, since it is formed after the 
 heart, is the coldest of the organs, and is devoid of blood ; that the soul 
 is the reunion of all the functions of the body : it is an energy or active 
 essence; being neither body nor magnitude, it can not have extension. 
 for thought has no parts, nor can it be said to move in space ; it is as a 
 sailor, who is motionless in a ship which is moving ; that, in the origin 
 of the organism, the male furnishes the soul and the female the body; 
 that the body being liable to decay, and of a transitory nature, it is nec- 
 essary for its well-being that its disintegration and nutrition should bal- 
 ance one another ; that sensation may be compared to the impression of 
 a seal on wax, the wax receiving form only, but no substance or matter; 
 that imagination arises from impressions thus made, but endure for a 
 length of time, and that this is the origin of memory ; that man alone 
 possesses recollection, but animals share with him memory — memory 
 being unintentional or spontaneous, but recollection implying voluntary 
 exertion or a search ; that recollection is necessary for acting with de- 
 sign. It is doubtful whether Aristotle believed in the immortality of 
 the soul, no decisive passage to that effect occurring in such of his works 
 as are extant. 
 
 Aristotle, with a correct and scientific method, tried to build up a vast 
 system when he was not in possession of the necessary data. Though 
 Causes of Aria- a vcry leamcd man, he had not sufficient knowledge ; indeed 
 and faUure. there was not suf&cient knowledge at that time in the world. 
 For many of the assertions I have quoted in the preceding paragraph 
 there was no kind of proof; many of them also, such as the settling of 
 the heavy and the rise of the light, imply very poor cosmic ideas. B 
 is not until he deals with those branches, such as comparative anatomy 
 and natural history, of which he had a personal and practical knowl- 
 
ZENO, THE FOUNDER OF THE STOICS. 135 
 
 edge, that he begins to write well. Of his physiological conclusions, 
 some are singularly felicitous ; his views of the connected chain of or- 
 ganic forms, from the lowest to the highest, are very grand. His meta- 
 physical and physical speculations — for in reality they are nothing but 
 speculations — are of no kind of value. His successful achievements, 
 and also his failures, conspicuously prove the excellence of his system. 
 He expounded the true principles of science, but failed to apply them 
 merely for want of materials. His ambition could not brook restraint. 
 He would rather attempt to construct the universe without the necessary 
 means than not construct it at all. 
 
 Aristotle failed when he abandoned his own principles, and the mag- 
 nitude of his failure proves how just his principles were; he succeed- 
 ed when he adhered to them. If any thing were wanted to vindicate 
 their correctness and illustrate them, it is supplied by the glorious 
 achievements of the Alexandrian school, which acted in' physical sci- 
 ence as Aristotle had acted in natural history, laying a basis solidly in 
 observation and experiment, and accomplishing a like durable and 
 brilliant result. 
 
 From Aristotle it is necessary to turn to Zeno, for the Peripatetics 
 and Stoics stand in parallel lines. The social conditions exist- Biography 
 ing in Gfreece at the time of Epicurus may in some degree pal- "f^™"- 
 liate his sentiments, but virtue and honor will make themselves felt at 
 last. Stoicism soon appeared as the antagonist of Epicureanism, and 
 Epicurus found in Zeno of Citium a rival. The passage from Epicurus 
 to Zeno is the passage from sensual gratification to self-control. 
 
 The biography of Zeno may be dismissed in a few words. Born 
 about B.C. 300, he spent the early part of his life in the vocation of his 
 father, who was a merchant, but, by a fortunate shipwreck, happily los- 
 ing his goods during a voyage he was making to Athens, he turned to 
 philosophy for consolation. Though he had heretofore been somewhat 
 acquainted with the doctrines of Socrates, he became a disciple of the 
 Cynics, subsequently studying in the Megaric/ school, and then making 
 himself acquainted with Platonism. After twenty years of preparation, 
 he opened a school in the stoa or porch in Athens, from which his doc- 
 trine and disciples have received their name. He presided over his school 
 for fifty-eight years, numbering many eminent men among his disciples. 
 When nearly a hundred years old he chanced to fall and break his 
 finger, and, receiving this as an admonition that his time was accom- 
 plished, he forthwith strangled himself The Athenians erected to his 
 memory a statue of brass. His doctrines long survived him, and, in 
 times when there was no other consolation for man, offered a support in 
 their hour of trial, and an unwavering guide in the vicissitudes of life, 
 not only to many illustrious Greeks, but also to some of the great phi- 
 losophers, statesmen, generals, and emperors of Eome. 
 
136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ZENO. 
 
 It was the intention of Zeno to substitute for tlie visionaij specula- 
 tions of Platonism a system directed to the daily practices of life, and 
 Intention of hencc dealing chiefly with the morals. To make men vir- 
 stoicism. tuous was his aim. But this is essentially connected with 
 knowledge, for Zeno was persuaded that if we only know what is good 
 we shall be certain to practise it. He therefore rejected Plato's fancies 
 of Ideas and Eeminiscences, leaning to the common-sense doctrines of 
 Aristotle, to whom he approached in many details. With him Sense 
 furnishes the tiata of knowledge, and Eeason combines them ; the soul 
 being modified by external things, and modifying them in return, he 
 believed that the mind is at first, as it were, a blank tablet, on which 
 sensation writes marks, and that the distinctness of sensuous impressions 
 is the criterion of their truth. The changes thus produced in the soul 
 constitute ideas ; but, with a prophetic inspiration, he complained that 
 man will never know the true essence of things. 
 
 In his Physics Zeno adopted the doctrine of Strato, that the world is 
 The Phyaic3 ^ Hviug being. He believed that nothing incorporeal can pro- 
 of zeno. ^^Qg jjQ effectj and hence that the soul is corporeal. Matter 
 and its properties he considered to be absolutely inseparable, a property 
 being actually a body. In the world there are two things, matter and 
 God, who is the Reason of the world. Essentially however, God and 
 matter are the same thing, which assumes the aspect of matter from the 
 passive point of view, and God from the active ; he is, moreover, the 
 prime moving force. Destiny, Necessity, a life-giving Soul, evolving 
 things as the vital force evolves a plant out of a seed ; the visible world 
 is thus to be regarded as the material manifestation of God. The trans- 
 itory objects which it on all sides presents wiU be reabsorbed after a 
 season of time, and reunited in him. The Stoics pretended to indicate, 
 even in a more definite manner, the process by which the world has 
 arisen, and also its future destiny ; for, regarding the Supreme as a vital 
 heat, they supposed that a portion of that fire, declining in energy, be- 
 came transmuted into matter, and hence the origin of the world; but that 
 that fire, hereafter resuming its activity, would cause a universal confla- 
 gration, the end of things. During the present state every thing is in a 
 condition of uncertain mutation, decays being followed by reproductions; 
 and reproductions by decays ; and, as a cataract shows from year toyear 
 an invariable form, though the water composing it is perpetually chang- 
 ing, so the objects around us are nothing more than a flux of matter 
 ; offering a permanent form. Thus the visible world is only a moment 
 in the life of God, and after it has vanished away like a scroll that is 
 burned, a new period shall be ushered in, and a new heaven and a new 
 earth, exactly like the ancient ones, shall arise. Since nothing can ex- 
 ist without its contrary, no injustice unless there was justice, no cow- 
 ardice unless there was courage, no lie unless there was truth, no 
 
STOICISM. 137 
 
 shadow unless there was light, so the existence of good necessitates 
 that of evil. The Stoics believed that the development of the world is 
 under the dominion of paramount law, supreme law. Destiny, to which 
 God himself is subject, and that hence he can only develop the world in 
 a predestined way, as the vital warmth evolves a seed into the predes- 
 tined form of a plant. 
 
 The Stoics held it indecorous to offend needlessly the religious ideas 
 of the times, and, indeed, they admitted that there might Exoteric phuoso- 
 be created gods like those of Plato ; but they disap- phyofthestote. 
 proved of the adoration of images and the use of temples, making 
 amends for their offenses in these particulars by offering a semi-philo- 
 sophical interpretation of the legends, and demonstrating that the exist- 
 ence, and even phenomenal display of the gods was in accordance with 
 their principles. Perhaps to this exoteric philosophy wfe must ascribe 
 the manner in which they expressed themselves as to final causes — ex- 
 pressions sometimes of amusing quaintness — thus, that the peacock was 
 formed for the sake of his tail, and that a soul was given to the hog in- 
 stead of salt, to prevent his body from rotting ; that the final cause of 
 plants is to be food for brutes, of brutes to be foo^ for men, though they 
 discreetly checked their irony in its ascending career, and abstained from 
 saying that men are food for the gods, and the gods for all. 
 
 The Stoics concluded that the soul is mere warm breath, and that it 
 and the body mutually interpervade one another. They Their opinions 
 thought that it might subsist after death until the general oftheaoui. 
 conflagration, particularly if its energy was great, as in the strong spir- 
 its of the virtuous and wise. Its unity of action implies that it has 
 a principle of identity, the I, of which the physiological seat is the heart. 
 Every appetite, lust, or desire is an imperfect knowledge. Our nature 
 and properties are forced upon us by Fate, but it is our duty to despise 
 all our propensities and passions, and to live so that we may be &ee, 
 intelligent, and virtuous. 
 
 This sentiment leads us to the great maxim of Stoical Ethics, "Live 
 according to Eeason ;" or, since the world is composed of matter and 
 God, who is the Eeason of the world, "Live in harmony with Kature." 
 As Eeason is supreme in Nature, it ought to be so in man. Our exist- 
 ence should be intellectual, and all bodily pains and pleas- Their etucairuiea 
 ures should be despised. A harmony between the hu- "f^a™- 
 man will and universal Eeason constitutes virtue. The free-will of the 
 sage should guide his actions in the same irresistible manner in which 
 universal Eeason controls nature. Hence the necessity of a cultivation 
 of physics, without which we can not distinguish good from evil. The 
 sage is directed to remember that Nature, in her operations, aims at the 
 universal, and never spares individuals, but uses them as means for ac- 
 complishing her ends. It is for him, therefore, to submit to his destiny, 
 
138 EISE OF GEEEK SCIENCE IN EGYPT, 
 
 endeavoring continually to establisli the supremacy of Eeason, and cul- 
 tivating, as the things necessary to virtue, knowledge, temperance, forti- 
 tude, justice. He is at liberty to put patriotism at the value it is worth 
 when he remembers that he is a citizen of the world; he must train him- 
 self to receive in tranquillity the shocks of Destiny, and to be above all 
 passion and all pain. He must never relent and never forgive. He 
 must remember that there are only two classes of men, the wise and the 
 fools, as " sticks can only either be straight or crooked, and very few 
 sticks in this world are absolutely straight." 
 
 From the account I have given of Aristotle's philosophy, it may be 
 Rise of Greek sccn that he occupicd a middle ground between the specula- 
 science. ^jqq q^ ^j^g ^^d philosophy and the strict science of the Alex- 
 andrian school. He is the true connecting link, in the history of Euro- 
 pean intellectual progress, between philosophy and science. Under his 
 teaching, and the material tendencies of the Macedonian campaigns, 
 there arose a class of men in Egypt who gave to the practical a devel- 
 opment it had never before attained ; for that country, upon the break- 
 ing, up of Alexander's dominion, B.C. 323, falling into the possession 
 Political position of Ptolcmy, that general found himself at once the deposit- 
 of the Ptolemies, ^■j.y of Spiritual aiid temporal power. Of the former, it is to 
 be remembered that, though the conquest by Cambyses had given it a 
 severe shock, it still not only survived, but displayed no inconsiderable 
 tokens of strength. Indeed, it is well known that the surrender of 
 Egypt to Alexander was greatly accelerated by hatred to the Persians, 
 the Egyptians welcoming the Macedonians as their deliverers. In this 
 movement we perceive at once the authority of the old priesthood. It 
 is hard to tear up by the roots an ancient religion, the ramifications of 
 which have solidly insinuated themselves among a populace. That of 
 Egypt had already been the growth of more than three thousand years. 
 The question for the intrusive Greek sovereigns to solve was how to co- 
 They co-ordinate Ordinate this hoary system with the philosophical skepticism 
 Sereefctkeptf- ^^^^ ^^d issucd as the result of Greek thought. With sin- 
 cism. gular sagacity, they saw that this might be accomplished by 
 
 availing themselves of Orientalism, the common point of contact of the 
 two systems ; and that, by its formal introduction and development, it 
 would be possible not only to enable the philosophical king, to ■whom 
 all the pagan gods were alike equally fictitious and equally useful, to 
 manifest respect even to the ultra-heathenish practices of the Egyptian 
 populace, but, what was of far more moment, to establish an apparent 
 concord between the old sacerdotal Egyptian party — strong in its un- 
 paralleled antiquity, strong in its reminiscences, strong in its recent per- 
 secutions, strong in its Pharaonic relics, regarded by all men with a su- 
 perstitious or reverent awe — and the free-thinking and versatile Greeks. 
 
THE ALEXANDEIAN MUSEUM. 139 
 
 The occasion was like some other instances in history, some even in our 
 own times ; a small but energetic body of inyaders was holding in sub- 
 jection an ancient and populous country. 
 
 To give practical force to this project, a grand state institution was 
 founded at Alexandria. It became celebrated as the Mu- The Museum ot 
 seum. To it, as to a centre, philosophers from all parts of J^'^'^''*'^- 
 the world converged. It is said that at one time not fewer than fourteen 
 thousand students were assembled there. Alexandria, in confirmation 
 of the prophetic foresight of the great soldier who founded it, quickly 
 became an immense metropolis, abounding in mercantile and manufac- 
 turing activity. As is ever the case with such cities, its higher classes 
 were prodigal and dissipated, its lower only to be held in restraint by 
 armed force. Its public amusements were such as might be expected — 
 theatrical shows, music, horse-racing. In the solitude of such a crowd, 
 or in the noise of such dissipation, any one could find a r.etreat — atheists 
 who had been banished from Athens, devotees from the Ganges, mono- 
 theistic Jews, blasphemers from Asia Minor. Indeed, it has been said 
 that in this heterogeneous community blasphemy was hardly looked 
 upon as a crime ; at the worst, it was no more than an unfortunate,iand, 
 it might be, an innocent mistake. But, since uneducated men need some 
 solid support on which their thoughts may rest, mere abstract doctrines 
 not meeting their wants, it became necessary to provide some corporeal 
 representation for the eclectic philosophical Pantheism, and hence the 
 Ptolemies were obliged to restore, or, as some say, import the EstabUsimenb 
 worship of the god Serapis. Those who affirm that he was ofserapia. 
 imported saythat he was brought from Sinope; modern Egyptian 
 scholars, however, give a different account. As setting forth the Pan- 
 theistic doctrine of which he was the emblem, his image, subsequently 
 to attain world-wide fame, was made of all kinds of metals and stones. 
 " All is God." But still the people, with that instinct which other. na- 
 tions and ages have displayed, hankered after a female divinity, and 
 this led to the partial restoration of the worship of Isis. It is interest- 
 ing to remark how the humble classes never shake off the reminiscences 
 of early life, leaning rather to the maternal than to the paternal attach- 
 nient. Perhaps it is for that reason that they expect a more favorable 
 attention to their supplications from a female divinity than a god. Ac- 
 cordingly, the devotees of Isis soon outnumbered those of Serapis, 
 though a magnificent temple had been built for him at Ehacotis, in the 
 quarter adjoining the Museum, and his worship was celebrated with 
 more than imperial splendor. In subsequent ages the worship of Se- 
 rapis diffused itself throughout the Eoman empire, though the authori- 
 ties — consuls, senate, emperors — knowing well the idea it foreshadowed, 
 and the doctrine it was meant to imply, used their utmost power to put 
 it down. 
 
140 THE GREAT LIBBAEIES, OBSEEVATOEIES, ETC. 
 
 The Alexandrian Museum soon assumed the character of a Univers- 
 TheAiexandri- itj- ^^ i* t^o^e great libraries were collected, the pride and 
 anUtearies. boast of autiquity. Demetrius Phalareus was instructed to 
 collect all the writings in the world. So powerfully were the exertions 
 of himself and his successors enforced by the government that two im- 
 mense libraries were procured. They contained 700,000 volumes. In 
 this literary and scientific retreat, supported in ease and even in luxury 
 — luxury, for allusions to the sumptuous dinners have descended to our 
 times — the philosophers spent their day in mental culture by study, or 
 mutual improvement by debates. The king himself conferred appoint- 
 ments to these positions ; in. later times, the Eoman emperors succeed- 
 ed to the patronage, the government thereby binding in golden chains 
 intellect that might otherwise have proved troublesome. At first, in 
 honor of the ancient religion, the presidency of the establishment was 
 committed to an Egyptian priest ; but in the course of time that policy 
 was abandoned. It must not, however, be imagined that the duties of 
 the inmates were limited to reading and rhetorical display ; a far more 
 
 Botanical gar- practical character was imparted to them. A botanical gar- 
 dene; menage- \ . . •in-ayr nt> t • 
 
 ries; dissecting- dcn, lu counection With the Museum, ottered an opportunity 
 atories.' to those who were interested in the study of the nature of 
 
 plants ; a zoolo^cal menagerie afforded like facilities to those interest- 
 ed in animals. Even those costly establishments were made to minis- 
 ter to the luxury of the times : in the zoological garden pheasants were 
 raised for the royal table. Besides these elegant and fashionable appoint- 
 ments, another, of a more forbidding and perhaps repulsive kind, was 
 added ; an establishment which, in the light- ef our times, is sufficient 
 to confer immortal glory on those illustrious and high-minded kings, 
 and to put to shame the ignorance and superstition of many modern 
 nations: it was an anatomical school, suitably provided with means 
 for .the dissection of the human body, this anatomical school being the 
 basis of a medical college for the education of physicians. For the 
 astronomers Ptolemy Euergetes placed in the Square Porch an equinoc- 
 tial and a solstitial armil, the graduated limbs of these instruments being 
 divided into degrees and sixths. There were in the observatory stone 
 quadrants, the. precursors of our mural quadrants. On the floor a me- 
 ridian line was drawn for the adjustment of the instruments. There 
 were also astrolabes and dioptras. Thus, side by side, almost in the 
 king's palace, were noble provisions for the cultivation of exact science 
 and for the pursuit of light literature. Under the same roof were gath- 
 ered together geometers, astronomers, chemists, mechanicians, engineers. 
 There were also poets, who ministered to the literary wants of a dissi- 
 pated city — authors who could write verse, not only in correct metre, 
 Life in tiie ^^^ ill ^^H kinds of fantastic forms — trees, hearts, and eggs. Here 
 Museum. ^^^ together the literary dandy and the grim theologian. At 
 
THE SEPTUAGINT TEANSLATIOK OP THE SCEIPTURES. 141 
 
 their repasts occasionally the king himself would preside, enlivening the 
 moment with the condescensions of royal relaxation. Thus, of Phila- 
 delphus it is stated that he caused to be presented to the Stoic Spliserus 
 a dish of fruit made of wax, so beautifully colored as to be undistin- 
 guishable from the natural, and, on the mortified philosopher detecting 
 too late the fraud that had been practised upon him, inquired what he 
 now thought of the maxim of his sect that "the sage is never deceived 
 by appearances." Of the same sovereign it is related that he received 
 the translators of the Septuagint Bible with the highest honors, enter- 
 taining them at his table. Under the atmosphere of the place their 
 usual religious ceremonial was laid aside, save that the king courteously 
 requested one of the aged priests to offer an extempore prayer. It is 
 naively related that the Alexandrians present, ever quick to discern 
 rhetorical merit, testified their estimation of the performance with loud 
 applause. But not alone did literature and the exact sciences thus find 
 protection. As if no subjects with which the human mind has occupied it- 
 self can be unworthy of investigation, in the Museum were cultivated 
 the more doubtful arts, magic and astrology. Philadelphus, who, to- 
 ward the close of his life, was haunted with an intolerable dread of 
 death, devoted himself with intense assiduity to the discovery of the 
 elixir of life and to alchemy. Such a comprehensive organization for 
 the development of human knowledge never existed in the world before, 
 and, considering the circumstances, never has since. To be connected 
 with it was a passport to the highest Alexandrian society and to court 
 favor. 
 
 To the Museum, and, it has been asserted, particularly to Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus, the Christian world is thus under obligation for that an- 
 cient version of the Hebrew Scriptures — the Septuagint. -rheseptuagmt 
 Many idle stories have been related respecting the circum- "^™i''""s- 
 stances under which that version was made, as that the seventy-two 
 translators by whom it was executed were confined each in a separate 
 cell, and, when their work was finished, the seventy-two copies were 
 found identically the same, word for word. From this it was supposed 
 that the inspiration of this translation was established. If any proof of 
 that kind were needed, it would be much better found in the fact that 
 whenever the occasion arises in the New Testament of quoting fi:om the 
 Old, it is usually done in the words of the Septuagint. The story of 
 the cells underwent successive improvements among the early fathers, 
 but is now rejected as a fiction ; and, indeed, it seems probable that the 
 translation was not made under the splendid circumstances commonly 
 related, but merely by the Alexandrian Jews for their own convenience. 
 As the Septuagint grew into credit among the Christians, it lost favor 
 among the Jews, who made repeated attempts in after years to sup- 
 plant it by new versions, such as those of Aquila, of Theodotion, of 
 
142 THEOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC INFLUENCES OF THE MUSEUM. 
 
 Symmachus, and others. From the first the Syrian Jews had looked 
 on it with disapproval ; they even held the time of its translation as a 
 day of mourning, and with a malicious grief pointed out its errors, as 
 for instance, they afiirmed that it made Methusaleh live »until after the 
 Deluge. Ptolemy treated all those who were concerned in providing 
 books for the library with consideration, remunerating his translators 
 and transcribers in a princely manner. 
 
 But the modern world is not alone indebted to these Egyptian kings 
 Lasting influence ^^ the particular here referred to. The Museum made an 
 the'oioJfcTaSd imprcssiou upon the intellectual career of Europe so pow- 
 Bcientific. Q-jiul and enduring that we still enjoy its results. That 
 
 impression was twofold, theological and physical. The dialectical spirit 
 and literary culture diffused among the Alexandrians prepared that 
 people, beyond all others, for the reception of Christianity. For thirty 
 centuries the Egyptians had been familiar with the conception of a tri- 
 une God. There was hardly a ciby of any note without its particular 
 triad. Here it was Amun, Maut, and Khonso ; there Osiris, Isis, and 
 Horus. The apostolic missionaries, when they reached Alexandria, 
 found a people ready to appreciate the profoundest mysteries. But 
 with these advantages came great evils. The Trinitarian disputes, whjch 
 subsequently deluged the world with blood, had their starting-point and 
 focus in Alexandria. In that city Arius and Athanasius dwelt. There 
 originated that desperate conflict which compelled Constantine the Great 
 to summon the Council of Nicea, to settle, by a formulary or creed, the 
 essentials of our faith. 
 
 But it was not alone as regards theology that Alexandria exerted a 
 power on subsequent ages, her influence was as strongly marked in the 
 impression it gave to science. Astronomical qjaservatories, chemical 
 laboratories, libraries, dissecting-houses, were not in vain. There went 
 forth from them a spirit powerful enough to tincture all future times. 
 Nothing like the Alexandrian Museum was ever called into existence 
 in Greece or Kpme, even in their palmiest days. It is the unique and 
 noble memorial of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, who have thereby laid 
 the whole human race under obligations, and vindicated their title to be 
 regarded as a most illustrious line of kings. The Museum was, in 
 truth, an attempt at the organization of human knowledge, both for its 
 development and its diffusion. It was conceived and executed in a 
 practical manner worthy of Alexander. And though, in the night 
 through which Europe has been passing — a night full »i dreams and de- 
 lusions — men have not entertained a right estimate of the spirit in which 
 that great institution was founded, and the work it accomplished, its 
 glories being eclipsed by darker and more unworthy things, the time 
 is approaching when its action on the course of human events wilihe 
 better understood, and its "infiuences on European civilization more 
 clearly discerned. 
 
ITS SCIENTIFIC TENDENCY. 143 
 
 Thus, then, about the beginning of the third century before Christ, 
 in consequence of the Macedonian campaign, which had brought the 
 Greeks in contact with the ancient civilization of Asia, a The MuBeum was 
 great degree of intellectual activity was manifested in MfcSoni^n'Mm- 
 Egypt. On the site of the village of Ehacotis, once held as ^^'^"■ 
 an Egyptian post to prevent the ingress of strangers, the Macedonians 
 erected that city which was to be the entrepot of the commerce of the 
 East and "West, and to transmit an illustrious name to the latest genera- 
 tions. Her long career of commercial prosperity, her commanding po- 
 sition as respects the material interests of the world, justified the states- 
 manship of her founder, and the intellectual glory which has gathered 
 round her has given an enduring lustre to his name. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the philosophical activity here alluded to 
 was the direct issue of the political and military event to which we have 
 referred it. The tastes and genius of Alexander were manifested by his 
 relations to Aristotle, whose studies in natural history he promoted by 
 the collection of a menagerie ; and in astronomy, by transmitting to 
 him, through Callisthenes, the records of Babylonian observations ex- 
 tending over 1903 years. His biography, as we have seen, shows a per- 
 sonal interest in the cultivation of such studies. Jn this particular other 
 great soldiers have resembled him ; and perhaps it may be inferred that 
 the practical habit of thought and accommodation of theory to the ac- 
 tual purposes of life pre-eminently required by their profession, leads 
 them spontaneously to decline speculative uncertainties, and to be satis- 
 fied only with things that are real and exact. 
 
 Under the inspiration of the system of Alexander, and guided by the 
 suggestions of certain great men who had caught the spirit of the times, 
 the Egyptian kings thus created, under their own immediate auspices, 
 the Museum. State policy, operating in the manner I have previously 
 described, furnished them with an additional theological reason for 
 founding this establishment. In the Macedonian campaign a vast 
 amount of engineering and mathematical talent had been necessarily 
 stimulated into existence, for great armies can not be handled, great 
 marches can not be made, nor great battl^ fought without that result. 
 When the period of energetic action was over, and to the military oper- 
 ations succeeded comparative repose and temporary moments of peace, 
 the talent thus called forth found occupation in the way most congenial 
 to it by cultivating mathematical and physical studies. In Alexandria, 
 itself a monument of engineering and architectural skill, soon .were to 
 be found men whose names were destined for futurity — Apollonius, 
 Eratosthenes, Manetho. Of these, one may be selected for The great men 
 the i^emark that, while speculative philosophers were occu- " P'o^^ed. 
 pying themselves with discussions respecting the criterion of truth, and, 
 upon the whole, coming to the conclusion that no such thing existed, 
 
144 THE WRITINGS OF EUCLID AND DISCOVERIES OF ARCHIMEDES. 
 
 and that, if the truth was actually in the possession of man, he had no 
 means of knowing it, Euclid of Alexandria was writing an immortal 
 work, destined to challenge contradiction from the whole human race, 
 and to make good its title as the representative of absolute and unde- 
 niable truth — truth not to be gainsaid ia any nation or at any time. 
 We still use the geometry of Euclid in our schools. 
 
 It is said that Euclid opened a geometrical school in Alexandria 
 about B.C. 300. He occupied himself not only with mathematical, but 
 also physical investigation. Besides many works of the former class 
 The writings supposcd to havc been written by him, as on Fallacies, Conic 
 of EucUd. Sections, Divisions, Porisms, Data, there are imputed to him 
 treatises on Harmonics, Optics, and Catoptrics, the two latter subjects 
 being discussed, agreeably to the views of those times, on the hypothe- 
 sis of rays issuing from the eye to the object, instead of passing, as we 
 consider them to do, from the object to the eye. It is, however, on the 
 excellencies of his Elements of Geometry that the durable reputation of 
 Euclid depends; and though the hypercriticism of modem mathemati' 
 cians has perhaps successfully maintained such objections against them 
 as that they might have been more precise in their axioms, that they 
 sometimes assume wh|t might be proved, that they are occasionally 
 redundant, and their arrangement sometimes imperfect, yet they stffl 
 maintain their ground as a model of extreme accuracy, of perspicuity, 
 and as a standard of exact demonstration. They were employed uni- 
 versally by the Greeks, and, in subsequent ages, were translated and 
 preserved by the Arabs. 
 
 Great as is the fame of Euclid, it is eclipsed by that of Archimedes 
 The -writings the Syracusan, born B.C. 287, whose connection with Egyptian 
 Aichimcdes. scieucc is uot aloue testified by tradition, but also by such facts 
 as his acknowledged friendship with Conon of Alexandria, and his in- 
 vention of the screw still bearing his name, intended for raising the wa- 
 ters of the Nile. Among his mathematical works, the most interesting, 
 perhaps, in his own estimation, as we may judge from the incident that 
 he directed the diagram thereof to be engraved on his tombstone, was 
 his demonstration that the solid content of a sphere is two thirds that 
 of its circumscribing cylinder. It was by this mark that Cicero, when 
 Qusestor of Sicily, discovered the tomb of Archimedes grown over with 
 weeds.. This theorem was, however, only one of a large number of a 
 like kind, which he treated of in his two books on the sphere and cylin- 
 der in an equally masterly manner, and with equal success. His posi- 
 tion as a geometer is perhaps better understood from the assertion made 
 respecting him by a modern mathematician, that he came as near to the 
 discovery of the Differential Calculus as can be done without the aid of 
 algebraic transformations. Among the special problems he treated of 
 may be mentioned the quadrature of the circle, his determination of the 
 
THE DISCOVERIES OF ARCHIMEDES. 145 
 
 ratio of the circumference being between 3.1428. and 3.1408, the true 
 value, as is now known, being 3.1416 nearly. He also wrote on Conoids 
 and Spheroids, and upon that spiral still passing under his name, the 
 genesis of which had been suggested to him by Oonon. In his work 
 entitled Psammites he alludes to the astronomical system subsequently 
 established by Copernicus, whose name has been given to it. He also 
 mentions the attempts' which had been made to measure the size of the 
 earth; the chief object of the work being, however, to prove not only 
 that the sands upon the sea-shore cau be numbered, but even those re- 
 quired to fill the entire space within the sphere of the fixed stars ; the 
 result being, according to our system of arithmetic, a less number than 
 is expressed by unity followed by 63 ciphers. Such a book is the 
 sport of a geometrical giant wantonly amusing himself with his strength. 
 Among his mathematical investigations must not be omitted the quad- 
 rature of the parabola. His fame depends, however, not so much on 
 his mathematical triumphs as upon his briUiant discoveries in physics 
 and his mechanical inventions. How he laid the foundation of Hydro- 
 statics is familiar to every one, through the story of Hiero's crown.- j A 
 certain artisan having adulterated the gold given him by King Hiero to 
 make a crown, Archimedes discovered that the falsification might be de- 
 tected, while he was accidentally stepping into a bath, and thereby in- 
 vented the method for the determination of specific gravity. From these 
 investigations he was naturally led to the consideration of the equilib- 
 rium of floating bodies; but his grand achievement in the mechanical di- 
 rection was his discovery of the true theory of the lever : his surprising 
 merit in these respects is demonstrated by the fact that no advance was 
 made in theoretical mechanics in the eighteen centuries intervening be- 
 tween him and Leonardo da Vinci. Of minor matters not less than 
 forty mechanical inventions have been attributed to him. Among these 
 are the endless screw, the screw pump, a hydrauhc organ, and burning 
 mirrors. His genius is well indicated by the saying popularly attrib- 
 uted to him, " Give me whereon to stand, and I will move the earth," 
 :and by the anecdotes told of his exertions against Marcellus during the 
 siege of Syracuse : his invention of catapults and other engines for 
 throwing projectiles, as darts and heavy stones ; claws which, reaching 
 over the walls, lifted up into the air ships and their crews, and then 
 suddenly dropped them into the sea ; burning mirrors, by 'v^hich, at a 
 great distance, the Eoman fleet was set on fire. It is related that Mar- 
 cellus, honoring his intellect, gave the strictest orders that no harm 
 should be done to him at the taking of the town,-Bnd that he was killed, 
 unfortunately, by an ignorant soldier — ^unfortunately, for Europe was 
 not able to produce his equal for nearly two thousand years. 
 
 Eratosthenes was contemporary with Archimedes. He was born at 
 Gyrene B.C. 276. The care of the library appears to have been com- 
 
 K 
 
146 THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND OTHER WORKS OF ERATOSTHENES. 
 
 The writings mitted to him by Euergetes ; but his attention was more spe- 
 Erato8thene°8. ciallj directed to mathematical, astronomical, geographical, and 
 historical pursuits. The work entitled Catasterisms,' doubtfully imputed 
 to him, is a catalogue of 475 of the principal stars ; but it was probably 
 intended for nothing more than a manual. He also is said to haye 
 written a poem upon terrestrial zones. Among his important geo- 
 graphical labors may be mentioned his determination of the interval 
 between the tropics. He found it to be eleven eighty-thirds of the cir-' 
 cumference. He also attempted the measurement of the size of the 
 earth by ascertaining the distance between Alexandria and Syene, the 
 difference of latitude between which he had found to be one fiftieth of 
 the earth's circumferenc'e. It was his object to free geography from the 
 legends with which the superstition of ages had adorned and oppressed 
 it. In effecting 'this, he well deserves the tribute paid to him by Hum- 
 boldt, the modern who of all others could best appreciate his labors. 
 He considered the articulation and expansion of continents ; the position 
 of mountain chains ; the action of clouds ; the geological submersion of 
 lands; the elevation of ancient sea-beds; the opening of the Dardanelles 
 and of the Straits of Gibraltar ; the relations of the Euxine Sea; the prob- 
 lem of the equal level of the circumfluous ocean ; and the necessary ex- 
 istence of a mountain chain running through Asia in the diaphragm of 
 Dicsearchus. What an advance is all this beyond the meditations of 
 Thales ! Herein we see the practical tendencies of the Macedonian 
 wars. In his astronomical observations he had the advantage of using 
 the armils and other instruments in the Observatory. He ascertained 
 that the direction of terrestrial gravity is not constant, but that the ver- 
 ticals converge. He composed a complete systematic description of the 
 earth in three books — physical, mathematical, historical — accompanied 
 by a map of all the parts, then known. Of his skill as a geometer, his 
 solution of the problem of two mean proportionals, still extant, offers 
 ample evidence ; and it is only of late years that the fragments remain- 
 ing of his Chronicles of the Theban Kings are properly appreciated. 
 He hoped to free history as well as geography from the myths that de- 
 form it, a task that the prejudices and interests of man will never permit 
 to be accomplished. Some amusing anecdotes of his opinions in these 
 respects have descended to us. He ventured to doubt the historical 
 truth of the Homeric legends. " I will believe in it when I have been 
 shown the currier who made the wind-bags which Ulysses on his home- 
 ward voyage received from ^Eolus." It is said that, having attained the 
 age of eighty years, he became weary of life, and put an end to himself 
 by voluntary starvation. 
 
 I shall here pause to make a few remarks suggested by the chrono- 
 chvonoiogy of, logical and astronomical works of Eratosthenes. Our current 
 EratoBtiwneB. chrouology was the offspring of erroneous theological coiisid- 
 
PERVEESIOK OF CHEONOLOGY BY EUSEBIUS. 147 
 
 erations, the nature of whicli required not only a short historical term 
 for the' various nations of antiquity, but even for the existence of man 
 upon the globe. This necessity appears to have been chiefly experi- 
 enced in the attempt to exalt certain facts in the history of the Hebrews 
 from their subordinate position in human affairs, and, indeed, to give the 
 whole of that history an exaggerated value. This was done in a double 
 way : by elevating Hebrew history froni its true grade, and depreciating 
 or falsifying that of other nations. Among those who have been guilty 
 of this literary offense, the name of the celebrated Eusebius, the Bishop 
 of Csesarea in the time of Constantine, should be designated, since in his 
 chronography and synchronal tables he purposely "perverted chronol- 
 ogy for the sake of making synchronisms" (Bunsen). It is true, as Nie- 
 buhr asserts, " He is a very dishonest writer." To a great extent, the 
 superseding of the Egyptian annals was brought about by his influence. 
 It was forgotten, however, that of all things chronology is the least suit- 
 ed to be an object of inspiration ; and that, though men may be wholly 
 indifferent to truth for its own sake, and consider it not improper to 
 wrest it unscrupulously to what they may suppose a just purpose, yet 
 that it will vindicate itself at last. It is impossible to succeed complete- 
 , ly in perverting the history of a nation which has left numerous endur- 
 ing records. Egypt offers to us testimonials reaching over five thousand 
 years. As Bunsen well remarks, from the known portion of the curve 
 of history we may determine the whole. The Egyptians, old as they 
 are, belong to the middle ages of mankind, for there is a period antece- 
 dent to monumental history, or, indeed, to history of any kind, during 
 which language and mythology are formed, for these must exist prior to 
 all political institutions, all art, aU science. Even at the first moment 
 that we gain a glimpse of the state of Egypt she had attained a high 
 intellectual condition, as is proved by the fact that her system of hiero- 
 glyphics was perfected before the fourth dynasty. It continued un- 
 changed until the time of Psammetichus. A stationary condition of 
 language and writing for thousands of years necessarily implies a long 
 'and very remote period of active improvement and advance. It was- 
 doubtless such a general consideration, rather than a positive knowledge 
 of the fact, which led the Greeks to assert that the introduction of geom- 
 etry into Egypt must be attributed to kings before the times of Menes. 
 Not alone do her artificial monuments attest for that country an ex-, 
 treme antiquity ; she is herself her own witness ; for, though the Nile 
 raises its bed only four feet in a thousand years, all the alluvial portion 
 of Egypt has been deposited from the -fraters of that river. A natural 
 register thus re-enforces the written records, and both together compose 
 a body of evidence not to be gainsaid. Thus the depth of muddy silt 
 accumulated round the pedestals of monuments is an irreproachable in- 
 dex of their age. In the eminent position he occiipied, Eusebius might 
 
148 ASTEOJSrOMY OF EEATOSTHENES. 
 
 « 
 
 succeed m perverting tlie received book-chronology, but he had no pow- 
 er to make the endless trade-wind that sweeps over the tropical Pacific 
 blow a day more or a day less ; none to change the weight of water pre- 
 cipitated from it by the African mountains ; none to arrest the annual 
 mass of mud brought down by the river. It is by collating such diEfer- 
 ent orders of evidence together — ^the natural and the monumental, the 
 latter gaining strength every year from the cultivation of hieroglyphic 
 studies — that we begin to discern the true Egyptian chronology, and 
 to put confidence in the fragments that remain of Eratosthenes and 
 Manetho. 
 
 At the time of which we are speaking — ^the time of Eratosthenes- 
 general ideas had been attained to respecting the doctrine of the sphere, 
 its poles, axis, the eq:uator, arctic and antarctic circles, equinoctial points, 
 Astronomy of solsticcs, colurcs, horizou, ctc. No one competent to form an 
 Eratosthenes, opinion any longer entertained a doubt respecting the globu- 
 lar form of the earth. The arguments adduced in support of that posi- 
 tion being such as are still popularly resorted to — ^the different positions 
 of the horizon at different places, the changes in elevation of the pole, 
 the phenomena of eclipses, and the gradual disappearance of ships as 
 they sail from us. As to eclipses, once looked upon with superstitious 
 awe, their true causes had not only been assigned, but their periodicities 
 so well ascertained that predictions of their occurrence could be made. 
 The Babylonians 'had thus long known that after a cycle of 223 luna- 
 tions the eclipses of the moon return. The mechanism of the phases of 
 Attempts of Ax- that Satellite was clearly understood. Indeed, Aristarchus 
 tte"°Sii*ce^f* of Samos attempted to ascertain the distance of the sun from 
 the Bun. ^^g earth on the principle of observing the moon when she 
 
 • is dichotomized, a method quite significant of the knowledge of tlie 
 time, though in practice unreliable ; Aristarchus thus finding that tbe 
 sun's distance is 18 times that of the moon, whereas it is in reality 400. 
 In like manner, in a general way, pretty clear notions were entertainel- 
 of the climate distribution of heat upon the earth, exaggerated-,' how- 
 ever, in this respect, that the torrid zone was believed to be too hot for 
 human life, and the frigid too cold. Observations, as good as could be 
 made by simple instruments, had not only demonstrated in a general 
 manner the progressions, retrogradations, and stations of the planets, 
 but attempts had been made to account for, or rather to represent them, 
 by the aid of epicycles. 
 
 It was thus in Alexandria, under the Ptolemies, that modern astron- 
 omy arose. Of this line of kings, the founder, Ptolemy Soter, was not 
 only a patron of science, but likewise an author. He composed a his- 
 tory of the campaigns of Alexander. Under him the collection of the 
 Biography of library was commenced, probably soon after the defeat of An- 
 the Ptolemies, tigonus at the battle of Ipsus, B.C. 301. The Museum is due 
 
BIOGRAPHY OF THK PTOLEMIES. 149 
 
 to his son Ptolemy Philadelphus, who not only patronized learning in 
 his own dominions, but likewise endeavored to extend the boundaries 
 of human knowledge in other quarters. Thus he sent an expedition 
 under his admiral Timosthenes as far as Madagascar. Of the succeed- 
 ing Ptolemies, Buergetes and Philopator were both very able men, 
 though the latter was a bad one ; he murdered his father, and perpetrated 
 many horrors in Alexandria. Epiphanes, succeeding his father when 
 only five years old, was placed by his guardians under the protection 
 of Eome, thus furnishing to the ambitious republic a pretense for in- 
 terfering in the affairs of Egypt. The same policy was continued dur- 
 ing the reign of his son Philometor, who, upon the whole, was an able 
 and good king. Even Physcon, who succeeded in B.C. 146, and who is 
 described as sensual, corpulent, and cruel — cruel, for he cut off the head, 
 hands, and feet of his son, and sent them to Cleopatra his wife — could 
 not resist the inspirations to which the policy of his ancestors, continued 
 for nearly two centuries, had given birth, but was an effective promoter 
 of literature and the arts, and himself the author of an historical work. 
 A like inclination was displayed by his successors, Lathyrus and Au- 
 letes, the name of the latter indicating his proficiency in music. The 
 surnames under which all these Ptolemies pass were nicknames, or titles 
 of derision imposed upon them by their giddy and satirical Alexandrian 
 subjects. The pohtical state of Alexandria was significantly said to be 
 a tyranny tempered by ridicule. The dynasty ended in the person of 
 the celebrated Cleopatra, who, after the battle of Actium, caused her- 
 self, as is related in the legends, to be bitten by an asp. She took poison 
 that she might not fall captive to Octavianus, and be led in his triumph 
 through the streets of Eome. 
 
 If we possessed a complete and unbiased history of these Greek kings, 
 it would doubtless uphold their title to be regarded as the most illus- 
 trious of all ancient sovereigns. Even after their political power had 
 passed into the hands of the Eomans — a nation who had no regard to 
 truth and to right — and philosophy, in its old age, had become extin- 
 guished or eclipsed by the faith of the later Caesars, enforced by an un- 
 scrupulous use of their power, so strong was the vitality of the intel- 
 lectual germ they had fostered, that, though compelled to lie dormant 
 for centuries, it shot up vigorously on the first occasion that favoring 
 circumstances occurred. 
 
 This Egyptian dynasty extended its protection and patronage to lit- 
 erature as well as to science. Thus Philadelphus did not consider it 
 beneath him to count among his personal friends the poet They patronize 
 Callimachus, who had written a treatise on birds, and honor- weu as science. 
 ably maintained himself by keeping a school in Alexandria. The court 
 of that sovereign was, moreover, adorned by a constellation of seven 
 poets, to which the gay Alexandrians gave the nickname of the Pleia- 
 
1^0 THE WRITINGS OF APOLLONIUS AND SIPPARCSUS. 
 
 des. They are said to have been Lycophron, Theocritus, Callimachus, 
 Aratus, ApoUonius Ehodius, Nicander, and Homer the son of Macro.* 
 Among them may be distinguished Lycophron, whose work, entitled 
 Cassandra, still remains ; and Theocritus, whose exquisite bucolics prove 
 how sweet a poet he was. 
 
 To return to the scientific movement. The school of Euclid was 
 worthily represented in the time of Euergetes by ApoUonius Pergsus, 
 The writings of forty ycars subsequently to Archimedes. He excelled both in 
 ApoUonius. ^-j^Q mathematical and physical department. His chief work 
 was a treatise on Conic Sections. It is said that he was the first to intro- 
 duce the words ellipse and hyperbola. So late as the eleventh century 
 his complete works were extant in Arabic. Modern geometers describe 
 him as handling his subjects with less power than his great predecessor 
 Archimedes, but nevertheless displaying extreme precision and beauty 
 in his methods. His fifth book, on Maxima and Minima, is to be re- 
 garded as one of the highest efforts of Greek geometry. As an ex- 
 ample of his physical inquiries may be mentioned his invention of a 
 clock. 
 
 Fifty years after ApoUonius, B.C. 160-125, we meet with the great 
 astronomer Hipparchus. He does not appear to have made observations 
 himself in Alexandria, but he uses those of Aristyllus and Timochares 
 of that place. Indeed, his great discovery of the precession of the equi- 
 noxes was essentially founded on the discussion of the Alexandrian ob- 
 servations on Spica Virginis made by Timochares. In pure mathemat 
 The writings of ^^ ^^ S^^^ methods fot solving all triangles, plane and spher- 
 Hipparohns. j(,j^| . j^g ^^^q coustructcd a table of chords. In astronomy, 
 besides his capital discovery of the precession of the equinoxes just 
 mentioned, he also determined the first inequality of the moon, the equa- 
 tion of the centre, and all but anticipated Ptolemy in the discovery of 
 the evection. To him also must be attributed the establishment of the 
 theory of epicycles and eccentrics, a geometrical conception for the pur- 
 pose of resolving the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies, on the 
 principle of circular movement. In the case of the sun and moon, Hip- 
 The theory of parchus succcedcd in the application of that theorv, and indi- 
 
 Qpigygjgg and 
 
 eccentrics, catcd that, it might be adapted to the planets. Though never 
 intended as a representation of the actual motions of the heavenly bod- 
 ies, it maintained its ground until the era of Kepler and Newton, when 
 the heliocentric doctrine, and that of elliptic motions, were incontestably 
 established. Even Newton himself, in the 35th proposition of the third 
 book of the Principia, availed himself of its aid. Hipparchus also un- 
 dertook to make a register of the stars by the method of alineations— 
 that is, by indicating those which were in the same apparent straight 
 line. The number of stars catalogued by him was 1080. If he thus 
 depicted the aspect of the sky for his times, he also endeavored to do 
 
THE ALMAGEST OF PTOLEMY. 151 
 
 the same for the surface of the earth by marking the position of towns 
 'and other places by lines of latitude and longitude. 
 
 Subsequently to Hipparchus, we find the astronomers Geminus and 
 Cleomedes ; their fame, however, is totally eclipsed by that of Ptolemy, 
 A.D. 138, the author of the great work " The Syntaxis," or ^he writings 
 the mathematical construction of the heavens — a work fully »f p'"'™?. 
 deserving the epithet which has been bestowed upon it, "a noble expo- 
 sition of the mathematical theory of epicycles and eccentrics." It was 
 translated by the Arabians after the Mohammedan conquest of Egypt ; 
 and, under the title of Almagest, was received by them as the highest 
 authority on the mechanism and phenomena of the universe. It main- 
 tained its ground in Europe in the same eminent position for nearly fif- 
 teen hundred yearg, justifying the encomium of Synesius on the institu- 
 tion which gave it birth, "the divine school of Alexandria." The Al- 
 magest commences with the doctrine that the earth is globu- Hia great work: 
 lar and fixed in space ; it describes the construction of a ta- *oMt?uctfon"?f 
 ble of chords and instruments for observing the solstices, tiie i>eavenB. 
 and deduces the obliquity of the ecliptic. It finds terrestrial latitudes 
 by the gnomon ; describes climates ; shows how ordinary may be con- 
 verted into sidereal time ; gives reasons for preferring the tropical to 
 the sidereal year ; furnishes the solar theory on the principle of the sun's 
 Drbit being a simple eccentric ; explains the equation of time ; advances 
 to the discussion of the motions of the moon ; treats of the first inequal- 
 ity, of her eclipses, and the motion of the node. It then gives Ptolemy's 
 own great discovery — that which makes his name immortal — the dis- 
 covery of the moon's evection or second inequality, reducing it to the 
 epioyclic theory. It attempts the determination of the distances of the 
 sun and moon from the earth, with, however, only partial success, since 
 it makes the sun's distance but one twentieth of the real amount. It 
 considers the precession of the equinoxes, the discovery of Hipparchus, 
 the full period for which is twenty-five thousand years. It gives a cat- 
 alogue of 1022 stars ; treats of the nature of the Milky Way ; and dis- 
 cusses, in the most masterly manner, the motions of the planets. This 
 point constitutes Ptolemy's second claim to scientific fame. His de- 
 termination of the planetary orbits was accomplished by comparing his 
 own observations with those of former astronomers, as those of Timo- 
 chares on Venus. 
 
 To Ptolemy we are also indebted for a work on Geography, used in 
 European schools so late as the fifteenth century. The known gj, ^^^^ 
 world to him was from the Canary Islands eastward to China, "'•y^ 
 and from the equator northward to Caledonia. His maps, however, are 
 very erroneous; for, in the attempt to make them correspond to the 
 spherical figure of the earth, the longitudes are too much to the east; 
 the Mediterranean Sea is twenty degrees too long. Ptolemy's determ- 
 
152 LATEE ALEXANDEIAK GEOMETERS. 
 
 inations are, therefore, inferior in accuracy to those of his illustrious 
 predecessor Eratosthenes, who made the distance from the sacred prom- 
 ontory in Spain to the eastern mouth of the Ganges to be seventy thou-, 
 sand stadia. Ptolemy also wrote on Optics, the Planisphere, and Astrol- 
 ogy. It is not often given to an author to endure for so many ages; 
 perhaps, indeed, few deserve it. The mechanism of the heavens, from 
 his point of view, has, however, been, greatly misunderstood. Neither 
 he nor Hipparchus ever intended that theory as any thiag more than a 
 geometrical fiction. It is not to be regarded as a representation of the 
 actual celestial motions. And, as might be expected, for such is the 
 destiny of all unreal abstractions, the theory kept advancing in com- 
 plexity as 'facts accumulated, and was on the point of becoming alto- 
 gether unmanageable, when/ it was supplanted by the theory of universal 
 gravitation, which has ever exhibited that inalienable attribute of a true 
 theory — affording an explanation of every new fact as soon as it was 
 discovered, without requiring to be burdened with new provisions, and 
 prophetically foretelling phenomena which had not as yet been ob- 
 served. 
 
 Prom the time of the Ptolemies the scientific spirit of the Alexan- 
 drian school declined ; for though such mathematicians as Theodosius, 
 whose work on Spherical Geometry was greatly valued by the Arab 
 The later Aiexan- gcometcrs ; and Pappus, whose mathematical collections, in 
 drian geometers, gigjit books. Still for the most part remain ; and Theon, 
 doubly celebrated for his geometrical attainments, and as being the fa- 
 ther of the unfortunate Hypatia, A.D. 415, lived in the next three cen- 
 turies, they were not men like their great predecessors. That mental 
 strength which gives birth to original discovery had passed away. The 
 commentator had succeeded to the philosopher. No new development 
 illustrated the physical sciences ; they were destined long to remain 
 stationary. Mechanics could boast of no trophy like the proposition of 
 Archimedes on the equilibrium of the lever ; no new and exact ideas 
 like those of the same great man on statical and hydrostatical pressure; 
 no novel and clear views like those developed in his treatise on floating 
 bodies ; no mechanical invention like the first of all steam-engines— 
 that of Hero. Natural Philosophy had come to a stop. Its great, and 
 hitherto successfully cultivated department, Astronomy, exhibited no 
 Decline of the farther advance. Men were content with what had been 
 
 GtpggIc &?6 of 
 
 Reason. dono, and continued to amuse themselves with reconciling 
 
 the celestial phenomena to a combination of equable circular motions. 
 To what are we to attribute this pause ? Something had occurred to 
 enervate the spirit of science. A gloom had settled on the Museum. 
 
 There is no dif&culty in giving an explanation of this unfortunate 
 condition. Greek intellectual life had passed the period of its maturijy, 
 and was entering on old age. Moreover, the talent which might have 
 
GEEEK INTELLECTUAL DECEEPITUDE. 153 
 
 been devoted to the service of science was in part allured to another 
 pursuit, and in part repressed. Alexandria had sapped crasea of tiiat 
 Athens, and m her turn Alexandria was sapped by Eome. ^^^«- 
 From metropolitan pre-eminence she had sunk to be a mere provincial 
 town. The great prizes of life were not so likely to be met with in 
 such a declining city as in Italy or, subsequently, in Constantinople. 
 Whatever affected these chief centres of Eoman activity necessarily in- 
 fluenced her ; but, such is the fate of the conquered, she must await 
 their decisions. In the very institutions by which she had once been 
 glorified, success could only be attained by.a conformity to the manner 
 of thinking fashionable in the imperial metropolis, and the best that 
 could be done was to seek distinction in the path so marked but. Yet 
 even with all this restraint Alexandria asserted her intellectual power, 
 leaving an indelible impress on the new theology of her conquerors. 
 During three centuries the intellectual atmosphere of the Eoman empire 
 had been changing. Men were unable to resist the steadily increasing 
 pressure. Tranquillity could only be secured by passiveness. Things 
 had come to such a state that the thinking of men was to be done for 
 them by others, or, if they thought at all, it must be in accordance with 
 a prescribed formula or rule. Greek intellect was passing into decrepi- 
 tude, and the moral condition of the European world was in antagonism 
 to scientific progress. 
 
 CHAPTEE YII. 
 THE GEEEK AGE OF INTELLECTUAL DECEEPITUDE. 
 
 IHE DEATH OP GEEEK PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 DecUne of Greeh Phihsophy : it becomes Setrospective, and in Phih the Jew and Apollonius of 
 Tyana leans on Inspiration, Mysticism, Miracles. 
 
 Neo-Platonism founded by Ammonius Saccas, followed by Plotinus, Porphyry, lamblicus, 
 Proclus. — The Alexandrian Trinity. — Ecstasy. — Alliance with Magic, Necromancy. 
 
 The Emperor Justinian closes the philosophical Schools. 
 
 Summary of Greek Philosophy. — Its four Problems : 1. Origin of the World; 2. Nature of the 
 Soul; 3. Existence of God; 4. Criterion of Truth. — Solution of these Problems in theAgeof 
 Inquiry — in that of Faith — in that of Reason — in that of Decrepitude. 
 
 Determination of the Law of Variation of Greek Opinion. — The Development of National In- 
 tellect is the same as that of Individual. 
 
 Determination of the final Conclusions of Greek Philosophy as to God, the World, the Soul, the 
 Criterion of Truth. — Illustrations and Criticisms cm each of these Points. 
 
 In this chapter it is a melancholy picture that I have to present — the 
 old age and death of Greek philosophy. The strong man Decide of Greek 
 of Aristotelism and Stoicism is sinking into the superan- pi^<m»pii7. 
 nuated dotard ; he is settling 
 
154 CESSATION OF INVESTIGATION AND DISCOVERT. 
 
 "Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, 
 With spectacles on nose and pouch on side ; 
 His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide 
 For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice, 
 Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 
 And whistles in his Sound. Last scene of all, 
 That ends this strange, eventful history. 
 Is second childishness and mere oblivion — 
 Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing." 
 
 He is full of admiration for the past and of contemptuous disgust at the 
 present ; his thoughts are wandering to the things that occupied him in 
 his youth, and even in his infancy. Like those who are ready to die. 
 ■ he delivers himself up to religious preparation, without any farther con- 
 cern whether the things on which he is depending are intrinsically true 
 or false. 
 
 In this, the closing scene, no more do we find the vivid faith of Plato, 
 the mature intellect of Aristotle, the manly self-control of Zeno. Greek 
 philosophy is ending in garrulity and mysticism. It is, leaning for lielp 
 on the conjurer, juggler, and high-priest of Nature. 
 
 There are also new-comers obtruding themselves on the stage. The 
 Eoman soldier is about to take the place of the Greek thinker, and as- 
 sert his claim to the effects of the intestate — to keep what suits him, and 
 to destroy what he pleases. The Eomans, advancing toward their age 
 of Faith, are about to force their ideas on the European world. 
 
 Under the shadow of the Pyramids Greek philosophy was bom; 
 after many wanderings for a thousand years round the shores of the 
 Mediterranean, it came back to its native place, and under the shadow 
 of the Pyramids it died. 
 
 From the period of the New Academy the decline of Greek philos- 
 ophy was uninterrupted. Inventive genius no longer existed ; its place 
 was occupied by the commentator. Instead of troubling themselves 
 It becomes ret- ^^^^ inquiries after absolute truth, philosophers sought sup- 
 roapective. pgp^ jjj ^]^g opinious of the ancient times, and the real or im- 
 puted views of Pythagoras, Plato, or Aristotle were received as a cri- 
 terion. In this, the old age of philosophy, men began to act as though 
 there had never been such things as original investigation and discov- 
 ery among the human race, and that whatever truth there was in the 
 world was not the product of thought, but the remains of an ancient 
 and now all but forgotten revelation from heaven — forgotten through 
 the guilt and fall of man. There is something very inelahcholy in this 
 total cessation of inquiry. The mental impetus, which one would have 
 expected to continue for a season by reason of the momentum that had 
 been gathered in so many ages, seems to have been all at oiice abruptly 
 lost. So complete a pause is surprising : the arrow still flies on after it 
 has parted from the bow ; the potter's wheel runs round though all the 
 
PHILO THE JEW. — ^APOLLONIUS OP TYANA. 155 
 
 vessels are finislied. In producing this sudden stoppage, the policy of 
 the early Csesars greatly assisted. The principle of liberty of thought, 
 •which the very existence of the divers philosophical schools necessarily 
 implied, was too liable to make itself manifest in aspirations for political 
 liberty. While through the emperors the schools of Greece, of Alex- 
 andria, and Eome -Were depressed from that supremacy to which they 
 might have aspired, and those of the provinces, as Marseilles and Ehodes, 
 ■^ere relatively exalted, the former, in a silent and private way, were 
 commencing those rivalries, the forerunners of the great theological 
 struggles between them in after ages for political power. Christianity 
 in its dawn was attended by a general belief that in the Bast ^^ ^^^^ ^^ 
 there had been preserved a purer recollection of the ancient oriental ideas, 
 revelation, and that hence from that quarter the light would presently 
 shine forth. Under the favoring influence of such an expectation. Ori- 
 entalism, to which, as we have seen, Grecian thought had spontaneously 
 arrived, was greatly re-enforced. 
 
 In this final period of Greek philosophy, the first to whom we must • 
 turn is Philo the Jew, who lived in the time of the Emperor Caligula. 
 In harmony with the ideas of his nation, he derives all philosophy and 
 useful knowledge from the Mosaic record, not hesitating to pwiothejew 
 wrest Scripture to his use by various allegorical interpreta- inepired. 
 tions, asserting that man has fallen from his primitive wisdom and purity ; 
 that physical inquiry is of very little avail, but that an innocent life and 
 a burning faith are what we must trust to. He persuaded himself that 
 a certain inspiration fell upon him while he was in the act of writing, 
 somewhat like that of the penmen of the Holy Scriptures. His readers 
 may, however, be disposed to believe that herein he was self-deceived, 
 judging both from the character of his composition and the nature of 
 his doctrine. As respects the former, he writes feebly, is vacillating in 
 his views, and, when watched in his treatment of a difficult point, is seen 
 to be wavering and unsteady. As respects the latter, among jjis mystical 
 other extraordinary things, he teaches that the world is the pi'«°=°p''y- 
 chief angel or first son of God ; he combines all the powers of God into 
 one force, the Logos or holy Word, the highest powers being creative 
 wisdom and governing mercy. From this are emitted all the mundane 
 forces ; and, since God can not do evil, the existence of evil in the world 
 must be imputed to these emanating forces. It is very clear, therefore, 
 that though Philo declined Oriental pantheism, he laid his foundation on 
 the Oriental theory of Emanation. 
 
 As aiding very greatly in the popular introduction of Orientalism, 
 ApoUonius of ,Tyana must be mentioned. Under the auspices of the 
 Empress Julia Domna, in a biographical composition, Philos- Apouoniua 
 tratus had the audacity to institute a parallel between this man "^ ''^'^■ 
 and our Savior. He was a miracle-worker, given to soothsaying and 
 
156 PLUTAECH. — NEO-PLATOlSriSM. 
 
 prophesying, led the life of an ascetic, his raiment and food being of 
 the poorest. He attempted a reformation of religious rites and morals- 
 Is a miracle-work- denied the ef&cacj of sacrifice, substituting for it a simple 
 er and prophet, -vyorship and a pure prayer, scarce even needing words. 
 He condemned the poets for propagating immoral fables of the gods 
 since they had thereby brought impurity into religion. He maintained 
 the doctrine of transmigration. 
 
 Plutarch, whose time reaches to the Emperor Hadrian, has exercised 
 an influence, through certain peculiarities of his style, which has ex- 
 tended even tq us. As a philosopher he is to be classed amon^the 
 Hutarch leans Platouists, vct with & predominance of the prevailing Ori- 
 
 to platonizing . ' K_.. ^ - . . . - ° 
 
 oricntaiiam. entalism. His mental pecuuarities seam to have unfitted 
 him for an acceptance of the national faith, and his works commend 
 themselves rather by the pleasant manner in which he deals with the 
 topic on which he treats than by a deep philosophy. In some respects 
 an analogy may be discerned between his views and those of Philo, the 
 Isis of the one corresponding to the Word of the other. This disposi- 
 Nnmenius in- ^^^^ ^o Orientalism occurs still more strongly in succeeding 
 iSian°piSoaI writcrs ; 'for example, Lucius Apule'ius the Numidian, and 
 ophy. Numenius :, the latter embracing the opinion that had now 
 
 become almost universal — that all Greek philosophy was originally 
 brought from the East. In his doctrine a trinity is assumed, the 
 first person of wtich is reason ; the second the principle of becoming 
 which is a dual existence, and so gives rise to a third person, these 
 three persons constituting, however, only one Grod. Having indicated 
 the occurrence of this idea, it is not necessary for us to inquire more 
 particularly into its details. As philosophical conceptions, none of the 
 trinities of the Greeks will bear comparison with those of ancient Egypt, 
 Amun, Maut, and Khonso, Osiris, Isis, and Horus ; nor with those of hi- 
 dia,Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the creator, preserver, and destroyer, or, 
 the Past, the Present, and the Future of the Buddhists. 
 
 The doctrines of Numenius led directly to those of Neo-Platonism, 
 of which, however, the origin is commonly imputed to Ammonius Sao- 
 Ammonius Saccas cas of Alexandria, toward the close of the second centurt 
 
 founds Neo-Plato- „ y^i • , rr« • n -i • i -i i -i 
 
 niam. after Christ. The views of this philosopher do not appeaj 
 
 to have been committed to writing. They are known to us through his 
 disciples Longinus and Plotinus chiefly. Neo-Platonism, assuming the 
 aspect of a philosophical religion, is distinguished for the conflict it 
 maintained with the rising power of Christianity. Alexandria was the 
 scene of this contest. The school which there arose lasted for about 300 
 years. Its history is not only interesting to us from its antagonism to 
 that new power which soon was to conquer the "Western world, but also 
 because it was the expiring effort of Grecian philosophy. 
 
 Plotinus, an Egyptian, was born about A.D. 204. He studied at 
 
THE WEITINGS OF PLOTINUS. 157 
 
 Alexandria, and is said to have spent eleven years under p,„tin^, » Mysuc. 
 Ammonius Saccas. He accompanied the expedition of the Kenmonwith God. 
 Emperor Gordian to Persia and India, and, escaping from its disasters, 
 opened a philosophical school in Eome. In that city he was held in 
 the highest esteem by the Emperor Grallienus ; and the Empress Salo- 
 nina intended to build a city, in which Plotinus might inaugurate the 
 celebrated Republic of Plato. The plan was not, however, carried out. 
 With the best intention for promoting the happiness of man, Plotinus is 
 to be charged with no little obscurity and mysticism. Eunapius says 
 truly that the heavenly elevation of his mind and his perplexed style 
 make him very tiresome and unpleasant. His repulsiveness is, perhaps, 
 in a measure due to his want of skill in the art of composition, for he 
 did not learn to write till he was fifty years old. He professed a con- 
 tempt for the advantages of life and for its pursuits. He disparaged 
 patriotism. An ascetic in his habits, eating no flesh and but little 
 bread, he held his body in utter contempt, saying that it was only a- 
 phantom and a clog to the soul. He refused to remember his birth- 
 day. As has frequently been the case with those who have submitted 
 to prolonged fasting and meditation, he believed that he had been priv- 
 ileged to see God with his bodily eye, and on six different occasions had 
 been reunited to him. In such a mental condition, it may well be sup- 
 posed that his writings are mysterious, inconsequential, and diffuse. 
 An air of Platonism, mingled with many Oriental ideas and ancient 
 Egyptian recollections, pervades his works. 
 
 Like many of his predecessors, Plotinus recognized a difference between 
 the mental necessities of the educated and the vulgar, justifying mythol- 
 ogy on the ground that it was very useful to those who were not yet 
 emancipated from the sensible. Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, referring 
 to mythology and the gods in human form, had remarked, " Much has 
 been mythically added for the persuasion of the multitude, and also on 
 account of the laws and for other useful ends." But Plotinus also held 
 that the gods are not to be moved by prayer, and that both they and the 
 deemons occasionally manifest themselves visibly ; that incantations may 
 be lawfully practised, and are not repugnant to philosophy. In the 
 body he discerns a penitential mechanism for the soul. He believes 
 that the external world is a mere phantom — a dream — and the indica- 
 tions of the senses altogether deceptive. That union with the divinity of 
 which he speaks he describes as an intoxication of the soul which, for- 
 getting all external things, becomes lost in the contemplation of "the 
 One." The doctrinal philosophy of Plotinus presents a trinity in ac- 
 cordance with the Platonic idea. (1.) The One, or Prime essence. 
 (2.) The Reason. (3.) The Soul. Of the first he declares The trinity of 
 that it is impossible to speak fully, and in what he says on ^'°""'^- 
 the point there are many apparent contradictions, as when he denies 
 
158 THE WRITINGS OF PLOTINUS. 
 
 oneness to the one. His ideas of tlie trinity are essentially based on the 
 theory of emanation. He describes how the second principle issues by 
 emanation out of the first, and the third out of the second. The mech- 
 anism qf this process may be illustrated by recalling how from the body 
 of the sun issues forth light, and from light emerges heat. In the pro- 
 cession of the third from the second principle it ,is really Thought aris- 
 ing from Eeason ; but thought is the Soul. The mundane soul he con- 
 siders as united to nothing ; but on these details he falls into much mys- 
 ticism, and it is often dif&cult to see clearly his precise meaning, as when 
 he says that Eeason is surrounded by Eternity, but the Soul is sur- 
 rounded by Time. He carries Idealism to its last extreme, and, as has 
 been said, looks upon the visible world as a semblance only, deducing 
 from his doctrine moral reflections to be a comfort in the trials of life. 
 Thus hei says that " sensuous life is a mere stage-play ; all the miseiy 
 in it is only imaginary, all grief a mere cheat of the players." " The 
 soul is not in the game ; it looks on, while nothing more than the ex- 
 ternal phantom weeps and laments." " Passive affections and misery 
 light only on the outward shadow of man." The great end of ex- 
 istence is to draw the soul from external things and fasten it in con- 
 templation on God. Such considerations teach us a contempt for vir- 
 tue as well as for vice : " Once united with God, man leaves the virtues, 
 as on entering the sanctuary he leaves the images of the gods in the 
 ante-temple behind." Hence we should struggle to free ourselves from 
 Ecstasy; commanion ©vcry thing low and mean ; to cultivate truth, and de- 
 with the inviaibie. ^.^^ jjfg ^q intimate, communiou with God, divesting 
 ourselves of all. personality, and passing into the condition of ecstasy, in 
 which the soul is loosened from. its material prison, separated from in-, 
 dividual consciousness, and absorbed in the infinite intelligence from 
 which -it ernanated. "In ecstasy it contemplates real existence; it 
 identifies itself with that which it contemplates." Our reminiscence 
 passes -into intuition. In all these views of Plotinus the tincture of Ori- 
 entalism predominates ; the principles and practices are altogether In- 
 dian. The supreme being of the system is the "unus qui est omnia;" the 
 intention of the theory of emanation is to find a philosophical connection 
 between him and the soul of man ; the process for passing into ecstasy 
 by sitting long in an invariable posture, by looking steadfastly at the 
 tip of the nose, or by observing for a long time an unusual or definite 
 manner of breathing, had been familiar to the Eastern devotees, as they 
 are now to the impostors of our own times ; the result is not celestia], 
 but physiological. The pious Hindus were, however, assured that, SB 
 water will not wet the lotus, so, though sin may touch, it can never de- 
 file the soul after a full intuition in God. 
 
 The opinions of Plotinus were strengthened and diffused by his cele- 
 brated pupil Porphyry, who was born at Tyre A.D. 233. After the 
 
PORPHYRY, lAMBLICUS, PROCLTJS. 159 
 
 death of Plotinus he established a school in Rome, attaining great ce- 
 lebrity in astronomy, music, geography, and other sciences. His treat- 
 ise against Christianity was answered by Eusebius, St. Jerome, and oth- 
 ers ; the Emperor Theodosius the Great, however, silenced porphyry-ws writ- 
 it more effectually by causing all the copies to be burned. i"s» i?'''"?*^: 
 Porphyry asserts his own unworthiness when compared with his mas- 
 ter^ saying that he had been united to God but once in eighty-six.years, 
 whereas Plotinus had been so united six times in sixty years. In him 
 is to be seen all the mysticism, and, it may be added, all the piety of 
 Plotinus. He speaks of demons shapeless, and therefore invisible ; re- 
 quiring food, but not immortal ; some of which rule the air, and may be 
 propitiated or restrained by magic: he admits also the use rcjorts to magic 
 of necromancy. It is scarcely possible to determine how '"'* necromancy, 
 much this inclination of the Neo-Platonists to the unlawful art is to be 
 regarded as a concession to the popular sentiment of the times, for else- 
 where Porphyry does not hesitate to condemn soothsaying and divina- 
 tion, and to dwell upon the folly of invoking the gods in making bar- 
 gains, marriages, and such like trifles. He strenuously enjoins a holy 
 life in view of the fact that man has fallen both from his ancient purity 
 and knowledge. He recommends a worship in silence and pure thought, 
 the pubUc worship being of very secondary importaace. He also in- 
 sists on an abstinence from animal food. 
 
 The cultivation of magic and the necromantic art was fully carried out 
 in lamblicus, a Coelo-Syrian, who died in the reign of Constantine the 
 Great. It is scarcely necessary to relate the miracles and iambiicua_awon- 
 prodigies he performed, though they received full credence ^"-worker. 
 in those superstitious times ; how, by the intensity of his prayers, he 
 raised himself unsupported nine feet above the ground ; how he could 
 make rays of a blinding effulgence play round his head ; how, before 
 the bodily eyes of his pupils, he evoked two visible demonish imps. 
 Nor is it necessary to decide on the opinions of ^desius, Chrysanthus, 
 or Maximus ; the atmosphere of their age was full of wonders and 
 miracles. 
 
 For a moment, however, we may turn to Proclus, who was born in 
 Constantinople A.D. 412. When Vitalian laid siege to Constantinople, 
 Proclus is said to have burned his ships with a polished Procius unites 
 
 T . • , ^ . , ■Tin n • emanationwith 
 
 brass mirror. It is scarcely possible for us to determine mysticism, 
 how much truth there is in this, since similar authority affirms that he 
 could produce rain and earthquakes. His theurgic propensities are 
 therefore quite distinct. Yet, notwithstanding these superhuman pow- 
 ers, together with special favors displayed to him by Apollo, Athene, 
 and other divinities, he found it expedient to cultivate his rites in secret, 
 in terror ofpersecutionby the Christians, whose attention he had drawn 
 upon himself by writing a work in opposition to them. Eventually they 
 
160 JUSTINLAIf CLOSES THE GREEK SCHOOLS. 
 
 succeeded in expelling him from Athens, thereby teaching him a new 
 intrepretation of the moral maxim he had adopted, "Live concealed." 
 It was the aim of Proclus to construct a complete theology, -which should 
 include th6 theory of emanation, and be duly embellished with mysti- 
 cism. The Orphic poems and Chaldsean oracles were the basis upon 
 which he commenced ; his character may be understood from the dig- 
 nity he assumed as " high priest of the universe." He recommended to 
 his disciples the study of Aristotle for the sake of cultivating the reason 
 but enjoined that of Plato, whose works he found to be full of sublime 
 allegories suited to his purpose. He asserted that to know one's oVn 
 mind is to know the whole universe, and that that knowledge is impart- 
 ed to us by revelations and illuminations of the gods. 
 
 He speculates on the manner in which absorption is to take place; 
 whether the last form can pass at once into the primitive, or whether it 
 is needful for it to resume, in a returning succession, the intervening 
 states of its career. From such elevated ideas, considering the mystical 
 manner in which they were treated, there was no other prospect for phi- 
 losophy than to end as Neo-Platonism did under Damasius. The final 
 Justinian puts an ^^ys wcrc approaching. The Emperor Justinian prohibit- 
 endtophuosophy. g^ ^^q teaching of philosophy, and closed its schools in 
 Athens A.D. 529. Its last representatives, Damasius, Simplicius, and 
 Isidorus, went as exiles to Persia, expecting to find a retreat under the 
 protection of the great king, who boasted that he was a philosopher and 
 a Platonist. Disappointed, they were fain to return to their native land; 
 and it must be recorded to the honor pf Chosroes that, in his treaty of 
 peace with the Eomans, he stipulated safety and toleration for these ex- 
 iles, vainly hoping that they might cultivate their philosophy and prac- 
 tice their rites without molestation. 
 
 So ends Greek philosophy. She is abandoned, and preparation made 
 for crowning Faith in her stead. The inquiries of the lonians, the 
 reasoning of the Eleatics, the labors of Plato, of Aristotle, have sunk into 
 mysticism and the art of the conjurer. As with the individual man, 
 so with philosophy in its old age, when all else had failed it threw it- 
 self upon devotion, seeking consolation in the exercises of piety — a frame 
 of mind in which it was ready to die. The whole period firom the New 
 Academy shows that the grand attempt, every year becoming more and 
 more urgent, was to find a system which should be in harmony with 
 that feeling of religious devotion into which the Roman empire had 
 fallen — a feeling continually gathering force. An air of piety, though 
 of a most delusive kind, had settled upon the whole pagan world. 
 
 From the long history of Greek philosophy presented in the fore- 
 Summary of going pagcs, wc tum, Ist, to an investigation of the manner of 
 loBophy. progress of the Greek mind ; and, 2d, to the results to which it 
 attained. 
 
SUMMARY OF THE GEEEK AGE OF INQUIRY. 161 
 
 The period occupied by the events we have been considering extends 
 over almost twelve centuries. It commences with Thales, B.C. 636, and 
 ends A.D. 529. 
 
 1st. Greek philosophy commenced on the foundation of physical sug- 
 gestions. Its first object was the determination of the ori- Ageofinqniry- 
 gin and manner of production of the world. The basis **" »°'""°'^- 
 upon which it rested was in its nature unsubstantial, for it included in- 
 trinsic errors due to imperfect and erroneous observations. It dimin- 
 ished the world and magnified man, accepting the apparent aspect of 
 Nature as true, and regarding the earth as a flat surface, on which the 
 sky was sustained like a dome. It limited the boundaries of the terres- 
 trial plane to an insignificant extent, and asserted that it was the special 
 and exclusive property of man. The stars and other heav- First prowem. 
 enly bodies it looked upon as mere meteors or maniiesta- worw. 
 tions of fire. With a superficial simplicity, it received the notions of 
 absolute directions in space, up and down, above and below. In a like 
 spirit it adopted, from the most general observation, the doctrine of four 
 elements, those forms of_substance naturally presented to us in a pre- 
 dominating quantity — earth, water, air, fire. From these slender begin- 
 nings it made its first attempt at a cosmogony, or theory of the mode 
 of creation, by giving to one of these elements a predominance or supe- 
 riority over the other three, and making them issue from it. With one 
 teacher the primordial element was water ; with another, air ; with an- 
 other, fire. Whether a genesis had thus taken place, or whether all 
 four elements were co-ordinate and equal, the production of the world 
 was of easy explanation ; for, by calling in the aid of ordinary observa- 
 tion, which assures us that mud will sink to the bottom of water, that 
 water will fall through air, that it is the apparent nature of fire to as- 
 cend, and, combining these illusory facts with the erroneous notion of 
 up and down in space, the arrangement of the visible world became 
 clear ^ — the earth down below, the water floating upon it, the air above, 
 and, still higher, the region of fire. Thus it appears that the first in- 
 quiry made by European philosophy was. Whence and in what manner 
 came the world ? 
 
 The principles involved in the solutiosi of this problem evidently led 
 to a very important inference, at this early period betraying what was 
 befbre long to become a serious point of dispute. It is natural to man 
 to see in things around him visible tokens of divinity, continual prov- 
 idential dispensations. But in this, its very first act, Greek philosophy 
 had evidently excluded God from his own world. This settling of the 
 heavy, this ascending of the light, was altogether a pure- n, irreligious so- 
 ly physical affair; the limitless sea, the blue ah-, and the i"«<>° ti'^™*'- 
 unnumbered shining stars, were set in their appropriate places, not at 
 the pleasure or by the hand of God, but by innate properties of their 
 
 L 
 
162 GREEK PHILOSOPHICAL PEOBLEMS. 
 
 own. Popular superstition was in some degree appeased by the locali- 
 zation of deities in the likeness of men in a starry Olympus above the 
 sky, a region furnishing unsubstantial glories and a tranquil abode. 
 And yet it is not possible to exclude altogether the spiritual from this 
 world. The soul, ever active and ever thinking, asserts its kindred with 
 the divine. What is that soul? Such was the second question pro- 
 pounded by Greek philosophy. 
 
 A like course of superficial observation was resorted to in the solu- 
 second problem. ^01^ of this inquiry. To breathe is to live ; then the breath 
 What ia the soul! jg ^j^^ j^fg^ jf ^g gg^g ^ breathe, WO die. Man only be- 
 
 comes a living soul when the breath of life enters his .nostrils ; he is a 
 senseless and impassive form when the last breath is expired. In this 
 life-giving principle, thp air, must therefore exist all those noble quahties 
 possessed by the soul. It must be the source from which all intellect 
 arises, the store to which all intellect again returns. The philosophical 
 school whose fundamental principle was that the air is the primordial 
 Its material so- element thus brought back the Deity into the world, though 
 lution thereof. ^jQfjgp a material form. Yet still it was in antagonism to the 
 national polytheism, unless from that one god, the air, the many gods of 
 Olympus arose. 
 
 But who is that one God? This is the third question put forth by 
 Third prowem. Greek philosophy. Its answer betrays that in this, its be- 
 What is God? ginning^ it is tending to Pantheism. 
 
 In all tliese investigations the starting-point had been material con- 
 ceptions, depending on the impressions or information of the senses. 
 Whatever the conclusion arrived at, its correctness turned on the cor- 
 rectness of that information'. When we put a little wine into a measure 
 of water, the eye may no longer see it, but the wine is there. When a 
 rain-drop falls on the leaves of a distant forest, we can not hear it, but 
 the murmur of many drops composing a shower is audible enough. 
 But what is that murmur except the sum of the sounds of all the indi- 
 vidual drops ? 
 
 And so it is plain our senses are prone to deceive us. Hence arises 
 Fourth problem, the fourth great question of Greek philosophv : Have we 
 
 Has man a crite- ••paio i.«/ 
 
 rion of truth? any cntcrion oi Cruth i 
 
 The moment a suspicion that we have not crosses the mind of inan, 
 he realizes what may be truly termed intellectual despair. Is this 
 world an illusion, a phantasm of the imagination ? If things material 
 and tangible, and therefore the most solid props of knowledge, are thus 
 abruptly destroyed, in what direction shall we turn ? Within a single 
 century Greek philosophy had come to this pass, and it was not with- 
 out reason that intelligent men looked on Pythagoras almost as a divin- 
 Importance of ity upou earth whcu he pointed out to them a path of escape; 
 
 the views of •*■ ^ i l,^ 
 
 Pythagoras, when he bid them reflect on what it was that had thus taugm 
 
GREEK AGE OF FAITH. 163 
 
 them tlie unreliability of sense. For wliat is it but reason that has been 
 thus warning us, and, in the midst of delusions, has guided us to the 
 truth — reason, which has objects of her own, a world of her own? 
 Though the visible and audible may deceive, we may nevertheless find 
 absolute truth in things altogether separate from material nature, par- 
 ticularly in the relations of numbers and properties of geometrical forms. 
 There is no illusion in this, that two added to two make four ; or in this, 
 that any two sides of a triangle taken together are greater than the third. 
 If, then, we are living in a region of deceptions, we may rest ' assured 
 that it is surrounded by a world of truth. 
 
 From the material basis speculative philosophy gradually disengaged 
 itself through the labors of the Eleatic school, the contro- influence of the ei- 
 
 , . ., .,. , . , , n eatic school and the 
 
 versy as to the primary element recedmg into insignm- sopMsta. 
 cance, and being replaced by investigations as to Time, Motion, Space, 
 Thought, Being, God. The general result of these inquiries brought into 
 prominence the suspicion of the unreliability of the senses, the tendency 
 of the whole period being manifested in the hypothesis at last attained, 
 that atoms and space alone exist ; and, since the former are mere centres 
 of force, matter is necessarily a phantasm. When, therefore, the Athe- 
 nians themselves commenced a cultivation of philosophy, it was with 
 full participation in the doubt and uncertainty thus overspreading the 
 whole subject. As Sophists, their action closed this speculative period, 
 for, by a comparison of all the partial sciences thus far known, they ar- 
 rived at the conclusion that there is no conscience, no good or evil, no 
 philosophy, no religion, no law, no criterion of truth. 
 
 But man can not live without some guiding rule. If his speculations 
 in Nature will yield him nothing on which he may rely, he will seek 
 some other aid. K there is no criterion of truth for him in philosophy, 
 he will lean on implicit, unquestioning faith. If he can not prove by 
 physical arguments the existence of God, he will, with Socrates, ^^g^ „f faith- 
 accept that great fact as self-evident and needing no demon- "' ""iiaons. 
 stration. He will, in like manner, take his stand upon the undeniable 
 advantages of virtue and good morals, defending the doctrine that pleas- 
 ure should be the object of life — ^pleasure of that pure kind which flows 
 from a cultivation of ennobling pursuits, or instinctive, as exhibited in 
 the life of brutes. But when he has thus cast aside demonstration as 
 needless for his purposes, and put his reliance in this manner on faith, 
 he has lost the restraining, the guiding principle that can set bounds 
 to his conduct. If he considers, with Socrates, who opens the third age 
 of Greek development — its age of faith — ^the existence of God as not 
 needing any proof, he may, in like manner, add thereto its continuation by 
 the existence of matter and ideas. To faith there will be ty the skeptics. 
 no difficulty in such doctrines as those of Eeminiscence, the double im- 
 mortality of the soul, the actual existence of universals ; and, if such 
 
164 GREEK AGE OF EEASON. 
 
 faith, unrestrained and unrestricted, is directed to the regulation of per- 
 sonal life, there is nothing to prevent a falling ^nto excess and base 
 egotism. For ethics, in such an application, ends either in the attempt 
 at the procurement of extreme personal sanctity or the obtaining of in- 
 dividual pleasure — ^the foundation of patriotism is sapped, the sentiment 
 of friendship is destroyed. So it was with the period of Grecian faith 
 inaugurated by Socrates, developed by Plato, and closed by the Skep- 
 tics. Antisthenes and Diogenes of Sinope, in their outrages on society 
 and self-mortifications, show to what end a period of faith, unrestrained 
 by reason, will come ; and Epicurus demonstrated its tendency when 
 guided by self. 
 
 Thus closes the third period of Greek philosophical development. 
 
 In introducing us to a fourth, Aristotle insists that, though we must 
 rely on reason, Eeason itself must submit to be guided by Experience; 
 AgeofKeason ^^^ Zcno, taking up the same thought, teaches us that we 
 —its solutions, ijiust appeal to the decisions of common sense. He disposes 
 of all doubt respecting the criterion of truth by proclaiming that the 
 distinctness of our sensuous impressions is a sufiicient guide. In all this, 
 the essential condition involved is altogether different from that of the 
 speculative ages, and also of the age of faith. Yet, though under the os- 
 tensible guidance of reason, the human mind ever seeks to burst through 
 such self-imposed restraints, attempting to ascertain things for which it 
 possesses no suitable data. Even in the age of Aristotle, the age of 
 Eeason in Greece, philosophy resumed such questions as those of the 
 creation of the world, the emanation of matter from God, the existence 
 and nature of evU, the immortality, or, alas ! it might perhaps be more 
 truly said, judging from its conclusions, the death of the soul, and this 
 even after the Skeptics had, with increased force, denied that we have any 
 criterion of truth, and showed to their own satisfaction that man, at the 
 best, can do nothing but doubt ; and, in view of his condition here upon 
 earth, since it has not been permitted him to know what is right and 
 what is wrong, what is true and what is false, his wisest course is to 
 give himself no concern about the matter, but tranquilly sink into a 
 state of complete indiffereijce and quietism. 
 
 ""How uniformly do we see that through such variations of opinion in- 
 dividual man approaches his end. For Greek philosophy, wha,t, other 
 prospect was there but decrepitude, with its contempt for the present, 
 its attachment to the past, its distrust of man, its reliance on the myste- 
 rious — the unknown ? And this imbecility how plainly we witness he- 
 fore the scene was finally closed. 
 
 If now we look back upon this career of the Grecian mind, we find 
 that after the legendary pre-historic period — the age of credulity- 
 there came in succession an age of speculative inquiry, an age of faith, 
 an age of reason, an age of decrepitude — the first, the age of credulity, 
 
LAW OF VARIATION OF GREEK OPINION. 165 
 
 was closed by geographical discovery ; the second by the criticisms of 
 the Sophists ; the third by the doubts of the Skeptics ; the fourth, em- 
 inently distinguished by the greatness of its results, gradually Duration of 
 declined into the fifth, an age of decrepitude, to which the hand "'''* "s^- 
 of the Eoman put an end. In the mental progress of this people we 
 therefore discern the forthshadowing of a course like that of individual 
 life, its epochs answering to Infancy, Childhood, Youth, Manhood, Old 
 Age ; and which, on a still grander scale, as we shall hereafter find, has 
 been repeated by all Europe in its intellectual development. 
 
 In a space of 1150 years, ending about A.D. 529, the Greek mind had 
 completed its philosophical career. The ages into which we Boundaries of 
 have divided that course pass by insensible gradations into "^^^^s^^- 
 each other. They overlap and intermingle, like a gradation of colors, 
 but the characteristics of each are perfectly distinct. 
 
 2d. Having thus determined the general law of the variation of opin- 
 ions, that it is the same in this nation as in an individual, I Determination of 
 
 ' - _ _, Tint 1 • 1 the law of vana- 
 
 shall next endeavor to disentangle the final results attained, uon of opinions, 
 considering Greek philosophy as a whole. To return to the illustration, 
 to us more than an empty metaphor, though in individual life there is a 
 successive passage through infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood to 
 old age, a passage in which the characteristics of each period in their 
 turn disappear, yet, nevertheless, there are certain results in another 
 sense permanent, giving to the whole progress its proper individuality. 
 A critical eye may discern in the successive stages of PhUreopHcai conciu- 
 
 /^ T t '1 T'11 T ,T-. T T- siong finally arrived 
 
 Greek philosopnicai development decisive and enduring at by the Greeks, 
 results. These it is for which we have been searching in this long and 
 tedious discussion. 
 
 There are four grand topics in Greek philosophy : 1st, the existence 
 and attributes of God ; 2d, the origin and destiny of the world ; 3d, the 
 nature of the human soul; 4th, the possibility of a criterion of truth. I. 
 shall now present what appear to me to be the results at which the 
 Greek mind arrived on each of these points. 
 
 (1.) Of the existence and attributes of God. On this point the deci: 
 sion of the Greek mind was the absolute rejection of all an thro- AstoGod— 
 pomorphic conceptions, even at the risk of encountering the '™>""'y- 
 pressure of the national superstition. Of the all-powerful, all-perfect, 
 and eternal there can be but one, for such attributes are absolutely op- 
 posed to any thing like a participation, whether of a spiritual or mate- 
 rial nature ; and hence the conclusion that the universe itself is God, 
 and that all animate and inanimate things belong to his essence. In 
 him they live, and move, and have their being. It is conceivable that 
 God may exist without the world, but it is inconceivable that the world 
 should exist without God. We must not, however, permit ourselves to 
 be deluded by the varied aspect of things ; for, though the universe is 
 
166 GREEK PHILOSOPHICAL CONCLUSIONS— GOD — THE WORLD, 
 
 thus God, we know it not as it really is, but only as it appears. God 
 has no relations to space and time. They are only the fictions of our 
 finite imagination. 
 
 But this ultimate effort of the Greek mind is Pantheism. It is the 
 But their solution Same rcsult which the more aged branch of the Indo-Euro- 
 18 Pantheism. pgg^jj family had long before reached. " There is no God 
 independent of Nature ; no other has been revealed by tradition, per- 
 ceived by the sense, or demonstrated by argument." 
 
 Yet never will man be satisfied with such a conclusion. . It offers him 
 none of that aspect of personality which his yearnings demand. This 
 infinite, and eternal, and 'universal is no intellect at all. It is passion- 
 less, without motive, without design. It does not answer to those hnea- 
 ments of which he catches a glimpse when he considers the attributes of 
 his own soul. He shudderingly turns from Pantheism, this final result 
 of human philosophy, and, voluntarily retracing his steps, subordinates 
 his reason to his instinctive feelings; declines the impersonal as having 
 nothing in unison with him, and asserts a personal God, the Maker of 
 the universe and the Father of men. 
 
 (2.) Of the origin and destiny of the world. In an examination of 
 As to the world-- the rcsults at which the Greek mind arrived on this topic, 
 
 a manifestation , ^ . , , tti.i.t •, 
 
 of God. our labor is rendered much lighter by the assistance we re- 
 
 ceive from the decision of the preceding inquiry. The origin of all 
 things is in God, of whom the world is only a visible manifestation. It is 
 evolved by 'and from him, perhaps, as the Stoics delighted to say, as the 
 plant is evolved by and from the vital germ in the seed. It is an ema- 
 nation of him. On this point we may therefore accept as .correct the 
 general impression entertained by philosophers, Greek, Alexandrian, and 
 Eoman afi;er the Christian era, that, at the bottom, the Gre^k and Ori- 
 ental philosophies were alike, not only as respects the questions they 
 proposed for solution, but also in the decisions they arrived at. As we 
 have said, this impression led to the belief that there must have been in 
 the remote past a revelation common to both, though subsequently oh- 
 scured and vitiated by the infirmities and wickedness of man. This 
 doctrine of emanation, reposing on the assertion that the world existed 
 eternally in God, that it came forth into visibility from him, and will be 
 hereafter absorbed into him, is one of the most striking features of Veda 
 theology. It is developed with singular ability by the Indian philoso- 
 phers as well as by the Greeks, and is illustrated by their poets. 
 
 The following extract from the Institutes of Menu will convey the 
 Senticii" with *^^iental conclusion : " This universe existed only in the first 
 the Oriental, divinc idea, yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness; im- 
 perceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by 
 revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep. Then the sole self- 
 existing power, himself undiscerned, but making this world discernible, 
 
ORIENTAL ANALOGIES TO THESE CONCLUSIONS. 167 
 
 with five elements and other principles of nature, appeared with undi- 
 minished glory, expanding his idea, or dispelling the gloom. He whom 
 the mind can alone perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, 
 who has no visible parts, who exists from eternity — even He, the soul of 
 all beings, whom no being can comprehend, shone forth in person. He, 
 having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, 
 first with a thought created the- waters. The waters are so called (nara) 
 because they were the production of Nara, or the spirit of God ; and, 
 since they were his first ayand, or place of motion, he thence is named 
 Narayana, or moving on the waters. From that which is the first 
 cause, not the object of sense existing every where in substance, not ex- 
 isting to our perception, without beginning or end, was produced the 
 divine male. He framed the heaven above, the earth beneath, and in 
 the midst placed the subtle ether, the light regions, and the permanent 
 receptacle of waters. He framed all creatures. He gave being to time 
 and the divisions of time — to the stars also and the planets. For the 
 sake of distinguishing actions, he made a total difference' between right 
 and wrong. He whose powers are incomprehensible, having created 
 this universe, was again absorbed in the spirit, changing the time of en- 
 ergy for the time of repose." ■ 
 
 From such extracts from the sacred writings of the Hindus we might 
 turn to their poets, and find the same conceptions of the emanation, man- 
 ifestation, and absorption of the world illustrated. " The mustrations of the 
 Infinite being is like the clear crystal, which receives into anfaiso^™^ 
 itself all the colors and emits them again, yet its transpar- ^^^ ''°"*- 
 ency or purity is not thereby injured or impaired." "He is like the 
 diamond, which absorbs the light surrounding it, and glows in the dark 
 from the emanation thereof." In similes of a less noble nature they 
 sought to convey their idea to the illiterate. " Thou hast seen the spi- 
 der spin his web, thou hast seen its excellent geometrical form, and how 
 well adapted it is to its use ; thou hast seen the play of tinted colors 
 making it shine like a rainbow in the rays of the morning sun. From 
 his bosom the little artificer drew forth the wonderful thread, and into 
 his bosom, when it pleases him, he can withdraw it again. So Brahm 
 made, and so will he absorb the world." In common the Greek and 
 Indian asserted that being exists for the sake of thought, and hence 
 they must be one ; that the universe is a thought in the mind of God, 
 and is unaffected by the vicissitudes of the worlds of which it is com- 
 posed. In India this doctrine of emanation had reached such apparent 
 precision that some asserted it was possible to demonstrate that the en- 
 tire Brahm was not transmuted into mundane phenomena, but only a 
 fourth part ; that there occur successive emanations and absorptions,- a 
 periodicity in this respect being observed ; that, in these considerations, 
 we ought to guard ourselves from any deception arising from the visi- 
 
168 EMANATION AND ABSOEPTION. 
 
 ble appearance of material things, for there is reason to believe that 
 matter is nothing more than forces filling space. Democritus raised us 
 to the noble thought that, small as it is, a single atom may constitute a 
 world. 
 
 The doctrine of Emanation has thus a double interpretation. It sets 
 forth the universe either as a part of the substance of God, or as an un- 
 substantial something proceeding from him : the former a conception 
 more tangible and readily grasped by the mind ; the latter of unap- 
 proachable sublimity, when we recall the countless beautiful and majes- 
 tic forms which Nature on all sides presents. This visible world is only 
 the shadow of God. 
 
 In the farther consideration of this doctrine of the issue, forthcoming, 
 or emanation of the universe from God, and its return into or absorption 
 by him, an illustration may not be without value. Out of the air, which 
 may be pure and tranquil, the watery vapor often comes forth in a visi- 
 ble form, fi misty fleece, perhaps no larger than the hand of a man at 
 first, bijt a great cloud in the end. The external appearance the forth- 
 coming form presents is determined by the incidents of the times; it 
 may have a pure whiteness or a threatening blackness ; its edges may 
 be fringed with gold. In the bosom of such a cloud the lightning may 
 be pent up, from it the thunder may be heard ; but, even if it should 
 not ofier these manifestations of power, if its disappearance should be 
 as tranquil as its formation, it has not existed in vain. No cloud ever 
 yet formed on the sky without leaving an imperishable impression on 
 the earth, for while it yet existed there was not a plant whose growth 
 was not delayed, whose substance was not lessened. And of such a 
 cloud, whose production we have watched, how often has it happened to 
 us to witness its melting away into the untroubled air. From the un- 
 ' troubled aif it came, and to the pure untroubled air it has again re- 
 turned. 
 
 Now such a cloud is made up of countless hosts of microscopic drops, 
 each maintaining itself separate from the others, and each, small though 
 it may be, having an individuality of its own. The grand aggregate 
 may vary its color and shape ; it may be the scene of unceasing and 
 rapid interior movements of many kinds, yet it presents its aspect un- 
 changed, or changes tranquilly and silently, still glowing in the light 
 that falls on it, still casting its shadow on the ground. It is an emblem 
 of the universe according to the ancient doctrine, showing us how the 
 visible may issue from the invisible, and return again thereto; that a drop 
 too small for the unassisted eye to see may be the representative of S 
 world. The spontaneous emergence and disappearance of a cloud is the 
 emblem of a transitory universe issuing forth and disappearing, again 
 to be succeeded by other universes, other like creations in the long lapse 
 of time. 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHICAL CONCLUSIONS — THE SOUL. 169 
 
 (3.) Of the nature of the soul. From the material quality assigned to 
 the soul by the early Ionian schools, as that it was air, fire, or the like, 
 there was a gradual passage to the opinion of its immateri- As to the soui— 
 ality. To this, precision was given by the assertion that it vmity^ 
 had not only an afi&nity with, but even is a part of God. Whatever 
 were the views entertained of the nature and attributes of the Supreme 
 Being, they directly influenced the conclusions arrived at respecting the 
 nature of the soul. 
 
 Greek philosophy, in its highest state of development, regarded the 
 soul as something more than the sum of the moments of thinking. It 
 held it to be a portion of the Deity himself This doctrine is the neces- 
 sary corollary of Pantheism. It contemplated a past eternity, a future 
 immortality. It entered on such inquiries as whether the number of 
 souls in the universe is constant. As upon the foregoing point, so upon 
 this, there was a complete analogy between the decision arrived at in 
 •Grecian and that in Indian philosophy. Thus the latter says, "I am 
 myself an irradiated manifestation of the supreme Beahm." "Never 
 was there a time in which I was not, nor thou, nor these princes of the 
 people, and never shall I not be ; henceforth we all are." Viewing the 
 soul as merely a spectator and stranger in this world, they regarded it' 
 as occupying itself rather in contemplation than in action, asserting that 
 in its origin it is an immediate emanation from the Divinity — not a modi- 
 fication nor a transformation of the Supreme, but a portion of him ; "its 
 relation is not that of a servant to his master, but of a part to the whole." 
 It is like a spark separated from a flame ; it migrates from body to body, 
 sometimes found in the higher, then in the lower, and again in the higher 
 tribes of life, occupying first one, then another body, as circumstances 
 demand. And, as a drop of water pursues a devious career its immorM- 
 m the cloud, m the rain, in the river, a part of a plant, or a absorption. 
 part of an animal, but sooner or later inevitably finds its way back to 
 the sea from which it came, so the soul, however various its fortunes 
 may have been, sinks back at last into the divinity from whichi it 
 emanated. 
 
 Both Greeks and Hindus turned their attention to the delusive phe- 
 nomena of the world. Among the latter many figuratively supposed 
 that what we call visible nature is a mere illusion befalling the soul, 
 because of its temporary separation from God. In the Buddhist phi- 
 losophy tlfe world was thus held to be a creature of the imagination. 
 But among some in those ancient, as among others in more modern 
 times, it was looked upon as having a more substantial condition, and 
 the soul a passive mirror in which things reflected themselves, or per- 
 haps it might, to some extent, be the partial creator of its own forms. 
 But, however that may be, its final destiny is a perfect repose after its 
 absorption in the Supreme. 
 
170 ORIENTAL ANALOGY TO THAT CONCLUSION. 
 
 On this third topic of ancient philosophy an ilhistration may not he 
 niuBtration of without usc. As a bubble floats upon the sea, and, by reason 
 
 the nature of .^ i ^'"ouii 
 
 thesouL 01 its form, reflects whatever objects may be present, whether 
 the clouds in the sky, or the stationary and moving things on the shore, 
 nay, even to a certain extent depicts the sea itself on which it floats, and 
 from which it arose, offering these various forms not only in shapes re- 
 sembling the truth in the proper order of light and shade,' the proper 
 perspective, the proper colors, but, in 'addition thereto, tincturing them 
 all with a play of hues arising from itself, so it is with the soul. From 
 a boundless and unfathomable sea the bubble arose. It does not in any 
 respect differ in nature from its source. From water it came, and mere 
 water it ever is. It gathers its qualities, so far as external things are 
 concerned, only from its form, and from the circumstances under which 
 it is placed. As the circumstances to which it is exposed vary, it floats 
 here and there, merging into other bubbles it meets, and emerging from 
 the collected foam again. In such migrations it is now larger, now less; 
 at one moment passing into new shapes, at another lost in a coalescence 
 of those around it. But whatever these its migrations, these its vicissi- 
 tudes, there awaits it an inevitable destiny, an absorption, a reincorpora- 
 'tion with the ocean. In that flnal moment, what is it that is lost? what 
 is it that has come to an end? Kot the essential substance, for water it 
 was before it was developed, water it was during its existence, and wa- 
 ter it still remains, ready to be re-expanded again. 
 
 Nor does the resemblance fail when we consider the general functions 
 discharged while the bubble maintained its form. In it were depicted 
 in their true shapes and relative magnitudes surrounding things. It 
 hence had a relation to Space. And, if it was in motion, it reflected in 
 succession the diverse objects as they passed by. Through such suc- 
 cessive representations it maintained a relation to Time. Moreover, it 
 imparted to the images it thus produced a colorsition of its own, and in 
 all this was an emblem of the Soul. For Space and Time are the out- 
 ward conditions with which it is concerned, and it adds thereto abstract 
 ideas, the product of its own nature. 
 
 But when the bubble bursts the]*e is an end of all these relations. No 
 longer is there any reflection of external forms, no longer any motion, 
 no longer any innate qualities to add. In one respect the bubble is an- 
 Its continued exiat- uihilatcd, in another it still exists. It has returned to that 
 enoe-its Nirwana. infinite expause in comparison with which it is altogether 
 insignificant and imperceptible. Transitory, and yet eternal : transitoiy, 
 since all its relations of a special and individual kind have come to an 
 end ; eternal in a double sense — the sense of Platonism — since it was 
 connected with a past of which there was no beginning, and continues in 
 a future to which there is no end. 
 
 (4.) Of the possibility of a criterion of truth. An absolute criterion 
 
THE CRITEEION OF TBUTH. 171 
 
 of trutli must at once accredit itself, as well as other things, as to the criterion 
 
 , . 1 ' 1 -T 1 J^ ^ of trutli — seneede- 
 
 At a very early period m philosophy the senses were de- lusiona. 
 tected as being altogether unrehable. On numberless occasions, instead 
 of accrediting, they discredit themselves. A stick, having a spark of fire 
 at one end, gives rise to the appearance of a circle of light when it is 
 turned round quickly. The rainbow seems to be an actually-existing 
 arch until the delusion is detected by our going to the place over which 
 it seems to rest. Nor is it alone as respects things for which there is an 
 exterior basis or foundation, such as the spark of fire in one of these 
 cases, and the drops of water in the other. Each of our organs of sense 
 can palm off delusions of the most purely fictitious kind. The eye may 
 present apparitions as distinct as the realities among which they locate 
 themselves; the ear may annoy us with the continual repetition of a 
 murmuring sound, or parts of a musical strain, or articulate voices, 
 though we weU know that it is all a delusion ; and in like manner, in 
 their proper way, in times of health, and especially in those of sickness, 
 will the other senses of taste, and touch, and smell practice upon us 
 their deceptions. 
 
 This being the ease, how shall we know that any information derived 
 from such unfaithful sources is true? Pythagoras rendered a great 
 service in telling us to remember that we have within ourselves a means 
 of detecting fallacy and demonstrating truth. What is it that assures 
 us of the unreality of the fiery circle, the rainbow, the spectre, the voices, 
 the crawling of insects upon the skin ? Is it not reason ? To reason 
 may we not then trust? 
 
 With such facts before us, what a crowd of inquiries at once presses 
 upon our attention — inquiries which even in modem times have occu- 
 pied the thoughts of the greatest metaphysicians. Shall we begin our 
 studies by examining sensations or by examining ideas? uncertontiea in 
 Shall we say with Descartes that all clear ideas are true? pi^o^opti^i^s- 
 Shall we inquire with Spinoza whether we have any ideas iudependent 
 of experience ? ' With Hobbes, shall we say that all our thoughts a,re 
 begotten by, and are the representatives of, objects exterior to us ; that 
 our conceptions arise in material motions pressing on our organs, pro- 
 ducing motion in them, and so affecting the mind ; that our sensations 
 do not correspond with outward qualities ; that sound and noise belong 
 to the bell and the air, and not to the mind, and, like color, are only agi- 
 tations occasioned by the object in the brain; that imagination is a con- 
 ception gradually dying away after the act of sense, and is nothing more 
 than a decaying sensation ; that memory is the vestige of former im- 
 pressions, enduring for a time ; that forgetfulness is the obliteration of 
 such vestiges ; that the succession of thought is not indifferent, at ran- 
 dom, or voluntary, but that thought follows thought in a determinate 
 andi-predestined sequence ; that whatever we imagine is finite, and hence 
 
172 UNCEETAINTIES OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 we can not conceive of the infinite, nor think of any thing not subject to 
 sense? Shall we say with Locke that there are two sources of our ideas 
 sensation and reflection ; that the mind can not know things directly, 
 but only through ideas? Shall we suggest with Leibnitz that reflection 
 is nothing more than attention to what is passing in the mind, and that 
 between the mind and the body there is a syinpathetic synchronism? 
 With Berkeley shall we assert that there is no other reason for infer- 
 ring the existence of matter itself than the necessity of having some syn- 
 thesis for its attributes; that the objects of knowledge are ideas and 
 nothing else ; and that the mind is active in sensation ? Shall we listen 
 to the demonstration of Hume, that, if matter is an unreal fiction, the 
 mind is not less so, since it is no more than a succession of impressions 
 and ideas ; that our belief in causation is only the consequence of habit ; 
 and that we have better proof that night is the cause of day, than of 
 thousands of other cases in which we persuade ourselves that we know 
 the right relation of cause and effect ; that from habit alone we believe 
 the .future will resemble the past? Shall we infer with Condillac that 
 memory is only transformed sensation, and comparison double atten- 
 tion ; that every idea for which we can not find an exterior object is 
 destitute of significance ; that our innate ideas come by development, 
 and that reasoning and running are learned together. With Kant shall 
 we conclude that there is but one source of knowledge, the union of the 
 object and the subject — but two elements thereof, space and time ; and 
 that they are forms of sensibility, space being a form of internal sensi- 
 bility, and time both of internal and external, but neither of them hav- 
 ing any objective reality ; and that the world is not known to us as it is, 
 but only as it appears ? 
 
 I admit the truth of the remark of Posidonius that a man might as 
 well be content to die as to cease philosophizing ; for, if there are con- 
 tradictions in philosophy, there are quits as many in life. -In the light 
 of this remark, I shall therefore not hesitate to offer a few suggestions 
 Remarks on the respecting the Criterion of human knowledge, undiscouraged 
 criterion. ^^y ^|jg fg^^ j-jjg^^ gQ jjjany of the ablest men have turned their 
 attention to it. In this there might seem to be presumption, were it not 
 that the advance of the sciences, and especially of human physiology, 
 has brought us to a more, elevated point of view, and enabled us'to see 
 the state of things much more distinctly than was possible for our pred- 
 ecessors. 
 
 I think that the inability of ancient philosophers to furnish a true 
 Defective Inform- solutiou of this problcm was altogether owing totheimper- 
 
 atioa of the old „ , ■,■-,■, ■^ ? ■■ -i » T v „<■ 
 
 philosophy. feet, and, indeed, erroneous idea they had of the position oi 
 man. They gave too much weight to his personal individuality. In 
 the mature period of his life they regarded him as isolated, independtot, 
 and complete in himself. They forgot that this is only a momentary 
 
INCEEASE OF INTELLECT IN THE INDIVIDUAL. 173 
 
 phase in bis existence, which, commencing from small beginnings, ex- 
 hibits a continuous expansion or progress. From a single cell, scarcely- 
 more than a step above the inorganic state, not differing, as we may in- 
 fer both from the appearance it offers and the forms through which it 
 runs in the earlier stages of life, from the cell out of which any other an- 
 imal or plant, even the humblest, is derived, a passage is made through 
 form after form in a manner absolutely depending upon surrounding 
 physical conditions. The history is very long, and the forms are very 
 numerous, between the first appearance of the primitive Necessity of a more 
 
 , jj.T.T_ i. J? 1. Ti'i general coQception 
 
 trace and the hoary aspect oi seventy years. It is not cor- as to man. 
 rect to take one moment in this long procession and make it a repre- 
 sentative of the whole. It is not correct to say, even if the body of the 
 mature man undergoes unceasing changes to an extent implying the re- 
 ception, incorporation, and dismissal of nearly a ton and a half of mate- 
 rial in the course of a year, that in this flux of matter there is not only 
 a permanence of form, but, what is of infinitely more importance, an un- 
 changeableness in his intellectual powers. It is not correct to say this ; 
 indeed, it is wholly untrue. The intellectual principle passes forth in a 
 career as clearly marked as that in which the body runs. Even if we 
 overlook the time antecedent to birth, how complete is the imbecility 
 of his early days! The light shines upon his eyes, he sees not; sounds 
 fall upon his earj he hears not. From these low beginnings we might de- 
 scribe in succession the successive re-enforcements through The whole cycle 
 infancy, childhood, and youth to maturity. And what is m«sti>e included, 
 the result to which all this carries us? Is it not that, in the philosophic- 
 al contemplation of man, we are constrained to reject the idea of person- 
 ality, of individuality, and to adopt that of a cycle of progress ; to aban ■ 
 don all contemplation of his mere substantial form, and consider Lis 
 abstract relation ? All organic forms, if compared together and exam- 
 ined fi-om one common point of view, are found to be constructed upon 
 an identical scheme. It .is as in some mathematical expression contain- 
 ing constants and variables ; the actual result changes accordingly as we 
 assign successively different values to the variables, yet in those differ- 
 ent results, no matter how numerous they may be, the original formula 
 always exists. From such a universal conception of the condition and 
 career of man, we rise at once to the apprehension of his relations to 
 others like himself — that is to say, his relations as a member of society. 
 We perceive, in this light, that society must run a course the counter- 
 part of that we have traced for the individual, an4 that the appearance 
 of isolation presented by the individual is altogether illusory. Each 
 individual man drew his life from another, and to another and aiaohia race 
 man he gives rise, losing, in point of fact, his aspect of «>'"»='*><'■«• 
 individuality when these his race connections are considered. One 
 epoch in life is not all life. The mature individual can not be disen- 
 
174 CONNECTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL WITH THE EAOB, 
 
 tangled from the multitudinous forms througli whicli lie has passed; 
 and, considering the nature of his primitive conception and the issue of 
 his reproduction, man can not be separated from his race. 
 
 By the aid of these views of the nature and relationship of man, we can 
 come to a decision respecting his possession of a criterion of truth. In 
 the earliest moments of his existence he can neither feel nor think, and 
 the universe is to him as though it did not exist. Considering the prog- 
 ress of his sensational powers — ^his sight, hearing, touch, etc. — ^these,as 
 ■his cycle advances to its maximum, become, by nature or by educa- 
 tion, more and more perfect ; but never, at the best, as the ancient phi- 
 losophers well knew, are they trustworthy. And so of his intellectual 
 powers. They, too, begin in feebleness and gradually expand. The 
 mind alone is no surer reliance than the organs of sense alone. If any 
 doubt existed on this point, the study of the phenomena of dreaming is 
 sufficient to remove it, for dreaming manifests to us how wavering and 
 unsteady is the mind in its operations when it is detached from the solid 
 support of the organs of sense. How true is the remark of Philo the 
 Jew, that the mind is like the, eye; for, though it may see aU other ob- 
 jects, it can not see itself, and therefore can not judge of itself. And 
 thus we may conclude that neither are the senses to be trusted alone, 
 nor is the mind to be trusted alone. In the conjoint action of the two, 
 by reason of the mutual checks established, a far higher degree of cer- 
 tainty is attained to ; yet even in this, the utmost vouchsafed to the in- 
 dividual, there is not, as both Greeks and Indians ascertained, an abso- 
 lute sureness. It was the knowledge of this which extorted from theni 
 so many melancholy complaints, which threw them into an intellectual 
 despair, and made them, by applying the sad determination to which 
 they had come to the course of their daily life, sink down into indiffer- 
 ence and infidelity. 
 
 But yet there is something more in reserve for man. Let him cast 
 off the clog of individuality, and remember that he has race connections 
 — connections which, in this matter of a criterion of truth, indefinitely in- 
 crease his chances of certainty. If he looks with contempt on the opin- 
 ions of his childhood, with little consideration on those of his youth, 
 with distrust on those of his manhood, what will he say about the opin- 
 ions of his race ? Do not such considerations teach us that, through all 
 these successive conditions, the criterion of truth is ever advancing in 
 precision and power, and that its maximum is found in the unanimous 
 opinion of the whole human race ? 
 
 Upon these principles I believe that, though we have not, philosophic- 
 Though no absolute ally speakiug, any absolute criterion of truth, we rise by 
 
 criterion exists, a n . i • 1 i i • i . . i „™J 
 
 practical one does, dcgrecs to higher and higher certainties along an ascena- 
 ing scale which becomes more and more exact. I think that meta- 
 physical writers who have treated on this point have been led into error 
 
THE MAXIMUM OP CERTAINTY. 175 
 
 from an imperfect conception of the true position of man ; they have 
 limited their thoughts to a single epoch of his course, and have not 
 taken an enlarged and philosophical view. In thus declining the Ori- 
 ental doctrine that the individual is the centre from which the universe 
 should be regarded, and transferring our stand-point to a more compre- 
 hensive and solid foundation, we imitate, in metaphysics, the course of 
 astronomy when it substituted the heliocentric for the geocentric point 
 of view, and the change promises to be equally fertile in sure results. 
 If it were worth while, we might proceed to enforce this doctrine by an 
 appeal to the experience of ordinary life. How often, when we distrust 
 our own judgment, do we seek support in the advice of a friend. How 
 strong is our persuasion that we are in the right when public opinion is 
 witb us. For this even the Church has not disdained to call together 
 Councils, aiming thereby at a surer means of arriving at the truth. The 
 Council is more reliable than an individual, whoever he may be. The 
 probabilities increase with, the number of consenting intellects, and 
 hence I come to the conclusion that in the unanimous con-. The maxinmm of 
 sent of the entirei human race lies the human criterion of human race. 
 truth — a criterion, in its turn, capable of increased precision with the 
 diffusion of enlightenment and knowledge. For this reason, I do not 
 look upon the prospects of humanity in so cheerless a light as they did 
 of old. On the contrary, every thing seems full of hope. Good au- 
 guries may be drawn for philosophy from the great mechanical and ma- 
 terial inventions which multiply the means of intercommunication, and, 
 it may be said, annihilate terrestrial distances. In the intellectual col- 
 lisions that must ensue, in the melting down of opinions, in tbe exami- 
 nations and analyses of nations, truth will come forth. Whatever can 
 not stand that ordeal must submit to its fate. Lies and imposture, no 
 matter how powerfully sustained, must prepare to depart. In that su- 
 preme tribunal man may place implicit confidence. Even though, phil- 
 osophically, it is far from absolute, it is the highest criterion vouchsafed 
 to him, and from its decision he has no appeal. 
 
 In delivering thus emphatically my own views on this profound topic 
 perhaps I do wrong. It is becoming to speak with humility on that 
 which has been_glorified by the great writers of Greece, of India, of 
 Alexandria, and, in latter times, of Europe. 
 
 In conclusion, I would remark that the view here presented of the re- 
 sults of Greek philosophy is that which offers itself to me after a long 
 and careful study of the subject. It is, however, the af&rmative, not the 
 negative result; for we must not forget that if, on the one complete analogy 
 hand, the pantheistic doctrines of the Nature of God, Uni- ana™diS*pmo 
 versal Animation, the theory of Emanation, Transmutation, e^isoftiionght 
 Absorption, Transmigration, etc., were adopted, on -the other there was 
 by no means an insignificant tendency to atheism and utter infidelity. 
 
176 APPLICATION OF PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 Even of. this negative state a corresponding condition occurred in the 
 Buddhism of India, of which I have previously spoken ; and, indeed, so 
 complete is the parallel between the course of mental evolution in Asia 
 and Europe, that it is difficult to designate a matter of minor detail in 
 the philosophy of the one which can not be pointed out in that of the 
 other. It was not without reason, therefore, that the Alexandrian phi- 
 losophers, who were profoundly initiated in the detail of both systems, 
 came to the conclusion that such surprising coincidences could be only 
 accounted for upon the admission that there had been an ancient revela- 
 tion, the vestiges of which had descended to their time. In this, how- 
 ever, they judged erroneously ; the true explanation consisting in the 
 fact that the process of development of the intellect of man, and the final 
 results to which he arrives in examining similar problems, are in all 
 countries the same. 
 
 It does not fall within my plan to trace the application of these philo- 
 sophical principles to practice in daily life, yet the subject is of such 
 boundless interest that perhaps the reader will excuse a single para- 
 graph. It may seem to superficial observation that, whatever might be 
 the doctrinal resemblances of these philosophies, their application was 
 Variation of prac- vcry different. lu E general way, it may be asserted that 
 explained. the Same doctrincs which in India led to the inculcation of 
 
 indifference and quietism, led to Stoic activity in Greece and Italy. If 
 the occasion permitted, I could, nevertheless, demonstrate in this appar- 
 ent divergence an actual coincidence ; for the mode of life of man is 
 chiefly determined by geographical conditions, his instinctive dispositiofl 
 to activity increasing with the latitude in which he lives. Under the ' 
 equinoctial line he has no disposition for exertion, his physiological re- 
 lations with the climate making quietism most agreeable to him. The 
 philosophical formula which, in the hot plains of India, finds its issue in a 
 life of tranquillity and repose, will be interpreted in the more tracing air 
 of Europe by a life of activity. Thus, in later ages, the monk of Africa, 
 willingly persuading himself that any intervention to improve Nature is 
 a revolt against the providence of God, spent his worthless life in weav- 
 ing baskets and mats, or in solitary meditation in the caves of the desert 
 of Thebais ; but the monk of Europe encountered the labors of agricul- 
 ture and social activity, and thereby aided, in no insignificant manner, in 
 the civilization of England, France, and Germany. These things, duly 
 considered, lead to the conclusion that human life, in its diversities, is 
 dependent upon and determined by primary conditipns in all countries 
 and climates essentially the same. 
 
THE OLD EUROPEANS, 177 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 DIGRESSION ON THE HISTOEt'aND PHILOSOPHICAL INELUENCES OF 
 
 KOME. 
 
 PBEPAEATION FOE EESUMING THE EXAMINATIOK OP THE rUTELLECTUAL PROGEESS OF 
 
 EUROPE. 
 
 Religious Ideas of the primitive Europeans. — The Form ofthdr Variations is determined by the 
 Influence of Rome. — Necessity of Roman History in these Investigations. 
 
 Rise and Development of Roman Power ^ its saocessive Phases^ territorial Acquisitums. — 'Becomes 
 Supreme in the Mediterranean. — Consequent Demoralization of Italy. — Irresistible Concentra- 
 tion of Power. — Development of Imperialism. — Eventual Extinction of the true Roman Race. 
 
 Effect on the intellecnial, religious, and social Condition of the Mediterranean Countries. — Pro- 
 duces homogeneous Thought. — Imperialism prepares the Way for Monotheism. — Momentous 
 Transition of the Roman World in its religious Ideas. 
 
 Opinions of the Roman Philosophers. — Coalescence of the new and old Ideas. — Seizure of Power 
 by the Illiterate, and consequent Debasement of Christianity in Rome. 
 
 Feom the exposition given in the preceding pages of the intellectual 
 progress' of Grreece, we now turn, agreeably to the plan laid Transition from 
 down, to an examination of that of all Europe. The move- '^'^""^ '° ^°^°- 
 ment in that single nation is typical of the movement of the entire con- 
 tinent. 
 
 The first European intellectual age — that of Credulity — ^has already, 
 in part, been considered in Chapter II., more especially so far as Greece, 
 was concerned. I propose now, after some necessary remarks in conclu- 
 sion of that topic, to enter on the description of the second European age 
 European age — that of Inquiry. of inquiry. 
 
 For these remarks, what has already been said of Greece prepares the 
 way. Mediterranean Europe was philosophically and socially in ad- 
 vance of the central and northern countries. The wave of civilization 
 passed from the south to the north; in truth, it has hardly yet reached 
 its extreme limit. The adventurous emigrants who in remote times 
 had come from Asia left to the successive generations of their descend- 
 ants a legacy of hardship. In the struggle for life, all memory of an 
 Oriental parentage was lost ; knowledge died away ; religious ideas be- 
 came debased ; and the diverse populations sank into the same intellect- 
 ual condition that they would have presented had they been proper au- 
 tochthons of the soil. 
 
 The religion of the barbarian Europeans was in many respects hke 
 that of the American Indians. They recognized a Great KeUgionofthe 
 Spirit— ^omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. In the earliest oi* Europeans. 
 
 M 
 
178 THEIE PRIESTHOOD AND WOKSHIP. 
 
 times they made no representation of him under the human form, nor 
 had they temples ; but they propitiated him by sacrifices, offering ani- 
 mals, as the horse, and even men, upon rude altars. Though it was be- 
 lieved that this great spirit might sometimes be heard in the sounds of 
 the forests at night, yet, for the most part, he was too far removed from 
 human supplication, and hence arose, from the mere sorcerous ideas of 
 a terrified fancy, as has been the case in so many other countries, star 
 worship — the second stage of comparative theology. The gloom and 
 shade of dense forests, a solitude that offers an air of sanctity, and seems 
 a fitting resort for mysterious spirits, suggested the establishment of 
 sacred groves and holy trees. Throughout Europe there was a confused 
 idea that the soul exists after the death of the body ; as to its particular 
 state there was a diversity of belief. As among other people also, the 
 offices of religion were not only directed to the present benefit of indi- 
 viduals, but also to the discovery of future events by various processes 
 ,of divination and augury practiced among the priests.i^ 
 
 Although the priests had thus charge of the religious rites, they do 
 Their priest- ^^^ sccm to have been organized in such a manner as to be 
 hood, g^ijjg iq ^q^ ^jij^ unanimity, or to pursue a steady system of 
 
 policy. A class of female religious officials — prophetesses — -joined in 
 the ceremonials. These holy women, who were held in very great es- 
 teem, prepared the way for the reception of Mariolatry. In the stead 
 of temples, rock-altars, cromlechs, and other rustic structures were used 
 among the Celtic nations . by the Druids, who were at the same time 
 priests, magicians, and medicine-men. Their religious doctrines, which 
 recall in many particulars those of the Eig-Veda, were perpetuated from 
 generation to generation by the aid of songs. 
 
 The essential features of this system were its purely local form and its 
 want of a well-organized hierarchy. Even the Celts offer no exception, 
 though they had a subordination from the arch-Druid downward. 
 This was the reason of the weakness of the old faith, and eventually the 
 cause of its fall. When the German nations migrated to the south in 
 and objects of t^^i^ Warlike expeditions, they left behind them their conse- 
 adoration. cratcd grovcs. and sacred oaks, hallowed by immemorial ages. 
 These objects the devotee could not carry with him, and no equivalent 
 substitutes could be obtained for them. In the civilized countries to 
 which they came they met with a very different state of things ; a priest- 
 hood thoroughly organized and modeled according to the ancient Eo- 
 man political system; its objects of reverence tied to no particular local- 
 ity ; its institutions capable of universal action ; its sacred writings easy 
 of transportation any where ; its emblems movable to all countries— the 
 cross on the standards of its armies, the crucifix on the bosom of its 
 saints. In the midst of the noble architecture of Italy and the splendid 
 remains of those Eomans who had once given laws to the world, in the 
 
EOMAN HISTORY. 179 
 
 midst of a worship distinguished- by the magnificence of its ^„"™™,J^°y 
 ceremonial and the solemnity of its mysteries, they found a upon them. 
 people whose faith taught them to regard the present life as offering 
 only a transitory occupation, and not for a moment to be weighed against 
 the eternal existence hereafter— an existence very different from that of 
 the base transmigration of Druidism or the drunken Paradise of "Woden, 
 where the brave solace themselves with mead from cups made of the 
 skulls of their enemies killed in their days upon earth. 
 
 The European age of inquiry is therefore essentially connected with 
 Eoman affairs. It is distinguished by the religious direction it took. 
 In place of the dogmas of rival philosophical schools, we have importance of 
 now to deal with the tenets of conflictmg sects. The whole ^S^S.^ to." 
 history of those unhappy times displays the organizing and ■fe^^g"*'""- 
 practical spirit characteristic of Eome. Greek democracy, tending to 
 the decomposition of things, led to the Sophists and Skeptics. Epman 
 imperialism, ever constructive, sought to bring unity out of discords, and 
 draw the line between orthodoxy and heresy by the authority of coun-^ 
 cils like that of Nicea. Following the ideas of St. Augustine in his 
 work, "The City of God," I adopt, as the most convenient termination 
 of this age, the sack of Eome by Alaric. This makes it overlap the age 
 of Faith, which had, as its unmistakable beginning, the foundation of 
 Constantinople. 
 
 Greek intellectual life displays all its phases completely, but not so 
 with that of the Eomans, who came to an untimely end. They were men 
 of violence, who disappeared in consequence of their own conquests and 
 crimes. The consumption of them by war bore, however, an insignifi- 
 cant proportion to that fatal diminution, that mortal adulteration occa- 
 sioned by their merging in the vast mass of humanity with which they 
 came in contact. 
 
 I approach the consideration of Eoman affairs, which is thus the next 
 portion of my task, with no little diffidence. It is hard to rise to a 
 point of view sufficiently elevated and clear, where the extent of domin- 
 ion is so great geographically, and the reasons of policy are obscured by 
 the dimness and clouds of so many centuries. Living in a Great difficulty 
 social state the origin of which is in the events now to be <'f'"^^''t'"s"- 
 examined, our mental vision can hardly free itself from the illusions of 
 historical perspective, or bring things into their just proportions and po- 
 sition. Of a thousand acts, all of surpassing interest and importance, 
 how shall we identify the master ones ? how shall we discern with cor- 
 rectness the true relation of the parts of this wonderful phenomenon of 
 empire, the vanishing events of which glide like dissolving views into 
 each other ? "Warned by the example of those who have permitted the 
 shadows of their own imagination to fall upon the scene, and- have mis- 
 taken them for a part thereof, I shall endeavor to apply the test of com- 
 
180 • THE LEGENDARY TIMES. 
 
 mon sense to tlie facts of whicli it will be necessary to treat ; and, believ- 
 ing that naan bas ever been the same in bis mode of tbought and mo- 
 tives of action, I shall judge of past occurrences in the same way as of 
 those of our own times. 
 
 In its entire form the Eoman power consists of two theocracies, with 
 Triple form of ^ military domination intercalated. The first of these theoc- 
 Eoman power, jacies Corresponds to the fabulous period of the kings ; the 
 military domination to the time of the republic and earlier C^ars; the 
 second theocracy to that of the Christian emperors and the popes. 
 
 The first theocracy is so enveloped in legends and fictions that it is 
 impossible to give a, satisfactory account of it. The biographies of the 
 kings offer such undeniable evidence of being mere romances, that, since 
 the time of Mebuhr, they have been received by historians in that light. 
 The first theoora- But during the reigus of the pagan emperors it was not 
 times. safe in Eome to insinuate publicly any disbelief in such 
 
 honored legends" as those of the wolf that suckled the foundlings; the 
 ascent of Eomulus into heaven ; the nymph Egeria ; the duel of the 
 Horatii and Curiatii ; the leaping of Curtius into the gulf on his horse ; 
 the cutting of a flint with a razor by Tarquin ; the Sibyl and her books. 
 The modem historian has, therefore, only very little reliable material. 
 He may admit that the Eomans and Sabines coalesced ; that they con- 
 quered the Albans and Latins ; that thousands of the latter were trans- 
 planted to Mount Aventine and made plebeians, these movements being 
 Early Eoman tbc Origin of the castes which long afflicted Eome, the van- 
 history. quishcd people constituting a subordinate class ; that at first the 
 chief occupation was agriculture, the nature of which is not only to ac- 
 custom men to the gradations of rank, such as the proprietor of the land, 
 the overseer, the laborer, but also to the cultivation of religious senti- 
 ment, and even the cherishing of superstition ; that, besides the more 
 honorable occupations in which the rising state was engaged, she had, 
 from the beginning, indulged in aggressive war, and was therefore per- 
 petually liable to reprisal — one of her first acts was the founding of the 
 town of Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, on account of piracy ; that, 
 through some conspiracy in the army, indicated in the legend of Lucre- 
 tia, since armies have often been known to do such things, the kings 
 were expelled, and a military domination, fancifully called a republic, 
 but consisting of a league of some powerful families, arose. 
 
 Throughout the regal times, and far into the republican, the chief do- 
 mestic incidents turn on the strife of the upper caste or patricians with 
 the lower or plebeians, manifesting itself in the latter asserting their 
 right to a share in the lands conquered by their valor ; by the extortion 
 of the Valerian law ; by the admission of the Latins and Hernicans to 
 conditions of equality; by the transference of the election of tribunes 
 from the centuries to the tribes; by the repeal of the law prohibiting the 
 
GROWTH OF ROME. 181 
 
 marriage of plebeians with patricians, and by the eventual concession to 
 the former of the offices of consul, dictator, censor, and praetor. 
 
 In these domestic disputes we see the origin of the Eoman necessity 
 for war. The high caste is steadily diminishing in number. The domestic 
 the low caste as steadily increasing. In imperious pride, the foreign war. 
 patrician fills his private jail with debtors and delinquents ; he usurps 
 the lands that have been conquered. Insurrection is the inevitable con- 
 sequence, foreign war the only relief. As the circle of operations ex- 
 tends, both parties see their interest in a cordial coalescence on equal 
 terms, and jointly tyrannize exteriorly. 
 
 The geographical dominion of Eome was extended at first with infi- 
 nite difficulty. Up to the time of the capture of the city by the Gauls 
 a doubtful existence was maintained in perpetual struggles with the ad- 
 jacent towns and chieftains. There is reason to believe that in the very 
 infancy of the republic, in the contest that ensued upon the expulsion 
 of the kings, the city was taken by Porsenna. The direction in which 
 her influence first spread was toward the south of the pen- Gradual spread of 
 
 „ , T IT Koman influence 
 
 insula. Tarentum, one of the southern states, brought over to tie south. 
 to its assistance Pyrrhus the Epirot. He did little in the way of assist- 
 ing his allies — he only saw Eome from the Acropolis of Praeneste ; but 
 from him the Eomans learned the art of fortifying camps, and caught 
 the idea of invading Sicily. Here the rising republic came in contact 
 with the Carthaginians, and in the conflict that ensued discovered the 
 military value of Spain and Gaul, from which the Carthaginians drew 
 an immense supply of mercenaries and munitions of war. The advance 
 to greatness which Eome now made was prodigious. She saw that ev- 
 ery thing turned on the possession of the sea, and with admira- jjome tniids 
 ble energy built a navy. In this her expectations were more " '"''^' 
 than realized. The assertion is quite true that she spent more time in 
 acquiring a little earth in Italy than was necessary for subduing the 
 world after she had once got possession of the Mediterranean. From 
 the experience of Agathocles she learned that the true method of con- 
 trolling Carthage was by invading Africa. The principles in- ^nd invades 
 volved in the contest, and the position of Eome at its close, are ^*^'^' 
 shown by the terms of the treaty of the first Punic War — that Carthage 
 should evacuate every island in the Mediterranean, and pay a Eesnits of tiie 
 war-fine of three millions of dollars. In her devotion to the war. 
 acquisition of wealth Carthage had become very rich ; she had reached 
 a high state of cultivation of art ; yet her prosperity, or rather the mode 
 by which she had attained it, had greatly weakened her, as also had the 
 pohtical anomaly under which she was living, for it is an anomaly that 
 an Asiatic people should place itself under democratic forms. Her con- 
 dition in this respect was evidently the consequence of her original sub- 
 ordinate position as a Tyrian trading station, her rich men having for 
 
182 THE PUNIC WAES. 
 
 long been habituated to look to the mother city for distinction. As in 
 other commercial states, her citizens became soldiers with reluctance, 
 and hence she had often to rely on mercenary troops. From her the 
 Eomans received lessons of the utmost importance. She confirmed 
 them in the estimate they had formed of the value of naval power; 
 taught them how to build ships properly and handle them ; how to 
 make military roads. The tribes of Northern Italy were hardly in- 
 cluded in the circle of Eoman dominion when a fleet was built in 
 the Adriatic, and, under the pretense of putting 'down piracy, the sea- 
 power of the Illyrians was extinguished. From time immemorial 
 the Mediterranean had been infested with pirates ; man-stealing had 
 been a profitable occupation, great gains being realized by ransoms of 
 the captives, or by selling them at Delos or other slave-markets. At 
 this time it was clear that the final mastery of the Mediterranean turned 
 on the possession of Spain, the great silver-producing country. The 
 rivalry for Spain occasioned the second Punic War. It is needless to 
 Eesuitsofthesec- repeat the well-known story of Hannibal, how he brought 
 ond Punic War. jjoj^g ^q ^-^q brink of Tuin. The relations she maintained 
 with surrounding communities had been such that she could not trust 
 to them. Her enemy found allies in many of the Greek towns in the 
 south of Italy. It is enough for us to look at the result of that conflict 
 in the treaty that closed it. Carthage had*to give up all her ships of 
 war except ten triremes, to bind herself to enter into no war without 
 the consent of the Eoman people, and to pay a war-fine often millioiis 
 of dollars. Eome now entered on the great scale, on the policy of disor- 
 ganizing states for the purpose of weakening them. Under pretext of 
 an invitation from the Athenians to protect them from the King of 
 Eome invades Maccdou, the ambitious republic secured a footing in Greece, 
 Greece, ^]^g principle developed in the invasion of Africa of making 
 war maintain war being again resorted to. There may have been truth 
 in the Eoman accusation that the intrigues of Hannibal with Antiochus, 
 king of Syria, occasioned the conflict between them and that monarcli. 
 Its issue was a prodigious event in the material aggrandizement of 
 Rome — it was the cession of all his possessions in Europe and those of 
 and compels the Asia north of Mouut Taurus, with a war-fine of fifteen mil- 
 Euro™ernprov-° Hous of dollars. Already were seen the effects of the wealth 
 'S. ° ° '° that was pouring into Italy in the embezzlement of the pub- 
 lic money by the Scipios. The resistance of Perses, king of Macedon, 
 EevoitofPeraes. could uot rcstorc independence to Greece; it ended in the 
 annexation of that country, Epirus, and Illyricum. The results of this 
 war were to the last degree pernicious to the viptors and the vanquish- 
 ed ; the moral greatness of the former is truly affirmed to have disap- 
 peared, and the social ruin of the latter was so complete that for long 
 marriage was replaced by concubinage. The policy and practices of 
 
THE REPUBLIC TBANSFORMED INTO THE EMPIRE. 183 
 
 Eome now literally became infernal ; she forced a quarrel upon her old 
 antagonist Carthage, and the third Punic War resulted in the utter de- 
 struction of that city. Simultaneously her oppressions in Dreadfni aociai ef- 
 Greec% provoked revolt, which was ended by the sack and fe-^teonEome. 
 burning of Corinth, Thebes, Chalcis, and the transference of the plun- 
 dered statues, paintings, and works of art to Italy. There was nothing 
 now in the way of the conquest of Spain except the valor of its inhab- 
 itants. After the assassination of Tiriatus, procured by the Consul 
 Csepio, and the horrible siege of Numantia, that country ^^^^''^"^J™^ 
 was annexed as a province. Next we see the gigantic re- spain. 
 public extending itself over the richest parts of Asia Minor, through the 
 insane bequest of Attains, king of Pergamus. The wealth of Africa, 
 Spain, Greece, and Asia was now concentrating in Italy, and the cap- 
 ital was becoming absolutely demoralized. In vain the Gracchi at- 
 tempted to apply a remedy. The Roman aristocracy was intoxicated, 
 insatiate, irresistible. The middle class was gone^ there was seizure of 
 nothing but profligate nobles and a diabolical populace. In -^'^mi"" 
 the midst of inconceivable corruption, the Jugurthine War served only 
 to postpone for a moment an explosion which was inevitable. The Ser- 
 vile rebellion in Sicily broke out ; it was closed by the extermination 
 of a million of those unhappy wretches : vast numbers of ^he servue and 
 them were exposed, for the popular amusement, to the wild ®°"^' ^''"'• 
 beasts in the arena. It was followed closely by the revolt of the Italian 
 allies, known as the Social War — this ending, after the destruction of half 
 a million of men, with a better result, in the extortion of the freedom of 
 the city by several of the revolting states. Doubtless it was the in- 
 trigues connected with these transactions that brought the Cimbri and 
 Teutons into Italy, and furnished an opening for the rivalries of Marius 
 and Sylla, who, in turn, filled Eome with slaughter. The same spirit 
 broke out under the gladiator Spartacus : it was only checked for a time 
 by. resorting to the most awful atrocities, such as the crucifixion of pris- 
 oners, to appear under another form in the conspiracy of Catiline. And 
 now it was plain that the contest for supreme power lay between a few 
 leading men. It found an issue in the first triumvirate — a Gradual converg- 
 union of Pompey, Crassus, and Csesar, who usurped the ™'='=°fp™er. 
 whole power of the senate and people, and bound themselves by oath to 
 permit nothing to be done without their unanimous consent. Affairs 
 then passed through their iaevitable course. The death of Crassus and 
 the battle of Pharsalia left Csesar the master of the world, caeaar the master 
 At this moment nothing could have prevented the inevita- "f *«»"'"•'*• 
 ble result The dagger of Brutus merely removed a man, but it left the 
 fact The battle of Actium reaffirmed the destiny of Eome, and the 
 death of the republic was illustrated by the annexation of Egypt The 
 circle of conquest around the Mediterranean was complete ; the function 
 of the republic was discharged : it did not pass away prematurely. 
 
18^ THE ROMAN SLAVE SYSTEM. 
 
 From this statement of tlie geographical career of Eome, we may turn 
 to reflect on the political principles which inspired her. From a remote 
 Ancient necessity antiquity wars had been engaged in for the purpose of ob- 
 fcr siave-waiB. taiuiug a supply of labor, the conqueror compelling those 
 whom he had spared to cultivate his fields and serve him as slaves. 
 Under a system of transitory military domination, it was more expe- 
 dient to exhaust a people at once by the most unsparing, plunder than 
 to be content with a tribute periodically paid, but necessarily uncertain 
 in the vicissitudes of years. These elementary principles of the policy 
 of antiquity were included by the Eomans in their system with modifi- 
 cations and improvements. 
 
 The republic, during ite whole career, illustrates the observation that 
 the system on which it was founded included no conception of the act- 
 ual relations of man. It dealt with him as a thing,~not as a being en- 
 dowed with inalienable rights. Eecognizing power as its only measure 
 of value, it could never accept the principle of the equality of all men 
 in the eye of the law. The subjugation of Sicily, Africa, Greece, was 
 Depopulation of ouickly foUowcd by the depopulation of those countries, as 
 
 countries Sifter j. •/ 4/ x x 1 
 
 Eoman conquest. Livy, Plutarch, Strabo, and Poly bins testify. Can there be 
 a more fearful instance than the conduct of Paulus ^milius, who, at 
 the conquest of Epirus, murdered or carried into slavery 150,000 per' 
 sons ? At the taking of Thebes whole families were thus disposed of, 
 and these not of the lower, but of the respectable kind, of whom it .has 
 been significantly said that they were transported into Italy to be melt- 
 ed down. In- Italy itself the consumption of life was so great that there 
 was no possibility of the slaves by birth meeting the requirement, and 
 the supply of others by war became necessary. To these slaves the 
 Atrocity of the laws Were atrociously unjust. Tacitus has recorded that on 
 laws. ' the occasion of the murder of Pedanius, after a solemn debate 
 in the senate, the particulars of which, he furnishes, the ancient laws 
 were enforced, and four hundred slaves of the deceased were put to 
 death, when it was obvious to every one that scarcely any of them had 
 known of the' crime. The horrible maxim that not only the slaves 
 within a house in which a master was murdered, but even those within 
 a circle supposed to be measured by the reach of his voice, should be put 
 to death, shows us the small value of the life of these unfortunates, and 
 the facility with which they could be replaced. Their vast numbers 
 necessarily made every citizen a soldier; the culture of the land and the 
 manufacturing processes, the pursuits of labor and industry, were as- 
 sooiai effects sigufid to them with contempt. The relation of the slave in 
 siavl-syS. such a social system is significantly shown by the fact that the 
 courts estimated the amount of any injury he had received by the dam- 
 age his master had thereby sustained. To such a degree had this sys- 
 tem been developed, that slave labor was actually cheaper than animal 
 
THE EOMAN WAE SYSTEM. 185 
 
 labor, and, as a consequence, much of the work that we perform by cat- 
 tle was then done by men. The class of independent hirelings, which 
 should have constituted the chief strength of the country, disappeared, 
 labor itself becoming so ignoble that the poor citizen could not be an 
 artisan, but must remain a pauper — a sturdy beggar, expecting from the 
 state bread and amusements. The personal uncleanness and shiftless 
 condition of these lower classes were the true causes of the prevalence 
 of leprosy and other loathsome diseases. Attempts at sanitary improve- 
 ment were repeatedly made, but they so imperfectly answered the pur- 
 pose that epidemics, occurring from time to time, produced a dreadful 
 mortality. Even under the Caesars, after all that had been done, there 
 was no essential amendment. The assertion is true that the Old "World 
 never recovered from the great plague in the time of M.Antoninus, 
 brought by the army from the Parthian "War. In the reign of Titus ten 
 thousand persons died in one day in Rome. 
 
 The slave system bred that thorough contempt for trade which ani- 
 mated the Eomans. They never grudged even the Carthaginians a 
 market. It threw them into the occupation of the demagogue, making 
 them spend their lives, when not engaged in war, in the intrigues of po- 
 litical factions, the turbulence of public elections, the excitement of 
 lawsuits. They were the first to discover that the privilege of inter- 
 preting laws is nearly equal to that of making them ; and to this has 
 been rightly attributed their turn for jurisprudence, and the prosperity, 
 of advocates among them. The disappearance of the hireling class was 
 the immediate cause of the downfall of the republic and the institution 
 of the empire, for the aristocracy were left without any antagonist, and, 
 therefore, without any restraint. They broke up into factions, involv- 
 ing the country in civil war by their struggles with each other for 
 power. 
 
 The political maxims of the republic, for the most part, rejected the 
 ancient system of devastating a vanquished state by an instant, unspar- 
 ing, and crushing plunder, which may answer very well where the ten- 
 ure is expected to be brief, but does not accord with the form- Thewarsys- 
 ula subdue, retain, advance. Yet depopulation was the nee- ''"°- 
 essary incident. Italy, Sicily, Asia Minor, Gaul, Germany, were full of 
 people, but they greatly diminished under Eoman occupation. Her 
 maxims were capable of being realized with facility through her mili- 
 tary organization, particularly that of the legion. In some nations 
 colonies are founded for commercial purposes, in others for getting rid 
 of an excess of population : the Eoman colony implies the idea of a gar- 
 rison and an active military intent. Each legion was, in fact, so con- 
 structed as to be a small but complete army. In' whatever country it 
 might be encamped, it was in quick communication with the head-quar- 
 ters at Rome ; and this not metaphorically, but materially, as was shown 
 
186 ROMAN COINAGE. 
 
 by the building of the necessary military roads. The idea of permanent 
 occupation, which was thus implied, did not admit the expediency of 
 devastating a country, but, on the contrary, led to the encouragement of 
 provincial prosperity, because the gfeater the riches the greater the ca- 
 pacity for taxation. Such principles were in harmony with the condi- 
 tions of solidity and security of the Eoman power, which proverbially 
 had not risen in a single day — was not the creation of a -single fortunate 
 soldier, but represented the settled policy of many centuries. In the act 
 of conquest Eome was inhuman ; she tried to strike a blow that there 
 would never be any occasion to repeat ; no one was spared who by pos- 
 sibility might inconvenience her; but, the catastrophe once over, as a 
 general thing, the vanquished had no Occasion to complain of her rule. 
 Of course, in the shadow of public justice, private wrong and oppression 
 were often concealed. Her officers accumulated enormous fortunes, 
 which have never since been equaled in Europe, through injustice and 
 extortion. Sometimes the like occurred in times of public violence; 
 thus Brutus made Asia Minor pay five years' tribute at onCe, and short- 
 ly after Antony compelled it to do it again. The extent to which rec- 
 ognized and legitimate exactions were carried is shown by the fact that 
 upon the institution of the empire the annual revenues were about two 
 hundred millions of dollars. , 
 
 The comparative value of metals in Eome is a significant poUtical in- 
 .dication. Bullion rapidly increased during the Carthaginian wars. At 
 Value of gold ^^^ Opening o^ the first Punic War silver and copper were as 
 andsiiTcr. 1 to 960 ; at the^econd Punic War the ratio had fallen, and 
 was 1 to 160; soon after there was another fall, and it became 1 to 128. 
 The republic debased the coinage by reducing its weight, the empire by 
 alloying it. 
 
 The science, art, and political condition of nations are often illustrated 
 by their coinage. An interesting view of the progress of Europe might 
 be obtained from a philosophical' study of its numismiatic remains. The 
 simplicity of the earlier ages is indicated by the pure silver, such as that 
 Connection between coincd at Crotona B.C. 600 — the reign of Philip of 
 fgea™poiifeu"" Macedon by the native unalloyed gold. A gradual de- 
 decUne. cliue in Eoman prosperity is more than shadowed forth by 
 
 the gradual deterioration of its money; for, as evil times befell the state, 
 the emperors were conipelled to utter a false coinage. Thus, under Ves- 
 pasian, A.D. 69, the silver money contained about one fourth of its 
 weight of copper; under Antoninus Pius, A.D. 138, more than one 
 third ; under Commodus, A.D. 180, nearly one half; under Gordian, 
 A.D. 236, there was added to the silver more than twice its weight of 
 copper. Nay, under Grallienus, a coinage was issued of copper, tin, and 
 silver, in which the two first metals exceed the last by more than two 
 hundred times its -vfeight.- It shows to what a hopeless condition the 
 state had come. 
 
THE SOCIAL DEPEAYITY. 187 
 
 The Eoman demagogues, as is the instinct of tTieir kind, made politi' 
 cal capital by attacking industrial capital. They lowered the rate of in 
 terest, prohibited interest, and often attempted the abolition of debts. 
 
 The concentration of power and increase of immorality proceeded 
 with an equal step. In its earlier ages, the Eoman dominion was exer- 
 cised by a few thousand persons ; then it passed into the hands of some 
 score families; then it was sustained for a moment by indi- indescribable ae- 
 
 . . ^ ^ "^ - pravity in the 
 
 viduals, and at last was seized by one man, who became the Koman decline, 
 master of 120 millions. As the process went on, the virtues which 
 had adorned the earlier times disappeared, and in the end were replaced 
 by crimes such as the world had never before witnessed and never will 
 again. An evil day is approaching when it becomes recognized in a 
 community that the only standard of social distinction is wealth. That 
 day was soon followed in Eome by its unavoidable consequence, a gov- 
 ernment founded upon two domestic elements, corruption and terrorism. 
 No language can describe the state of that capital after the civil wars. 
 The accumulation of power and wealth gave rise to a universal deprav- 
 ity. Law ceased to be of any value. A suitor must deposit a bribe be- 
 fore a trial could be had. The social fabric was a festering mass of rot- 
 tenness. The people had become a populace ; the aristocracy was de- 
 moniac; the city was a hell. No crime that the annals of human 
 wickedness can show was left unperpetrated : remorseless murders ; the 
 betrayal of parents, husbands, wives, friends ; poisoning reduced to a. 
 system; adultery degenerating into incests, and crimes that Dissoluteness of 
 can not be written. Women of the higher class were so avoitoncrof""* 
 lascivious, depraved, and dangerous, that men could not be """^^ss- 
 compelled to contract matrimony with them ; marriage was displaced by 
 concubinage ; even virgins were guilty of inconceivable immodesties ; 
 great officers of state and ladies of the court, of promiscuous baths and 
 naked exhibitions. In the time of Csesar it had become necessary for 
 the government to interfere, and actually put a premium on marriage. 
 He gave rewards to women who had many children ; prohibited those 
 who were under forty-five years of age, and who had no children, from 
 wearing jewels and riding in litters, hoping by such social disabilities 
 to correct the evil. It went on from bad to worse, so that Augustus, in 
 view of the general avoidance of legal marriage and resort to concubin- 
 age with slaves, was compelled to impose penalties on the unmarried — to 
 enact that they should not inherit by will except from relations. Not 
 that the Eoman \^omen refrained from the gratification of their desires; 
 their depravity impelled them to such wicked practices as can not be 
 named in a modern book. They actually reckoned the years, not by 
 the consuls, but by the men they had lived with. To be childless, and 
 therefore without the natural restraint of a family, was looked upon as 
 a singular felicity. Plutarch correctly touched the point when he said 
 
188 COMPARATIVE MORALITY OF THE PROVINCES. 
 
 that the Eomans married to be heirs and not to have heirs. Of offenses 
 that do not rise to the dignity of atrocity, but which excite our loathing, 
 such as gluttony and the most debauched luxury, the annals of the times 
 furnish disgusting proofs. It was said, " They eat that they may vomit, 
 and vomit 'that they may eat." At the taking of Perusium, three 
 hundred of the most distinguished citizens were solemnly sacrificed at 
 the altar of Divus Julius by Octavian ! Are these the deeds of civilized 
 men, or the riotings of cannibals drunk with blood ? 
 
 The higher classes on all sides exhibited a total extinction of moral 
 The whole system principle ; the lower were practical atheists. Who can pa- 
 is past cure. j.^gg jtj^q annals of the emperors without being shocked at 
 the manner in which men died, meeting their fate with the obtuse tran- 
 quillity that characterizes the beasts ? A centurion with a private man- 
 date appears, and forthwith the victim opens his veins and dies in a 
 warm bath. At the best, all that was done was to strike at the tyrant. 
 Men despairingly acknowledged that the system itself was utterly past 
 cure. 
 
 That in these statements I do not exaggerate, hear what Tacitus says : 
 " The holy ceremonies of religion were violated; adultery reigning with- 
 out control ; the adjacent islands filled with exiles ; rocks and desert 
 Testimony placcs staiucd with clandestine murders, and Eome itself a the^ 
 of Tacitus. ^|.j,g q£ horrors, where nobility of descent and splendor of for- 
 tune marked men out for destruction ; where the vigor^ of mind that 
 aimed at civil dignities, and the modesty that declined them, were of- 
 fenses without distinction ; where virtue was a crime that led to certain 
 ruin ; where the guilt of informers and the wages of their iniquity were 
 alike detestable ; where the sacerdotal order, the consular dignity, the 
 government of provinces, and even the cabinet of the prince, were seized 
 by that execrable race as their lawful prey ; where nothing was sacred, 
 nothing safe from the hand of rajiacity ; where slaves were suborned, or 
 by their own malevolence excited against their masters ; where freemen 
 betrayed their patrons, and he who had lived without an enemy died by 
 the treachery of a friend." 
 
 But, though these were the consequences of the concentration of pow- 
 er and wealth in the city of Eome, it was otherwise in the expanse of 
 Effects in the the empire. The effect of Eoman domination was the ces- 
 trade. satiou of all the little wars that had heretofore been waged 
 
 between adjacent people. They exchanged independence for peace. 
 Moreover, and this in the end was of the utmost importance to them all, 
 unrestricted commerce ensued, direct trade arising between all parts of 
 the empire. The Mediterranean nations were brought closer to each 
 other, and became common inheritors of such knowledge as was then in 
 the world. Arts, sciences, improved agriculture, spread among them; 
 the most distant countries could boast of noble roads, aqueducts, bridges, 
 
PRODUCTION- OF HOMOGENEOUS THOUGHT. 189 
 
 and great works of engineering. In barbarous places, the legions that 
 were intended as garrisons proved to be foci of civilization. For the 
 provinces, even the wickedness of Eome was not without some good. 
 From one quarter corn had to be brought; from another, clothing- 
 from another, luxuries ; and Italy had to pay for it all irf coin. She 
 had nothing to export in return. By this there was a tendency to equal- 
 ization of wealth in all parts of the empire, and a perpetual movement 
 of money. Nor was the advantage altogether material ; there were con- 
 joined intellectual results of no little value. Superstition and intellectual aa- 
 the amazing credulity of the old times disappeared. In the ™°<=™™'- 
 first Punic War, Africa was looked upon as a land of monsters ; it had 
 serpents large enough to stop armies, and headless men. Sicily had its 
 Cyclops, giants, enchantresses ; golden apples grew in Spain ; the mouth 
 of Hell was on the shores of the Buxine. The marches of the legions 
 and the voyages of merchants made all these phantasms vanish. 
 
 It was the necessary consequence of her military aggrandisement that 
 the ethnical element which really constituted Rome should Dia-appearance of 
 expire. A small nucleus of men had undertaken to con- caTcieSmt 
 quer the Mediterranean world, and had succeeded. In doing this they 
 had diffused themselves over an immense geographical surface, and nec- 
 essarily became lost in the mass with which they mingled. On the 
 other hand, the deterioration of Italy was insured by the slave system, 
 and the ruin of Rome was accomplished before the barbarians touched 
 it. "Whoever inquires the cause of the fall of the Roman empire will 
 find his answer in ascertaining what had become of the Romans. 
 
 The extinction of prodigies and superstitious legends was occasioned 
 by increased travel through the merging of many separate nations into 
 one great empire. Intellectual communication attends material commu- 
 nication. The spread of Roman influence around the borders Roman conquest 
 of the Mediterranean produced a tendency to homogeneous l^eoulftought, 
 thought eminently dangerous to the many forms of faith professed by so 
 many different people. 
 
 After Tarquin was expelled the sacerdotal class became' altogether 
 subordinate to the military, whose whole history shows that they re- 
 garded religion as a mere state institution, without any kind of philo- 
 sophical significance, and chiefly to be valued for the control it furnished 
 over vulgar minds. It presented itself to them in the light of a branch 
 of mdustry, from which profit might be made by those who practiced it. 
 They thought no more of concerning themselves individually about it 
 than in taking an interest in any other branch of lucrative trade. As 
 to any examination of its intellectual basis, they were not sophists, but 
 soldiers, blindly following the prescribed institutions of ^nd revoiutionizea 
 their country with as little question as its military com- «"p<>°swe>»- ■ 
 mands. For these reasons, throughout the time of the republic, and 
 
190 IMPERIALISM PEECEDES MONOTHEISM. 
 
 also under the early emperors, there never was much reluctance to the 
 domestication of any kind of worship in Eome. Indeed, the gods of the 
 conquered countries were established there to the gratification of the 
 national vanity. From this commingling of worship in the city, and 
 intercommunication of ideas in the provinces, the most important events 
 arose. 
 
 For it very soon was apparent that the political unity which had been 
 established over so great a geographical surface was the forerunner of 
 imperiaiiam pre- intcUectual, and therefore religious unity. Polytheism be- 
 
 pares the way . -- . . ^ . ^ - ^ "^ . 
 
 for Monotheism, camc practically mconsistent with the Koman empire, and 
 a tendency arose for the introduction of some form of monotheism. 
 Apart from the operations of Eeason, it is clear that the recognition by 
 so many nations of one emperor must soon be followed by the acknowl- 
 edgment of one Grod. There is a disposition for uniformity among peo- 
 ple who are associated by a common political bond. Moreover, the 
 rivalries of a hundred priesthoods imparted to polytheism an intrinsic 
 weakness ; but monotheism implies centralization, an organized hie- 
 rarchy, and therefore concentration of power. The different interests 
 and collisions of multitudinous forms of religion sapped individual faith; 
 a diffusion of practical atheism, manifested by a total indifference to all 
 ceremonies, ex,cept so far as they were shows, was the result, the whole 
 community falling into an unbelieving and godless state. The form of 
 superstition through which the national mind had passed was essentially 
 founded upon the recognition of an incessant intervention of many di- 
 vinities determining human affairs ; but such a faith became extinct by 
 degrees among the educated. How was it possible that human reason 
 should deal otherwise with all the contradictions and absurdities of a 
 thousand indigenous and imported deities, each asserting his inconsistent 
 pretensions. A god who in his native grove or- temple has been para- 
 mount and unquestioned, sinks into insignificance when he is brought 
 into a crowd of compeers. In this respect there is no difference be- 
 tween gods and men. Great cities are great levelers of both. He who 
 has stood forth in undue proportions in the solitude of the country, sinks 
 out of observation in the solitude of a crowd. 
 
 The most superficial statement of philosophy among the Romans, if 
 philosophy it can be called, shows us how completely religious senti- 
 Koman phi- mcnt was effaced. The presence of skeptical thought is seen in 
 loaophy. ^^g explanations of Terentius Varro, B.C. 110, that the anthro- 
 pomorphic gods are to be received as mere emblems of the forces of 
 matter ; and the general tendency of the times may be gathered from 
 Varro. Lucretiua. the pocm of Lucretius : his recommendations that the 
 mind should be emancipated from the fear of the gods ; his insinuations 
 against the immortality of the soul ; his setting forth Nature as the only 
 God to be worshiped. In Cicero we see how feeble and wavering a 
 
ROMAN PHILOSOPHY — LUCRETIUS — OIOEEO. 191 
 
 guide to life in a period of trouble philosophy had become, and how one 
 who wished, to stand in the attitude of chief thinker of his times was no 
 more than a servile copyist of Grecian predecessors, giving to his works 
 not an air of masculine and independent thought, but aiming at cicero. 
 present effect rather than a solid durability ; for Cicero addresses him- 
 self more to the public than to philosophers, exhibiting herein his pro- 
 fessional tendency as an advocate. Under a thin veil he hides an undis- 
 guised skepticism, and, with the instinct of a placeman, leans rather to 
 the investigation of public concerns than to the profound and abstract 
 topics of philosophy. As is the case with superficial men, he sees no 
 difference between the speculative and the exact, confusing them to- 
 gether. He feels that it is inexpedient to communicate truth publicly, 
 especially that of a religious kind. Doubtless herein we shall agree 
 when we find that he believes God to be nothing more than the soul of 
 the world; discovers many serious objections to the doctrine of Provi- 
 dence ; insinuates that the gods are only poetical creations ; is uncertain 
 whether the soul is immortal, but is clear that. the popular doctrine of 
 punishment in the world to come is only an idle fable. 
 
 It was the attribute of the Eomans to impress upon every thing a 
 practical character. In their philosophy we continually see this dis- 
 played, along with a striking inferiority in original thought. Q,^i^ ge^. 
 Quintus Sextius admonishes us to pursue a virtuous life, and, *™- Seneca, 
 as an aid thereto, enjoins an abstinence from meat. In this opinion 
 many of the Cynical school acquiesced, and some, it is said, even joined 
 the Brahmans. In the troublous times of the first Csesars, men had oc- 
 casion to derive all the support they could from philosophy ; there was 
 no religion to sustain them. Among the Stoics there were some, as 
 Seneca, to whom we can look back with pleasure. Through his writ- 
 ings he exercised a considerable influence on subsequent ages, though, 
 when we attentively read his works, we must attribute this not so much 
 to their intrinsic value as to their happening to coincide with the prev- 
 alent tone of i:eligious thought. He enforces the necessity of a cultiva- 
 tion of good morals, and yet he writes against the religion of his coun- 
 try, its observances, and requirements. Of a far higher grade was Bpic- 
 tetus, at once a slave and a philosopher, though scarcely to Eptetetus. An- 
 be classed as a true Stoic. He considers man as a mere spec- ">™"=- 
 tator of God and his works, and teaches that every one who can no lon- 
 ger bear the miseries of life is, upon just deliberation, and a conscientious 
 belief that the gods will not disapprove, free to commit suicide. His 
 maxim is that all have a part to play, and he has done well who has 
 done his best-^that he must look to conscience as his guide. If Seneca 
 said that time alone is our absolute and only possession, and that noth- 
 ing else belongs to man, Epictetus taught that his thoughts are all that 
 man has any power over, every thing else being beyond his control. 
 
192 MAXIMUS TTEIUS — GALEN.. 
 
 M, Aurelius Antoninus, the emperor, did not hesitate to acknowledge 
 his thankfulness to Epictetus, the slave, in his attempt to guide his life 
 according to the principles of the Stoics. . He recommends every man 
 to preserve his daemon free from sin, and prefers religious devotions to 
 the researches of physics, in this departing to some extent from the 
 original doctrines of the sect; but the evil times on which men had fall- 
 en led them to seek support in religious consolations rather than in 
 Marimua TyriuB. philosophical inquirics. In Maximus Tyrius, A.D. 146, we 
 discover a corresponding sentiment, enveloped, it is true, in an air of 
 Platonism, and countenancing an impression that the worship of images 
 and sanctuaries are unnecessary for those who have a lively remembrance 
 of the view they once enjoyed of the divine, though excellent for the 
 Alexander of vulgar, who havc forgottcu their past. Alexander of Aphro- 
 Aphrodbiaa. jigi^s exMbits the tendency, which was becoming very preva- 
 lent, to combine Plato and Aristotle. He treats upon Providence, both 
 absolute and contingent ; considers its bearings upon religion, and shows 
 a disposition to cultivate the pious feelings of the age. 
 
 Of Galen, the physician, I shall have to speak subsequently. It is 
 Galen, sufficient to remark that he asserts experience to be the only 
 source of knowledge ; lays great stress on the culture of mathematics and 
 logic, observing that he himself should have been a Pyrrhonist had it 
 not been for geometry. In the teleological doctrine of physiology he 
 considers that the foundations of a true theology must be laid. The 
 physicians of the times exerted no little influence on the promotion of 
 such views ; for the most part they embraced the Pantheistic doctrine. 
 As one of them, Sextus'Empiricus may be mentioned ; his works, still 
 remaining, indicate to us the tendency of this school to materiahsm. 
 
 Such was the tone of thought among the cultivated Eomans ; and to 
 this philosophical atheism among them was added an atheism of indif- 
 ference among the vulgar. But, since man is so constituted that he can 
 pwioaophicai athe- not livc for any length of time without a form of worship, 
 ucated. it is evident that there was great danger, whenever events 
 
 should be ripe for the appearance of some monotheistic idea, that it 
 might come in a base aspect. At a much later period than that we are 
 here considering, one of the emperors expressed himself to the effect 
 that it would be necessary to give liberty for the exercise of a sound 
 philosophy among the higher classes, and provide a gorgeous ceremo- 
 nial for the lower ; he saw how difficult it is, by mere statesmanship, to 
 co-ordinate two such requirements, in their very nature contradictory. 
 Though polytheism had lost all intellectual strength, the nations who 
 had so recently parted with it could not be expected to have ceased 
 from all disposition to an animalizatiou of religion and corporealization 
 of God. In a certain sense the emperor was only a more remote and 
 more majestic form of the conquered and vanished kings, but, like them, 
 
POLITICAL BOUNDARIES OF THE NEW OPINIONS. 193 
 
 he was a man. There was danger that the theological system, thus 
 changing with the political, would yield only expanded anthropomor- 
 phic conceptions. 
 
 History perpetually demonstrates that nations can not be permanently 
 modified except by principles or actions conspiring with their existing 
 tendency. Violence perpetrated upon them may pass away, leaving, 
 perhaps, in a few generations, no vestige, of itselfT Even Victory is con- 
 quered by Time. Profound changes alone ensue when principles, to be ef- 
 the operating force is in unison with the temper of the age. darvSthSs'ttag' 
 International peace among so many people once in con- 'pudencies, 
 flict— peace under the auspices of a great overshadowing power ; the 
 unity of sentiment and brotherhood of feeling fast finding its way round 
 the Mediterranean shores; the interests of a vast growing commerce, un- 
 fettered through the absorption of so many little kingdoms into one great 
 republic, were silently bringing things to a condition that political force 
 could be given to any religious dogma founded upon sentiments of mu- 
 tual regard and interest, Nor could it be otherwise than that among 
 the great soldiers of those times one would at last arise whose practi- 
 cal intellect would discover the personal advantages that must accrue 
 from putting himself in relation with the universally prevailing idea. 
 How could he better find adherents from the centre to the remotest 
 corner of the empire? And, even if his own personal intellectual state 
 should disable him from accepting in its fullness the special form in 
 which the idea had become embodied, could there be any doubt, if 
 he received it, and was true to it as a politician, though he might de- 
 cline it as .a man, of the immense power it would yield him in return — 
 a power suflS.cient, if the metropolis should resist, of be otherwise un- 
 suited to his designs, to enable him to found a rival to her in a more 
 congenial place, and leave her to herself, the skeleton of so. much glory 
 and of so much guilt. 
 
 Thus, after the event, we can plainly see that the final blow to Poly- 
 theism was the suppression of the ancient independent nationalities 
 round the Mediterranean Sea ; and that, in like manner. Monotheism 
 was the result of the establishment of an imperial a;overn- The coming Mon- 
 
 , 7» , . ottieiBni must be 
 
 ment m Eome. But the great statesmen of those times, bounded by the 
 
 ., V p . IP limits of Roman 
 
 who were ,at the general pomt oi view, must have foreseen influence, 
 that, in whatever form the expected change came, its limits of definition 
 would inevitably be those of the empire itself, and that wherever the 
 language of Eome was understood the religion of Eome would prevail. 
 In the course of ages, an expansion beyond those limits might ensue 
 wherever the state of things was congenial. On the south, beyond the 
 mere verge of Africa, nothing was to be hoped for — it is the country in 
 which man lives in degradation and is happy. On the east there'were 
 great unsubdued and untouched monarchies, having their own types of 
 
 N 
 
194 CONDUCT OF THE EDUCATED EOMANS. 
 
 civilization, and experiencing no want in a religious respect. But on 
 the north thej-e were nations who, though they were plunged in hideous 
 barbarism, filthy in an equal degree in body and mind, polygamists, 
 idolaters, drunkards out of their enemies' skulls, were yet capable of an 
 illustrious career. For these there was a glorious participation in store. 
 Except the death of a nation, there is no event in human history more 
 profoundly solemn than the passing away of an ancient religion, though 
 religious ideas are transitory, and creeds succeed one another with a 
 periodicity determined by the law of cohtiauous variation of human 
 thought. "The intellectual epoch at .which we have now arrived has for 
 its essential characteristic such a succession of change — the abandon- 
 The new Ideas ment of a timc-honored but obsolete system, the acceptance 
 
 coalesce with „ it- t ■ ,t •■'•■, , •• 
 
 the old. 01 a new and living one ; and, m the incipient stages, opinion 
 
 succeeding opinion in a well-marked way, until at length, after a few 
 centuries of fusion and solution, there crystallized on the remnant of 
 Eoman power, as on a nucleus, a definite form, which, slowly modifying 
 itself -into the Papacy, served the purposes- of Europe for more than a 
 ■ thousand years throughout its age of Faith. 
 
 In this abandonment, the personal conduct of the educated classes 
 very powerfully assisted. They outwardly conformed to the ceremo- 
 nial of the times, reserving their higher doctrines to themselves, as some- 
 thing beyond vulgar comprehension. Considering themselves as an in- 
 
 conduot of the Eo- tellcctual arfstocracy, they stood aloof, and, with an ill-con- 
 man educated men -^ ., j_nj_j_ij_ i^n j 
 
 at this period. cealcd smilc, consented to the transparent lolly around 
 them. It had come to" an evil state when authors like Polybius and 
 Strabo apologized to their compeers for the traditions and legends they 
 ostensibly accepted, on the ground that it is inconvenient and needless 
 to give popular offense, and that those who are children in understand- 
 ing must, like those who are children in age, be kept in order by bug- 
 bears. It had come to an evil state when the awful ceremonial of for- 
 mer times had degenerated into a pageant, played off by an infidel 
 priesthood and unbelieving aristocracy ; when oracles were becoming 
 mute, because they could no longer withstand the sly wit of the initia- 
 ted ; when the miracles of the ancients were regarded as mere lies, and 
 of contemporaries as feats of legerdemain. It had come to an evil pass 
 when even statesmen received it as a maxim that " when the people 
 have advanced in intellectual culture to a certain point, the sacerdotal 
 class must either deceive them or oppress them, if it means to keep its 
 power." 
 
 In Eome, at the time of Augustus, the intellectual classes — ^phUoso- 
 phers and statesmen — had completely emerged from the ancient modes 
 of thought. To them, the national legends, so jealously guarded by 
 Keiigiods conditioa the populacc, had become mere fictions. The miraculous 
 eiaBsea'j'a''Eome, ^sonceptioa of Rhca Sylvia by the god Mars, an event from 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE ILLITEEATE CLASSES. 195 
 
 which their ancestors had deduced with pride the celestial origin of 
 the founder of their city, had dwindled into a myth ; as a source of ac- 
 tual reliance and trust, the intercession of Yenus, that emblem of female 
 loveliness, with the father of the gods in behalf of her human favorites, 
 was abandoned ; the Sibylline books, once believed to contain all that 
 was necessary for the prosperity of the republic, were suspected of an 
 origin more sinister than celestial ; nor were insinuations wanting that 
 from time to time they had been tampered with to suit the expediency 
 of passing interests, or even that the true ones were lost and forgeries 
 put in their stead. The Greek mythology was to them, as it is to us, an 
 object of reverence, not because of any inherent truth, but for the sake 
 of the exquisite embodiments it can yield in poetry, in painting, in 
 marble. The existence of those illustrious men who, on account of 
 their useful lives or excellent example, had, by the pious ages of old, 
 been sanctified or even deified, was denied, or, if admitted, they were 
 regarded as the exaggerations of dark and barbarous times. It was 
 thus with jSJsculapius, Bacchus, and Hercules. And as to the various 
 forms of worship, the multitude of sects into which the pagan nations 
 were broken up offered themselves as a spectacle of imbecile and incon- 
 sistent devotion altogether unworthy of attention, except so far as they 
 might be of use to the interests of the state. 
 
 Such was the position of things among the educated. In one sense 
 they had passed into liberty, in another they were in bondage. Their 
 indisposition to encounter those inflictions with which their Their irresolution. 
 illiterate contemporaries might visit them may seem to us surprising : 
 they acted as if they thought that the public was a wild beast that would 
 bite if awakeiied too abruptly from its dream ; but their pusillanimity, 
 at the most, could only postpone for a little an inevitable day. The ig- 
 norant classes, whom they had so much feared, awoke spontaneously 
 in due season, and saw in the clear light how matters stood. 
 
 Of the Eoman emperors there were some whose intellectual endow- 
 ments were of the highest kind; yet, though it must have been plain 
 to them, as to all who turned their attention to the matter, in what di- 
 rection society was drifting, they let things take their course, and no one 
 lifted a finger to guide. It may be said that the genius of surrenaerofaf- 
 Eome manifested itself rather in physical than in intellectual erate ciasaes, 
 operations ; but in her best days it was never the genius of Home to 
 abandon great events to freedmen, eunuchs, and slaves. By such it was 
 that the ancient gods were politically cast aside, while the government 
 was speciously yielding a simulated obedience to them, and hence it 
 was not at all surprising that, soon after the introduction of Christian-* 
 ity, its pure doctrines were debased by a commingling with ceremonies 
 of the departing creed. It was not to be expected that the popular 
 mind could spontaneously extricate itself from the vicious circle in 
 
196 CON-SEQUENT DEBASEMENT OP EELIGIOUS IDEAS. 
 
 which it was involved. Nothing bnt philosophy was competent to de- , 
 liver it, and philosophy failed of its duty at the critical moment. The 
 classical scholar need scarcely express his surprise that the Ferise Au- 
 ana coneeqaent S'^^ti wcre Continued in the Church as the Festival St. Petri 
 cSSyta ad vincula ; that even to our own times an image of the holy 
 EomB. Yirgin was carried to the river in the same manner as in the 
 
 old times was that of Cybele, and that many pagan rites still continue 
 to be observed in Eome. Had it been in such incidental particulars 
 only that the vestiges of paganism were preserved, the thing would 
 have been 'of little moment ; but, as all who have examined the subject 
 very well know, the evil was far more general and far more profound. 
 When it was announced to the Ephesians that the Council of that place, 
 headed by Cyril, had decreed that the Virgin should be called "the 
 Mother of God," with tears of joy they embraced the knees of their 
 bishop ; it was the old instinct peeping out ; their ancestors would have 
 done the same for Diana. If Trajan, after ten centuries, could have re- 
 visited Eome, he would, without difSciilty, have recognized the drama, 
 though the aictors and scenery had all changed; he would have reflected 
 how great a mistake had been committed in the legislation of his reign, 
 and how much better it is, when the intellectual basis of a reHgion is 
 gone, for a wise government to aljstain from all compulsion in behalf of 
 what has become untenable, and to throw itself into the new movemenl; 
 SQ as to shape the career by assuming the lead. Philosophy is useless 
 when misapplied in support of things which common sense has begun 
 to reject ; she shares in the discredit which is attaching to them. Tha 
 opportunity of rendering herself of service to humanity once lost, agea 
 may elapse before it occurs again. Ignorance and low interests seize 
 the moment, and fasten a burden on man which the struggles of a thou< 
 sand years may not suffice to cast off. ■ Of all the duties of an enlight- 
 ened government, this of allying itself with Philosophy in the critical 
 moment in which society is passing through so serious a metamorphosis, 
 of its opinions as is involved in the casting off of its ancient inyestiture 
 of Faith, and its assumption of a new one, is the most important, for it 
 stands connected with things that outlast all temporal concerns. 
 
BISE OF CHRISTIANITY. 197 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 THE EUROPEAN AGE OF INQUIEY. 
 
 THE PEOGEESSIVE VAEIATION OF OPINIONS CLOSED BY THE MSTIinTION OF COtnSClLS AND 
 
 THE CONCENTRATION OP POWEK IN A PONTIFF. 
 
 RISE, EAELT VABIATIONS, CONTUCTS, AND FINAI, ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Rise of Christianity. — Distingmshed from ecclesiastical Organization. — It is demanded by the 
 deplorable Condition of the Empire. — Its brief Conflict with Paganism. — Character of its 
 first Organization. — Variations of Thought and Rise of Sects: their essential Difference in 
 the East and West. — The three primitive Forms of Christianity : the Judaic Form, its End — 
 the Gnostic Form, its End — the African Form, continues. I 
 
 Spread of Christianity from Syria. — Its Antagonism to Imperialism ; their Conflicts. — Position 
 of Affairs under Dioclesian. — The Policy of Constantine. — Se avails himself of the Christian 
 Party, and through it attains supreme Power. — His personal Relations to it. 
 
 The Trinitarian Controversy. — Story of Arius. — The Council of Nicea. 
 
 The Progress of the Bishop of Rome to Supremacy, — Tlie Roman Church; its primitive subor- 
 dinate Position. — Causes of its increasing Wealth, Influence, and Corruptions. — Stages of its 
 Advancement through tlia^ Pelagian, Nestorian, and Eutychian Disputes. — Rivalry of the Bish- 
 ops of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Rome. 
 
 Necessity of a Pontiff in the West and ecclesiastical Councils in the East. — Nature of those 
 Councils and of pontifical Power, 
 
 The Period closes at the Capture and Saclc of Rome by Alaric, — Defense of that Event by St. 
 Augustine. — Criticism on his Writings. 
 
 Character of the Progress of Thought through this Period. — Destiny of the three great Bishops. 
 
 From llie decay of Polytheism and the decline of philosophy, from 
 the moral and social disorganization of the Eoman empire, I suyectoftue 
 have now to turn to the most important of all events, the "'^'s^- 
 rise of Christianity. I have to show how a variation of opinion pro- 
 ceeded and reached its culmination ; how it was closed by the establish- 
 ment of a criterion of truth, under the form of ecclesiastical councils, 
 and a system developed which supplied the intellectual wants of Europe 
 for nearly a thousand years. 
 
 The reader, to* whom I have thus offered a representation of the state 
 of Eoman affairs, must now prepare to look at the consequences there- 
 of. Together we must trace out the progress of Christianity, intoduction 
 examine the adaptation of its cardinal principles to the wants Christianity. 
 of the empire, and the variations it exhibited — a task supremely diffi- 
 cult, for even sincerity and truth will sometimes offend. For my part, 
 it is my intention to speak with veneration on this great topic, and yet 
 with liberty, for freedom of thought and expression is to me the first of 
 all earthly things. 
 
198 PEOPITIOUS COIirDITION OF THE EOMAK EMPIBE. 
 
 But, that I may not be misunderstood, I here, at the outset, emphatic- 
 Distinction be- S'lty distinguish between Christianity and ecclesiastical or- 
 trrdeodSaslf. ganizations. The former is the gift of God ; the latter are 
 cai organizations. |.j^g product of human exigencies and human invention, 
 and therefore open to criticism, or, if need be, to condemnation. 
 
 From the condition of the Eoman empire may be indicated the prin- 
 ciples of any new system adapted to its amelioratidn. In the reign of 
 Moral state of Augustus, violencc pauscd only because it had finished its 
 
 the world at ° -n . i n -. t i i i • ' i 
 
 this period, work. b aith was dead ; morality had disappeared. Around 
 the shores of the Mediterranean the conquered nations looked at one 
 another — ^partakers of a common misfortune, associates in a common lot. 
 Not one of them had found a god to help her in her day of need. Eu- 
 rope, Asia, and Africa were tranquil, but it was the silence of despair. 
 
 Eome never considered man as an individual, but only as a thing, 
 unpityingtyr- Her Way to political greatness was pursued utterly regardless 
 anny of Eome. gf human Suffering. If advantages accrued to the conquer- 
 ed under her dominion, they arose altogether from incident, and never 
 from her purposed intent. She was no self-conscious, deliberate civil- 
 izer. Conquest and rapine, the uniform aim of her actions, never per- 
 mitted her, even at her, utmost intellectual development, to comprehend 
 the equal rights of all men in the eye of the law. Unpitying in her 
 stern policy, few were the occasions when, for high state reasons, she 
 stayed her uplifted hand. She might, in the wantonness of her power, 
 stoop to mercy ; she never rose to benevolence. 
 
 When Syria was paying one third of its annual produce in taxeS, is it 
 surprising that the Jewish peasant sighed for a deliverer, and eagerly 
 Prepares the iray listened to the traditions of his nation that a temporal 
 ttonofttowiu. Messiah, " a king of the Jews" would soon come? 'When 
 ty of all men. there was announced the equality of all men before God, 
 " who maketh the sun to shine on the good and the evil, and sendeth 
 his rain on the just and the unjust," is it surprising that men looked for 
 equal rights before the law ? Universal equality means universal be- 
 nevolence ; it substitutes for the impersonal and easily-eluded commands 
 of the state the dictates of an ever-present conscience ; it accepts the in- 
 junction, " Do unto others as you would they should do to you." 
 
 In the spread of a doctrine two things'are concerned — its own intrinsic 
 nature, and the condition of him on whom it is intended to act. The 
 spread of Christianity is' not difficult to be understood. Its antagonist, 
 Attitude of Paganism, presented inherent weakness, infidelity, and a cheer- 
 raganism. jggg prospcct ; a system, if that can be called so, which had no 
 ruling idea, no principles, no organization; caring nothing for proselytes; 
 its rival pontiffs devoted to many gods, but forming no political combi- 
 nation; occupying themselves with directing public worship" and fore- 
 telling future events, but not interfering in domestic life; giving itself no 
 
EARLY ORGANIZATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. - 199 
 
 concern for the lowly and unfortunatei ; not recognizing, or, at the best, 
 doubtfully admitting a future life ; limiting the hopes and destiny of man 
 to this ■W9rld ; teaching that temporal prosperity may be selfishly gain- 
 ed at any cost, and looking to suicide as the relief of the brave from 
 misfortune. 
 
 On the other side was Christianity, with its enthusiasm and burning 
 faith ; its rewards in this life, and everlasting happiness or damnation in 
 the next ; the precise doctrines it by degrees gathered of sin, repentance, 
 pardon; the efficacy of the blood of the Son of God; its Attitude of chns- 
 proselyting spirit ; its vivid dogmas of a resurrection fitom '"""'y- 
 the dead, the approaching end of the world, the judgment-day. Above 
 all, in a worldly point of view, the incomparable organization it soon at- 
 tained, and its preaching in season and out of season. To the needy 
 Christian the charities of the faithful werp freely given ; to the desolate, 
 sympathy. In every congregation there were prayers to God that he 
 would listen to the sighing of the prisoner and captive, and have mercy 
 on those who were ready to die. For the slave and his master there 
 was one law and one hope, one baptism, one Savior, one Judge. In 
 times of domestic bereavement the Christian slave doubtless often con- 
 soled his pagan mistress with the suggestion that our present separations 
 are only for a little while, and revealed to her willing ear that there is 
 another world — a land in which we rejoin our dead. How is it possi- 
 ble to arrest the spread of a faith which can make the broken heart leap 
 with joy ? 
 
 At its first organization Christianity embodied itself in a form of com- 
 munism, the merging of the property of the disciples into a common 
 stock, from which the necessary provision for the needy was made. 
 Such a system, carried out rigorously, is, however, only suited ng g^t ^^g^^. 
 to small numbers and a brief period. In its very nature it is i^"*'"''- 
 impracticable on the great scale. Scarcely had it been resorted to be- 
 fore such troubles as that connected with the question of the Hebrew 
 and Greek widows showed that it must be modified. By this relief or 
 maintenance out of the funds of the Church, the spread of the faith 
 among the humbler classes was greatly facilitated. In warm climates, 
 where the necessities of life are small, an apparently insignificant sum 
 will accomplish much in this way. But, as wealth accumulated, besides 
 this, inducement for the poor, there were temptations for the ambitious: 
 luxurious appointments and a splendid maintenance, the ecclesiastical 
 dignitaries becoming more than rivals for those of the state. 
 
 From the modification which the primitive organization thus under- 
 went, we may draw the instructive conclusion that the special forms of 
 embodiment which the Christian principle from time to time has as- 
 sumed, and of which many might be mentioned, were, in re- Gradual eectan- 
 ality, of only secondary importance. The sects of the early '"' ^''■^'■geiices. 
 
200 . ITS THEEB CHIEF PRIMITIVE FORMS. 
 
 ages have so totally died away that we hardly recall the meaning of 
 their names, or determine their essential dogmas. From fasting, pen- 
 ance, and the gift of money, things which are of precise measurement, 
 and therefore well suited to intellectual infancy, there may be perceived 
 an advancing orthodoxy up to the highest metaphysical ideas. Yet it 
 must not be supposed that new observances and doctrines, as they 
 emerged, were the disconnected inventions of ambitious men. If rightly 
 considered, they are, in the aggregate, the product of the uniform pro- 
 gression of human opinions. 
 
 Those authoiJS who have treated of the sects of earlier times will point 
 out to the curious reader how, in the beginning, the Church was agita- 
 Eariy variation ^^^ hy a lingering ^attachment to the Hebrew rites, and with 
 of opinions. difiaculty torc itself away from Judaism, which for the first 
 ten years was paramount in it ; how then, for several centuries, it be- 
 came engrossed with disputes respecting the nature of Christ, and creed 
 after creed arose therefrom; to the Ebionites he was a mere man; to 
 the Docetes, a phantasm ; to the Jewish Gnostic, Cerinthus, possessed of 
 a twofold nature ; how, after the spread of Christianity, in succeeding 
 ages, all over the empire, the intellectual peculiarities of the East and 
 West were visibly impressed upon it — ^the East filled with speculdtive 
 doctrines, of which the most important were those brought forward 
 Eastern tiieoiogy hy the Platouists of Alexandria, for the Platonists, of all 
 '^""^'-'°°'™"5'' philosophical sects, furnished most converts; the West, 
 in accordance with its utilitarian genius, which esteems the practical 
 and disparages the intellectual, singularly aided by propitious oppor- 
 tunity, occupying itself with material aggrandizement and territorial 
 power. The vanishing point of all Christian sectarian ideas of the 
 East was in God, of those of the West in Man. Herein consists the es- 
 westernto sential difference between them. The one was rich in doctrines 
 Humanity, respecting the nature of the Divinity, the other abounded in 
 regulations for the improvement and consolation of Humanity. For 
 long there was a tolerance, and even liberality toward differences of 
 opinion. Until the Council of ISTicea, no one was accounted a heretic if 
 only he professed his belief in the. Apostles' Creed. 
 
 A very astute ecclesiastical historian, referring to the early contamina- 
 Foreign modifl- tlous of Christianity, makes this remark : " A clear and un- 
 tianity. poHutcd fountalu, fed by secret channels with the dew of 
 
 Heaven, when it grows a large river, and takes a long and winding 
 course, receives a tincture from the various soils through which it 
 passes." 
 
 Thus influenced by surrounding circumstances, the primitive modifi- 
 cations of Christianity were three — Judaic Christianity, Gnostic Chris- 
 tianity, African Christianity. 
 
 Of these, the first consisted of contaminations ffom Judaism, from 
 
JUDAIC CHEISTIANITT. 201 
 
 wMcli true Christianity disentangled itself with extreme diffi- judaic ctais- 
 culty, at the cost of dissensions among the apostles them- *'°''"'y- 
 selves. From the purely Hebrew point of view of the early disciples, 
 who surrendered with reluctance their expectation that the Savior was 
 the long-looked-for temporal Messiah, the King of the Jews, under which 
 name he suffered, the faith gradually expanded, including successively 
 proselytes of the Gate, the surrounding Gentiles, and at last the whole 
 world, irrespective of nation, climate, or color. With this truly imperial 
 extension, there came into view the essential doctrines on which it was 
 based. But Judaic Christianity, properly speaking, soon came to an 
 untimely end. It was unable to maintain itself against the powerful 
 apostolic influences in the bosom of the Church, and the violent press- 
 ure exerted by the unbelieving Jews, who exhibited toward it an in- 
 flexible hatred. Moreover, the rapid advance of the new doctrines 
 through Asia Minor and Greece offered a tempting field for enthusiasm. 
 The first preachers in the Eoman empire were Jews ; for the first years 
 circumcision and conformity to the law of Moses were insisted on ; but 
 the first council determined that point, at Jerusalem, probably about 
 A.D. 49, in the negative. The organization of the Church, originally 
 modeled upon that of the Synagogue, was changed. In the beginning 
 the creed and the rites were simple ; it was only necessary to profess be- 
 lief in the Lord Je%us Christ, and baptism marked the admission of the 
 convert into the community of the faithful. James, called the brother 
 of our Lord, as might, from his relationship, be expected, occupied the 
 position of headship in the Church. The names of. the bishops of the 
 Church of Jerusalem, as given by Busebius, succeed to JameSj the broth- 
 er of Christ, in the following qrder : Simeon, Justus, Zaccheus, Tobias, 
 Benjamin, John, Matthew, Philip, Simeon, Justus, Levi, Ephraim, Jo- 
 seph, and Judas. The names are indicative of the nationality. It was 
 the boast of this Church that it was not corrupted with any heresy un- 
 til the last Jewish Wshop, a boast which must be received with some 
 limitation, for very early we find traces of two distinct parties in Jeru- 
 salem — ^those who received the account of the miraculous conception 
 and those who did not. The Ebionites, who were desirous of tracing 
 our Savior's lineage up to David, did so according to the genealogy 
 given in the Gospel of St. Matthew, and therefore they would not ac- 
 cept what was said respecting the miraculous conception, afiirming that 
 it was apocryphal, and in obvious contradiction to the genealogy in 
 which our Savior's line was traced uj) through Joseph, who, it would 
 thus appear, was not his father. They are to be considered as the na- 
 tional or patriotic party. 
 
 Two causes seem to have been concerned in arresting the spread of 
 conversion among the Jews : the first was their disappoint- cauaea of the 
 ment as respects the temporal power of the Messiah ; the sec- fah conversion. 
 
202 GNOSTIC AND PLATONIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ond, the prominence eventually given to the doctrine of the Trinity. 
 Their jealousy of any thing that might. touch the national doctrine of 
 the unity of God became almost a fanaticism. Judaic Christianity may 
 be said to have virtually ended with the destruction of Jerusalem by 
 the Romans ; its last trace, however, was the dispute respecting Easter, 
 which was terminated by the Council of Mcea. The conversion of the 
 Jews had ceased before the reign of Constantine. 
 
 The second forni. Gnostic Christianity, had l-eached its full develop- 
 ment within a century.after the death of Christ ; it maintained an active 
 influence through the first four centuries, and gave birth, during that 
 Gnostic Chris- time, to many different subordinate sects. It consisted essen- 
 tianity. * tially in ingrafting Christianity upon Magianism. It made the 
 Savior an emanated intelligence, derived from the eternal, self-existing 
 mind ; this intelligence, and not the Man- Jesus, was the Christ, who thus, 
 being an impassive phantom, afforded to Gnosticism no idea of an expi- 
 atory sacrifice, none of an atonement. It was arrested by the reappear- 
 ance of pure Magianism in the Persian empire under Ardeschir Bab- 
 hegan ; not, however, without communicating to orthodox Christianity 
 an impression far more profound than is commonly supposed, and of 
 which indelible traces may be perceived in our day. 
 
 The third form, African or Platonic Christianity, arose in Alexandria. 
 Platonic Chris- Here was the focus of those fatal disputes respecting, the 
 tianity. Trinity, a word which does not occur in the Holy Scriptures, 
 
 and which, it appears, had been first introduced by Theophilus, the 
 Bishop of Antioch, the seventh from the apostles. In the. time of Ha- • 
 drian, Christianity had become diffused all over Egypt, and had found 
 among th*e Platonizing philosophers of the metropolis many converts. 
 These men modified the Gnostic idea to suit their own doctrines, assert- 
 ing that the principle from which the universe originated was some- 
 thing emitted from the supreme mind, and capable of being drawn into 
 it again, as they supposed was the case with a raj and the sun. This 
 ray, they afiirmed, was permanently attached to our Savior, and hence 
 he might be considered as God. Thus, therefore, there were in his per- 
 son three parts, a body, a soul, and the logos ; hence he was both God 
 and man. But, as a ray is inferior to the sun, it seemed to follow that 
 the Christ must be inferior to the Father. 
 
 In all this it is evident that there is something transcendental, and the 
 Platonizing Christians, following the habit of the Greek philosophers, 
 considered it as a mystertous doctrine; they spoke of it as "meat for 
 strong men," but the popular current doctrine was "milk for babes." 
 Justin Martyr, A.D. 132, who had been a Platonic philosopher, believed 
 that the divine ray, after it was attached to Christ, was never withdrawn 
 The Logos, from him, or ever separated from its source. He offers two 
 illustrations of his idea^ As speech (logos), going forth from one man, 
 
ANTAGONISM OF CHEISTIANITY AND IMPERIALISM. 203 
 
 enters into another, conveying to him meaning, while the same meaning 
 remains in the person who speaks, thus the logos of the Father con- 
 tinues unimpaired in himself, though imparted to the Christ; or, as 
 from one lamp another may be lighted without any loss of splendor, so 
 the divinity of the Father is transferred to the Son. This last illustra- 
 tion subsequently became very popular, and was adopted into the Ni- 
 cene Creed. " God of God, Light of Light." 
 
 It is obvious that the intention of this reasoning was to preserve in- 
 tact the doctrine of the unity of God, for the great body of Christians 
 were at this time monarchists, the word being used in its theological 
 acceptation. 
 
 Thus the Jewish and Gnostic forms both died out, but the African, 
 Platonic, or Alexandrian was destined to be perpetuated, permanence of ai- 
 The manner in which this occurred can only be under- exancWan ideas. 
 stood by a study of the. political history of the times. To such facts as 
 are needffil for the purpose, I shall therefore with brevity allude. 
 
 From its birthplace in Judea, Christianity advanced to the conquest 
 .of the Eoman world. In its primitive form it received an urgency from 
 the belief that the end of all things was close at hand, and ^^^^^^ ^ christi- 
 that the earth was on the point of being burnt up by fire. ™ty ^o™ sym. 
 From the civil war it had waged in Judea, it emerged to enter on a war 
 of invasion and foreign annexation. In succession, Cyprus, Phrygia, 
 Galatia, and all Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, were penetrated. The 
 persecutions of Nero, incident on the burning of Eome, did not for a 
 moment retard its career ; during his reign it rapidly spread, and in 
 every direction Petrine and Pauline, or Judaizing and Hellenizing 
 churches were springing up. The latter gained the superiority, and 
 the former passed away. The constitution of the churches Modifications of 
 
 T T ii • i- J n 1 ■ 1 • 1 organisation be- 
 
 changed, the congregations gradually losing power, which come necessary. 
 became concentrated in the bishop. By the end of the first century 
 the episcopal form was predominant, and the ecclesiastical organization 
 so imposing as to command the attention of the emperors, who now be- 
 gan to discover the mistake that had hitherto been made in confound- 
 ing the new religion with Judaism. Their dislike to it, soon manifested 
 in measures of repression, was in consequence of the peculiar attitude it 
 assumed. As a body, the Christians not only kept aloof from all the 
 amusements of the times, avoiding theatres and public rejoicings, but in 
 eveiy respect constituted themselves an empire within the empire. Such 
 a state of things was altogether inconsistent with the es- Becomes antagonis- 
 tablished" government, and its certain inconveniences and «■= '» impe™ii8m- 
 evils were not long in making themselves felt. The triumphant march 
 of Christianity was singularly facilitated by free intercommunication 
 over the Mediterranean, in consequence of that sea being in the hands 
 of one sovereign power. The Jewish and Greek merchants aflforded it a 
 
204 EAELY PERSECUTIONS. 
 
 medium ; their trading towns w.ere its posts. But it is not to be sup. 
 posed that its spread was without resistance; for at least the first century 
 and a half the small farmers and land laborers entertained a hatred to it, 
 looking upon it as a peculiarity of the trading communities, whom they 
 ever despised. They persuaded themselves that the earthquakes, in- 
 persecution con- uudatious, and pestilcnces were attributable to it. To these 
 soiidateait. incitements' was added a. desire to seize the property of the 
 faithful confiscated by the law. Of this the early Christians unceasingly 
 and bitterly complained. But the rack, the fire, wild beasts were un- 
 availingly applied. Out of the very persecutions themselves advantages 
 arose. Injustice and barbarity bound the pious but feeble communitia 
 together, and repressed internal dissent. 
 
 In several instances there can be no doubt, however, that persecution 
 Defiant air of the ^^ brought ou by the defiant air the churches assumed as 
 young churchee. ^j^gy gathered strength. To understand this, we have only 
 to peruse such documents as the address of TertuUian to Scapula, Full 
 of intolerant spirit, it accuses the national religion of being the cause of 
 all the public calamities, the floods, the fires, the eclipses ; it denounces 
 the vengeance of God on the national idolatry. As was the opinion of 
 the Christians at that time, it acknowledges the reality of the pagan 
 gods, whom it stigmatizes as demons, and proclaims its determination to 
 expel them. It warns its opponents that they may be stricken blind, 
 devoured by worms, or visited with other awful calamities. Such a 
 sentiment of scorn and hatred, gathering force enough to make itself po- 
 Opposition of the litically felt, was certain to provoke persecution. That of 
 emperors. Decius, A.D. 250, was chiefly aimed against the clergy, not 
 
 even the bishops of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Eome escaping. Eigtt 
 years after occurred that in which Sextus, the Bishop of Eome, and Cyp- 
 rian of Carthage perished. 
 
 Under Dioclesian it had become apparent that the self-governed Ohiis- 
 Position of things ^^'^ Corporations every where arising were altogether in- 
 nnder Dioclesian. compatible with the imperial system. If tolerated muoli 
 longer, they would undoubtedly gain such strength as to become polit 
 ically quite formidable. There was not a town, hardly a village in the 
 empire — nay, what was indeed far more serious, there was not a legion in 
 which these organizations did not exist. The uncompromising and in- 
 exorable spirit animating them brought on necessarily a triple alliance 
 of the statesmen, the philosophers, and the polytheists. These three 
 parties, composing or postponing their mutual disputes, cordially united 
 to put down the common enemy before it should be too late. It so fell 
 out that the conflict first broke out in the army. When the engine of 
 power is affected, it behooves a prince to take heed. The Christian sol- 
 diers in some of the legions refused to join in the time-honored solemni- 
 ties for propitiating the gods. It was in the winter A.D. 302-3. The 
 
THEIR POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES. 205 
 
 emergency' became so pressing that a council was held by Dioclesian 
 and G-alerius to determine what should be done. The difficulty of the 
 position may perhaps be appreciated when it is understood that even 
 the wife and daughter of Dioclesian himself were adherents of the new 
 religion. He was a man of such capacity and enlarged political views 
 that, at the second council of th6 leading statesmen and generals, he 
 ■vyould not have been brought to give his consent to repression if it had 
 not been quite clear that a conflict was unavoidable. His extreme re- 
 luctance to act is shown by the express stipulation he made that there 
 should be no sacrifice of life. It is scarcely necessary to re- imperial perse- 
 late the events which ensued ; how the Church of Nicomedia ™"™=- 
 was razed to the ground ; how an ominous retaliation was exacted by 
 setting fire to the imperial palace; how an edict 'was openly insulted 
 and torn down ; how the Christian, officers in the army were compelled 
 to resign ; and, as Eusebius, an eye-witness, relates, a vast number of 
 martyrs soon suffered in Armenia, Syria, Mauritania, Egypt, and else- 
 where. So resistless was the march of events that not even the em- 
 peror himself could stop the persecution. The Christians were given 
 over to torture, the fire, wild beasts, beheading ; many of them, in the 
 moment of condemnation, simply returning thanks to God that he had 
 thought them worthy to suffer. The whole world was filled with ad- 
 miration.- The greatness of such holy courage could have no other re- 
 sult. An internecine conflict between the disputants seemed to be in- 
 evitable. But, in the dark and bloody policy of the times, the question 
 was settled in an unexpected way. To Constantine, who had fled from 
 the treacherous custody of Galerius, it naturally occurred that, if he 
 should aUy himself to the Christian party, conspicuous advantages must 
 forthwith accrue to him. It would give him in every cor- Their great poutu 
 ner of the empire men and women ready to encounter fire '^^ consequences. 
 and sword ; it would give him partisans, not only animated by the tra- 
 ditions of their fathers, but — ^for human nature wiH even in the religious 
 assert itself— demanding retribution for the horrible barbarities and in- 
 justice that had been inflicted on themselves ; it would give him, and 
 this was the most important of all, unwavering adherents in every le- 
 gion of the army. He took his course. The events of war crowned 
 him with success. He could not be otherwise than out- successM policy 
 wardly true to those who had given him power, and who o'ccns'intine. 
 continued to maintain him on the throne. But he never conformed to 
 the ceremonial requirements of the Church till the close of his evil life. 
 The attempt to make an alliance with this great and rapidly growing 
 party was nothing new. Maximin tried it, but was distrusted. Li- 
 cinius, fpreseeing the policy that Constantine would certainly pursue, 
 endeavored to neutralize it by feebly reviving the persecution, A.D. 
 816, thinking thereby to conciliate the pagans. The aspirants for em- 
 
206 CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. 
 
 pire at this moment so divided tlie strength of the state that, had the 
 Christian party been weaker than it actually was, it so held the balance 
 of power as to be able to give a preponderance to the candidate of its 
 choice. Much more, therefore, was it certain to prevail, considering its 
 numbers, its ramifications, its compactness. Force, argument, and per- 
 suasion had alike proved ineffectual against its strength. 
 
 To the reign of Constantine the Great must be referred the commence- 
 influence of the meut of thosc dark and dismal times which oppressed Eu- 
 uneT" ° ' rope for a thousand years. It is the true close of the Eoman 
 empire, the beginning of the Greek. The transition from one to the 
 other is emphatically and abruptly marked by a new metropolis, a new 
 religion, a new code, and, above all, a new policy. An ambitious man 
 had attained to imperial power by personating the interests of a rapid- 
 ly growing party. The unavoidable consequences were a union be- 
 tween the Church and State ; a diverting of the dangerous classes from 
 civil to ecclesiastical paths, and the decay and materialization of relig- 
 ion. This, and not the reign of Leo the Isaurian, as some have said, is 
 the true beginning of the Byzantine empire ; it is also the beginning of 
 the age of Faith in Europe, though I consider the age of Inquiry as 
 overlapping this epoch, and as terminating with the military fall of 
 Eome. 
 
 Ecclesiastical authors have made every thing hinge on the conversion 
 of Constantine and the national establishment of Christianity. The me 
 dium through which they look distorts the position of objects, and mag 
 nifies the subordinate and collateral into the chief Events had been 
 gradually shaping themselves in such a way that the political fall of the 
 city of Eome was inevitable. The Eomans, as a people, had disappear- 
 ed, being absorbed among other nations ; the centre of power was in the 
 army. One after another, the legions put forth competitors for the pur- 
 ple— soldiers of fortune, whose success could never remove low habite 
 due to a base origin, the coarseness . of a life of camps — who found no 
 congeniality in the elegance and refinement of those relics of the ancient 
 families which were expiring in Eome. They despised the military de- 
 crepitude of the superannuated city ; her recollections they hated. To 
 such men the expediency of founding a new capital was an obvious de- 
 vice ; or, if indisposed to undertake so laborious a task, the removal of 
 the imperial residence to some other of the great towns was an effectual 
 substitute. It was thus that the residence of Dioclesian at Nicomedia 
 produced such disastrous consequences in a short time to Eome. 
 
 After Constantine had murdered his son Crispus, his nephew Licinius, 
 and had suffocated in a steam-bath his wife Fausta, to whom he had 
 been married twenty years, and who was the mother of. three of his 
 He resolves on SOUS, the publio abhorrencc of his crimes could no longer be 
 
 remoTmg the i n a • -i ' t i. f 
 
 metropous. conccaled. A pasquinade, companng his reign to that oi 
 
HIS EELIGIOUS POLICY. 207 
 
 Nero, was affixed to the palace gate. The guilty emperor, in the first 
 burst of anger, was on the point of darkening the tragedy, if such a 
 thing was possible, by a massacre of the Eoman populace who had thus 
 insulted him. It is said that his brothers were consulted on this meas- 
 ure of vengeance. The result of their council was even more deadly, 
 for it was resolved to degi^de Eome to a subordinate rank, and build a 
 metropolis elsewhere. 
 
 Political conditions thus at once suggested and rendered possible the 
 translation of the seat of government : the temporary motive was the 
 vengeance of a great criminal. Perhaps, also, in the mental occupation 
 incident to such an undertaking, the emperor found a refuge from the 
 accusations of conscience. But it is altogether erroneous to suppose 
 that either at this time, or for many years subsequently, he He la a protector, 
 was a Christian. His actions are not those of a devout I'ltn""' convert. 
 convert ; he was no proselyte, but a protector ; never guiding himself 
 by religious principles, but now giving the most valuable support to his 
 new alhes, now exhibiting the impartiality of a statesman for both forms 
 of faith. In his character of Pontifex Maximus he restored pagan tem- 
 ples, and directed that the haruspices should be consulted. On the fes- 
 tival of the birthday of the new city he honored the statue of Fortune. 
 The, continued heathen sacrifices and open temples seemed to indicate 
 that he intended to do no more than place the new religion on a level 
 with the old. His recommendation to the Bishop of Alexandria and to 
 Arius of the example of the philosophers, who never debated profound 
 questions before ignorant audiences, and who could differ without hat- 
 ing one another, illustrates the indifferentism of his personal attitude, 
 and yet he clearly recognized his obligations to the party that had given 
 him power. 
 
 This conclusion is confirmed by the works of Constantine himself. 
 They must be regarded as far better authority than the writings of re- 
 ligious polemics. A medal was struck, on which was im- Hjg tenaencica 
 pressed his title of " God," together with the monogram of t°.^'^^^^'^- 
 Christ. Another represented him as raised by a hand from the sky 
 while seated in the chariot of the Sun. But more particularly the great 
 porphyry pillar, a column 120 feet in height, exhibited the true re- 
 ligious condition of the founder of Constantinople. The statue on its 
 summit mingled together the Sun, the Savior, and the Emperor. Its 
 body was a colossal image of Apollo, whose features were replaced by 
 those of 'Constantine, and round the head, like rays, were fixed the nails 
 of the cross of Christ recently discovered in Jerusalem. 
 
 The position of a patron assumed by Constantine may be remarked - 
 in many of the incidents of his policy. The. edict of Milan gave liberty 
 both to Pagans and Christians ; but his necessity for in some degree 
 showing a preponderance of favor for the latter obliged him to issue a 
 
208 HIS CiyiL POLICY. 
 
 rescript exempting the clergy from civil offices. It was this also which 
 led him to conciliate the bishops by the donation of large sums of 
 money for the restitution of their churches and other purposes, and to 
 exert himself, often by objectionable means, for destroying that which 
 they who were around him considered to be heresy. A better motive, 
 perhaps, led him to restore those Christians who had been degraded; to 
 surrender to the legal heirs the confiscated estates of martyrs, or, if no 
 heirs were to be found, to convey them to the Church ; to set at liberty 
 those who had been condemned to the mines ; to recall those who had 
 been banished. If, as a tribute to the Christians, who had sustained him 
 politically, he made the imperial treasury responsible for many of their 
 losses ; if he caused costly churches to be built not only in the great 
 cities, but even in the Holy Land ; if he vindicated the triumphant po- 
 sition of his supporters by forbidding any Jew to have a Christian 
 slave ; if he undertook to enforce the decisions of councils by means of 
 the power of the state ; if he forbade all schism in the Church, himself 
 determining the degftes of heresy under the inspirations of his clerical 
 Hia relations to cutouragc, his vacillations show how little he was guided by 
 the Church, principle, how much by policy. After the case of the Donar 
 tists hud been settled by repeated councils, he spontaneously recalled 
 them from banishment; after he had denounced Arius as "the very 
 image of the Devil," he, through the influence of court females, received 
 him again into favor ; after the temple of ^sculapius at jEgse had 
 been demolished, and the doors and roofs of others removed, the "pa- 
 gans were half conciliated by perceiving that no steady care was taken 
 to enforce the obnoxious decrees, and that, after all, the Christians would 
 have to accept the intentions of the emperor for deeds. 
 
 In a double respect the removal of the seat of empire was important 
 to Christianity. It rendered possible the assumption of power by the 
 Consequences of bishops of Eomc, who Were thereby secluded from impe- 
 metropous. rial observation and inspection, and whose position, feeble 
 at first, under such singularly auspicious circumstances was at last de- 
 veloped into papal supremacy. In Constantinople, also, there were no 
 pagan recollections and interests to contend with. At first the new 
 city was essentially Eoman, and its language Latin ; but this was soon 
 changed for Greek, and thus the transference of the seat of government 
 tended to make Latin in the end a sacred tongue. 
 
 Constantino knew very well where Eoman power had for many years 
 lain. His own history, from the time of his father's death and his ex- 
 altation by the legions at York, had taught him that, for the perpetua- 
 tion of his dynasty and system, those formidable bodies must be dis- 
 The poucy of poscd of. It was for this reason, and that no future command- 
 conatantine. gj. migi^t ^q -^jijat himsclf and so many of his predecessors had 
 done, that he reduced the strength of the legion from 6000 to 1500 oi 
 
KEVOLT OP THE DONATISTS. 209 
 
 1000 men. For this reason, too, lie opened to ambition the less danger- 
 ous field of ecclesiastical wealth and dignity, justly concluding that, 
 since the clergy came from every class of society, the whole people 
 would look to the prosperity of the Church. By exempting the priest- 
 hood from burdensome municipal offices, such as the decurionate, he put 
 a premium on apostasy from paganism. The interest he personally 
 took in the Trinitarian controversy encouraged the spreading of theo- 
 logical disputation from philosophers and men of capacity to the popu- 
 lace. Under the old polytheism heresy was impossible, since every man 
 might select his god and his worship ; but under the new monotheism it 
 was inevitable — heresy, a word that provokes and justifies a black cata- 
 logue of crimes. Occupied in those exciting pursuits, men took but lit- 
 tle heed of the more important political changes that were in progress. 
 The eyes of the rabble were easily turned from the movements of the 
 government by horse-racing, theatres, largesses. Yet already this di- 
 version of ambition into new fields gave tokens of dangers to the state 
 in future times. The Donatists, whom Constantine had attempted to 
 pacify by the Councils of Eome, Aries, and MUan, maintained a more 
 than religious revolt, and exhibited the bitterness that may be infused 
 among competitors for ecclesiastical spoUs. These enthusiasts assumed 
 to themselves the title of God's elect, proclaimed that the only true 
 apostolical succession was in their bishops, and that whosoever denied 
 the right of Donatus to be Bishop of Carthage should be eternally 
 damned. They asked, with a truth that lent force to their demand, 
 "What has the emperor to do with the Church, what have Christians to 
 do with kings, what have bishops to do at court?" « Already the Cath- 
 olic party, in preparation of their commencing atrocities, ominously in- 
 quired, " Is the vengeance of God to be defrauded of its victims ?" Al- 
 ready Constantine, by bestowing on the Church the right of receiving 
 bequests, had given birth to that power which, reposing on the influ- 
 ence that always attaches to the possession of land, becomes at last over- 
 whelming when it is held by a corporation which may always receive 
 and can never alienate, which is always renewing itself and can never 
 die. It was by no miraculous agency, but simply by its organization, 
 that the Church attained to power ; an individual who must die, and a 
 family which must become extinct, had no chance against, a corporation 
 whose purposes were ever unchanged, and its life perpetual. But it 
 was not the state alone which thus took detriment from her connection 
 with the Church ; the latter paid a full price for the temporal advantages 
 she received in invoking civil intervention in her affairs. After a ret- 
 rospect of a thousand years, well did the pious Fratricelli loudly pro- 
 claim their conviction that the fatal gift of a Christian emperor had been 
 the doom of true religion. . 
 
 From the rough soldier who accepted the purple at York, how great 
 
 O 
 
210 THE TRINITABIAJSr CONTROVERSY. 
 
 the change to the effeminate emperor of the Bosphorus, in silken rohes 
 stiffened with threads of gold, with a diadem of sapphires and pearls, 
 and false hair stained of various tints ; his steps stealthily guarded hy 
 mysterious eunuchs flitting through the palace, and streets fall of spies, 
 and an ever-watchful police. The same man who approaches us as the 
 Eoman imperator retires from us as the Asiatic despot. In the last 
 His converBion days of Ms life, he put aside the imperial purple, and, assum^ 
 and death. jjjg ^]^q customary white garment, prepared for baptism, that 
 the sins of his long and evil life might all be washed away. Since com- 
 plete purification can thus be only once obtained, he was desirous to 
 procrastinate that ceremony to the last moment. Profoundly politic, 
 even in his relations with heaven, he thenceforth reclined on a white 
 bed, took no farther part in ^worldly affairs, and, having thus insured a 
 right to the continuance of that prosperity in a future life which he had 
 enjoyed in this, expired, A.D. 337. 
 
 In a theological respect, among the chief events of this emperor's 
 The Ti-inUarian Tcigu are the Trinitarian controversy and the open materi- 
 controversy. aUzatiou of Christianity. The former, commencing among 
 the Platonizing ecclesiastics of Alexandria, continued for ages to exert 
 a formidable influence. From time immemorial, as we have already re- 
 lated, the Egyptians had been familiar with various trinities, different 
 ones being worshiped in different cities, the devotees of each exercising 
 a peaceful toleration toward those of others. But now things were great- 
 ly changed. It was the settled policy of Constantino to divert ambition 
 from the state to the Church, and to make it not only safer, but more 
 profitable to be a great ecclesiastic than a successful soldier. A violent 
 competition for the chief offices was the consequence — a competition, the 
 prelude of that still greater one for episcopal supremacy. 
 
 We are now again brought to a consideraltion of the variations of 
 opinion which fnarked this age. It would be impossible to give a de- 
 scription of them all. I therefore propose to speak only of the prom- 
 inent ones. They are a sufficient guide in our investigation ; and of 
 the Trinitarian controversy first. 
 
 For some time past dissensions had been springing up in the Church. 
 Prelude of sec Evcu out of persecution itself disunion had .arisen. The mar- 
 tarian dissent, ^yj-g ^j^q ^^^^ suffcrcd for thcir faith, and the confessors who 
 had nobly avowed it, gained a worthy consideration and influence, be- 
 coming the intermedium of reconciliation of such of their weaker breth- 
 ren as had apostatized in times of peril by authoritative recommenda-, 
 tions to "the peace of the Church."- From this abuses arose. Martyrs 
 were known to have given the use of their names to " a man and his 
 friends;" nay, it was even asserted that tickets of recommendation had 
 been bought for money ; and as it was desirable that a uniformity of 
 discipline should obtain in all the churches, so that he who was exoom' 
 
ARIUS, HIS HEEEST. 211 
 
 municated from one should -be escommunicated from all, it was neces- 
 sary that these abuses should be corrected. In the controversies that 
 ensued, Novatus founded his sect on the principle that penitent apos- 
 tates should, under no circumstances, be ever again received. Besides 
 this dissent on a question of discipline, already there were abundant ele- 
 ments of dispute, such as the time of observance of Easter, the nature of 
 Christ, the millennium upon earth, and rebaptism. Already, in Syria, 
 Noetus, the Unitarian, had foreshadowed what was coming; already 
 there were Patripassians ; already Sabellianism existed. 
 
 But it was in Alexandria that the tempest burst forth. There lived 
 in that city a presbyter of the name of Arius, who, on occasion Arius,his 
 of a vacancy occurring, desired to be appointed bishop. But d<"='=™<=»- 
 one Alexander supplanted him in the coveted dignity. Both relied on 
 numerous supporters, Arius counting among his not less than seven 
 hundred virgins of the Mareotic nome. In his disappointment he ac- 
 cused his successful antagonist of Sabellianism, and, in retaliation, was 
 anathematized. It was no wonder that, in such an atmosphere, the 
 question quickly assumed a philosophical aspect. The point of diffi- 
 culty was to define the position of the Son in the Holy Trinity. Arius 
 took the ground that there was a time when, from the very nature of 
 sonship, the Son did not exist, and a time at which he commenced to 
 be, asserting that it is the necessary condition of the filial relation that a 
 son must be posterior in time to his father. But this assertion evi- 
 dently might imply subordination or inequality among the three per- 
 sons of the Holy Trinity. The partisans of Alexander raised up their 
 voices against such a blasphemous lowering of the Eedeemer ; the Ari- 
 ans answered them that, by exalting the Son in every respect to an 
 equality with the Father, they impugned the great truth of the unity 
 of Grod. The new bishop himself edified the giddy citizens, and per- 
 haps, in some degree, justified his appointment to his place by display- 
 ing his rhetorical powers in public 'debates on the question. The Alex- 
 andrians, little anticipating the serious and enduring results soon to 
 arise, amused themselves, with characteristic levity, by theatrical repre- 
 sentations of the contest upon the stage. In the theatre of Alexandria 
 many of the corruptions of Christianity originated. The passions of the 
 two parties were roused ; the Jews and Pagans, of whom the town was 
 full, exasperated them by their mocking derision. The dissension 
 spread ; the whole country became convulsed. In the hot climate of 
 Africa, theological controversy soon ripened into political disturbance. 
 In all Egypt there was not a Christian man, and not a woman, who did 
 not proceed to settle the nature of the unity of God. The tumult rose 
 to such a pitch that it became necessary for the emperor to constantine at- 
 interfere. Doubtless, at first, he congratulated himself on thTmntroveray, 
 such a course of events. It was better that the provinces should be 
 
212 THE COUNCIL OF KICEA. 
 
 fanatically engaged in disputes than secretly employed in treason against 
 his person or conspiracies against his pblicy. A united people is an 
 inconvenience to one in power. ISTevertheless, to compose the matter 
 somewhat, he sent Hosius, the Bishop of Cordova, to Alexandria; but, 
 finding that the remedy was altogether inadequate, he was driven at last 
 andsummona to the memorable expedient of summoning the Council of 
 WMr"°"°^ Nicea, A.D. 325. It attempted a settlement of the trouble 
 by a condemnation of Arius, and the promulgation of authoritative ar- 
 ticles of belief as set forth in the Nicene Creed. As to the main point, 
 the Son was declared to be of the same substance with the Father— a 
 temporizing and convenient, but, as the event proved, a disastrous am- 
 biguity. The Nicene Council, therefore, settled the question by evad- 
 ing it, and the emperor enforced the decision by the banishment of 
 Arius. 
 
 "I am persecuted," Arius plaintively said, "because I have taugit 
 that the Son had a beginning and the Father had not." It was the in- 
 fluence of the court theologians that had made the emperor his personal 
 The fortunes oncmy. Constantinc, as we have seen, had looked upon the 
 of Arius. dispute, in the first instance, as altogether frivolous, if he did 
 not, in truth, himself incline to the assertion of Arius, that, in the very 
 nature of the thing, a father must be older than his son. The theatrical 
 exhibitions at Alexandria in mockery of the question were calculated 
 to confirm him in his opinion; his judgment was lost in the theories 
 that were springing up as to the nature of Christ ; for on the Bbionitish, 
 Gnostic, and Platonic doctrines, as well as on the new one that "the 
 logos" was made out of nothing, it equally followed that the current 
 opinion must be erroneous, and that there was a time before which the 
 Son did not exist. 
 
 But, as the contest spread through churches and even'families, Oon- 
 stantine had found himself compelled to intervene. At first he attempt- 
 ed the position of a moderator, but soon took ground against Arius, ad- 
 vised to that course by his entourage at Constantinople. It was at this 
 time that the letter was circulated in which he denounced Arius as the 
 His condemnation image of the Dcvil. Arius might now have foreseen 
 as a heretic. ^]^^ jjj^st Certainly occur at Nicea. Before that council 
 was called every thing was settled. No contemporary for a moment 
 supposed that it was an assembly of simple-hearted men, anxious, by a 
 mutual comparison of thought, to ascertain the truth* Its aim was not 
 to compose such a creed as would give unity to the Church, but one so 
 worded that the Arians would be compelled to refuse to sign it, and so 
 ruin themselves. To the creed was attached an anathema precisely de- 
 fining the point of dispute, and leaving the foreordained victims no 
 chance of escape. . The original Nicene Creed differed in some essential 
 particulars from that now current under that title. Among other things, 
 
THE DEATH OF AEIUS. 213 
 
 the fatal and final clause has been dropped. Thus it ran : " The Holy 
 Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes those who say The Nicene 
 that there was a time when the Son of God was not ; and that '*'^*- 
 before he was begotten he was not, and that he was made out of noth- 
 ing, or out of another substance or essence, and is created, or change- 
 able, or alterable." The emperor enforced the decision of the council 
 by the civil power ; he circulated letters denouncing Arius, and initi- 
 ated those fearful punishments unhappily destined in future ages to be- 
 come so frequent, by ordaining that whoever should find a book of 
 Arius and not burn it should actually be put to death. 
 
 It might be thought that, after such a decisive course, it would be 
 impossible to change, and yet in less than ten years Constantine is 
 found agreeing with the convict Arius. A presbyter in the confidence 
 of Constantia, the emperor's sister, had wrought upon him. Arius received 
 Athanasius, now Bishop of Alexandria, the representative of com-t fkTor, 
 the other party, is deposed and banished. Arius is invited to Constan- 
 tinople. The emperor orders. Alexander, the bishop of that city, to re- 
 ceive him into communion to-morrow. It is Saturday. Alexander 
 flies to the church, and, falling prostrate, prays to God that he will in- 
 terpose and save his servant from being forced into this sin, even if it 
 should be by death. That same evening Arius was seized with a sud- 
 den and violent illness as he passed along the street, and in a few mo- 
 ments he was found dead in a house, whither he had hasten- and is poisoned. 
 ed. In Constantinople, where men were familiar with Asiatic crimes, 
 there was more than a suspicion of poison. But when Alexander's 
 party proclaimed that his prayer had been answered, they forgot what 
 then that prayer must have been, and that the difference is little be- 
 tween praying for the death of a man and compassing it. 
 
 The Ariang afSrmed that it was the intention of Constantine to have 
 called a new council, and have the creed rectified according to his more 
 recent ideas ; but, before he could accomplish this, he was over- constantine 
 taken by death. So little efficacy was there in the determin- anXcreed! 
 ation of the Council of Nicea, that for many years afterward creed upon 
 creed appeared. What Constantine's new creed would have been may 
 be told from the fact that the Consubstantialists had gone out of power, 
 and from what his son Constantius soon after did at the Council of Ari- 
 minium. 
 
 So far, therefore, from the Council of Nicea ending the controversies 
 afflicting religion, they continued with increasing fury, spread of tueoiog. 
 The sons and successors of Constantine set an example of '"^^ <usputes. 
 violence in these disputes ; and, until the barbarians burst in upon the 
 empire, the fourth century wore away in theological feuds. Even the 
 populace, scarcely emerged from paganism, set itself up for a judge on 
 auestions from their very nature incapable of being solved; and to this 
 
214 GKOWTH OF CHITECH POWER. 
 
 the government gave an impetus by making the profits of public serv- 
 ice the reward of sectarian violence. The policy of Constantine began 
 to produce its results. Mental activity and ambition found their true 
 field in ecclesiastical affairs. Orthodoxy triumphed, because it was more 
 in' unison with the present necessity of the court, while asserting the pre- 
 dominance of Christianity, to offend as little as might be the pagan 
 party. ' The heresy of Arius, though it might suit the monotheistic 
 views of the educated, did not commend itself to that large mass who 
 had been so recently pagan. Already the elements of dissension were 
 obvious enough ; on one side there was an illiterate, intolerant, unscru- 
 pulous, credulous, numerous body, on the other a refined, better-inform- 
 ed, yet doubting sect. The Emperor Constantius, guided by his father's 
 latest principles, having sided with the Arian party, soon found that 
 under the new system a bishop would, without hesitation, oppose his 
 Athanasins re- sovereign. Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, as the head 
 the emperor, of the orthodox party, became the personal antagonist of the 
 emperor, who attempted, after vainly using physical compulsion, to re- 
 sort to the celestial weapons in vogue by laying claim to Divine inspira- 
 tion. Like his father, he had a celestial vision ; but, as his views were 
 Arian, the orthodox rejected without scruple his supernatural authority, 
 and Hilary of Poictiers wrote a book to prove that he was Antichrist. 
 The horrible bloodshed and murders attending these quarrels in the 
 great cities, and private life of both high and low degree, clearly showed 
 that Christianity, through its union with politics, had fallen into such a 
 state that it could no longer control the passions of men. The personal 
 history of the sons of Constantine is an awful relation of fanuly mur- 
 ders. Eeligion had disappeared, and theology had come in its stead. 
 Even theology had gone mad. But in the midst of these disputes world- 
 steady aggreaaion Ij interests Were steadily kept in view. At tlje Council of 
 OTtolsrfecdeS* Ariminium, A.D. 359, an attempt was made to have the 
 *'™- lands belonging to the churches exempt from all taxation ; 
 
 but, to his credit, the emperor steadfastly refused. Macedonius, the 
 Bishop of Constantinople, who had passed over the slaughtered bodies 
 of three thousand people to take possession of his episcopal throne, ex- 
 ceeded even Arius himself in heresy by not only asserting the inferior-, 
 ity of the Son to the Father, but by absolutely denying the divinity of 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 As the fruits of these broils, two facts appear : 1st, that there is a high- 
 Two resnita of ^^ ^^'^> wMch the faithful may obey, in opposition to the law 
 
 these events, ^f ^.^g Jg^^^^ ^J^g^ ^^ g^i^g ^T^^^j. ^g^g . ^.J^g j^^ ^f Qq^^ gS ex- 
 pounded by the bishop, who can eternally punish the soul, must take 
 precedence of the law of Csesar, who can only kill the body and seiae 
 the goods ; 2d, that there is a supremacy in the Bishop of Eome, to 
 whom Athanasius, the leader of the orthodox, by twice visiting that city, 
 
ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY. 215 
 
 submitted hia cause. The significance of these facts becomes conspicu- 
 ous in later ages. Things were evidently shaping themselves for a trial 
 of strength between the imperial and ecclesiastical powers, heretofore al- 
 lied. They were about to quarrel over their booty. 
 
 We have now to consider this asserted supremacy of the Bishop of 
 Eome, and how it came.to be established as a political fact. mstoryofPapai 
 We must also turn from the Oriental variations of opinion ""P'^emacy. 
 to those of the West. Except by thus enlarging the field to be trav- 
 ersed, we can gain no perfect conception of the general intellectual 
 tendency. 
 
 For long after its introduction to Western Europe, Christianity was 
 essentially a Greek religion. Its Oriental aspect had become Heuenizca 
 HeUenized. Its churches had, in the first instance, a Greek o^"™"?- 
 organization, conducted their worship in that tongue, and composed 
 their writings in it. Though it retained much of this foreign aspect so 
 long as Eome continued to be the residence, or was more particularly 
 under the eye of the emperors, it was gradually being affected by the 
 influences to which it was exposed. On Western Europe, the questions 
 which had so profoundly agitated the East, such as the nature of God, 
 the Trinity, the cause of evil, had made but little impression, the intel- 
 lectual peculiarity of the people being unsuited to such exercises. The 
 foundation of Constantinople, by taking off the political pressure, per- 
 mitted native peculiarities to manifest themselves, and Latin Christian- 
 ity emerged in contradistinction to Greek. 
 
 Yet still it can not be said that Europe owes its existing forms of 
 Christianity to a Eoman origin. It is indebted to Africa for Modified ty 
 them. We live under African domination. Africaniam. 
 
 I have now with brevity to relate the progress of this interesting 
 event ; how African conceptions were firmly estabhshed in Eome, and, 
 by the time that Greek Christianity had lost its expansive power and 
 ceased to be aggressive, African Christianity took its place, extending to 
 the North and West, and obtaining for itself an organization copied from 
 that of the Eoman empire ; sacerdotal preetors, proconsuls, and a Ceesar ; 
 developing its own jurisprudence, establishing its own magistracy, ex- 
 changing the Greek tongue it had hitherto used for the Latin, which, 
 soon becoming a sacred language, conferred upon it the most singular 
 advantages. 
 
 The Greek churches were of the nature of confederated republics ; 
 the Latin Church instinctively tended to monarchy. Far from assum- 
 ing an attitude of conspicuous dignity, the primitive bishops of Eome 
 led a life of obscurity. In the earliest times, the bishops of Jerusalem, 
 of whom James, the brother of our Lord, was the first, are spoken of as 
 the head of the Church, and so regarded even in Eome it- suioraiaate poss- 
 seE The controversy respecting Easter, A. D. 109, shows, Eoman chS^ 
 
216 ITS GEADUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 however, how soon the disposition for Western supremacy was exhib- 
 ited, Victor, the Bishop of Kome, requiring the Asiatic bishops to conform 
 to the view of his Church respecting the time at which the festival of 
 Easter should be observed, and being resisted therein by Polycrates, the 
 Bishop of Ephesus, on behalf of the Eastern churches, the feud continu- 
 ing until the determination of the Council of Nicea. It was not in Asia 
 alone that the growth of Koman supremacy was resisted. There is no 
 difficulty in selecting from ecclesiastical history proofs of the same feel- 
 ing in many other quarters. Thus, when the disciples of Montanus, the 
 Phrygian, who pretended to be the Paraclete, had converted to their doc- 
 trines and austerities the Bishop of Eome, and TertuUian, the Carthagini- 
 an, on the former backsliding from that faith, the latter denounced him 
 as a Patripassian heretic. Yet, for the most part, a good understanding 
 obtained not only between Eome and Carthage, but also among the 
 Grallic and Spanish churches, who looked upon Eome as conspicuous 
 and illustrious, though no more than equal to themselves. At the 
 Council of Carthage St. Cyprian said, " None of us ought to set himself 
 up as a bishop of bishops, or pretend tyrannically to restrain his col- 
 leagues, because each bishop has a liberty and power to act as he thinks 
 fit, and can no more be judged by another bishop than he can judge an- 
 other. But we must all wait for the judgment of Jesus Christ, to whom 
 alone belongs the power to set us over the Church, and to judge of our 
 actions." 
 
 Eome by degrees emerged from this equality, not by the splendid 
 talents of any illustrious man, for among her early bishops none rose 
 itB gradual in- abovo mcdiocrity, but partly from her political position, 
 and iDfluence, partly from the great wealth she soon accumulated, and 
 partly from the policy she happened to follow. Her bishop was not 
 present at the Council of Nicea, A.D. 325, nor at that of Sardica, A.D. 
 345 ; perhaps on these occasions, as on others of a like kind subse- 
 quently, the immediate motive of his standing aloof was the fear that he 
 might not receive the presidency. Soon, however, was discerned the ad- 
 vantage of the system of appearing by representatives. Such an attitude, 
 moreover, offered the opportunity of frequently holding the balance of 
 power in the fierce conflicts that soon arose, made Eome a retreat for the 
 discomfited ecclesiastic, and her bishop apparently an elevated and un- 
 biased arbiter on his case. It was thus that Athanasius, in his contest3_ 
 with the emperor, found a refuge and protector. "With this elevated 
 position in the esteem of strangers came also domestic dignity. The 
 prodigal gifts of the rich Eoman ladies had already made the bishopric 
 to be sought after by those who esteem the ease and luxuries of life as 
 well as by the ambitious. Fierce contests arose on the occurrence of 
 vacancies. At the election,of Damasus, one hundred and thirty of the 
 slain lay in the basilica of Sisinnius: the competitors had called in the 
 
NECESSITY FOR A StTPEEME PONTIFF. 217 
 
 aid of a rabble of gladiators, charioteers, and other ruffians ; nor could 
 the riots be ended except by the iatervention of the imperial troops. 
 
 It was none too soon that Jerome introduced the monastic system at 
 Eome : there was need of a change to austerity ; none too soon ^^^ ^^^y ^_ 
 that a law against legacy-hunting on the part of the clergy "e«°'«- 
 was enacted : it had become a public scandal ; none too soon that Jerome 
 struggled for the patronage of the rich Eoman women ; none too soon 
 that this stern fanatic denounced the immorality of the Eoman clergy, 
 when even the Bishop Damasus himself was involved in a charge of 
 adultery. It became clear, if the clergy would hold their ground in 
 public estimation against their antagonists the monks, that celibacy 
 must be insisted on. The doctrine of the pre-eminent value of virgin- 
 ity was steadily making progress; but it cost many years of struggle be- 
 fore ^the monks carried their point, and the celibacy of the clergy was 
 compelled. 
 
 It had long been seen by those who hoped for Eoman supremacy 
 that there was a necessity for the establishment of a definite Necessity for an 
 and ascertained doctrine — a necessity for some apostolic man, ''P<'s'°ii"iieaa. 
 who might be the representative of a criterion of truth. The Eastern 
 system of deciding by councils was in its nature uncertain. The coun- 
 cils themselves had no ascertained organization. Experience had shown 
 that they were too much under the control of the court at Constanti- 
 nople. 
 
 This tendency to accept the republican decisions of councils in the 
 East, and monarchical ones by a supreme pontiff in the West, Necessity for 
 in reality, however, depended on a common sentiment enter- ponSff. 
 tained by reflecting men every where. Something must be done to 
 check the anarchy of opinion. 
 
 To show how this tendency was satisfied, it will be sufficient to select, 
 out of the numberless controversies of the times, a few leading ones. A 
 clear light is thrown upon the matter by the history of the Pelagian, 
 Nestorian, and Eutychian heresies. Their chronological period is from 
 about A.D. 400 to A.D. 450. 
 
 Pelagius was a British monk, who, about the first of those dates, pass- 
 ed through Western Europe and Northern Africa, teaching the The Pelagian 
 doctrines that Adam was by nature mortal, and that, if he had '^^'roversy. 
 not sinned, he nevertheless would have died ; that the consequences of 
 his sin were confined to himself, and did not affect his posterity ; that 
 new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before his fall; 
 that we are at birth as pure as he was ; that we sin by our own free 
 wUl, and in the same manner may reform, and thereby work out our 
 own salvation ; that the grace of God is given according to our merits. 
 He was repelled from Africa by the influence of St. Augustine, and de- 
 nounced in Palestine from the cell of Jerome. He specially insisted on 
 
218 THE PELAGIAN HERESY. 
 
 this, that it is not the mere act of baptizing by water that Washes away 
 sin, but that it can only be removed by good works. Infants are bap- 
 tized before it is possible that they could have sinned. On the con- 
 Effect of Peiap- trary, Augustine resisted these doctrines, resting himself on 
 su^erioritr^'^ the words of Scripture that baptism is for the remission of 
 sins. The case of children compelled that father to introduce the doc- 
 trine of original sin as derived from Adam, notwithstanding the dread- 
 ful consequences if they die unbaptized. In like manner also followed 
 the doctrines of predestination, grace, atonement. 
 
 Summoned before a synod at Diospolis, Pelagius was unexpectedly- 
 acquitted of heresy — an extraordinary decision, which brought Africa 
 and the East into conflict. Under these circumstances, perhaps without 
 a clear foresight of the issue, the matter was referred to Rome as arbiter 
 or judge. 
 
 In his decision. Innocent I., magnifying the dignity of the Eoman,see 
 and the advantage of such a supreme tribunal, determined in favor of 
 the African bishops. But scarcely had he done this when he died, and 
 his successor, Zosimus, annulled his judgment, and declared the opinions 
 Settlement of the of Pelagius to bc orthodox. Carthage now put herself in 
 by the Africans, an attitude of resistancc. There was danger of a metaphys- 
 ical or theological Punic war. Meantime the wily Africans quietly pro- 
 cured from the emperor an edict denouncing Pelagius as a heretic. 
 Through the influence of Count Valerius the faith of Europe was set- 
 tled ; the heresiarchs and their accomplices were condemned to exile 
 and forfeiture of their estates ; the contested doctrine that Adam was 
 created without any liability to death was established by law ; to deny it 
 was a state crime. Thus it appears that the vacillating papacy was not 
 yet strong enough to, exalt itself above its equals, and the orthodoxy of 
 Europe was forever determined by an obscure court intrigue. 
 
 Scarcely was the Pelagian controversy disposed of when a new heresy 
 The Nestorian appeared. ISTestorius, the Bishop of Antioch, attempted to 
 controversy, distinguish between the divine and human nature of Christ; 
 he considered that they had become too much confounded, and that 
 "the God" ought to be kept separate from "the Man." Hence it 
 followed that the Virgin Mary should not be regarded as the " mother 
 of God, " but only the ' ' mother of Christ— the God-man." Called by the 
 Emperor Theodosius the Younger to the episcopate of Constantinople, 
 A.D. 427, ISTestorius was very quickly plunged by the intrigues of a dis- 
 appointed faction of that city into disputes with the populace. 
 
 Let us hear the Bishop of Constantinople himself; he is preaching in 
 The doctrines ^^^ g^sat metropolitan church, setting forth, with all the elo- 
 of Nestoriua. quenog of whlch language is capable, the attributes of the il- 
 limitable, the everlasting, the Almighty God. " And can this God hare 
 a mother ? The heathen notion of a. god born of a mortal mother is 
 
THE NESTOEIAN HERESY. 219 
 
 directly confuted by St. Paul, who declares febe Lord to be without fa- 
 ther and without mother. Could a creature bear the uncreated ?" He 
 thus insisted that what, was bom of Mary was human, and the divine 
 was added after. At once the monks raised a riot in the city, and Cyril, 
 the Bishop of Alexandria, espoused their cause. 
 
 Beneath the outraged orthodoxy of Cyril lay an ill-concealed motive, 
 the desire of the Bishop of Alexandria to humble the Bishop of Con- 
 stantinople. The uproar commenced with sermons, epistles, addresses. 
 Instigated by the monks of Alexandria, the monks of Constantinople 
 took up arms in behalf of "the mother of Grod." Again we remark 
 the eminent position of Eome. Both parties turn to her as an arbiter 
 Pope Celestine assembles a synod. The Bishop of Constantinople is or- 
 dered by the Bishop of Eome to recant, or hold himself under excom^ 
 munication. Italian supremacy is emerging through Oriental disputes, 
 yet not without a struggle. Belying. on his influence at court, Nes- 
 torius resists, excommunicates Cyril, and the emperor summons a coun 
 cil to meet at Ephesus. 
 
 To that council Nestorius repaired, with sixteen bishops and some of 
 the city populace. Cyril collected fifty, together with a rabble of sail- 
 ors, bath-men, and women of the baser sort. The imperial commission- 
 er with his troops with difficulty repressed the tumult of the assembly. 
 The rescript was fraudulently read before the arrival of the overthroiir of 
 Syrian bishops. In one day the matter was completed ; the ^y afSw" 
 Yirgin's party triumphed, and Nestorius was deposed. On '^^• 
 the arrival of the Syrian ecclesiastics, a meeting of protest was held by 
 them. A riot, with much bloodshed, occurred in the Cathedral of St. 
 John. The emperor was again compelled to interfere ; he ordered eight 
 deputies from each party to meet him at Chalcedon. In the mean time 
 court intrigues decided the matter. The emperor's sister was in after 
 times celebrated by the party of Cyril as having been the cause of the 
 discomfiture of ISTestorius : "the Holy Yirgin of the court of woisupofthe 
 Heaven had found an ally of her own sex in the holy virgin "^^^ ^''^■ 
 of the emperor's court." But there were also other very efScient auxil- 
 iaries. In the treasury of the chief eunuch, which some time after 
 there was occasion to open, was discovered an acknowledgment of many 
 pounds of gold received by him from Cyril, through Paul, his sister's 
 son. ISTestorius was abandoned by the court, and eventually exiled to 
 an Egyptian oasis. An edifying legend relates that his blasphemous 
 tongue was devoured by worms, and that from the heats of an Egyp- 
 tian desert he escaped only into the hotter torments of Hell. 
 
 So, again, in the affair of ISTestorius as in that of Pelagius, Africa tri- 
 umphed, and the supremacy of Eome, her ally or confederate, was be 
 coming more and more distinct. 
 
 A very important result in this gradual evolution of Eoman- suprem- 
 
220 THE EUTYCHIAN HERESY. . 
 
 acy arose from the affair of Eutyches, the Archimandrite of a convent of 
 TheEutychian Hionks at Constantinople. He had distinguished himself aa 
 controversy. ^ leader in the riots occurring at the time of Nestorius and 
 in other subsequent troubles. Accused before a synod held in Con- 
 stantinople of denying the two natures of Christ, of saying that if there 
 be two natures there must be two Sons, Eutyches was convicted, and 
 sentence of excommunication passed upon him. This was, however, 
 only the ostensible cause of his condemnation ; the true motive was con- 
 nected with a court intrigue. The chief eunuch, who was his godson, 
 was occupied in a double movement to elevate Eutyches to the see of 
 Constantinople, and to destroy the authority of Pulcheria, the emperor's 
 sister, through Eudocia, the emperor's wife. On his condemnation, Eu- 
 tyches appealed to the emperor, who summoned, at the instigation of 
 the eunuch, a council to meet at Ephesus. This was the celebrated 
 " Eobber Synod," as it was called. It pronounced in favor of the or- 
 thodoxy of Eutyches, and ordered his restoration, deposing the Bishop 
 of Constantinople, Flavianus, who was his rival, and at the synod had 
 been his judge, and also Eusebius, who had been his accuser. A riot 
 ensued, in which the Bishop of Constantinople was murdered by the 
 Bishop of Alexandria and one Barsumas, who beat him with their fists 
 amid cries of "Kill him! kill him!" The Italian legates made their 
 escape from the uproar with difficulty. 
 
 The success of these movements was mainly due to Dioscorus, the 
 Bishop of Alexandria, who thus accomplished the overthrow of his 
 rivals of Antioch and Constantinople. An imperial edict gave force to 
 the determination of the council. At this point the Bishop of Eome 
 intervened, refusing to acknowledge the proceedings. It was well that 
 Alexandria and Constantinople should be perpetually struggling,' but it 
 was not well that either should become paramount. Dioscorus there- 
 upon broke off communion with him. Rome and Alexandria were at 
 issue. 
 
 In a fortunate moment the emperor died; his sister, the orthodox 
 Pulcheria, the friend of Leo, married Marcian, and made him emperor. 
 A council was summoned at Chalcedon. Leo wished' it to be in Italy, 
 where no one could have disputed his presidency. As it was, he fell 
 Another advance l^ack ou the aucient policy, and appeared by representa- 
 ttoSgh EutyrM- ti'^es. Dioscorus was overthrown, and sentence pronounced 
 aniam. agaiust Mm, in behalf of the council, by one of the rep- 
 
 resentatives of Leo. It set forth that " Leo, therefore, by their voice, 
 and with the authority of the council, in the name of the Apostle 
 Peter, the Eock and foundation of the Church, deposes Dioscorus from 
 his episcopal dignity, and- excludes him from all Christian rites and 
 privileges." 
 
 But, perhaps that no permanent advantage might accrue to Eome 
 
EIVALEY OF EOME, CONSTANTINOPLE, AND ALEXANDRIA. 221 
 
 from the eminent position she was attaining in these transactions, when 
 most of the prelates had left the councU, a few, who were chiefly of the 
 diocese of Constantinople, passed, among other canons, one The rivalry of 
 to the effect that the supremacy of the Koman see was not Constantinople, 
 in right of its descent from St. Peter, but because it was the bishopric 
 of an imperial city. It assigned, therefore, to the Bishop of Constanti- 
 nople equal civil dignity and ecclesiastical authority. Eome ever re- 
 fused to recognize the validity of this canon. 
 
 In these contests of Eome, Constantinople, and Alexandria for su- 
 premacy — ^for, after all, they were nothing more than the rivalries of am- 
 bitious placemen for power — the Eoman bishop uniformly came forth 
 the gainer. And it is to be remarked that he deserved to KivaWeaoftue 
 be so ; his course was always dignified, often noble ; theirs biBhopa. 
 exhibited a reckless scramble for influence, an unscrupulous resort to 
 bribery, court intrigue, murder. 
 
 Thus the want of a criterion of truth, and a determination to arrest a 
 spirit of inquiry that had become troublesome, led to the introduction 
 of councils, by which, in an authoritative manner, theological questions 
 might be settled. But it is to be observed that these councils did not 
 accredit themselves by the coincidences of their decisions on successive 
 occasions, since they often contradicted one another, nor jjatnre of eccieai- 
 did they sustain those decisions only with a moral influence ^^""^ councus. 
 arising from the understanding of man, enlightened by their investiga- 
 tion§ and conclusions. Their human character is clearly shown by the 
 necessity under which they labored of enforcing their arbitrary conclu- 
 sions by the support of the civil power. The same necessity which, in 
 the monarchical East, led thus to the republican form of a council, led 
 in the democratic West to the development of the autocratic papt.1 
 power ; but in both it was found that the final authority thug appealed 
 to had no innate or divinely derived energy. It was altogether help- 
 less against any one disposed to resist it except by the aid of military 
 or civil compulsion. 
 
 It was impossible that any other opinion could be entertained of the 
 character of these assemblages by men of practical ability who had been 
 concerned in their transactions. Gregory of Nazianzen, one of the most 
 pious and able men of his age, and who, during a part of its sittings, was 
 president of the Council of Constantinople, A.I). 381, refused subse- 
 quently to attend, any more, saying that he had never known an assem- 
 bly of bishops terminate well ; that, instead of removing evils, they only 
 increased them, and that their strifes and lust of power were not to be 
 described. A thousand years later, Mneas Sylvius, Pope Pius II., speak- 
 ing of another council, observes that it was not so much directed by the 
 Holy Ghost as by the passions of men. 
 
 Notwithstanding the contradictions and opposition they so frequently 
 
222 NATUBE OF ECCLESIASTICAL COUNCILS. 
 
 Progresaive va- exhibit, there may be discerned in the decisions of these 
 thought mani- bodics the traccs of an affiliation indicating: the continuous 
 cranci£^* °"" progression of thought. Thus, of the four oecumenical 
 councils that were concerned with the facts spoken of in the preceding 
 pages, that of Nicea determined the Son to be of the same substance 
 with the Father ; that of Constantinople, that the Son and Holy Spirit 
 are equal to the Father ; that of Bphesus, that the two natures of Christ 
 make but one person ; and that of Chalcedon, that these natures remain 
 two, notwithstanding their personal union. But that they failed of their 
 object in constituting a criterion of truth is plainly demonstrated by 
 such simple facts as that, in the fourth century alone, there were thir- 
 teen councils adverse to Arius, fifteen in his favor, and seventeen for 
 the semi-Arians — ^in all, forty-five. From such a confusion, it was nec- 
 essary that the councils themselves must be subordinate to a higher au- 
 thority — a higher criterion, ablie to give to them or refuse to them au- 
 thenticity. That the source of power, both for the council in the East 
 and the papacy in the "West, was altogether political, is proved by al- 
 most every transaction in which they were concerned. In the case of 
 the papacy, this was well seen in the contest between Hilary the Bishop 
 of Aries, and Leo, on which occasion an edict was issued by the Emperor 
 Valentinian denouncing the contumacy of Hilary, and setting forth that, 
 Pontifical pow- " though the sentence of so great a pontiff as the Bishop of 
 
 er BUBtamed by tt n. -in 
 
 physical force. Eomo did uot need imperial confirmation, yet that it must 
 now be understood by all bishops that the decrees of the apostolic see 
 should henceforth be law, and that whoever refused to obey the citation 
 of the Eoman pontiff should be compelled to do so by the moderator of 
 the province." Herein we see the intrinsic nature of papal power dis- 
 tinctly. It is allied with physical force. 
 
 In the (Piidst of these theological disputes occurred that great event 
 Thefauof which I havc designated as marking the close of the age of In- 
 Eome. quiry. It was the fall of Eome. 
 
 In the Eastern empire the Goths had become permanently settled, 
 having laws of their own, a magistracy of their own, paying no taxes, 
 but contributing 40,000 men to the army. The Visigoths were spread- 
 spread of the ii^g through Greece, Spain, Italy. In their devastations of the 
 barbarians, former couutry, they had spared Athens for the sake of her 
 recollections. The Eleusinian mysteries had ceased. From that day 
 Greece never saw prosperity again. Alaric entered Italy. StiHcho, the 
 imperial general, forced him to retreat. Ehadogast made his invasion. 
 Stilicho compelled him to surrender at discretion. The Burgundians 
 and Vandals overflowed Gaul ; the Suevi, Vandals, and Alans overflow- 
 ed Spain. Stilicho, a man worthy of the old days of the republic, 
 though a Goth, was murdered by the emperor his master. Alaric ap- 
 peared before Eome. It was 619 years since she had felt the presence 
 
THE FALL OF ROME. 223 
 
 of a foreign enemy, and that was Hannibal. She' still contained 1780 
 senatorial palaces, the annual income of some of the owners of ^^^"^^^^^ 
 which was $800,000. The city was eighteen miles in circum- by Aiaric"™ 
 ference, and contained above a million of people — of people, as in old 
 times, clamorous for distributions of bread, and wine, and oil. In its 
 conscious despair, the apostate city, it is said, with the consent of the 
 pope, offered sacrifice to Jupiter, its repudiated, and, as it now believed, 
 its offended god. A million of dollars, together with many costly 
 goods, were paid as a ransom. The barbarian general retired. He was 
 insulted by the emperor from his fastness at Eavenna. Altercations 
 and new marches ensued ; and at last, for the third time, Alaric appeared 
 before Eome. At midnight on the 24:th of April, A.D. 410, eleven 
 hundred and sixty-three years from the foundation of the city, the Sa- 
 larian gate was opened to him by the treachery of slaves ; there was no 
 god to defend her in her dire extremity, and Eome was sacked by the 
 Goths. 
 
 Has the Eternal City really fallen ! was the universal exclamation 
 throughout the empire when it became known that Alaric had taken 
 Eome. Though paganism had been ruined in a national sense, the true 
 Eoman ethnical element had never given it up, but was dying out with 
 it, a relic of the population of the city stUl adhering to the Accusations of the 
 . ancient faith. Among this were not wanting many of the christians. 
 ' aristocratic families and philosophers, who imputed the disaster to the 
 public apostasy, and in their shame and suffering loudly proclaimed 
 that the nation was justly punished for its abandonment of the gods of 
 its forefathers, the gods who had given victory and empire. It became 
 necessary for the Church to iheet this accusation, which, whUe it was 
 openly urged by thousands, was doubtless believed to be true by silent, 
 and timid, and panic-stricken millions. With the intention of defend- 
 ing Christianity, St. Augustine, one of the ablest of the fathers, solemnly 
 devoted thirteen years of his life to the composition of his great work 
 entitled " The City of God." It is interesting for us to remark the tone 
 of some of these replies of the Christians to their pagan adversaries. 
 
 ' For the manifest deterioration of Eoman manners, and for the im- 
 pending dissolution of the state, paganism itself is responsible. Our po- 
 litical power is only of yesterday ; it is in no manner concerned with 
 the gradual development of luxury and wickedness, which rp^^ christian 
 has been going on for the last thousand years. Your ances- "'''P'y- 
 tors made war a trade ; they laid under tribute and enslaved the ad- 
 jacent nations ; but were not profusion, extravagance, dissipation, the 
 necessary consequences of conquest? was not Eoman idleness the inev- 
 itable result of the filling of Italy with slaves ? Every hour rendered 
 wider that bottomless gulf which separates immense riches from abject 
 poverty. Did not the middle class, in which reside the virtue and 
 
224 PAGAN ACCUSATION AND CHRISTIAN REPLY. 
 
 Strength of a nation, disappear, and aristocratic families remain, in Eome, 
 whose estates in Syria or Spain, Gaul or Africa, equaled, nay, even ex- 
 ceeded in extent and revenue illustrious, kingdoms, provinces for the an- 
 nexation of which the republic of old had decreed triumphs? Was 
 there not in the streets a profligate rabble living in total idleness, fed 
 and amused at the expense of the state ? We are not answerable for 
 the grinding oppression perpetrated on the rural populations until they 
 have been driven to despair, their numbers so diminishing as to warn 
 ' us that there is danger of their being extinguished. We did not sug- 
 gest to the Emperor Trajan to abandon Dacia, and neglect that policy 
 which fixed the boundaries of the empire at strong military posts. We 
 did not suggest to Caracalla to admit all sorts of people to Eoman citi- 
 zenship, nor dislocate the population by a wild pursuit of civil offices 
 or the discharge of military duties. We did not crowd Italy with slaves, 
 nor make those miserable men more degraded than the beasts of the 
 field, compelling them to labors which are the business of the brutes. 
 We have taught and practiced a very different doctrine from that. We 
 did not nightly put into irons the population of provinces and cities re- 
 duced to bondage. We are not responsible for the inevitable insurrec 
 tions, poisonings, assassinations, vengeance. We did not bring on that 
 state of things in which a man having a patrimony found it his best in- 
 terest to abandon it without compensation and flee. We did not de- 
 moralize the populace by providing them food, games, races, theatres; 
 we have been persecuted because we would not set our feet in a theatre. 
 We did not ruin the senate and aristocracy by sacrificing every thing, 
 even ourselves, for the Julian family. We did not neutralize the le- 
 gions by setting them to fight against one another. We were not the 
 first to degrade Eome ; Dioclesian, who persecuted us, gave the exam- 
 ple by establishing his residence at Nicomedia. As to the sentiment of 
 patriotism of which you vaunt, was it not destroyed by your own em- 
 perors? When they had made Eoman citizens of Gauls and Egyp- 
 tians, Africans and Huns, Spaniards and Syrians, how could they expect 
 that such a motley crew would remain true to the interests of an Mian 
 town, and that town their hated oppressor. Patriotism depends on 
 concentration ; it can not bear diffusion. Something more than such 
 a worldly tie was wanted to bind the diverse nations together; they 
 have found it in Christianity. A common language imparts community' 
 of thought and feeling ; but what was to be expected when Greek is the 
 language of one half of the ruling classes, and Latin of the other? we say 
 nothing of the thousand unintelligible forms of speech in use throughout 
 the Eoman world. The fall of the senate preceded, by a few years, the 
 origin of Christianity ; you will not surely say that we were the inciters of 
 the usurpations of the Caesars ? What have we had to do with the army, 
 that engine of violence, which in ninety-two years gave you thirty-two 
 
THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTINE. 225 
 
 emperors and twenty-seven pretenders to the throne ? We did not sug- 
 gest to the Praetorian Guards to put up the empire at auction. 
 
 ' Can you really wonder that all this should come to an end ? We 
 do not wonder'; on the contrary, we thank God for it. It is time that 
 the human race had rest. The sighing of the prisoner, the prayer of the 
 captive, are heard at last. Yet the judgment has been tempered with 
 mercy. Had the pagan Ehadogast taken Eome, not a life would have 
 been spared, no stone left on another. The Christian Alaric, though a 
 Goth, respects his Christian brethren, and for their sakes you are saved. 
 As to the gods, those daemons in whom you trust, did they always save 
 you from calamity ? How long did Hannibal insult them ? Was it a 
 goose or a god that saved the Capitol from Brennus ? Where were the 
 gods' in all the defeats, some of them but recent, of the pagan emperors? 
 It is well that the purple Babylon has fallen, the harlot who was drunk 
 with the blood of nations. 
 
 'In the place of this earthly city, this vaunted mistress of the world, 
 whose fall closes a long career of superstition and sin, there shall arise 
 "the City of God." The purifying fire of the barbarian shall remove 
 her heathenish defilements, and make her fit for the kingdom of Christ. 
 Instead of a thousand years of that night of crime, to which in your de- 
 spair you look back, there is before her the day of the millennium, pre- 
 dicted by the prophets of old. In her regenerated walls there shall be 
 no taint of sin, but righteousness and peace ; no stain of the vanities of 
 the world, no conflicts of ambition, no sordid hunger for gold, no lust of 
 glory, no desire for domination, but holiness to the Lord.' 
 
 Of those who in such sentiments defended the cause of the new relig- 
 ion St. Augustine was the chief. In his great work, "the st AuguBtme's 
 City of God," which may be regarded as the ablest specimen "c'tyfoo^-" 
 of the early Christian literature, he pursues this theme, if not in the lan- 
 guage, at least in the spirit here presented, and through a copious detail 
 of many books. On the later Christianity of the Western churches he 
 has exerted more influence than any other of the fathers. To him is 
 due much of the precision of our views on original sin, total depravity, 
 grace, predestination, election. 
 
 In his early years St. Augustine had led a frivolous and evil life, 
 plunging into all the dissipations of the gay city of Car- 1,5^^ ^nd writings 
 thage. Through the devious paths of Manichaeism, astrol- "fsfcAugustme. 
 ogy, and skepticism, he at last arrived at the truth. It was not, how- 
 ever, the fathers, but Cicero, to whom the good change was due ; the 
 writings of that great orator won him over to a love of wisdom, wean- 
 ing him from the pleasures of the theatre, the follies of divination and 
 superstition. From his Manichsean errors, however, he was snatched by 
 Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, who baptized him, together wit^ his il- 
 legitimate son Adeodatus. In his writings we may, without difficulty, 
 
 P 
 
 • • • • 
 
226 CRITICISM ON ST. AUGUSTrNE's WOEKS. 
 
 recognize the vestiges of Magianism, not as regards the duality of God, 
 but as respects the division of mankind — the elect and lost ; the king- 
 doms of grace and perdition, of God and the devil ; answering to the 
 Oriental ideas of the rule of light and darkness. From Ambrose, St. 
 Augustine learned those high Trinitarian doctrines which were soon en- 
 forced in the West. 
 
 In his philosophical disquisitions on Time, Matter, Memory, this far- 
 famed writer is, however, always unsatisfactory, often trivial. His doc- 
 trine that Scripture, as the Word of God, is capable of a manifold 
 meaning, led him into many delusions, and exercised, in subsequent 
 ages, a most baneful influence on true science. Thus he finds in the 
 Mosaic account of the creation proofs of the Trinity ; that the firmament 
 spoken of therein is the type of God's word ; and that there is a corre- 
 spondence between creation itself and the Church. His numerous books 
 have often been translated, especially his Confessions, a work that has 
 delighted and edified fifty generations, but which must, after all, yield 
 the palm, as a literary production, to the writings of Bunyan, who, like 
 Augustine, gave himself up to all the agony of unsparing personal ex- 
 amination and relentless self-condemnation, anatomizing his very soul, 
 and dragging forth every sin into the face of day. 
 
 The ecclesiastical influence of St. Augustine has so completely eclipsed 
 his political biography that but little attention has been given to his 
 conduct in the interesting time in which he lived. Sismondi recalls to 
 his disadvantage that he was the friend of Count Boniface, who invited 
 Genseric and his Vandals into Africa; the bloody consequences of that 
 conspiracy can not be exaggerated. It was through him that the count's 
 name has been transmitted to posterity without infamy. Boniface was 
 with him when he died, at Hippo, August 28th, A.D. 430. 
 
 When Eome thus fell before Alaric, so far from the provincial Chris- 
 Propitious effect ti^°s bewailing her misfortune, they actually gloried in it. 
 of Aiaric's siege, rpj^gy critically distinguished between the downfall of the 
 purple pagan harlot and the untouched city of God. The vengeance 
 of the Goth had fallen on the temples, but the churches had been spared. 
 Though in subsequent and not very distant calamities of the city these 
 triumphant distinctions could scarcely be maintained, there can be no 
 doubt that that catastrophe singularly developed papal power. The 
 abasement of the ancient aristocracy brought into relief the bishop. It 
 has been truly said that, as Eome rose from her ruins, the bishop was 
 discerned to be her most conspicuous man. Most opportunely, at this 
 period Jerome had completed his Latin translation of the Bible. The 
 Vulgate henceforth became the ecclesiastical authority of the West. 
 The influence of the heathen classics, which that austere anchorite had 
 in early life admired, but had vainly attempted to free himself from by 
 unremitting nocturnal flagellations, appears in this great version. It 
 
ANALOGY BETWEEN ECCLESIASTICAL AND CIVIL PEOGKESS. 227 
 
 came at a critical moment for the West. In the politic non-committal- 
 ism of Eome, it was not expedient that a pope should be an author. 
 The Vulgate was all that the times required. Henceforth the East 
 might occupy herself in the harmless fabrication of creeds and of here- 
 sies; the West could develop her practical talent in the much more im- 
 portant organization of ecclesiastical power. 
 
 Doubtless not without interest will the reader of these pages remark 
 how closely the process of ecclesiastical events resembles that of civil. 
 In both there is an irresistible tendency to the concentration of power. 
 As in Eoman history we have seen a few families, and, indeed, at last, 
 one man grasp the influence which in earlier times was disseminated 
 among the people, so in the Church the congregations are quickly found 
 in subordination to their bishops, and these, in their turn, succumbing to 
 aperpetually diminishing number of their compeers. In the The fate of the 
 period we are now considering, the minor episcopates, such as bishops, 
 those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Carthage, had virtually lost their pristine 
 force, every thing having converged into the three great sees of Con- 
 stantinople, Alexandria, and Eome. The history of the time is a record 
 of the desperate struggles of the three chief bishops for supremacy. In 
 this conflict Eome possessed many advantages ; the two others were 
 more immediately under the control of the imperial government, the 
 clashing of interests between them more frequent, their rivalry more 
 bitter. The control of ecclesiastical power was hence perpetually in 
 Eome, though she was, both pohtically and intellectually, inferior to her 
 competitors. As of old, there was a triumvirate in the world destined 
 to concentrate into a despotism. And, as if to remind men that the 
 principles involved in the movements of the Church are of the same na- 
 ture as those involved in the movements of the state, the resemblances 
 here pointed out are sometimes singularly illustrated in trifling details. 
 The Bishop of Alexandria was not the first triumvir who came to an 
 untimely end on the banks of the Nile ; the Eoman pontiff was not the 
 first who consolidated his power by the aid of Gallic legions. 
 
228 THE AGE OF FAITH ES^ THE EAST. 
 
 CHAPTBE X. 
 
 THE EUROPEAN AGE OF FAITH. 
 
 , AGE OF PAITH DJ THE EAST. 
 
 Consolidation of the Byzantine System, or the Union of Church and State. — The consequent Par 
 
 gamsation of Religion and Persecution of Philosophy. 
 Political Necessity for the Enforcement of Patristidsm, or Science of the Fathers, — ItspeaiSar 
 
 Doctrines. 
 Obliteration of the Vestiges of Greek Knowledge Try Patristidsm. — The Libraries and SemjAm 
 
 of Alexandria, — Destruction of the latter by Theodosius. — Death ofHypatia.^Extinctionof 
 
 Learning in the East by Cyril, his Associates and Successors. 
 
 The policy of Constantine tlie Great inevitably tended to the pagan- 
 ization of Christianity. An incorporation of its pure doctrines with de- 
 caying pagan ideas was the necessary consequence of the control that 
 had been attained by unscrupulous politicians and placemen. The faith, 
 The age of/ tl^^s Contaminated, gained a more general and ready popular 
 Faith. acceptance, but at the cost of a new lease of life to those ideas. 
 So thorough was the adulteration that it was not until the EeformatioD, 
 a period of more than a thousand years, that a separation of the true 
 from the false could be accomplished. 
 
 Considering how many nations were involved in these events, and 
 the length of time over which they extend, a clear treatment of the sub- 
 subdmsion of j^ct requires its subdivision. I shall therefore speak, 1st, of 
 the Bubject. tj^g ^ge of pa,ith in the East ; 2d, of the Age of Faith in the 
 "West. The former was closed prematurely by the Mohammedan con- 
 quest ; the latter, after undergoing slow metamorphosis, passed into the 
 European Age of Eeason during the pontificate of Nicolas V. 
 
 In this and the following chapter I shall therefore treat of the age of 
 Faith in the East, and of the catastrophe that closed it. I shall then 
 turn to the Age of Faith in the "West — a long but an instructive story. 
 
 The paganization of religion was in no small degree assisted by the 
 The paganiza- influence of the females of the court of Constantinople. It 
 anity. ' soou manifested all the essential features of a true mythol- 
 ogy and hero-worship. Helena, the empress-mother, superintended the 
 building of monumental churches over the reputed places of interest in 
 the history of our Savior — those of his birth, his burial, his ascension, 
 A vast and ever-increasing crowd of converts from paganism, who had 
 become such from worldly considerations, and still hankered after won- 
 
PAaAJSriZATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 229 
 
 ders like those in which their forefathers had from time immemorial be- 
 lieved, lent a ready ear to assertions, which, to more hesitating or better- 
 instructed minds, would have seemed to carry imposture on their very 
 face. A temple of Venus, formerly erected on the site of the Holy Sep- 
 ulchre, being torn down, there were discovered, in a cavern be- Discovery of 
 neath, three crosses, and- also the inscription written by Pilate, and naiis. 
 The Savior's cross, being by miracle distinguished from those of the 
 thieves, was divided, a part being kept at Jerusalem and a part sent to 
 ConstantLaople, together with the nails used in the crucifeion, which 
 were also fortunately found. These were destined to adorn the head of 
 the emperor's statue on the top of the porphyry pillar. The wood of 
 the cross, moreover, displayed a property of growth, and hence furnish- 
 ed an abundant supply for the demands of pilgrims, and an unfailing 
 source of pecuniary profit to its possessors. In the course of subsequent 
 years there was accumulated iu the various churches of Europe, from 
 this particular relic, a sufficiency to have constructed many hundred 
 crosses. The age that could accept such a prodigy, of course found no 
 difficulty in the vision of Constantino and the story of the Labarum. 
 
 Such was the tendency of the times to adulterate Christianity with 
 the spirit of paganism, partly to conciliate the prejudices of Poutioai causes 
 worldly converts, partly in the hope of securing its more ofpaganization. 
 rapid spread. There is a solemnity ia the truthful accusation which 
 Faustus makes to Augustine: "You have substituted your agapse for 
 the sacrifices of the pagans ; for their idols your martyrs, whom you 
 serve with the very same honors. You appease the shades of the dead 
 with wine and feasts; you celebrate the solemn festivals of the Gentiles, 
 their calends and their solstices ; and as to their manners, those you 
 have retained without any alteration. Nothing distinguishes you from 
 the pagans except that you hold your assembUes apart from them." 
 
 As we have seen in the last chapter, the course of political affiairs had 
 detached the power of the state from the philosophical and polytheistic 
 parties. Joined to the new movement, it was not long before it gave 
 ■significant proofs of the sincerity of its friendship by commencing an 
 active persecution of the remnant of philosophy. It is to be Eeiati™ action 
 borne in mind that the direction of the proselytism, which pMol*h^* 
 was thus leading to important results, was from below upward through 
 society. As to philosophy, its action had been in the other direction; 
 its depository in the few enlightened, in the few educated; its course, 
 socially, from above downward. Under these circumstances, it was ob- 
 vious enough that the prejudices of the ignorant populace would find, 
 in the end, a full expression ; that learning would have no considera- 
 tion shown to it, or be denounced as mere magic ; that philosophy would 
 be looked upon as a vain, and therefore sinful pursuit. When once a 
 political aspirant has bidden with the multitude for power, and still de- 
 
230 PERSECUTION OP PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 pends on their pleasure fot effective support, it is no easy thing to refuse 
 their wishes or hold back from their demands. Even Constantine him- 
 The emperors re- self felt the prcssurc of the influence to which he was allied 
 
 aist their ecclesi- , ^ „ , i i • r • -i r^ ' 
 
 asticaiauies. and was Compelled to surrender ms inend Sopater, the 
 philosopher, who was accused of binding the winds in an adverse quar- 
 ter by the influence of magic, so that the corn-ships could not reach Con- 
 stantinople ;' and the emperor was obliged to give orders for his decapi- 
 tation to satisfy the clamors in the theatre. Not that such requisitions 
 were submitted to without a struggle, or that succeeding sovereigns were 
 willing to make their dignity tacitly subordinate to ecclesiastical domi- 
 nation. It was the aim of Constantine to make theology a branch of 
 politics ; it was the hope of every bishop in the empire to make pohtics 
 a branch of theology. Already, however, it was apparent that the ec- 
 clesiastical party would, in the end, get the upper hand, and that the 
 reluctance of some of the emperors to obey its behests was merely the 
 revolt of individual minds, and therefore ephemeral in its nature, and 
 that the popular wishes would be abundantly gratified as soon as em- 
 perors arose who not merely, like Constantine, availed themselves of 
 Christianity, but absolutely and sincerely adopted it. 
 
 Julian, by his brief but ineffectual attempt at the restoration of pagan- 
 ism, scarcely restrained for a moment the course of the new doctrines, 
 The Emperor now Strengthening themselves continually in public estimation, 
 Julian. ^y. incorporating ideas borrowed from paganism. Through 
 the reign of Valentinian, who was a Mcenist, and Valens, who was an 
 Arian, things went on almost as if the episode of Julian had never oc- 
 curred. The ancient gods, whose existence no one seems ever to have 
 denied, were now thoroughly identified with dsemons; their worship was 
 stigmatized as the practice of magic. Against this crime, regarded by 
 Persecutions of his the laws as cqual to treason, a violent persecution arose, 
 successors. Persous rcsortiug to Eome for the purposes of study were 
 
 forbidden to remain there after they were twenty-one years of age. 
 The force of this persecution fell practically upon the old rehgion, 
 though nominally directed against the black art, for the primary fane- 
 tion of paganism was to foretell future events in this world, and hence 
 its connection with divination and its punishment as magic. 
 
 But the persecution, though directed at paganism, struck also at what 
 remained of philosophy. A great party had attained to' power under 
 circumstances which compelled it to enforce the principle on which it 
 Necessity of learn- was originally founded. That principle was the exaction 
 ing to the bishops. Qf unhesitating belief, which, though it will answer very 
 well for the humbler and more numerous class of men, is unsuited for 
 those of a higher intellectual grade. The policy df Constantine had 
 opened a career in the state, through the Church, for men of the lowest 
 rank. Many of such had already attained to the highest dignities. A 
 
EXTINCTION OP PAGANISM. 231 
 
 burning zeal rather tlian the possession of profound learning animated 
 them. But eminent position once attained, none stood more in need of 
 the appearance of wisdom. Under such circumstances, they were tempt- 
 ed to set up their own notions as final and unimpeachable truth, and to 
 denounce as magic, or the sinful pursuit of vain trifling, aU the learning 
 that stood in the way. In this the hand of the civil power assisted. It 
 was intended to cut off every philosopher. Every manuscript that 
 could be seized was forthwith burned. Throughout the Bast, men in 
 terror destroyed their hbraries, for fear that some unfortunate sentence 
 contained in any of the books should involve them and their families in 
 destruction. The universal opinion was that it was right to compel men 
 to believe what the majority of society had now accepted Growth of wgotry 
 as the truth, and, if they refused, it was right to punish ""a ^s^^tMo''- 
 them. No one was heard in the dominating party to raise his voice in 
 behalf of intellectual liberty. The mystery of things above reason was 
 held to be the very cause that they should be accepted by Faith; a sin- 
 gular merit was supposed to appertain to that mental condition in which 
 belief precedes understanding. 
 
 The death-blow to paganism was given by the Emperor Theodosius, 
 a Spaniard, who, from the services he rendered in this particular, has 
 been rewarded with the title of " The Great." From making i-anaticiam of 
 the practice of magic and the inspection of the entrails of an- Tieoios™- 
 imals capital offenses, he proceeded to the prohibition of sacrifices, A.D. 
 391, and even the entering of temples. He alienated the revenues of 
 many temples, confiscated the estates of others, some he demolished. 
 The vestal virgins he dismissed, and any house profaned by incense he 
 declared forfeited to the imperial exchequer. When once the property 
 of a rehgious estabhshment has been irrevocably taken away, it is need- 
 less to declare its worship a capital crime. 
 
 But not only did the government thus constitute itself a thorough 
 auxiliary of the new religion, it also tried to secure it from its own dis- 
 sensions. Apostates were deprived of the right of bequeathing their 
 own property. Inquisitors of faith were established ; they were at once 
 spies and judges, the prototypes of the most fearful tribunal of modem 
 times. Theodosius, to whom the carrying into effect of these measures 
 was due, found it, however, more expedient for himself to institute liv- 
 ing emblems of his personal faith than to rely on any ambiguous creed. 
 He therefore sentenced aU those to be deprived of civil rights, and to be 
 driven into exUe, who did not accord with the belief of Damasus, the 
 Bishop of Eome, and Peter, the Bishop of Alexandria. Those who pre- 
 sumed to celebrate Easter on the same day as the Jews he condenjned 
 to death. " "We will," says he, in his edict, " that all who embrace this 
 creed be called catholic Christians" — the rest are heretics. 
 
 Impartial history is obliged to impute the origin of these tyrannical 
 
232 PATEISTICISM. 
 
 and scandalous acts of the civil power to the influence of the clergy, and 
 rf thede™'^ to hold them responsible for the crimes. The guilt of im- 
 these events, pure unscrupulous women, eunuchs, parasites, violent sol- 
 diers in possession of absolute power, lies at tTieir door. Yet human 
 nature can never, in any condition of affairs, be altogether debased. 
 Though the system under which men were living pushed them forward 
 to these iniquities, the individual sense of right and wrong sometimes 
 vindicated itself In these pages we shall again and again meet this 
 personal revolt against the indefensible consequences of system. It was 
 thus that there were bishops who openly intervened between the victim 
 and his oppressor, who took the treasures of the Church to redeem 
 slaves from captivity. For this a future age will perhaps excuse Am- 
 brose, the Archbishop of Milan, the impostures he practiced, remember- 
 ing that, face to face, he held Theodosius the Great to an accountability 
 for the massacre of seven thousand persons, whom, in a fit of vengeance, 
 Massacre at ^^ ^^ murdered in the circus of Thessalonica, A.D. 390, and 
 Tbessaionica. inexorably compelled the imperial culprit, to whom he and all 
 his party were under such obligations, to atone for his crime by such 
 penance as may be exacted in this world, teaching his sovereign "that 
 though he was of the Church and in the Church, he was not above the 
 Church ;" that brute force raust giv^ way to intellect, and that even the 
 meanest human being has rights in the sight of Grod. 
 
 Political events had thus taken a course disastrous to human knowl- 
 edge. A necessity had arisen that they to whom circumstances, had 
 given the control of public faith should also have the control of public 
 knowledge. The moral condition of the world had thus come into an- 
 tagonism to scientific progress. As had been the case many ages before 
 imroduotion of ^'^ India, the sacred writings were asserted to contain what- 
 patriBtioism. gyg^ .^g^g necessary or useful for man to know. Questions in 
 astronomy, geography, chronology, history, or any other branch which 
 had hitherto occupied or amused the human mind, were now to be re- 
 ferred to a new tribunal for solution, and there remained nothing, to be 
 done by the philosopher. A revelation of science is incompatiblewith 
 any farther advance ; it admits no employment save that of the humble 
 commentator. 
 
 The early ecclesiastical writers, or fathers, as they are often called, 
 came thus to be considered not only as surpassing all other men in piety, 
 but also as excelling them in wisdom. Their dictum was looked upon 
 as final. This eminent position they held for many centuries ; indeed, 
 it was not until near the period of the Eeformation that they were de- 
 posed. The great critics who appeared at that time, by submitting the 
 Patristic works to a higher analysis, comparing them with one another 
 and showing their mutual contradictions, brought them aU to their 
 proper level. The habit of even so much as quoting them went out of 
 
PATBISTIO DOCTRINES. 233 
 
 use, when it was perceived that not one of thesa writers could Apology of the 
 present the necessary credentials to entitle Mm to speak with tristioiBm. 
 authority on any scientific fact. Many of them had not scrupled to ex- 
 press their contempt of the things they thus presumed to judge. Thus 
 Busebius says: "It is not through ignorance of the things admired by 
 philosophers, but through contempt of such useless labor, that we think so 
 little of these matters, turning our souls to the exercise of better things." 
 In such a spirit Lactantius holds the whole of philosophy to be "empty 
 and false." Speaking in reference to the heretical doctrine of the globu- 
 lar form of the earth, he says : " Is it possible that men can be so absurd 
 as to believe that the crops and the trees on the other side of the earth 
 hang downward, and that men have their feet higher than their heads ? 
 If you ask them how they defend these monstrosities ? how things do not 
 fall away from the earth on that side? they reply that the nature of 
 things is such, that heavy bodies tend toward the centre like the spokes 
 of a wheel, while Kght bodies, as clouds, smoke, fire, tend from the 
 centre to the heavens on all sides. Now I am really at a loss what 
 to say of those who, when they have once gone wrong, steadily perse- 
 vere in their folly, and defend one absurd opinion by another." On the 
 question of the antipodes, St. Augustine asserts that " it is impossible 
 there should be inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth, since no 
 such race is recorded'by Scripture among the descendants of Adam." 
 
 Patristicism, or the science of the fathers, was thus essentially found- 
 ed on the principle that the Scriptures contain all knowledge permitted 
 to man. It followed, therefore, that natural events may be interpreted 
 by the aid of texts, and that all philosophical doctrines must ^^ doctrines of 
 be moulded to the standard of orthodoxy. It asserted that ^aTi""™™- 
 God made the world out of nothing, since to admit the eternity of mat- 
 ter leads to Manicheism. It taught that the earth is a plane, and the 
 sky a vault above it, in which the stars are fixed, and the sun, moon, 
 and planets perform their motions, rising and setting ; that these bodies 
 are altogether of a subordinate nature, their use being to give light to 
 man; that stiU, higher and beyond the vault of the sky is heaven, the 
 abode of God and the angelic hosts ; that in six days the earth, and all 
 that it contains, were made ; that it was overwhelmed by a universal 
 deluge, which destroyed aU living things save those preserved in the 
 ark, the waters being subsequently dried up by the wind ; that man is the 
 moral centre of the world ; for him all things were created and are sustain- 
 ed; that, so far from his ever having shown any tendency to improve- 
 ment, he has fallen both in wisdom and worth, the first man, before his 
 sin, having been perfect in body and soul: hence Patristicism ever look- 
 ed backward, never forward ; that through that sin death, came into 
 the world ; not even any animal had died previously, but aU had been 
 immortal. It utterly rejected the idea of the government of the world 
 
234 CBITICISM ON PATEISTICISM. 
 
 by law, asserting the perpetual interference of an instant Providence 
 on all occasions, not excepting the most trifling. It resorted to spiritual 
 influences in the production of natural effects, assigning to angels the 
 duty of moving the stars, carrying up water from the sea to form rain, 
 and managing eclipses. It affirmed that man had existed but a few 
 centuries upon earth, and that he could continue only a little longer, 
 for that the world itself might be every moment expected to be burned 
 up by fire. It deduced all the families of the earth from one primitive 
 pair, and made them all morally responsible for the sin committed by 
 that pair. It rejected the doctrine that man can modify his own organ- 
 ism as absolutely irreligious, the physician being little better than an 
 atheist, but it affirmed that cures might be effected by the intercession 
 of saints, at the shrines of holy men, and by relics. It altogether repu- 
 diated the improvement of man's physical state ; to increase his power 
 or comfort was to attempt to attain what Providence had denied ; philo- 
 sophical investigation was an unlawful prying into things that G-od had 
 designed to conceal. It declined the logic of the Greeks, substituting 
 miracle-proof for it, the demonstration of an assertion being supposed to 
 be given by a surprising illustration of something else. 
 
 A wild astrondmy had thus supplanted the astronomy of Hipparchus; 
 the miserable fictions of Eusebius had subverted the chronology of 
 Manetho and Eratosthenes ; the geometry of Eucli& and Apollonius was 
 held to be of no use; the geography of Ptolemy, a blunder; the great 
 mechanical inventions of Archimedes incomparably surpassed by the 
 miracles worked at the shrines of a hundred saints. 
 
 Of such a mixture of truth and of folly was Patristicism composed. 
 Ignorance in power had found it acceptable to have a false and unpro- 
 gressive science, forgetting that sooner or later the time must arrive 
 Intrinsic weak- when it would be impossible to maintain stationary ideas in 
 triBtic system, a world of which the affairs are ever advancing". A failure 
 to include in the system thus imposed upon men any provision for in- 
 tellectual progress was the great and fatal mistake of those times. Eaxili 
 passing century brought its incompatibilities. A strain upon the work- 
 ing of the system soon occurred, and perpetually increased in force. It 
 became apparent that, in the end, the imposition would be altogether 
 unable to hold together. On a future page we shall see what were the 
 circumstances under which it at last broke down. 
 
 The wonder-worker who prepares to exhibit his phantasmagoria 
 upon the wall, knows well how much it adds to the delusion to have all 
 lights extinguished save that which is in his own dark lantern. I have 
 It commences T^°^ to relate how the last flickering rays of Greek learning 
 S's^Greek'scI: werc put out ; how Patristicism, aided by her companion 
 ™°°- Bigotry, attempted to lay the foundations of her influence in 
 
 security. 
 
THE LIBRARIES OP ALEXAinORIA. 235 
 
 In the reign of Theodosius the Great, the pagan religion and pagan 
 knowledge were together destroyed. This empero]^ was restrained by 
 no doubts, for he was very ignorant, and, it must be admitted, was equal- 
 ly sincere and severe. Among his early measures we find an order that 
 if any of the governors of Egypt so much as entered a tern- j^^f^ „f j^e Em- 
 ple he should be fined fifteen pounds of gold. He follow- p^™ Theodosius. 
 ed this by the destruction of the teinples of Syria. At this period the 
 Archbishopric of Alexandria was held by one Theophilus, a bold, bad 
 man, who had once been a monk of Nitria. It was about A.D.390. 
 The Trinitarian conflict was at the time composed, one party having got 
 the better of the other. To the monks and rabble of Alexandria the tem- 
 ple of Serapis and its library were doubly hateful, partly because of the 
 Pantheistic opposition it shadowed forth against the prevailing doctrine, 
 and partly because within its walls sorcery, magic, and other dealings 
 with the devil had for ages been going on. We have related how Ptol- 
 emy Philadelphus commenced the great library in the aristo- Alexandrian 
 cratic quarter of the city named Bruchion, and added various '"'™*=- 
 scientific establishments to it. Incited by this example, Eumenes, King 
 of Pergamus, established out of rivalry a similar library in his metropo- 
 lis. With the intention of preventing him from excelling that of Egypt, 
 Ptolemy Bpiphanes prohibited the exportation of papyrus, whereupon 
 Eumenes invented the art of making parchment. The second great 
 Alexandrian library was that established by Ptolemy Physcon at the 
 Serapion, in the adjoining quarter of the town. The library in the 
 Bruchion, which was estimated to contain 400,000 volumes, was acci- 
 dentally, or, as it has been said, purposely burned during the siege of 
 the city by Julius Caesar, but that in the Serapion escaped. To make 
 amends for this great catastrophe. Marc Antony presented to Cleopatra 
 the rival library, brought for that purpose from Pergamus. Library of Perga- 
 It consisted *of 200,000 volumes. It was with the library SEOTt^°"° 
 in the Bruchion that the Museum was originally connected ; but after 
 the conflagration thereof, the remains of the various surviving establish- 
 ments were transferred to the Serapion, which therefore was, at the 
 period of which we are speaking, the greatest depository of human 
 knowledge in the world. 
 
 The pagan Eoman emperors had not been unmindful of the great 
 trust they had thus inherited from the Ptolemies. The temple The tempie 
 of Serapis was universally admitted to be the noblest religious "' Serapis. 
 structure in the world, unless perhaps the patriotic Eoman excepted 
 that of the Capitoline Jupiter. It was approached by a vast flight of 
 steps ; was adorned with many rows of columns ; and in its quadrangu- 
 lar portico — a matchless work of skill — were placed most exquisite 
 statues. On the sciilptured walls of its chambers, and upon ceilings, 
 •were paintings of unapproachable excellence. Of the value of these 
 works of art the Greeks were no incompetent judges. 
 
236 THE SEBAFIOH". 
 
 The Serapion, with these its precious contents, perpetually gave um- 
 brage to the Archbishop Theophilus and his party. To them- it was a 
 reproach and an insult. Its many buildings were devoted to unknown, 
 and therefore unholy uses. In its vaults and silent chambers the popu- 
 lace believed that the most abominable mysteries were carried on. 
 There were magical brazen circles and sun-dials for fortune-telling in its 
 porch ; every one said that they had once belonged to Pharaoh or the 
 conjurors who strove with Moses. Alas! no one of the ferocious higofe 
 knew that with these Eratosthenes had in the old times measured the 
 size of the earth, and Timocharis had determined the motions of the 
 planet Venus. The temple, with its pure white marble walls, and end- 
 less columns projected against a blue and cloudless Egyptian sky, was 
 to them a whited sepulchre full of rottenness within. In the very sanc- 
 tuary of the god it was said that the priesfe had been known to delude 
 the wealthiest and most beautiful Alexandrian women, who fancied that 
 they were honored by the raptures of the god. To this temple, so well 
 worthy of their indignation, Theophilus directed, the attention of his 
 people. It happened that the Eraperor Constantius had formerly given 
 to the Church the site of an ancient temple of Osiris, and, in digging 
 the foundation for the new edifice, the obscene symbols used in that 
 Worship chanced to be found. With more zeal than modesty, Theophi- 
 lus exhibited them to the derision of the rabble in the market-place. 
 The old Egyptian pagan party rose to avenge the insult. A riot en- 
 Quarrei between susd. One Qlympius, a pMlosopher, being their leader. Their 
 and p^m ta head-quartcrs were in the massive building of the Serapioif 
 Aiexandria. iiQm whcnce issuiug forth they seized whatever Christians 
 they could, compelled them to offer sacrifice, and then killed thein on 
 the altar. The dispute was referred to the emperor, in .the mean time 
 the pagans maintaining themselves in the temple-fortress. In the dead 
 of the night, Olympius, it is said, was awe-stricken by thd sound of a 
 clear voice chanting among the arches and pillars the Christian AUeluiah. 
 Either accepting, like a heathen, the omen, or fearing a secret assassin, 
 Theoaosim orders he oscaped from the temple and fled for his life. On the 
 torn dJw?.°° ° ^ arrival of the rescript of Theodosius the pagans laid dow 
 their arms, little expectiiig the orders of the emperor..- He enjoined that 
 the building should forthwith be destroyed, intrusting the task to the 
 swift hands of Theophilus. His work was commenced by the .pUlage 
 and dispersal of the library. He entered the sanctuary of the god— that 
 sanctuary which was the visible sign of the Pantheism of thi'-East, the 
 memento of the alliance between hoary primeval Egypt and free-tiiinK-. 
 ing Greece, the relic of the statesmanship of Alexander's captains.' , la 
 statue of serapis gloomy silcncc the image of Serapis confronted its assail- 
 ia destroyed. g^^^g_ j^ jg j^ g-^^-j^ ^ momcnt that the value of a religion is 
 tried; the god who can not defend himself is a convicted' sham. The- 
 
DESTEUCTION OF THE LIBRARIES. 237 
 
 ophilus, undaunted, commands a veteran to strike the image with his 
 battle-axe. The helpless statue offers no resistance. Another blow 
 rolls the head of the idol on the floor. It is said that a colony of fright- 
 ened rats ran forth from its interior. The kingcraft, and priestcraft, 
 and solemn swindle of seven hundred years is exploded in a shout of 
 laughter ; the god is broken to pieces, his members dragged through 
 the streets. The recesses of the Serapion are explored. Posterity is 
 edified by discoveries of the frauds by which priests maintain their 
 power. Among other wonders, a car with four horses is seen suspended 
 near the ceiling by means of a magnet laid on the roof, which being re- 
 moved by the hand of a Christian, the imposture fell to the pavement. 
 The historian of these events, noticing the physical impossibility of such 
 things, has wisely said that it is more easy to invent a fictitious story 
 than to support a practical fraud. But the gold and silver contained in 
 the temple were carefully collected, the baser articles being broken in 
 pieces or cast into the fire. Nor did the holy zeal of TheophUus rest 
 until the structure was demolished to its very foundations — a work of 
 no little labor — and a church erected in the precincts. It must, how- 
 ever, have been the temple more particularly which experienced this 
 devastation. The building in which the library had been contained 
 must have escaped, for, twenty years subsequently, Orosius expressly 
 states that he saw the empty cases or shelves. The fanatic Theophilus 
 pushed forward his victory. The temple at Canopus next fell before 
 him, and a general attack was made on aU similar edifices in Egypt. 
 Speaking of the monks and of the worship of relics, Eu- Perseeuaons of 
 napius says: "Whoever wore a black dress was invested ^eopuius. 
 with tyrannical power; philosophy and piety to the gods were com- 
 pelled to retire into secret places, and to dwell in contented poverty and 
 dignified meanness of appearance. The temples were turned into tombs 
 for the adoration of the bones of the basest and most depraved of men, 
 who had suffered the penalty of the law, and whom they made their 
 gods." 
 
 Such was the end of the Serapion. Its destruction stands forth an 
 enduring token of the state of the times. 
 
 In a few years after this memorable event the Archbishop Theophi- 
 lus had gone to his account. His throne was occupied by his nephew, 
 St. Cyril, who had been expressly prepared for that holy and re- st. cyrn. 
 sponsible office by a residence of five years among the monks of Nitria. 
 He had been presented to the fastidious Alexandrians with due precau- 
 tions, and by them acknowledged to be an effective and fashionable 
 preacher. His pagan opponents, however, asserted that the clapping of 
 hands and encores bestowed on the more elaborate passages of his ser- 
 mons w.ere performed by persons duly arranged in the congregation, 
 and paid for their trouble. If doubt remains as to his intellectual en- 
 
238 ST. CYEIL AND HYPATIA. 
 
 dowments, there can be none respecting the qualities of his heart. The 
 three parties into which the population of the city was divided — Chris- 
 tian, Heathen, and Jew — kept up a perpetual disorder by their disputes. 
 Of the last it is said that the number was not less than forty thousand. 
 The episcopate itself had become much less a religious than an import- 
 ant civil office, exercising a direct municipal control through the Para- 
 bolani, which, under the disguise of city missionaries, whose duty it was 
 to seek out the sick and destitute, constituted in reality a constabulary 
 force, or rather actually a militia. The unscrupulous manner in which 
 Determinea on CvTil made' usc of tMs forcc, diverting it from its ostensible 
 
 supremacy in. " . . -. i -i i /i i i 11., 
 
 Alexandria, purposc, IS moicated by the fact that the emperor was obliged 
 eventually to take the appointments to it out of the archbishop's hands, 
 and reduce the number to five or six hundred. Some local circnni' 
 stances had increased the animosity between the Jews and the Chri& 
 Eiota in that tians, and riots had taken place between them in the theatre, 
 city. These were followed by more serious conflicts in the streets 
 
 and the Jews, for the moment having the advantage over their antago- 
 nists, outraged and massacred them. It was, however, but for a moment 
 for, the Christians arousing themselves under the inspirations of Cyril, a 
 mob sacked the synagogues, pillaged the houses of the Jews, and en- 
 deavored to expel those offenders out of the city. The Prefect Orestes 
 was compelled to interfere to stop the riot ; but the archbishop was not 
 so easily disposed of. His old associates, the Nitrian monks, now justi- 
 fied the prophetic forecast of TheophUus. Five hundred, of those fanat- 
 ics swarmed into the town from the desert. The prefect himself was 
 assaulted, and wounded in the head by a stone thrown by one of them, 
 Ammonius. The more respectable citizens, alarmed at the turn things 
 were taking, interfered, and Ammonius, being seized, suffered death at 
 the hands of the lictor. Cyril, undismayed, caused his body to be trans- 
 ported to the Csesareum, laid there in state, and buried with unusual 
 honors. He directed that the name of the fallen zealot should be changed 
 from Ammonius to Thaumasius, or "the "Wonderful," and the holy mar- 
 tyr received the honors of canonization. 
 
 In these troubles there can be no doubt that the pagans sympathized 
 with the Jews, and therefore drew upon themselves the vengeance of 
 Cyril. Among the cultivators of Platonic philosophy whom the times 
 Hypatia. had left there was a beautiful young woman, Hypatia, thei daugh- 
 ter of Theon the mathematician, who not only distinguished herself by 
 her expositions of the Neo-Platonic and Peripatetic doctrines, but was 
 also honored for the ability with which she commented on the writings 
 of Apollonius and other geometers. Each day before her door stood a 
 long train of chariots ; her lecture-room was crowded with the wealth 
 and fashion of Alexandria. Her aristocratic audiences were mpre than 
 a rival to those attending upon the preaching of the archbishop, and 
 
THE CITY OF ALE2ANDBIA. 239 
 
 perhaps contemptuous comparisons were instituted between the philo- 
 sophical lectures of Hypatia and the incomprehensible sermons of Cyril. 
 But if the archbishop had not philosophy, he had what 'on such, occa- 
 sions is more valuable — power. It was not to be borne that a heathen 
 sorceress should thus divide such a metropolis with a prelate ; it was not 
 to be borne that the rich, and noble, and young should thus be carried 
 off by the black arts of a diabolical enchantress. Alexandria was too 
 fair a prize to be lightly surrendered. It could vie with Con- Thedtyof 
 stantinople itself. Into its streets, from the yellow sand-hills ■"«='»°<'^ 
 of the desert, long trains of camels and countless boats brought the 
 abundant harvests of the NUe. A ship-canal connected the harbor of 
 Eunostos with Lake Mareotis. The harbor was a forest of masts. Sea- 
 ward, looking over the blue Mediterranean, was the great light-house, 
 the Pharos, counted as one of the wonders, of the world ; and to protect 
 the shipping from the north wind there was a mole three quarters of a 
 mile in length, with its drawbridges, a marvel of the skill of the Mace- 
 donian engineers. Two great streets crossed each other at right angles 
 — one was three, the other one mile long. In the square where they 
 intersected stood the mausoleum in which rested the body of Alexander. 
 The city was fiill of noble edifices — the palace, the exchange, the Csesa- 
 reum, the halls of justice. Among the temples, those of Pan and Nep- 
 tune were conspicuous. The visitor passed countless theatres, churches, 
 temples, synagogues. There was a time before Theophilus when the 
 Serapion migut have been approached on one side by a slope for car- 
 riages, on the other by a flight of a hundred marble steps. On these 
 stood the grand portico with its columns, its checkered corridor leading 
 round a roofless hall, the adjoining porches of which contained the li- 
 brary, and from the midst of its area arose a lofty pillar visible afar off 
 at sea. On one side of the town were the royal docks, on the other the 
 Hippodrome, and on appropriate sites the Necropolis, the market-places, 
 the gymnasium, its stoa being a stadium long ; the amphitheatre, groves, 
 gardens, fountains, obelisks, and countless public buildings with gilded 
 roofs glittering in the sun. Here might be seen the wealthy Christian 
 ladies walking in the streets, their dresses embroidered with Scripture 
 parables, the Gospels hanging from their necks by a golden chain, Mal- 
 tese dogs with jeweled coUars frisking round them, and slaves with par- 
 asols and fans trooping along. There might be seen the ever-trading, 
 ever-thriving Jew, fresh from the wharves, or busy concocting his loans. 
 But, worst of all, the chariots with giddy or thoughtful pagans hasten- 
 ing to the academy of Hypatia, to hear those questions discussed which 
 have never yet been answered, "Where am I?" "What am I?" "What 
 can I know ?" — to hear discourses on antenatal existence, or, as the vul- 
 gar asserted, to find out the future by the aid of the black art, soothsay- 
 ing by Chaldee talismans engraved on precious stones, by incantations 
 
240 DEATH OF HYPATIA AND SUPPRESSION OF SCIENCE, 
 
 witli a glass and water, by moonslaine on the walls, by tbe magic mir- 
 ror, the reflection of a sapphire, a sieve, or cymbals; fortune-telling by 
 the veins. of the hand, or consultations with the stars. 
 
 Cyril at length determined to remove this great reproach, and overturn 
 what now appeared to be the only obstacle in his way to uncontrolled 
 authority in the city. We are reaching one of those moments in whicli 
 great general principles embody themselves in individuals. It is Greek 
 philosophy under the appropriate form of Hypatia ; ecclesiastical ambi- 
 tion under that of Gyril. Their destinies are about to be fulfilled. As 
 Murder of Hypa- Hypatia comes forth to her academy, she is assaulted by 
 tia by cyru. Oyril's mob — an Alexandrian mob of many monks. Amid 
 the fearful yelling of these barelegged and black-cowled fiends she is 
 dragged from her chariot, and in the public street stripped naked. In 
 her mortal terror she is haled into an adjacent church, and in that sa- 
 cred edifice is killed by the club of Peter the Eeader. It is not always 
 in the power of him who has stirred up the worst passions of a fanatical 
 mob to stop their excesses when his purpose is accomplished. With 
 the blow given by Peter the aim of Cyril was reached, but his merciless 
 adherents had not glutted their vengeance. They outraged the naked 
 corpse, dismembered it, and, incredibleto be said, finished their infernal 
 crime by scraping the flesh from the bones with oyster-sheUs, and east- 
 ing the remnants into the fire. Though in his privacy St. Cyril and his 
 friends might laugh at the end of his antagonist, his memory niust bear 
 the weight of the righteous indignation of posterity. 
 
 Thus, in the 414th year of our era, the position of philosophy in the in- 
 snppreaaion of tcUectual mctropolis of the world was determined ; henceforth 
 science. scieuce must siukinto obscurity and Subordination. Its public 
 
 existence will no longer be tolerated. Indeed, it may be said that fi-om 
 this period for some centuries it altogether disappeared. The leaden mace 
 of bigotry had struck and shivered the exquisitely tempered steel of Greek 
 philosophy. Cyril's acts passed unquestioned. It was now ascertaiaed 
 that throughout the Eoman world there must be no more liberly of 
 thought. It has been said that these events prove Greek phUosophyto 
 have been a sham, and, like other sha,ms, it was driven out of the world 
 when it was detected, and that it could not withstand the truth. Such 
 assertions might answer their purposes very well, so long as the victors 
 maintained their power in Alexandria, but they manifestly are of incon- 
 venient application after the Saracens had Captured the city.' Howevei 
 these things may be, an intellectual stagnation settled upon the place, an 
 invisible atmosphere of oppression, ready to crush down, morally and 
 physically, whatever provoked its weight. And so for the next two 
 dreary and weary centuries things remained, until oppression and force 
 were ended by a foreign inVader. It was well for the World that the 
 Arabian conquerors avowed their true argument, the cimeter, and made 
 
END OF THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST. 241 
 
 no pretensions to superhuman wisdom. They were thus left free to 
 pursue knowledge without involving themselves in theological contra- 
 dictions, and were able to make Egypt once more illustrious among the 
 nations of the earth — to snatch it from the hideous fanaticism, ignorance, 
 and barbarism into which it had been plunged. On the shore of the 
 Eed Sea once more a degree of the earth's surface was to be measured, 
 and her size ascertained — but by a Mohanimedan astronomer. In 
 Alexandria the memory of the illustrious old times was to be recalled 
 by the disfcovery of the motion of the sun's apogee by Albategnius, and 
 the third inequality of the moon, the variation, by Aboul Wefa ; to be 
 discovered six centuries later in Europe by Tycho Brahe. The canal of 
 the Pharaohs from the Nile to the Eed Sea, cleared out by the Ptolemies 
 in former ages, was to be cleared from its sand again. The glad desert 
 listened once more to the cheerful cry of the merchant's camel-driver 
 instead of the midnight prayer of the monk. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 PREMATURE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST. 
 
 THE TKKEE ATTACKS, VANDAI,, PEESIAN, AKAB. 
 
 The Vandal Attack leads to the Loss oj" Africa, — Recovery of that Province hy Justinian 
 after great Calamities, 
 
 The Peksian Attack leads to the Loss of Syria and Fall of Jerusalem, — TTte true Cross car- 
 ried away as a Trophy. — Moral Impression of these Attacks. 
 
 The Aeab Attack. — Birth, Mission, and Doctrines of Mohammed. — Ea2nd Spread of his 
 Faith in Asia and Africa. — Fall of Jerusalem. — Dreadful Losses of Christianity to Moham- 
 medanism. — The Arabs become a learned Nation. 
 
 Review of the Koran. — Reflections on the Loss of Asia and Africa hy Christendom. 
 
 I HAVE now to describe the end of the age of Eaith in the East. The 
 Byzantine system, out of which it had issued, was destroyed Three attacks 
 by three attacks : 1st, by the Vandal invasion of Africa ; 2d, g^^^^SeVy^! 
 by the military operations of Chosroes, the Persian king ; 3d, *™- 
 by Mohammedanism. 
 
 Of these three attacks, the Yandal may be said, in a military sense, to 
 have been successfully closed by the victories of Justinian, but, polit- 
 ically,- the cost of those victories was the depopulation and ruin of the 
 empire, particularly in the south and west. The second, the Persian 
 attack, though brilliantly resisted in its later years by the Emperor 
 Heraclius, left, throughout the East, a profound moral impression, which 
 proved final and fatal in the Mohammedan attack. 
 
 No heresy has ever produced such important political results as that 
 of Anus. While it was yet a vital doctrine, it led to the infliction of 
 
 Q 
 
242 
 
 THE VAJJ-DAL ATTACK. 
 
 The Vandal Unspeakable calamities on the empire, and, though, long ago 
 forgotten, has blasted permanently some of the fairest portions 
 of the globe. When Count Boniface, incited by the intrigues of the pa- 
 trician iEtius, invited Genseric, the King of the Vandals, into Africa 
 that barbarian found in the discontented sectaries his most effectual aid. 
 In vain would he otherwise have attempted the conquest of the country 
 with the 50,000 men he landed from Spain, A.D. 429. Three hundred 
 Conquest of Douatist bishops, and many thousand priests, driven to despair 
 Afnca. -^^ ^i^g persecutions inflicted by the emperor, carrying with 
 them that large portion of the population who were Arian, were ready 
 to look upon him as a deliverer, and therefore to afford him support. 
 The result was the loss of Africa to the empire. 
 
 It was nothing more than might be expected that Justinian, when he 
 found himself firmly seated on the throne of Constantinople, should 
 make an attempt to retrieve these disasters. The principles which led 
 The reign of ,bim to Hs schems of legislation ; to the promotion of manufac- 
 Justinian, taring interests by the fabrication of sUk; to the reopening of 
 the ancient routes to India, so as to avoid transit through the Pereian 
 dominions ; to his attempt at securing the carrying trade of Europe for 
 the Greeks, also suggested the recovery of Africa. To this important 
 step he was urged by the Catholic clergy. In a sinister but suitable 
 manner, his reign was illustrated by his closing the schools of philoso- 
 phy at Athens, ostensibly because of their afSliation to paganism, but' 
 in reality on account of his detestation of the doctrines of Aristotle and 
 Plato; by the abolition of the consulate of Eome ; by the extinction of 
 the Eoman senate, A.D. 552 ; by the capture and recapture five times 
 of the Eternal City. The vanishing of the Eoman race was thus marked 
 by an extinction of the instruments of ancient philosophy and power. 
 
 The indigiiation of the Catholics was doubtless justly provoked by 
 the atrocities practiced in the Arian behalf by the Vandal kings of Af- 
 rica, who, among other cruelties, had attempted to silence some bishops 
 by cutting out their tongues. To carry out Justinian's intention of the 
 His reconqueat Tccovery of Africa-, his general Belisarius sailed at midsum- 
 of Africa. jjjgj.^ ^j) 533^ and in November he had completed the re- 
 conquest of the country. 
 
 This was speedy work, bijt it was followed by fearfiil calamities ; for 
 Dreadful caiam- in this, and the Italian wars of Justinian, likewise under- 
 by him" taken at the instance of the orthodox clergy, the human 
 
 race visibly diminished. It is afiSj-med that in the African campaign 
 five millions of the people. of that country were consumed; that during 
 the twenty year-s .of the Gothic War Italy lost fifteen millions ; and that 
 the wars, famines, and pestilences of the reign of Justinian diminished 
 the human species by the almost incredible number of one hundred 
 jnillions. • 
 
THE PEESIAN ATTACK. 243 
 
 It is therefore not at all surprising that in such a deplorable condi- 
 tion men longed for a deliverer, in their despair totally regardless who 
 he might be or from what quarter he might come. .Ecclesiastical par- 
 tisanship had done its work. When Chosroes II., the Persian ^he Persian 
 monarch, A.D. 611, commenced his attack, the persecuted sect- ^"°'°''- 
 aries of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt followed the example of the Af- 
 rican Arians in the Yandal invasion, and betrayed the empire. The 
 revenge of an oppressed heretic is never scrupulous about its means of 
 gratification. As might have been expected, the cities of Asia fell be- 
 fore the Persians. They took Jerusalem by assault, and paii and puiage 
 with it the cross of Christ ; ninety thousand Christians were "f Jerusalem, 
 massacred ; and in its very birthplace Christianity was displaced by 
 Magianism. The shock which religious men received through this 
 dreadful event can hardly now be realized. The imposture of Constan- 
 tine bore a bitter fruit ; the sacred wood that had filled the world with 
 its miracles was detected to be a helpless counterfeit, borne off in tri- 
 umph by deriding blasphemers. All confidence in the apostolic powers 
 of the Asiatic bishops was lost ; not one of them could work a wonder 
 for his own Salvation in the dire extremity. The invaders overran 
 Egypt as far as Ethiopia ; it seemed as if the days of Cambyses Triumphs of 
 had come back agaia. The Archbishop of Alexandria found ^•«»"«- 
 it safer to flee to Cyprus than to defend himself by spiritual artifices or 
 to rely on prayers. The Mediterranean shore to Tripoli was subdued. 
 For ten years the Persian standards were displayed in view of Constan- 
 tinople. At one time Heraclius had determined to abandon that city, 
 and make Carthage the metropolis of the empire. His intention was 
 defeated by the combination of the patriarch, who dreaded the loss of 
 his position ; of the aristocracy, who foresaw their own ruiii ; and of the 
 people, who would be deprived of their largesses and shows. Africa 
 was more truly Eoman than any other of the provinces ; it was there 
 that Latin was last used. But when the vengeance of the heretical sects 
 was satisfied, they found that they had only changed the tyrant without 
 escaping the tyranny. The magnitude of their treason was demonstrated 
 by the facility with which Heraclius expelled the Persians as soon as 
 they chose to assist him. 
 
 In vain, after these successes, what was passed off for the true cross 
 was restored again to Jerusalem — the charm was broken. The Magian 
 fire had burnt the sepulchre of Christ, and the churches of Themoraiim- 
 Constantine and Helena; the costly gifts of the piety of three tteTevents. 
 centuries were gone into the possession of the Persian and the Jew. 
 Never again was it possible that faith could be restored. They who 
 had devoutly expected that the earth would open, the lightning descend, 
 or sudden death arrest .the sacrilegious invader of the holy places, and 
 had seen that nothing of the kind ensued, dropped at once into dismal 
 
244 MOHAMMED. 
 
 disbelief. Asia and Africa were already morally lost. The cimeter of 
 the Arabian soon cut the remaining tie. 
 
 Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, 
 Biith of Mo- ill Arabia, the man who, of all others, has exercised the great- 
 hammed. gg^ influence upon the human race — Mohammed, by Europeans 
 surnamed " the Impostor." He raised his own nation from Fetichism, 
 the adoration of a meteoric stone, and from the basest idol- worship ; he 
 preached a monotheism which quickly scattered to the winds the empty 
 disputes of the Arians and Catholics, and irrevocably wrenched from 
 Christianity more than half, and that by far the best half of her posses- 
 sions, since it included the Holy Land, the birthplace of our faith, and 
 Africa, which had imparted to it its Latin form. That continent, and a 
 very large part of Asia, after the lapse of more than a thousand years, 
 still remain permanently attached to the Arabian doctrine. With the 
 utmost diificulty, and as if by miracle, Europe itself escaped. 
 
 Mohammed possessed that combination of qualities which more than 
 once has decided the fate of empires. A preaching soldier, he was elo- 
 His preaching, queut in the pulpit, valiant in the field. His theology was 
 simple : " There is but one God." The effeminate SyriaUj lost in Mono- 
 thelite and Monophysite mysteries ; the Athanasian and Arian, destined 
 to disappear before his breath, might readily anticipate what he meant 
 Asserting that everlasting truth, he did not engage in vain metaphysics,, 
 but applied himself to improving the social condition of his people by 
 regulations respecting personal cleanliness, sobriety, fasting, prayer. 
 Above all other works he esteemed almsgiving and charity. With a 
 liberality to which the world had of late become a stranger, he admitted 
 the salvation of men of any form of faith provided they were virtuous^ 
 To the declaration that there is but one God, he added, " and Moham- 
 med is his Prophet." Whoever desires to know whether the event of 
 things answered to the boldness of such an announcement, will do well 
 and title to to examine a map of the world in our own times. He will 
 aposticahip. £^^ ^j^g marks of something more than an imposture. To be 
 the religious head of many empires, to guide the daily life of one third 
 of the human race, may perhaps justify the title of a messenger of God. 
 
 Like many of the Christian' monks, Mohammed retired to the solitude 
 of the desert, and, devoting himself to meditation, fasting, and prayer, 
 became the victim of cerebral delusion. He was visited by supernatural 
 Hia deiusiona. appearanccs, mysterious voices accosting him as the Prophet 
 of God ; even the stones and trees joined in the whispering. He him- 
 self suspected the true nature of his malady, and. to his wife Chadizah 
 he expressed a dread that he was becoming insane. It is related that, 
 as they sat alone, a shadow entered the room. " Dost thou see aught?" 
 said Chadizah, who, after the manner of Arabian matrons, wore her 
 veil. " I do," said the prophet. Whereupon slie uncovered her face 
 
HIS OPPOSITION TO THE EASTERN CHUECHES. 245 
 
 and said, " Dost thou see it now ?" "I do not." " Glad tidings to thee, 
 Mohammed!" exclaimed Chadizah: "it is an angel, for he has re- 
 spected my unveiled face; an evil spirit would not." As his disease 
 advanced, these spectral illusions became more frequent ; from one of 
 them he received the divine commission. " I," said his wife, " will be 
 thy first believer;" and they knelt down in prayer together. Since that 
 day nine thousand milhons of human beings have acknowledged him 
 to be a prophet of God. 
 
 Though,,in the earlier part of his career, Mohammed exhibited a spirit 
 of forbearance toward the Christians, it was not possible but that bitter 
 animosity should arise, as the sphere of his influence extended. He ap- 
 pears to have been unable to form any other idea of the Trinity than 
 that of three distinct erods ; and the worship of the Virgin his gmdaai an- 
 
 ° ' p •! ■ ■ tagonism to 
 
 Mary, recently introduced, could not fail to come mto ir- chriatiamty. 
 reconcilable conflict with his doctrine of the unity of God. To his con- 
 demnation of those Jews who taught that Ezra was the Son of God, he 
 soon added bitter denunciations of the Oriental churches because of 
 their idolatrous practices. The Koran is full of such rebukes : "Verily, 
 Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary, is the apostle of God." " Believe, there- 
 fore, in God and his apostles, and say not that there are three gods. 
 Forbear this ; it will be better for you. God is but one God. Far be it 
 from Him that he should have a son." " In the last day, God shall say 
 unto Jesus, Jesus, son of Mary ! hast thou ever said to men. Take me 
 and my mother for two gods beside God? He shall say. Praise be unto 
 thee, it; is not for me to say that which I ought not." Mohammed dis- 
 dains all metaphysical speculations respecting the nature of the Deity, 
 or of the origin and existence of sin, topics which had hitherto exercised 
 the ingenuity of the East. He casts aside the doctrine of the superla- 
 tive value of chastity, asserting that marriage is the natural state of man. 
 To asceticism he opposed polygamy, permitting the practice of it in this 
 life, and promising the most voluptuous means for its enjoy- institution of 
 ment in Paradise hereafter, especially to those who had gain- ^"'ysamy- 
 ed the crowns of martyrdom or of victory. 
 
 Too often, in this world, success is the criterion of right. The Mo- 
 hammedan appeals to the splendor and rapidity of his career as a proof 
 of the divine mission of his apostle. It may, however, be per- j^^^^^ ^ 
 mitted to a philosopher, who desires to speak of the faith of so ^' ■"*■ 
 large a portion of the human race with profound respect, to examine 
 what were some of the secondary causes which led to so great a political 
 result. From its most glorious seats Christianity was forever expelled : 
 from Palestine, the scene of its most sacred recollections ; from Asia 
 Minor, that of its first churches ; from Egypt, whence issued the great 
 doctrine of Trinitarian orthodoxy ; from Carthage, who imposed her 
 behef on Europe. 
 
246 CAUSES OF Mohammed's success. 
 
 It is altogether a misconception that the Arabian progress was due to 
 cauBeaofhiB ^^^ sword alon'o. The sword niay change an acknowledged 
 succeaa. national creed, but it can not affect the consciences of men. 
 Profound though its argument is, something far more profound was 
 demanded before Mohammedanism pervaded the domestic life of Asia 
 and Africa, before Arabic became the language of so many different 
 nations. , 
 
 The explanation of this political phenomenon is to be found in the so- 
 cial condition of the conquered countries. The influences of rehgion in 
 them had long ago ceased ; it had become supplanted by theology— a 
 theology so incomprehensible that even the wonderful capabilities of 
 the Greek language were scarcely enough to meet its subtle demands; 
 the Latin and the barbarian dialects were out of the question. How 
 was it possible that unlettered men, who with difficulty can be made to 
 apprehend obvious things, should understand such mysteries? Yet 
 they were taught that on those doctrines the salvation or damnation of 
 the human race depended. They saw that the clergy had abandoned 
 the guidance of the individual life of their flocks ; that personal virtue or 
 vice were no longer considered ; that sin was not measured by evil works, 
 but by the degrees of heresy. They saw that the ecclesiastical chiefs of 
 Eome, Constantinople, and Alexandria were engaged in a desperate 
 struggle for supremacy, carrying out their purposes by weapons and in 
 ways revolting to the conscience of man. What an example when bish- 
 Civil weaknesa ops are coucemcd in assassinations, poisonings, adulteries, 
 li^ltat^^ie- bhndings, riots, treasons, civil war ; when patriarchs and pri- 
 moraiization. mateg are excommunicating and anathematizing one another 
 in their rivalries for earthly power, bribing eunuchs with gold, and 
 courtesans and royal females with concessions of episcopal love, and in- 
 iluencing the decisions of councils asserted to speak with the voice of 
 God by those base intrigues and sharp practice resorted to by dema- 
 gogues in their packed assemblies ! Among legions of monks, who car- 
 ried terror into the imperial armies and riot into the great cities, arose 
 hideous clamors for theological dogmas, but never a voice for intellect- 
 ual liberty or the outraged rights of man. In such a state of things, 
 what else could be the result than disgust or indifferentism? Certainly 
 men could not be expected, if a time of necessity arose; to give help to 
 a system that had lost all hold on their hearts. 
 
 When, therefore,, in the midst of the wrangling of sects, in the incom- 
 prehensible jargon of Arians, Nestorians, Eutychians, MonotheUtes, 
 Monophysites, Mariolatrists, and an anarchy of countless disputants, 
 there sounded through the world, not the miserable voice of the in- 
 triguing majority of a council, but the dread battle-cry, " There is but 
 one God," enforced by the tempest of Saracen armies, is it surprising 
 that the hubbub was hushed? Is it surprising that all Asia and Africa 
 
THE SAEACEN CONQUESTS. 247 
 
 fell away ? vJn better times patriotism is too often made subojdinate to 
 religion ; in those times it was altogether dead. 
 
 Scarcely was Mohammed buried when his religion manifested its in- 
 evitable destiny of overpassing the bounds of Arabia. The prophet' 
 himself had declared war against the Eoman empire, and, at the head 
 of 30,000 men, advanced toward Damascus, but his purpose ' conqnest of 
 was frustrated by ill health. His successor, Abu-Bekr, the ■""™- 
 first khalif, attacked both the Eomans and the Persians. The invasion 
 of Egypt occurred A.D. 638, the Arabs being invited by the Copts. In 
 a few months the Mohammedan general Amrou wrote to his master, the 
 khalif, "I have taken Alexandria, the great city of the "West." Treason 
 had done its work, and Egypt was thoroughly subjugated. To com- 
 plete the conquest of Christian Africa, many attacks were nevertheless 
 required. Abdallah penetrated nine hundred mUes to Tripoli, but re- 
 turned. Nothing more was done for twenty years, because of the dis- 
 putes that arose about the succession to the khalifate. Then Moawi- 
 yah sent his lieutenant, Akbah, who forced his way to the Atlantic, but 
 was unable to hold the long line of country permanently. Again oper- 
 ations were undertaken by Abdalmalek, the sixth of the Ommiade dy- 
 nasty, A.D. 698 ; his lieutenant, Hassan, took Carthage by storm and de- 
 stroyed it, the conquest being at last thoroughly completed by Musa, 
 who enjoyed the double reputation of a brave soldier and an eloquent 
 preacher. And thus this region, distinguished by its theological acu- 
 men, to which modern Europe owes so much, was forever silenced by 
 the cimeter. It ceased to preach and was taught to pray. 
 
 In this political result — ^the Arabian conquest of Africa — there can be 
 no doubt that the same element which exercised in the Yandal invasion 
 so disastrous an effect, came again into operation. But, if treason intro- 
 duced the enemy, polygamy secured the conquest. In Egypt the Greek 
 population was orthodox, the natives were Jacobites, more willing to 
 accept the Monotheism of Arabia than to bear the tyranny of the ortho- 
 dox. The Arabs, carrying out their policy of ruining an old metropo- 
 lis and erecting a new one, dismantled Alexandria ; and thus the patri- 
 archate of that city ceased to have any farther political existence in the 
 Christian system, which for so many ages had been disturbed by its in- 
 trigues and violence. The irresistible effect of polygamy in consolida- 
 ting the new order of things soon became apparent. In little more than 
 a single generation 1,he children of the north of Africa were speaking 
 Arabic. 
 
 During the khalifates of Abu-Bekr and Omar, -and within twelve years 
 after the death of Mohammed, the Arabians' had reduced conquest of syr- 
 thirty-six thousand fortified places in Persia, Syria, Africa, ^ ""* ^'^^ 
 and had destroyed four thousand churches, replacing them with four- 
 teen hundred mosques. In a few years they had extended their rule a 
 
248 THE FALL OF JERUSALEM. 
 
 thousand^ miles east and west. In Syria, as in Africa, thsjr early suc- 
 cesses were promoted ia the most effectual manner by treachery. Da- 
 mascus was taken after a siege of a year. At the battle of Aiznadin, 
 *A.D. 633, Kalid, " the Sword of God," defeated the army of Heraclius, 
 the Eomans losing fifty thousand men ; and this was soon followed by 
 The fall of the fall of the great cities, Jerusalem, Antioch, Aleppo, Tyre, 
 Jerusalem. Tripoli. On a red camel, which carried a bag of corn and one 
 of dates, a wooden dish, and a leather water-bottle, the Khahf Omar came 
 from Medina to take formal possession of Jerusalem. He entered the 
 Holy City riding by the side of. the Christian patriarch Sophroniug, 
 whose capitulation showed that his confidence was completely lost. The 
 successor of Mohammed and the Eoman emperor both correctly judged 
 how important in the eyes of the natipns was the possession of Jerusa- 
 lem. A belief that it would be a proof of the authenticity of Moham- 
 medanism led Omar to order the Saracen troops to take it at any cost. 
 
 The conquest of Syria and the seizure of the Mediterranean ports 
 ^ave to the Arabs the command of the sea. They soon took Bhodes 
 and Cyprus. The battle of Cadesia and sack of Ctesiphon, the metrop- 
 olis of Persia, decided the fate of that kingdom. Syria was thus com- 
 pletely reduced under Omar, the second khalif ; Persia under Othman, 
 the third. 
 
 If it be true that the Arabs burned the library of Alexandria, there 
 was at that time danger that their fanaticism would lend itself to the 
 Byzantine system ; but it was only for a moment that the khalifs fell into 
 The Araha be- this cvil policy. They Very soon became distinguished pa- 
 nation, trons of learning. It has been said that they overran the 
 domains of science as quickly as they overran the realms of their neigh- 
 bors. It became customary for the first dignities of the state to be held 
 by men distinguished for their erudition. Some of the maxims current 
 show how much literature was esteemed. " The ink of the doctor is 
 equally valuable with the blood of the martyr." " Paradise is as much 
 for him who has rightly used the pen as for him who has fallen by the 
 sword." " The world is sustained by four things only : the learning of 
 the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor 
 of the brave." Within twenty-five years after the death of Mohammed, 
 under Ali, the fourth khalif, the patronage of learning had become a. 
 settled principle of the Mohammedan system. Under the khalifs of 
 Bagdad this principle was thoroughly carried out. The cultivators of 
 mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and general literature abounded in 
 the court of Almansor, who invited all philosophers, offering them his 
 protection, whatever their religious opinions might be. His successor, 
 Alraschid, is said never to have traveled without a retinue of a hundred 
 learned men. This great sovereign issued an edict that no mosque 
 should be built unless there was a school attached to it. It was he who 
 
SAEAOEN CULTIVATION OF SCIENCE. 249 
 
 confided the superintendence of his schools to the Nestorian Masu^. 
 His successor, Almaimon, was brought up among Greek and Persian 
 mathematicians, philosophers, and physicians. They continued his as- 
 sociates all his life. By these sovereigns the establishment of libraries 
 was incessantly prosecuted, and the collection and copying of manu- 
 scripts properly organized. In all the great cities schools abounded ; in 
 Alexandria there were not fewer than twenty. As might be expected, 
 this could not take place without exciting the indignation of the old fa- 
 natical party, who not only remonstrated with Almaimon, but threaten- 
 ed him with the vengeance of God for thus disturbing the faith of the 
 people. However, what had thus been commenced as a matter of pro- 
 found policy soon grew into a habit, and it was observed that whenever 
 an emir managed to make himself independent, he forthwith opened 
 academies. 
 
 The Arabs furnish a striking illustration of the successive phases of 
 national life. They first come before us as fetich worship- Eapiaity of their 
 
 .. T . rt TT ,.,. „ ..■ intellectual de- 
 
 ers, having their age or credulity, their object oi superstition veiopment. 
 being the black stone in the temple at Mecca. They pass through an 
 age pf inquiry, rendering possible the advent of Mohammed. Then fol- 
 lows their age of faith, the blind fanaticism of which quickly led them 
 to overspread all adjoining countries; and at last comes their period of 
 maturity, their age of reason. The striking feature of their movement 
 is the quickness with which they passed through these successive phase's, 
 and the intensity of their national life. 
 
 This singular rapidity of national life was favored by very obvious 
 circumstances. The long and desolating wars between Heraclius and 
 Chosroes had altogether destroyed the mercantile , relations of the Eo- 
 man and Persian empires, and had thrown the entire Oriental and Af- 
 rican trade into the hands of the Arabs. As a merchant Mohammed 
 himself makes his first appearance. The first we hear in his history are 
 the journeys he haS made as the factor of the wealthy Chadizah. In 
 these expeditions with the caravans to Damascus and other Syrian cities, 
 he was brought in contact with Jews and men of affairs, who, from the 
 nature of their pursuits, were of more enlarged views than mere Arab 
 chieftains or the-petty tradesmen of Arab towns. Through such agency 
 the first impetus was given. As to the rapid success, its canseaofthe 
 causes are in like manner so plain as to take away all sur- h'a^^an^ 
 prise. It is no wonder that in fifty years, as Abderrahman '"™- 
 wrote to the khalif, not only had the tribute from the entire north of 
 Africa ceased, through the population having become altogether Mo- 
 hammedan, but that the Moors boasted an Arab descent as their 'great- 
 est glory. For, besides the sectarian animosities on which I have dwelt 
 as facilitating the first conquest of the Christians, and the dreadful shock 
 that had been given by the capture of the Holy City, Jerusalem, the in- 
 
250 THE POLICY OF THE SARACEN'S. 
 
 siilting and burning the sepulchre of our Savior, and the carrying away 
 of his cross as a trophy by the Persians, there were other very powerful 
 causes. For many years the taxation imposed by the Emperors of Con- 
 stantinople on their subjects in Asia and Africa had been not only ex- 
 cessive and extortionate,- but likewise complicated. This the khalifs re- 
 placed by a simple, well-defined tribute of far less amount. Thus, in 
 the case of Cyprus, the sum paid to the khalif was only half of what it 
 had been, to the emperor ; and, indeed, the lower orders were never made 
 to feel the bitterness of conquest ; the blows fell on the ecclesiastics, not 
 on the population, and between them there was but little sympatiy. 
 In the eyes of the ignorant nations the prestige of the patriarchs and 
 bishops was utterly destroyed by their detected helplessness to prevent 
 the capture and insult of the sacred places: On the payment of a 
 trifling sum the conqueror guaranteed to the Christian and the Jew ab- 
 solute security for their worship. An equivalent was given for a price. 
 Eeligious freedom was bought with money. Numerous instances migM 
 be given of the scrupulous integrity with which the Arab commanders 
 complied with their part of the contract. The example set by Omar on 
 the steps of the Church of the Resurrection was followed by Moawiyah, 
 who actually rebuilt the church of Edessa for his Christian subjects; 
 and by Abdulmalek, who, when he had commenced converting that of 
 Damascus into a mosque, forthwith desisted on finding that the Chris- 
 tians were entitled to it by the terms of the capitulation. K these things 
 were done in the first fervor of victory, the principles on which they de- 
 pended were all the more powerful after the Arabs had become tinctured 
 with Nestorian and Jewish influences, and were a learned nation. It is 
 related of Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, and the fourth successor in 
 the khalifate, that he gave himself up to letters. Among his sayings 
 are recorded such as these: " Eminence in science is the highest of hon- 
 ors;" "He dies not who gives life to learning;" "The greatest orna- 
 ment of a man is erudition." When the sovereign felt and expressed 
 such sentiments, it was impossible but that a liberal policy should pre- 
 vail. 
 
 Besides these there were other incentives not less powerful. To one 
 whose faith sat lightly upon him, or who valued it less than the tribute 
 to be paid, it only required the repetition of a short sentence acknowl- 
 edging the unity of God and the divine mission of the prophet, and lie 
 forthwith became, though a captive or a slave, the equal and friend of 
 his conqueror. Doubtless many 'thousands were under these circum- 
 stances carried away. As respects the female sex, the Arab system was 
 very far from being oppressive; some have even asserted that "the 
 Christian women found in the seraglios a delightful retreat." But 
 above all, polygamy acted most effectually in consolidatirig the con- 
 quests ; the large families that were raised — some are mentioned of more 
 
DISINTEGBATION OF THE AEAB SYSTEM. 251 
 
 than one hundred and eighty cMldren— compressed into the course of a 
 few years events that would otherwise have taken many generations for 
 their accomplishment. These children gloried in their Arab descent, 
 and, being taught to speak the language of their conquering fathers, be- 
 came to all intents and purposes Arabs. This diffusion of the language 
 was sometimes expedited by the edicts of the khalifsj thus Alwalid I. 
 prohibited the use of Greek, directing the Arabic to be employed in its 
 stead. 
 
 If thus without difficulty we recognize the causes which led to the 
 rapid diffusion of the Arab power, we also without difficulty recognize 
 those which led to its check and eventual dissolution. Arab conquest 
 implied, from the scale on which it was pursued, the forth- cnuscHof thear. 
 going of the whole nation. It could only be accomplished, medanism. 
 and in a temporary manner sustained, by an excessive and incessant 
 drain of the native Arab population. That immobility, or, at the best, 
 slow progress the nation had for so many ages displayed, was at an end, 
 society was moved to its foundations, a fanatical delirium possessed it, 
 the greatest and boldest enterprises were entered upon without hesita- 
 tion, the wildest hopes or passions of men might be speedily gratified, 
 wealth and beauty were the tangible rewards of valor in this life, to say 
 nothing of Paradise in the- next. But such an outrush of a nation in all 
 directions implied the quick growth of diverse interests and opposing 
 policies. The necessary consequence of the Arab system was subdivi- 
 sion and breaking up. The circumstances of its growth ren- Necessary aism- 
 dered it certain that a decomposition would take place in the Aiab system. 
 political, and not, as has been in the case of the ecclesiastical Eoman 
 system, in the theological direction. All this is illustrated both in the 
 earlier and later Saracenic history. 
 
 "War makes a people run through its phases of existence fast. It 
 would have taken the Arabs many thousand years to have Effect on the low 
 advanced intellectually as far as they did in a single cen- ^"^"^ °'*"- 
 tury, had they, as a nation,. remained in profound- peace. They did not 
 merely shake off that dead weight which clogs the movement of a na- 
 tion — its inert mass of common people ; they converted that mass into 
 a living force. National progress is the sum of individual progress ; 
 national immobility the result of individual quiescence. Arabian" life 
 was run through with rapidity, because an unrestrained career was 
 opened to every man ; and yet, quick as the movement was, it mani- 
 fested all those unavoidable phases through which, whether its motion 
 be swift or slow, humanity must unavoidably pass. 
 
 Arabian influence, thus imposing itself on Africa and Asia by mili- 
 tary successes, and threatening even Constantinople, rested es- Ee™»of 
 sentially on an intellectual basis, the value of which it is needful "'«k<»*°- 
 
252 EEVIEW OF THE KORAN. 
 
 for US to consider. The Koran, which is that basis, has exercised a 
 great control over the destinies of mankind, and still serves as a rule of 
 life to a very large portion of our race. Considering the asserted origin 
 of this book — indirectly from God himself— we might justly expect that 
 it would bear to be tried by any standard that man can apply, and vin- 
 dicate its truth and excellence in the ordeal of human criticisto. In 
 Its asaertedhomo- our estimate of it wc must constantly bear in mind that it 
 
 geneousnesfl and , /i -i • i • n 
 
 compieteneaa. docs uot profcss to be successivc rcvelations made at inter- 
 vals of ages and on various occasions, but a complete production deliv- 
 ered to one man. We ought, therefore, to look for universality, com- 
 pleteness, perfection. We might expect that it would present us with 
 just views of the nature and position of this world in which we hve. 
 The characters it ^ud that, whether dealing with the spiritual or the material, 
 tohave*p?eaS"' 1* wouM put to shamc the most celebrated productions of 
 ^^- human genius, as the magnificent mechanism of the heavens 
 
 andr the beautiful living forms of the earth are superior to the vain con- 
 trivances of man. Far in advance of all that has been written by the 
 ■sages of India or the philosophers of Greece on points connected with 
 the origin, nature, and destiny of the universe, its dignity of concep- 
 tion and excellence of expression should be in harmony with the great- 
 ness of the subject with which it is concerned. 
 
 We might expect that it should propound with authority, and defini- 
 tively settle those , all-important problems which have exercised the 
 mental powers of the ablest men of Asia and Europe for so many cen- 
 turies, and which are at the foundation of all faith and all philosophy; 
 that it should distinctly tell us in unmistakable language what is God, 
 what is the world, what is the soul, and whether man has any' criterion 
 of truth ; that it should explain to us how evil can exist in a world the 
 Maker of which is omnipotent and altogether good ; that it should re- 
 veal to us in what the affairs of men are fixed by Destiny, in what by 
 free-will ; that it should teach us whence we came, what is the object of 
 our continuing here, what is to become of us hereafter. And, since a 
 written word claiming a divine origin must necessarily accredit itself 
 even to those most reluctant to receive it, its internal evidences becom- 
 ing stronger and not weaker with the strictness of the examination to 
 which they are submitted, it ought to deal with those things that may 
 be demonstrated by the increasing knowledge and genius of man, antic- 
 ipating therein his conclusions. Such a work, noble as may be its ori- 
 gin, must not refuse, but court the test of natural philosophy, regarding 
 it not as an antagonist, but as its best support. As years pass on, and 
 human science becomes more exact and more comprehensive, its conclu- 
 sions must be found in unison therewith. When occasion arises, it 
 should furnish us at least the foreshadowings of the great truths discov- 
 ered by astronomy and geology, not offering for them the wild fictions 
 
EEVIEW OF THE KOEAHT. 253 
 
 of earlier ages, inventions of the infancy of man. It should tell us how- 
 suns and -worlds are distributed in infinite space, and ho-w, in their suc- 
 cessions, they come forth in limitless time. It should say how far the 
 dominion of God is carried out by law, and ,what is the point at which 
 it is his pleasure to resort to his own good Providence or his arbitrs^ry 
 will. How grand the description of this magnificent universe written 
 by the Omnipotent hand ! Of man it should set forth his relations to 
 other living beings, his place among them, his privileges, and responsi- 
 bilities. It should not leave him to grope his way through the vestiges 
 of Greek philosophy, and to miss the truth at last, but it should teach 
 him wherein true knowledge consists, anticipating the physical science, 
 physical power, and physical well-being of our own times, nay, even un- 
 fcjlding for our benefit things that we are still ignorant of. The discus- 
 sion of subjects, so many and so high, is not outside the scope of a work 
 of such pretensions. Its manner of dealing with them is the only crite- 
 rion it can offer of its authority to succeeding times. 
 
 Tried by such a standard, the Kora;n altogether fails. In its philoso- 
 phy it is incomparably inferior to the writings of Chakia Mouni, the 
 founder of Buddhism ; in its science it is absolutely worthless. Defects of 
 On speculative or doubtful things it is copious enough; but '^e Koran, 
 in the exact, where a test can be applied to it, it totally fails. Its astron- 
 omy, cosmogony, physiology, are so puerile as to invite our mirth if 
 the occasion did not forbid. They belong to the old times, of the world, 
 the morning of human knowledge. The earth is firmly balanced in its 
 seat by the weight of the mountains ; the sky is supported over it like 
 a dome, and we are instructed in the wisdom and power of God by be- 
 ing told to find a crack in it if we can. Eanged in stories, seven in 
 number, are the heavens, the highesf being the habitation of God, 
 whose throne — for the Koran does not reject Assyrian ideas — is sus- 
 tained by winged animal forms. The shooting stars are pieces of red- 
 hot stone thrown by angels at impure spirits when they approach too 
 closely. Of God the Koran is full of praise, setting forth, often in not 
 unworthy imagery, his majesty. Though it bitterly denounces those- 
 who give him any equals* and assures them that their sin will 1*3 goi 
 never be forgiven ; that in the judgment-day they must answer the fear- 
 ful question, "Where are my companions about whom ye disputed?" 
 though it inculcates an absolute dependence on the mercy of God, and 
 denounces as criminals all those who make a merchandise of religion, 
 its ideas of the Deity are altogether anthropomorphic. He is only a 
 gigantic man living in a paradise. In this respect, though exceptional 
 passages might be cited, the reader rises from a perusal of the 114 chap- 
 ters of the Koran -with a final impression that they have given him low 
 and unworthy thoughts; nor is it surprising that one of the Mohamme- 
 dan sects reads it in such a way as to find no difEculty in asserting that, 
 
254 REVIEW OF THE KORAN. 
 
 "from the crown of the head to the breast God is hollow, and from the 
 breast downward he is soUd ; that he has curled black hair, and roars 
 like a lion at 6very watch of the night." The unity asserted by Mo- 
 hammed is a unity in special contradistinction to the Trinity of the 
 Christians, and the doctrine of a divine generation. Our Savior is never 
 called the Son of God, but always the son of Mary. Throughout there 
 is a perpetual acceptance of the delusion of the human destiny of the 
 Its views universe. As to man, Mohammed is diffuse enough respecting 
 of man. ^ future State, speaking with clearness of a resurrection, the judg- 
 ment-day, Paradise, the torment of hell, the worm that never dies, the 
 pains that never end ; but, with all this precise description of the future, 
 there are many errors as to the past. K modesty did not render it un- 
 suitable to speak of such topics here, it might be shown how feeble is 
 his physiology when he has occasion to allude to the origin or genera- 
 tion of man. He is hardly advanced beyond the ideas of Thales. One 
 who is so unreliable a guide as to things that are past, can not be veiy 
 trustworthy as to events that are to come. 
 
 Of the literary execution of his work, it is, perhaps, scarcely possible 
 Its literary infe- to ludgc fairlv from a trauslatiou. It is said to be the old- 
 
 rioiifcy compared f «-> '' . . i a i i i -n- i 
 
 with the Bible, est proso compositiou amoug the Arabs, by whom Moham- 
 med's boast of the unapproachable excellence of his work is almost uni- 
 versally sustained ; but it must not be concealed that there have been 
 among them very learned men who have held it in light esteem. Its 
 most celebrated passages, as those on the nature of God, in Chapters 11., 
 XXrV"., will bear no comparison with parallel ones in the Psalms and 
 Book of Job. In the narrative style, the story of Joseph, in Chapter . 
 XII., compared with the same incidents related in Genesis, shows a like 
 inferiority. Mohammed also adulterates his work with many Christian 
 legends, derived probably from the apocryphal gospeV of St. Barnabas; 
 he mixes with many of his own inventions the scripture account of the 
 temptation of Adam, the Deluge, Jonah and the whale, enriching the 
 whole with stories like the later Night Entertainments of his country, 
 the seven sleepers, Gog and Magog, and all the wonders of genii, sor- 
 cery, and charms. 
 
 An impartial reader of the Koran may doubtless be surprised that so 
 feeble a production should serve its purpose so well. But the theoiy 
 Causes of its of religion is one thing, the practice another. The Koran 
 fluence. abouuds in excellent moral suggestions and precepts ; its com- 
 position is so fragmentary that we can not turn to a single page^rith- 
 out finding maxims of which all men must approve. This fragmentary 
 construction yields texts, and mottoes, and rules complete in themselves, 
 suitable for' common men in any of the incidents of life. There 'is a 
 perpetual insisting on the necessity of prayer, an inculcation of mercy, 
 almsgiving, justice, fasting, pilgrimage, and other good works ; institu- 
 
REVIEW OF THE KOEAH". 255 
 
 tions respecting conduct both social and domestic, debts, witnesses, mar- 
 riage, children, wine, and the like ; above all, a constant stimulation to 
 do battle with the infidel and blasphemer. For life as it^passes in Asia, 
 there' is hardly a condition in which passages from the Koran can not 
 be recalled suitable for instruction, admonition, consolation, encourage- 
 ment. To the Asiatic and to the African, such devotional fragments 
 are of far more use than any sustained theological doctrine. The men- 
 tal constitution of Mohammed did not enable him to handle important 
 philosophical questions with the weU-balanced ability of the great Greek 
 and Indian writers, but he has never been surpassed in adaptation to 
 the spiritual wants of humble life, making even his fearful fatalism ad- 
 minister thereto. A pitiless destiny is awaiting us ; yet the prophet is 
 uncertain what it may be. " Unto every nation a fixed time is decreed. 
 Death will overtake us even in lofty towers, but God only knoweth the 
 place in which a man shall die." After many an admonition of the res- 
 urrection and the judgment-day, many a promise of Paradise and threat 
 of hell, he plaintively confesses, " I do not know what will be done with 
 you or me hereafter." 
 
 The Koran thus betrays a human, and not a very noble intellectual 
 origin. It does not, however, follow that its author was, as is j^ j^jg n^. 
 so often asserted, a mere impostor. He reiterates again and ""'^ 
 again, I am nothing more than a public preacher. He defends, not al- 
 ways without acerbity, his work from those who, even in his own life, 
 stigmatized it as a confused heap of dreams, or, what is worse, a forgery. 
 He is not the only man who has supposed himself to be the subject of 
 supernatural and divine communications, for this is a condition of dis- 
 ease to which any one, by fasting and mental anxiety, may be reduced. 
 
 In what I have thus said respecting a work held by so many millions 
 of men as a revelation from God, I have endeavored to speak with re- 
 spect, and yet with freedom, constantly bearing in mind how deeply to 
 this book Asia and Africa are indebted for daily guidance, how deeply 
 Europe and America for the light of science. 
 
 As might be expected, the doctrines of the Koran have received many 
 fictitious additions and sectarian interpretations in the course of ages. 
 In the popular superstition angels and genii largely figure. Popular mo- 
 The latter, being of a grosser fabric, eat, drink, propagate i^"° 
 their kind, are of two sorts, good and bad, and existed long before men, 
 having occupied the earth before Adam. Immediately after death, two 
 greenish, livid angels, Monkir and Nekkar, examine every corpse as to 
 its faith ia God and Mohammed ; but the soul, having been separated 
 from the body by the angel of death, enters upon an intermediate state, 
 awaiting the resurrection. There is, however, much diversity of opin- 
 ion as to its precise disposal beforethe judgment-day: some think that 
 .^^it hovers near the grave ; some, that it sinks into the well Zemzem ; 
 
256 POPULAR MOHAMMEDANISM. 
 
 some, that it retires into the trumpet of the Angel of the Eesurrection; 
 the dif&culty apparently being that any final disposal before the day of 
 judgment wouid be anticipatory of that great event, if, indeed, it would 
 not render it needless. As to the resurrection, some believe it to be 
 merely spiritual, others corporeal ; the latter asserting that the os coo- 
 cygis, or last bone of the spinal column, will serve, as it were, as a germ, 
 and that, vivified by a rain of forty days, the body will sprout from it. 
 Among the signs of the approaching resurrection will be the rising of 
 the sun in the West. It will be ushered in by three blasts of a trum- 
 pet : the first, known as the blast of consternation, will shake the earth 
 to its centre, and extinguish the sun and stars ; the second, the blast of 
 extermination, will annihilate all material things except Paradise, hell, 
 and the throne of God. Forty years subsequently, the angel Israfil 
 will sound the blast of resurrection. From his trumpet there will be 
 blown forth the countless myriads of souls who have taken refuge there- 
 in or lain concealed. The day of judgment has now come. The Koran 
 contradicts itself as to the length of this day ; in one place making it a 
 thousand, in another fifty thousand years. Most Mohammedans incline 
 to adopt the longer period, since angels, genii, men, and animals bare to 
 be tried. As to men, they will rise in their natural state, but naked; 
 white winged camels, with saddles of gold, awaiting the Saved. When 
 the partition is made, the wicked will be oppressed with an intolerable 
 heat, caused by the sun, who, having been called into existence again, 
 will approach within a ,mile, provoking a sweat to issue from tbem, 
 which, according to their demerits, will immerse them from the ankles 
 to the mouth ; but the righteous will be screened by the shadow of the 
 throne of God. The judge will be seated in the clouds, the books open 
 before him, and every thing in its turn called on to account for its deeds, i 
 For the greater dispatch, the angel Gabriel will hold forth his balance, 
 one scale of which hangs over Paradise and one over hell. In these all 
 works are weighed. As soon as the sentence is delivered, the assembly, 
 in a long file, will pass over the bridge Al-Sirat. It is as shaip as the 
 edge of a Sword, and laid over the mouth of hell. Mohammed and his 
 followers will successfully pass the perilous ordeal ; but the sinners, gid- 
 dy with terror, will drop into the place of torment. The Messed will 
 receive their first taste of happiness at a pond which is supplied by sil- 
 ver pipes from the river Al-Cawthor. The soil of Paradise is of musk. 
 Its rivers tranquilly flow over pebbles of rubies and emeralds. From 
 tents of hollow pearls, the Houris, or girls of Paradise, will come forth, 
 attended by troops of beautiful boys. Each saint will have eighty 
 thousand servants and seventy-two girls. To these, some of the more 
 merciful Mussulmans add the wives they have had upon earth ; but the 
 grimly orthodox assert that hell is already nearly filled with women. 
 How should it be otherwise when they are not permitted to pray m * 
 
MOHAMMEDAN SECTS. 257 
 
 mosque upon earth ? I have not space to describe the silk brocades, the 
 green clothing, the soft carpets, the banquets, the perpetual music and 
 songs. From the glorified body all impurities will escape, not as they did 
 during life, but in a fragrant perspiration of camphor and musk. No 
 one will complain I am weary ; no one will say I am sick. 
 
 From the contradictions, puerilities, and impossibilities indicated in 
 the preceding paragraphs, it may be anticipated that the faith of Mo- 
 hammed has been broken into many sects. Of such it is said The Moham- 
 that not less than seventy-three may be numbered. Some, as ™e'i«°««*»- 
 the Sonnites, are guided by traditions ; some occupy themselves with 
 philosophical difficulties, the existence of evil in the world, the attri- 
 butes of God, absolute predestination and eternal damnation, the invis- 
 ibility and non-corporeality of God, his capability of local motion ; these 
 and other such topics furnish abundant opportunity for sectarian dis- 
 pute. As if to show how the essential principles of the Koran may be 
 departed from by those who still profess to be guided by it, there are, 
 among the Shiites, those who believe that Ali was an incarnation of 
 God ; that he was in existence before the creation of things ; that he 
 never died, but ascended to heaven, and will return again in the clouds 
 to judge the world. But the great Mohammedan philosophers, simply 
 accepting the doctrine of the oneness of God as the only thing of which 
 man can be certain, look upon all the rest as idle fables, having, how- 
 ever, this political use, that they furnish contention, and therefore occu- 
 pation to disputatious sectarians, and consolation to illiterate minds. 
 
 Thus settled on the north of Africa the lurid form of the Arabian 
 crescent, one horn reaching to the Bosphorus and one pointing beyond 
 the Pyrenees. For a while it seemed that the portentous meteor would 
 increase to the full, and that all Europe would be enveloped. Chris- 
 tianity had lost forever the most interesting countries over Effect of mo- 
 which her influence -had once spread, Africa, Egypt, Syria, on'cSriJtom" 
 with the Holy Land, Asia Minor, Spain. She was destined, *''• 
 in the end, to lose in the same manner the metropolis of the East. In 
 . exchange for these ancient and illustrious regions, she fell back on Gaul, 
 Germany, Britain, Scandinavia. In those savage countries, what were 
 there to be offered as substitutes for the great capitals, illustrious in ec- 
 clesiastical history, forever illustrious in the records of the human race 
 — Carthage, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople ? It was an 
 evil exchange. The labors, intellectual and physical, of which those 
 cities had once been the scene ; the preaching, and penances, and pray- 
 ers so lavishly expended in them, had not produced the anticipated, the 
 asserted result. In theology and morality the people had pursued a 
 descending course. Patriotism was extinct. They surrendered the state 
 to preserve their sect; their treason was rewarded by subjugation. 
 
 K 
 
258 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE "WEST. 
 
 From these melanclioly events we may learn that the principles on 
 Reflections on which the moral world is governed are analogous to thosp, 
 
 the course of ..,,.., i • i t^ • a i • 
 
 historic erents. which Obtain in the pnysical. it is not by incessant divine 
 interpositions, which produce breaches in the continuity of historic ac- 
 tion ; it is not by miracles and prodigies that the course of events is de- 
 termined ; but affairs foUow each other in the relation of cause and ef- 
 fect. The maximum development of early Christianity coincided with 
 the boundaries of the Eoman empire ; the ecclesiastical condition de- 
 pended on the political, and, indeed, was its direct consequence and 
 issue. The loss of Africa and Asia was, in like manner, connected 
 with the Arabian movement, though it would have been easy to pre- 
 vent that catastrophe, and to preserve those continents to the faith by 
 the smallest of those innumerable miracles of which Church hisiaiy 
 is full, and which were often performed on unimportant, and obscure 
 occasions. ' But not even one such miracle was vouchsafad, though 
 an angel might have worthily descended. I know of no event in the 
 history of our race on which a thoughtful man may more profitably 
 meditate than on the loss of Africa and Asia. It may remove from his 
 mind many erroneous ideas, and lead him to take a more elevated, a 
 more philosophical, and, therefore, more correct view of the course of 
 earthly events. 
 
 CHAPTBE Xn. 
 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. 
 
 Tilt Age of Faith in the West is marked by Pagatasm. — The Arabian military Attacks pro- 
 dvce the Isolation and permit the Independence of the Bishop ofBxyme. , 
 
 Gkegort the Gkeat organizes the Ideas of his Age, materializes Faith, allies it with Art, 
 rejects Science, and creates the Italian Form of Religion. 
 
 An Alliance of the Fapacy toith France diffuses that Form. — Political History of the Agremmt 
 and Conspiracy of the Prankish Kings and the Pope. — TTie resulting ConsoUdaiion of Ih 
 new Dynasty in France, and Diffusion of Roman Ideas. — Conversion ofJEurope. 
 
 The Value of the Italian Form of Religion determined from the papal Biography. 
 
 From the Age of Faith in the East, I have now to turn to the. Age 
 of Faith in the West. The former, as we have seen, ended prematurely, 
 The Age of Faith through a mctamorphosis of the populations by militaiy 
 in the West. operations, conquests, polygamy; the latter, under more 
 favorable circumstances, gradually completed its predestined phases, 
 and, after the lapse of many centuries, passed into the Age of Season. 
 
 If so many recollections of profound interest cluster round Jerusalem, 
 "the Holy City" of the East, many scarcely inferior are connected vith 
 Eome, "the Eternal City" of the West. 
 
 The By^ntine system, which, having- originated in the, polioyofafl 
 
POLITICAL EVENTS PEECEDmG IT. 259 
 
 ambitious soldier struggling for supreme power, and in the devices of 
 ecclesiastics intolerant of any competitors', had spread itself all over the 
 eastern and southern portions of the Eoman empire, and, n ease^wi^^- 
 •vrith its hatred of human knowledge and degraded relig- Hon of religion. 
 ious ideas and practices, had been adopted at last even in Italy. Not 
 by the Eomans, for they had ceased to exist, but by the medley of 
 Goths and half-breeds, the occupants of that peninsula. Gregory the 
 Great is the incarnation of the ideas of this debased population. That 
 evil system, so carefully nurtured by Constantine and cherished by all 
 the Oriental bishops, had been cut down by the axe of the Vandal, the 
 Persian, the Arab, in its native seats, but the offshoot of it that had been 
 planted in Eome developed spontaneously with unexpected luxuriance, 
 and cast its dark shadow over Europe for many centuries. He who 
 knew what religion had been in the apostolic days, might look with 
 boundless surprise on what was now ingrafted upon it, and was passing 
 under its name. 
 
 In the last chapter we have seen how, through the Vandal invasion, 
 Afiica was lost to the empire — a dire calamity, for, of all the Effects of the 
 provinces, it had been the least expensive and the most pro- J,n wentolr 
 ductive ; it yielded men, money, and, what was perhaps of ^'^^• 
 more importance, corn for the use of Italy. A sudden stoppage of the 
 customary supply rendered impossible the usual distributions in Eome, 
 Eavenna, Milan. A famine fell upon Italy, bringing in its train an in- 
 evitable diminution of the population. To add to the misfortunes, 
 Attila, the King of the Huns, or, as he called himself, " the Scourge of 
 God," invaded the empire. The battle of Ghalons, the convulsive death- 
 throe of the Eoman empire, arrested his career, A.D. 451. 
 
 Four years after this event, through intrigues in the imperial family, 
 Genseric, the Vandal king, was invited from Africa to Eome. ^^ and pii- 
 The atrocities which of old had been practiced against Car- ^^"^^"'^^ 
 thage under the auspices of the senate were now avenged. For fourteen 
 days the Vandals sacked the city, perpetrating unheard-of cruelties. 
 Their ships, brought into the Tiber, enabled them to accomplish their 
 purpose of pillage far more effectually than would have been possible 
 by any land expedition. The treasures of Eome, with multitudes of 
 noble captives, were transported to Carthage. In twenty-one years 
 after this time, A.D. 476, the Western Empire became extinct. 
 
 Thus the treachery of the African Arians not only brought the Van- 
 dals into the most important of all the provinces, so far as Italy was 
 concerned; it also furnished an instrument for the ruin of Effects of the ™ra 
 Eome. But hardly had the Emperor Justinian recon- o'JostmJan- 
 quered Africa when he attempted the subjugation of the Goths now 
 holding possession of Italy. His general Belisarius captured Eome, 
 Dec. 10, A.D. 556. In the military operations ensuing with Vitiges, 
 
260 CONTEMPOEAEY STATE OF EUEOPE. 
 
 Italy was devastated, the population sank beneath the sword, pestileiwe, 
 famine. In all directions the glorious remains of antiquity were de- 
 stroyed ; statues, as those of the Mole of Adrian, were thrown upon the 
 besiegers of Eome. These operations closed by the surrender of Yitiges 
 to Belisarius at the capture of Eavenna. 
 
 But, as soon as the military compression was withdrawn, revolt broke 
 'out. Eome was retaken by the Goths; its walls were razed; for forty 
 days it was deserted by its inhabitants, an emigration that in the end 
 proved its ruin. Belisarius, who had been sertt back by the emperor, 
 re-entered it, but was too weak to retain it. For four years Italy was 
 ravaged by the Franks and the Goths. At last Justinian sent the eu- 
 nuch Narses with a well-appointed army. The Ostrogothic monarchy 
 was overthrown, and the emperor governed Italy by his exarchs at 
 Eavenna. 
 
 But what was the cost of all this? We may reject the statement 
 previously made, that Italy lost fifteen millions of inhabitants, on the 
 ground that such computations were beyond the ability of the surviv- 
 ors, but, from the asserted number, we may infer that they had passed 
 through a horrible catastrophe. In other directions the relics of civili- 
 zation were fast disappearing ; the valley of the Danube had relapsed 
 into a barbarous state; the African shore had become a wilderness; 
 Detasea ideas of Italy a hideous desert; and the necessa,rv consequence of 
 
 the incomiiig Age -"^ .. „ i ._t *; ■*■_,, 
 
 of Faith. the extermmation oi the native Italians by war, and tneir 
 
 replacement by barbarous adventurers, was the falling of the sparse pop- 
 ulation of that peninsula into a lower psychical state. It was ready for 
 the materialized religion that soon ensued. An indelible aspect was 
 stamped on the incoming Age of Faith. The East and the West had 
 equally displayed the imbecility of ecclesiastical rule. Of both, the Holy 
 City had fallen ; Jerusalem had been captured by the Persian and Arab, 
 Eome had been sacked by the Yandal and the Goth. 
 
 But, for the proper description of the course of affairs, I must retrace 
 my steps a little. In the important political events coinciding with the 
 death of Leo the Great, and the constitution of the kingdom of Italy by 
 the barbarian Odoacer, A.D. 470-490, the bishops of Eome seem to have 
 steady progress taken but little interest. Doubtless, on one side, they per- 
 premaoy. ' ccived the trausitory nature of sucli incidents, and, on the 
 other, clearly saw for themselves the road to lasting spiritual domina- 
 tion. The Christians every where had long expressed a total careless- 
 ness for the fate of old Eome ; and in the midst of her ruins the popes 
 were incessantly occupied in laying deep the foundations of their power. 
 Though it mattered little to them who was the temporal ruler of Italy, 
 they were vigilant and energetic in their relations with their great com- 
 petitors, the bishops of Constantinople and Alexandria. It had become 
 clear that Christendom must have a head ; and that headship, once defi- 
 
EELATIONS OP ROME TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 261 
 
 nitely settled, implied the eventual control over the temporal power. 
 Of all objects of human ambition, that headship was best worth strug- 
 gling for. 
 
 Steadily pursuing every advantage as it arose, Eome inexorably in- 
 sisted that her decisions should be carried out in Constantinople itself. 
 This was the case especially in the affair of Acacius, the bishop of that 
 city, who, having been admonished for his acts by Felix, the Bishop of 
 Eome, was finally excommunicated. A difficulty arose as to the man- 
 ner in which the process should be served ; but an adventurous n^onk 
 fastened it to the robe of Acacius as he entered the church. Acacius, 
 undismayed, proceeded with his services, and, pausing deliberately, or- 
 dered the name of Felix, the Bishop of Eome, to be struck from the roll 
 of bishops in communion with the East. Constantinople and Eome 
 thus mutually excommunicated one another. It is in reference to this 
 affair that Pope Gelasius, addressing the emperor, says : " There are two 
 powers which rule the world, -the imperial and pontifical. HMatttoac 
 You are the sovereign of the human race, but you bow youT emperor. 
 neck to those who preside over things divine. The priesthood is the 
 greater of the two powers ; it has to render an account in the last day 
 for the acts of kings." This is not the language of a feeble ecclesiastic, 
 but of a pontiff who understands his power. 
 
 The conquest of Italy by Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, A.D. 493, gave to 
 the bishops of Eome an Arian sovereign, and presented to The Gothic con- 
 the world the anomaly of a heretic appointing God's vicar ^"^'^f ^n* 
 upon earth. There was a contested election between two ™''"'^''- 
 rival candidates, whose factions, emulating the example of the East, fill- 
 ed the city with murder. The Gothic monarch ordered that he who 
 had most suffrages, and had been first consecrated, should be acknowl- 
 edged. In this manner Symmachus became pope. 
 
 Hormisdas, who succeeded Symmachus, renewed the attempt to com- 
 pel the Eastern emperor, Anastasius, to accept the degradation of Aca- 
 cius and his party, and to enforce the assent of all his clergy thereto, 
 but in vain. On the accession of Justin to the imperial throne, Eome 
 at last carried her point ; all her conditions were admitted ; the schism 
 was ended in the humiliation of the Bishop of Constantinople, it was 
 said, through the orthodoxy of the emperor. But very soon began to 
 appear unmistakable indications that for this religious victory a temporal 
 equivalent had been given. "Conspiracies were detected in Th^ emperor 
 Eome against Theodoric, the Gothic king ; and rumors were spte'llS" 
 whispered about that the arms of Constantinople would before '™°- 
 long release Italy firom the heretical yoke of the Arian. There can be 
 no doubt that Theodoric detected the treason: It was an evil iie Gothic 
 reward for his impartial equity. At once he. disarmed the ttom.°'°°'*' 
 population of Eome. From being a merciful sovereign, he exhibited an 
 
262 EFFECT OF THE EECONQTTEST OF ITALY. 
 
 awful vengeance. It was in these transactions that Boethius, the phi- 
 losopher, and Symmachus, the senator, fell victims to his wrath. The 
 pope, John, himself was thrown into prison, and there miserably died. 
 In his remonstrances with Justin, the great barbarian monarch displays 
 sentiments far above his times, yet they were the sentiments that had 
 hitherto regulated his actions. " To pretend to a dominion over the 
 conscience is to usurp, the prerogative of Grod. By the nature of things, 
 the power of sovereigns is confined to political government. They have 
 no right of punishment but over those who disturb the public peace. 
 The most dangerous heresy is that of a sovereign who separates himself 
 from part of his subjects 'because they believe not according to his be- 
 lief." 
 
 Theodoric had been but a few years dead — ^his soul was seen by an 
 orthodox hermit carried by devils into the crater of the volcano of Li- 
 pari, which was considered to Tie the opening into hell — when the inva- 
 The conspiracy sion of Italy by Justinian showed how well-founded his sua- 
 matures. picious had been. Eome was, however, very far from re- 
 ceiving the advantages sh6 had expected ; the inconceivable wickedness 
 of Constantinople was brought into Italy. Pope Sylverius, who was the 
 son of Pope Hormisdas, was deposed by Theodora, the emperor's wife; 
 This woman, once a common prostitute, sold the papacy to VigUius for 
 two hundred pounds of gold. Her accomplice, Antonina, the unprinci- 
 Subjugation of pled wifo of Bclisarius, had Sylverius stripped of his robes 
 emperor. and habited as a monk. He was subsequently banished to 
 the old convict island of Pandataria, and there died. VigiKuS embraced 
 Eutyehianism, and, it was said, murdered one of his secretaries, and 
 caused his sister's son to be beaten to death. He was made to feel what 
 it is for a bishop to be in the hands of an emperor ; to taste of the cup 
 so often presented to prelates at Constantinople ; to understand in what 
 estimation his sovereign held the vicar of God upon earth. Compelled 
 to go to that metropolis to embrace the theological views which Justin- 
 ian had put forth, thrice he agreed to them, and thrice he recanted; he 
 excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople, and was excommuni- 
 cated by him. In his personal contests with the imperial officials, they 
 dragged him by his feet from a sanctuary with so much violence that a 
 part of the structure was pulled down upon him ; they confined him in 
 a dungeon, and fed him on bread and water. Eventually he died an 
 outcast in Sicily. The immediate effect of the conquest of Italy was 
 the reduction of the popes to the degraded condition of the patriarchs 
 of Constantinople. Such were the bitter fruits of their treason to the 
 Gothic king. The success of Justinian's invasion was due to the clergy; 
 in the ruin they brought upon their country, and the relentless tyranny 
 they drew upon themselves, they had their reward. 
 
 In the midst of this desolation and degradation the Age of Faith was 
 
GREGORY THE GREAT. 263 
 
 gradually assuming distinctive lineaments in Italy. Paganization, which, 
 had been patronized as a matter of policy in the East, became a matter 
 of necessity in the West To a man like Gregory the The paganization of 
 Great, born in a position which enabled him to examine ««gi°" p^»^'1»- 
 things from a very general point of view, it was clear that the psychical 
 condition of the lower social stratum demanded concessions in accord- 
 ance with its ideas. The belief of the thoughtful must be alloyed with 
 the superstition of the populace. 
 
 Accordingly, that was what actually occurred. For the clear under- 
 standing of these events .1 shall have to speak, 1st, of the acts of Pope 
 Gregorv the Great, by whom the ideas of the age were or- Division of the 
 
 o./ './ •11 • n subjects to be 
 
 ganized and clothed m a dress suited to the requirements of treated of. 
 the times ; 2d, of the relations which the papacy soon assumed with the 
 kings of France, by which the work of Gregory was consolidated, and 
 upheld, and diifused all over Europe. It adds not a little to the inter- 
 est of these things that the influences thus created have outlasted their 
 original causes, and, after the lapse of more than a thousand years, 
 though moss-covered and rotten, are a stumbling-block to the progress 
 of nations. 
 
 Gregory the Great was the grandson of Pope Felix. His patrician 
 parentage and conspicuous abilities had attracted in early life Gregory the 
 the attention of the Emperor Justin, by whom he was ap- '''^'■ 
 pointed prefect of Eome. "Withdrawn by the Church from the Splen- 
 dors of secular life, he was sent, while yet a deacon, as nuncio to Con- 
 stantinople. Discharging the duties that had been committed to him 
 with singular ability and firmness, he resumed the monastic life on his 
 return, with daily increasing reputation. Elected to the papacy by the 
 clergy, the senate, and people of Eome, A.D. 590, with well-dissembled 
 resistance he implored the emperor to reject their choice, and, on being 
 refused, escaped from the city hidden in a basket. It is related that the 
 retreat in which he was concealed was discovered by a celestial hover- 
 ing light thai} settled upon it, and revealed to the faithful their reluctant 
 pope. It was during a time of pestilence and famine. 
 
 Once made supreme pontiff, this austere monk in an instant resumed 
 the character he had displayed at Constantinople, and exhibited the 
 qualities of a great statesman. He regulated the Eoman liturgy, the 
 calendar of festivals, the order of processions, the fashions of sacerdotal 
 garments; he himself officiated in the canon of the mass, devised many 
 solemn and pompous rites, and invented the chant known by his name. 
 He established schools of music, administered the Church revenues with 
 precision and justice, and set an example of almsgiving and charity ; 
 for such was the misery of the times that even Eoman matrons had to 
 accept the benevolence of the Church. He authorized the alienation of 
 Church property for the redemption of slaves, laymen as well as eccle- 
 siastics. 
 
264 INCREASE OF SUPERSTITION. 
 
 An insubordinate clergy and a dissolute populace quickly felt the 
 hand that now held the reins. He sedulously watched the inferior pas- 
 tors, dealing out justice to them, and punishing all who offended with rig- 
 orous severity. He compelled the Italian bishops to acknowledge him 
 as their metropolitan. He extended his influence to Greece; prohibited 
 simony in Gaul; received into the bosom of the Church Spain, now re- 
 nouncing her Arianism ; sent out missionaries to Britain, and converted 
 the pagans of that country; extirpated heathenism from Sardinia; re- 
 sisted John, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had dared to take the 
 title of universal bishop ; exposed to the emperor the ruin occasioned 
 by the pride, ambition, and wickedness of the clergy, and withstood him 
 on the question of the law prohibiting soldiers from becoming monks. 
 It was not in the nature of such a man to decline the regulation of po- 
 litical affairs : he nominated tribunes, and directed the operations of 
 troops. 
 
 No one can shakfe off the system that has given him power ; no one 
 can free himself from the tincture of the times of which he is the rep- 
 His BuperBtition. rcsentativc. Though in so many respects Gregory was far 
 in advance of his age, he was at once insincere and profoundly supersti- 
 tious. "With more than Byzantine hatred he detested human knowl' 
 edge. His oft-expressed belief that the end of the world was at hand, 
 was perpetually contradicted by his acts, which were ceaselessly directed 
 to the foundation of a future papal empire. Under him was sanctified 
 He material- t^^* mythol6gic Christianity destined to become the religion 
 izes religion. q£ jjuropc for many subsequent centuries, and which adopted 
 the adoration of the Virgin by images and pictures soon to adorn mag- 
 nificent churches built to her glory; thei efficacy of the remains of mar- 
 tyrs and relics; stupendous miracles wrought at the shrines of saints; 
 the perpetual interventions of angels and devils in sublunary affairs; the 
 truth of legends far surpassing in romantic improbability the stories of 
 Greek inythology ; the localization of heaven a few miles above the 
 air, and of hell in the bowels of the earth, with its portal in the crater 
 of Lipari. Gregory himself was a sincere believer in miracles, ghosts, 
 and the resurrection of many persons from the grave, but who, alas! 
 had brought no tidings of the secret wonders of that land of deepest 
 shade. He made these wild fancies the actual, the daily, the practical 
 religion of Europe. Participating in the ecclesiastical hatred of human 
 His hatred learning, and insisting on the maxim that " Ignorance is the 
 of learning, ];nother of dcvotion," hc expelled from Eome all mathematical 
 studies, and burned the Palatine library founded by Augustus Csesar. 
 It was valuable for the many rare manuscripts it contained. He forbade 
 the study of the classics, mutilated statues, and destroyed temples. He 
 and ejTuision of hatcd the vcry relics of classical genius ; pursued with vin- 
 ciasBicaianthorB. ^ictivc fanaticism the writings of Livy, against whom hfc 
 
CORRUPTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 265 
 
 was specially excited. "Well has it been said that " he was as inveter- 
 ate an enemy against learning as ever lived;" that "no lucid ray ever 
 beamed on his superstitious soul." He boasted that his own works 
 were written without regard to the rules of grammar, and censured the 
 crime of a priest who had taught that subject. It was his aim to substi- 
 tute for the heathen writings others which he thought less dangerous to 
 orthodoxy ; and so well did he succeed in rooting out of Italy her il- 
 lustrious pagan authors, that when one of his successors, Paul I., sent to 
 Pepin of France "what books he could find," they were "an antiphonal, 
 a grammar, and the works of Dionysius the Areopagite." He was the 
 very incarnation of the Byzantine principle of ignorance. 
 
 If thus the misfortunes that had fallen on Italy had given her a base 
 population, whose wants could only be met by a paganized religion, 
 the more fortunate classes all over the empire- had long been craanai prep- 
 tending in the same direction. Whoever will examine the aewmenuif 
 progress of Christian society from the earlier ages, will find ""s*™- 
 that there could be no other result than a repudiation of solid learning 
 and an alliance with art. We have only to compare the poverty and 
 plainness of the first disciples with the extravagance reached in a few 
 generations. Cyprian complains of the covetousness, pride, luxury, and 
 worldly-mindedness of Christians, even of the clergy and confessors. 
 Some made no scruple to contract matrimony with heathens, comi Hon of 
 Clement of Alexandria bitterly inveighs against " the vices Christianity. 
 of an opulent and luxurious Christian community — splendid dresses, 
 gold and silver vessels, rich banquets, gilded litters and chariots, and 
 private baths. The ladies kept Indian birds. Median peacocks, mon- 
 keys, and Maltese dogs, instead of maintaining widows and orphans ; 
 the men had multitudes of slaves." The dipping three times at bap- 
 tism, the tasting of honey and milk, the oblations for the dead, the sign- 
 ing of the cross on the forehead on putting on the clothes or the shoes, 
 or lighting a candle, which Tertullian imputes to tradition without the 
 authority of Scripture, foreshadowed a thousand pagan observances soon 
 to be introduced. As time passed on, so far from the state of things 
 improving, it became worse. N"ot only among the frivolous class, but 
 even among historic personages, there was a hankering after the ceremo- 
 mes of the departed creed, a lingering attachment to the old rites, and, 
 perhaps, a religious indifference to the new. To the age of Justinian 
 these remarks strikingly apply. Boethius was, at the best, only a pagan 
 philosopher ; Tribonian, the great lawyer, the author of the Justinian 
 Code, was suspected of being an atheist. 
 
 In the East, the splendor of the episcopal establishments extorted ad- 
 miration even fi-om those who were familiar with the imperial court. 
 The well-ordered trains of attendants and the magnificent banquets in 
 the bishops' palaces are particularly praised. Extravagant views of 
 
266 ALLIANCE OF THE PAPACY WITH AET. 
 
 the pre-eminent value of celibacy had long been held among the more 
 devout, who conceded a reluctant admission even for marriage itseE 
 " I praise the married state, but chiefly for this, that it provides virgins," 
 had been the more than doubtful encomium of St. Jerome. Among the 
 Episcopal apien- clergVi who Under the force of this growing sentiment found 
 nes3. it advisable to refrain from marriage, it had become custom- 
 
 ary, as we learn from the enactments and denunciations against the 
 practice, to live with "sub-introduced women," as they were called. 
 These passed as sisters of the priests, the correctness of whose taste was 
 often exemplified by the remarkable beauty of their sinful partners. ■ A 
 Paganisms of 1^^ of Houorius put an end to this iniquity. The children 
 ctoisuamty. ajig^ug from these associations do not appear to have occasion- 
 ed any extraordinary scandal. At weddings itVas still the custom to 
 sing hymns to Venus. The cultivation of music at a very early period 
 attracted the attention of many of the great ecclesiastics — Paulof Samo- 
 sata, Arius, Chrysostom. In the first congregations probably all the 
 worshipers joined in the hymns and psalmody^ By degrees, however, 
 °it auies it- more skillful performers had been introduced, and the chorus 
 eeiftoart, q£ ^j^g Greek tragedy made available under the form of an- 
 tiphonal singing. The Ambrosian chant was eventually exchanged for 
 the noble Eoman chant of Gregory the Great, which has been truly 
 characterized as the foundation of all that is grand and elevated in mod- 
 ern music. 
 
 With the devastation that Italy had suffered the Latin language was 
 becoming extinct. But Eoman literature had never been converted to 
 Christianity. Of the best writers among the Fathers, not one was a Eo- 
 man; all were provincials. The literary basis was the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures and the New Testament, the poetical imagery being, for the most 
 part, borrowed from the prophets. In historical compositions therewas 
 a want of fair dealing and truthfulness to us almost incredible ; thus 
 Eusebius naively avows that in his history he shall omit whaterer 
 and rejects might tend to the discredit of the Church, and magnify what- 
 learning, g^gj, migjit conducc to her glory. The same principle was car- 
 ried out in numberless legends, many of them deliberate forgeries^ the 
 amazing credulity of the times yielding to them full credit, no matter 
 how they might outrage common sense. But what else was to be ex- 
 pected of generations that could believe that the tracks of Phaiaxjhs 
 chariot- wheels were still impressed on the sands of the Bed Sea, and 
 could not be obliterated either by the winds or the waves? He who 
 ventured to offend the public taste for these idle fables brought down 
 upon himself the wrath of society, and bore the brand of an infidel. In 
 the interpretation of the Scriptures, and, indeed, in all commentaries on 
 authors of repute, there was a constant indulgence in fanciful mystifica- 
 tion and the detection of concealed meanings, in the extracting of which 
 
ART TYPES OF THE SAVIOE AND VIKGIN. 267 
 
 aa amusing degree of ingenuity and industry was often shown ; but 
 these hermeneutical writings, as well as the polemical, are tedious be- 
 yond endurance ; of the latter, the energy of their vindictive violence is 
 not suf&cient to redeem them. 
 
 The relation of the Church to the sister arts, painting and sculpture, 
 was doubtless fairly indicated at a subsequent time by the painting and 
 second Council of Nicea, A.D. 787 ; their superstitious use »""1p'"«- 
 had been resumed. Sculpture has, however, never forgotten the prefer- 
 ence that was shown to her sister. To this day she is a pagan, emula- 
 ting therein the example of the noblest of the sciences. Astronomy, who 
 bears in mind the great insults she has received from the Church, and 
 tolerates the name of no saint in the visible heavens ; the new worlds 
 she discovers are dedicated to Uranus, or Neptune, or other Olympian 
 divinities. Among the ecclesiastics there had always been many, occa- 
 sionally some of eminence, who set their faces against the connection of 
 worship with art ; thus TertuUian of old had manifested his displeasure 
 against Hermogenes on account of the two deadly sins into which he 
 had fallen, painting and marriage ; but Gnostic Christianity had ap- 
 proved, as Eoman Christianity was now to approve, of their union. 
 To the Gnostics we oWe the earliest examples of our sacred images. 
 The countenance of our Savior, along with those of Pythagoras, Plato, • 
 Aristotle, appears on some of their engraved gems and seals. Among 
 the earlier fathers — Justin Martyn and Tertullian — ^there was the im- 
 pression that the personal appearance of our Lord was ungainly; that he 
 was short of stature ; and, at a later period Cyril says, mean of aspect 
 "even beyond the ordinary race of men." But these unsuitable de- 
 lineations were generally corrected in the fourth century, it Adopts a typi- 
 being then recognized that God could not dwell in an hum- ttoSaAorf 
 ble form or low stature. The model eventually received was perhaps 
 that described in the spurious epistle of Lentulus to the Eoman senate: 
 " He was a man of tall and well-proportioned form ; his countenance se- 
 vere and impressive, so as to move the beholders at once with love and 
 awe. His hair was of an amber color, reaching to his ears, with no ra- 
 diation, and standing up from his ears clustering and bright, and flow- 
 ing down over his shoulders, parted on the top according to the fashion 
 of the Nazarenes. The brow high and open; the complexion clear, 
 with a delicate tinge of red; the aspect frank and pleasing; the nose 
 and mouth finely formed; the beard thick, parted, and of the color of 
 the hair; the eyes blue, and exceedingly bright." Subsequently the 
 oval countenance assumed an air of melancholy, which, though eminent- 
 ly suggestive, can hardly be considered as the type of manly beauty 
 At first the cross was without any adornment; it nest had a lamb at 
 the toot ; and eventually became the crucifix, sanctified with the form 
 of the dymg Savior. Of the Virgin Mary, destined in later times to 
 
268 PAPAL CONSOLIDATION AND INTOLERANCE. 
 
 and of the furnish SO many transcendently beautiful types of female love- 
 Virgin, jiness, the earliest representations are veiled. The Egyptian 
 sculptors had thus depicted Isis ; the first form of the Virgin and child 
 was the counterpart of Isis and Horus. Si Augustine says her counte- 
 nance was unktiown ; there appears, however, to have been a very early 
 Christian tradition that in complexion she was a brunette. Adventurous 
 artists by degrees removed the veil, and next to the mere countenance 
 added a full-grown figure like that of a dignified Eoman matron ; then 
 grouped her with the divine child, the wise men, and other suggestions 
 of Scripture. 
 
 While thus the papacy was preparing for an alliance with art, it did 
 not forget to avail itself of the vast advantages within its reach by in- 
 terfering in domestic life — an interference which the social demoraliza- 
 tion of the time more than ever permitted. A prodigious step in pow- 
 er was made by assuming the cognizance of marriage, and the determ- 
 ination of the numberless questions connected with it. Once having 
 conaoiidation of discovcrcd the influence thus gained, the papacy never sur- 
 
 papal power ia ^^. . /»i . 
 
 tiieWest. rendered it again; some oi the most important events in 
 later history have been determined by its action in this matter. Per- 
 haps even a greater power accrued from its difesuhiption of the cogni- 
 zance of wills, and of questions respecting the testamentary disposal of 
 property. Though in many respects, at the time we are now considei'- 
 ing, the papacy had separated itself from morality, had become united 
 to Monachigm, and was preparing for a future alliance with pohtical in- 
 fluences and military power ; though its indignation and censures were 
 less against personal wickedness than heresy of opinion, toward which 
 it was inexorable and remorseless, a good effect arose from these as- 
 sumptions upon domestic life, particularly as regards the elevation of the 
 female sex. The power thus arising was re-enforced by a continually- 
 increasing rigor in the application of penitential punishments. As in 
 the course of years the intellectual basis on which that power rested he- 
 came more doubtful, and therefore more open to attack, the papacy he- 
 came more sensitive and more exacting. Pushed on by the influence 
 Roman Church of the lowcr population, it fell into the depths of anthropd- 
 phized, morphism, asserting for the Virgin and the saints such attri- 
 
 butes as omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. Every where pres- 
 ent, they could always listen to prayer, and, if necessary, control or 
 arrest the course of Nature. As it was certain that such doctrines must 
 and necessarily in the end bc overthrowu, the inevitable day was put off by 
 eranr"^'""' an iustant and vindictive repression of anyvrant of conform- 
 ity. Despotism in the state and despotism in the Church were upheld 
 by despotism over thought. 
 
 From the acts of Pope Gregory the Great, and his organization of the 
 ideas of his age, the paganization of religion in Italy and its alliance 
 
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE OF THE PAPACY. 269 
 
 with art, I have now to turn to the second topic to which this chapter 
 is (ievoted — the relations assumed hy the papacy with the origin of the 
 kings of France, by which the work of Gregory was consoli- pajTacy md"" 
 dated and upheld, and diffused all over Europe. ^^'^"™- 
 
 The armies of the Saracens had wrested from Christendom the west- 
 ern, southern, and eastern countries of the Mediterranean; Military results 
 their fleets dominated in that sea. Ecclesiastical policy had wars, 
 undergone a revolution. Carthage, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, had 
 disappeared from the Christian system ; their bishops had passed away. 
 Alone, of the great episcopal seats, Constantinople and Eome were left. 
 To all human appearance, their fall seemed to be only a question of 
 time. 
 
 The -disputes of the Bishop of Eome with his African and Asiatic 
 rivals had thus come to an untimely end. With them nothing more 
 remained to be done ; his communications with the emperor independence 
 at Constantinople were at the sufferance of the Mohammedan <>' ^epope. 
 navies. The imperial power was paralyzed. The pope was forced by 
 events into isolation ; he converted it into independence. 
 
 But independence ! how was it to be asserted and maintained. In 
 Italy itself the Lombards seemed to be firmly seated, but they were 
 Arian heretics. Their presence and power were incompatible with his. 
 Already, in a political sense, he was at their mercy. 
 
 One movement alone was open to him; and,' whether he rightly under- 
 stood his position or not, the stress of events forced him to take it. It 
 was an alhance with the Franks, who had successfully resisted the Mo- 
 hammedan power, and who were orthodox. 
 
 An ambitious Frank officer had resolved to deprive his sovereign of 
 the crown if the pope would sanctify the deed. They came to an un- 
 derstanding. The usurpation was consummated by the one and conse- 
 • crated by the other. It was then the interest of the intru- conditions of his 
 sive line of monarchs to magnify their Italian confederate, ^m^''*''*''^ 
 In the spread of Eoman principles lay the consolidation of the new 
 Frankish power. It became desirable to compel the ignorant German 
 tribes to acknowledge in the pope the vicegerent of God, even though 
 the sword must be applied to them for that purpose for thirty years. * 
 
 The pope revolted against his Byzantine sovereign on the question of 
 images ; but that was a fictitious issue. He did not revolt against his new 
 ally, who fell into the same heresy. He broke away from a weak and 
 cruel master, and attached himself on terms of equality to a confederate. 
 But from the first his eventual ascendency was assured. The repre- 
 sentative bf a system that is immortal must finally gain supremacy over 
 individuals and families, who must die. 
 
 Though we can not undervalue the labors of the monks, who had al- 
 ready nominally brought many portions of Europe to Christianity, the 
 
270 CHEISTIANIZATIOK OF EUEOPE. 
 
 The conversion passEge of the Centre of the Continent to its Age of Faith, 
 of Europe. ^3,8, in an enlarged political sense, the true issue of the em- 
 pire of the Franks. The fiat of Charlemagne put a stamp upon it which 
 it bears to this day. He converted an ecclesiastical fiction into a polit- 
 ical fact. 
 
 To understand this important event, it is necessary to describe, 1st, the 
 Three points for psycMcal State of Central Europe; 2d, the position of the 
 cojiBideration. pontiff and his compact with the Franks. It is also neces- 
 sary to determine the actual religious value of the system he representa, 
 and this is best done through, 3d, the biography of the popes. 
 
 1st. As with the Arabs, so with the barbarians of Europe. They 
 The psychical pass from their Age of Credulity to their Age of Faith with- 
 lope. out dwelling long in the intermediate state of Inquiry. An 
 
 age of inquiry implies self-iiivestigation, and the absence of an authori- 
 tative teacher. But the Arabs had had the Nestorians and the Jews, 
 and to the Germans the lessons of the monk were impressively dem- 
 onstrated by the convincing argument of the sword of Charlemagne. 
 
 The military invasions of the south by the barbarians were retaliated 
 by missionary invasions of the north. The aim of the former was to 
 Labors and sue- couquer, that of their antagonists to convert, if antagonists 
 monks. those Can be called who sought to turn them from their evil 
 
 ways. The monk penetrated through their most gloomy forests un- 
 armed and defenseless; he found his way alone to their fortresses. 
 Nothing touches the heart of a savage so profoundly as the greatness 
 of silent courage. Among the captives taken from the south in war 
 Influence of de- 'w^ere oftcu high-bom women of great beauty and, purity of 
 vout women. ]jiin(j^ and somctimes even bishops, who, true to their relig- 
 ious principles, did not fail to exert a happy and a holy influence 
 on the tribes among whom their lot was cast. One after another the 
 various nations submitted : the Yandals and Gepidse in the fourth cen- 
 tury ; the Goths somewhat earlier ; the Franks at the end. of the fifth; 
 Conversion t^® Alcmanui and Lombards at the beginning .of the sixth ; the 
 of Europe. Bavarians, Hessians, and Thuringians in the seventh and eighth. 
 Of these, all embraced the Arian form except the Franks, who were 
 •converted by the Catholic clergy. In truth, however, these nations 
 were only Christianized upon the surface, their conversion being indi- 
 cated by little more than their naaking the sign of the cross. In all 
 these movements women exercised an extraordinary influence: thus 
 Clotilda, the Queen of the Franks, brought over to the faith her husband 
 Clovis. Bertha, the Queen of Kent, and Gisella, the Queen of Hungary, 
 led the way in their respective countries ; and under similar influences 
 were converted the Duke of Poland and the Czar Jarislaus. To women 
 thus Europe is greatly indebted, though the forms of reUgion at the 
 first were nothing more than the creed and the Lord's prayer. It has 
 
CONVEESION OF ENGLAND. 271 
 
 been truly said that for these conversions three conditions were neces- 
 sary — a devout female of the court, a national calamity, and a monk. 
 As to the people, they seem to have followed the example of their 
 rulers in blind subserviency, altogether careless as to what the required 
 faith might be. The conversion of the ruler is naively taken by histo- 
 rians as the conversion of the whole people. As might be expected, a 
 faith so lightly assumed at the will or whim of the sovereign was often 
 as lightly cast aside ; thus the Swedes, Bohemians, and Hungarians re- 
 lapsed into idolatry. 
 
 Among such apostasies it is interesting to recall that of the inhab- 
 itants of Britain, to whom Christianity was first introduced by converBionof 
 the Eoman legions, and who might boast in Constantino the ^"Biand. 
 Great, and his mother Helena, if they were really natives of that coun- 
 try, that they had exercised no little influence on the rehgion of the 
 world. The biography of Pelagius shows with what acuteness theological 
 doctrines were considered in those remote regions ; but, after the decline 
 of Eoman affairs, this promising state of things was destroyed, and the 
 clergy driven by the pagan invaders to the inaccessible parts of Wales, 
 Scotland, and Ireland. The sight of some English children exposed for 
 sale in the slave-market at Eome suggested to Gregory the Great the 
 attempt of reconverting the island. On his assuming the pontificate, he 
 commissioned the monk Augustine for that purpose ; and after the usual 
 exertion of female influence in the court of King Ethelbert, by Bertha, 
 his Frankish princess, and th6 usual vicissitudes of backsliding, the faith 
 gradually won its way throughout the whole country. A little oppo- 
 sition occurred on the part of the ancient clergy, who retained in their 
 fastnesses the traditions of the old times, particularly in regard to Easter. 
 But this at length disappeared; an intercourse sprang up with Eome, 
 and it became common for the clergy and wealthy nobles to visit that 
 city. 
 
 Displaying the same noble quality which in our own times charac- 
 terizes it, British Christianity did not fail to exert a proselyting spirit. 
 As, at the end of the sixth century, Columban, an Irish monk irish andBrit- 
 of Banchor, had gone forth as a missionary, passing through nes. 
 France, Switzerland, and beyond the confines of the ancient Eoman em- 
 pire, so ab«ut a century later Boniface, an Englishman of Devonshire, 
 repaired to Germany, under a recommendation from the pope and 
 Charles Martel, and labored among the Hessians and Saxons, cutting 
 down their sacred oaks, overturning their altars, erecting churches, 
 founding bishoprics, and gaining at last, from the hands of the savages, 
 the crown of martyrdom. In the affinity of their language to those of 
 the countries to which they went, these missionaries from the West 
 found a very great advantage. 
 
 It is the glory of Pope Formosus, the same whose body underwent a 
 
272 ECCLESIASTICAi POLICY OF CHARLEMAGNE. 
 
 posthumous trial, to have converted the Bulgarians, a people who came 
 from the banks of the Volga. The fact that this event was brought 
 about by a picture representing the judgment-day shows on what tri- 
 fling circumstances these successes turned. The Slavians were convert- 
 ed by Greek missionaries, and for them the monk Cyril invented an 
 alphabet, as Ulphilas had done for the Goths. The predatory Nor- 
 mans, who plundered the churches in their forays, embraced Christiani- 
 ty on settling in Normandy, as the Goths, in like circumstances, had 
 elsewhere done. The Scandinavians were converted by St. Anschar. 
 
 Thus, partly by the preaching of missionaries, partly by the example 
 of monks, partly by the influence of females, partly by the sword of the 
 Frankish sovereigns, partly by the great name of Eome, Europe was 
 at last nominally converted. The so-called religious wars of Charle- 
 influence of Char- maguc, which lastcd for morc than thirty years, and which 
 events. werc attended by the atrocities always incident to such 
 
 undertakings, were doubtless as much, so far as he was concerned, of a 
 political as of a theological nature. They were the embodiment of the 
 understanding that had been made with Eome by Pepin. Charlemagne 
 clearly comprehended the position and fanctions of the Church; he 
 never suffered it to intrude unduly on the state. Eegarding it as furnish- 
 ing a bond for uniting not only the various nations and tribes of his 
 empire, but even families and individuals together, he ever extended to 
 it a wise and liberal protection. His mental condition prevented him 
 from applying its doctrines to the regulation of his own life, which was 
 often blemished by acts of violence and immorality. From the point 
 of view he occupied, he doubtless was led to the conclusion that the 
 maxims of religion are intended for the edification and comfort of 
 those who occupy a humbler sphere, and that for -a prince it is only 
 necessary to maintain appropriate political relations with the Church. 
 To him baptism was the sign, not of salvation, but of the subjugation' of 
 people ; and the foundation of churches and monasteries, thg institution 
 of bishoprics, and increase of the clergy, a more trustworthy means of 
 government than military establishments. A priest must necessarily 
 lean on him for support, a lieutenant might revolt. 
 
 If thus Europe, by its conversion, received from Eome an immense 
 benefit, it repaid the obligation at last by infusing into Latiif Christian- 
 ity what was sadly needed — a higher moral tone. Earnestness is the 
 Keflex action of con- attribute of savagc life. That divorce between morality 
 verted Europe. ^^^ {^^^^ which the southem nations had experienced 
 was not possible among these converts. If, by communicating many 
 of their barbarous and pagan conceptions to the Latin faith, they gave 
 it a tendency to develop itself in an idolatrous form, their influence was 
 not one of unmitigated evil, for while they lowered the standard of pub- 
 lic belief, they elevated that of private life. In truth, the contamination 
 
 ■i A ' 
 
CHARLES MARTEL CHECKS THE SARACENS. 273 
 
 ttey imparted is often overrated. The infusion of paganism into relig- 
 ion was far more due to the people of the classical countries. The in- 
 habitants of Italy and Greece were never really alienated from the idol- 
 atries of the old times. At the best, they were only Christianized on the 
 surface. With many other mythological practices," they forced image- 
 worship on the clergy. But Charlemagne, who in this respect may be 
 looked upon as a true representative of Frankish and German senti- 
 ment, totally disapproved of that idolatry. 
 
 2d. From this consideration of the psychical revolution that had oc 
 curred in central Europe, I, in the next i^ace, turn to an in- t^/j,"""^?^^"^"^' 
 vestigation of the position of the papacy and its compact with Franks, 
 the Franks. 
 
 Scarcely had the Arabs consolidated their conquest of Africa when 
 they passed into Spain, and quickly, as will be' related in a subsequent 
 chapter, subjugating that country, prepared to overwhelm Posj^nofthe 
 Europe. It was their ambition and their threat to preach aeena. 
 the unity of God in Kome. They reached the centre of France, but 
 were beaten in the great battle of Tours by Charles Martel, the Duke 
 of the Franks, A.D. 732. That battle fixed the religious destiny of Eu- 
 rope. The Saracens did not, however, give, up their attempt. Three 
 years afterward they returned into Provence, and Charles was himself 
 repulsed. But by this time their power had expanded too extensively for 
 consolidation. It was already giving unmistakable tokens of decompo- 
 sition. Scarcely indeed had Musa, the conqueror of Spain, succeeded 
 in his expedition, When he was arrested at the head of his army and or- 
 dered to give an account of his doings at Damascus. It was the occur- 
 rence of such disputes among the Saracens in Spain that constituted the 
 true check to their conquest of France. Charles Martel had permitted 
 Chilperic II. and Thierry IV. to retain the title of king ; but his fore- 
 sight of approaching events seems to be indicated by the circumstance 
 that after the death of the latter he abstained from appointing any suc- 
 cessor. He died A.D. 741, leaving a memory detested by Eeiations of chaiies 
 the Church of his own country on account of his having MarteitotheChurch. 
 been obliged to appropriate from its property sufficient for the payment 
 of his army. He had taken a tithe from the revenues of the churches 
 and convents for that purpose. The ignorant clergy; alive only to their 
 present temporal interests, and not' appreciating the great salvation he 
 had wrought out for them, could never forgive him. Their inconceiva- 
 ble greed could not bear to be taxed even in its own defense. "It is 
 because Prince Charles," says the Council of Kiersi to one of his de- 
 scendants, " was the first of all the kings and princes of the Franks who 
 separated and dismembered the goods of the Church ; it is for that sole 
 cause that he is eternally damned. We know, indeed, that St.Euche- 
 rius. Bishop of Orleans, being in prayer, was carried up into the world 
 
 S 
 
274 COMPACT OF PEPIN AND THE POPE. 
 
 of -spirits, and that among the things which the Lord showed to him, he 
 beheld Charles tormented in the lowest depths of hell. The angel who 
 conducted him, being interrogated on this matter, answered him that, in 
 the judgment to come, the soul and body of him who has taken, or who 
 has divided the goods of the Church, shall be delivered over, even be- 
 fore the end of the world, to eternal torments by the sentence of the 
 saints, who shall sit together with the Lord to judge him. This act of 
 sacrilege shall add to his own sins the accumulated sins of all- those who 
 thought that they had purchased their redemption by giving for the 
 love of God their goods to holy places, to the lights of divine worship, 
 and to the alms Of the servants of Christ." This amusing but instructive 
 quotation strikingly shows how quickly the semibarbarian Frankish 
 clergy had caught the iaethods of Eome in the defense of temporal pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, introduces U6 to an epoch and a 
 The epoch poHcy resembling in many respects that of Constantino the 
 of Pepin. Qpgat ; for he saw that by an alliance with the Church it would 
 be possible for him to displace his sovereign and attain to kingly power. 
 A thorough understanding was entered upon between Pepin and the 
 pope. Each had his needs. One wanted the crown of France, the, 
 other liberation from Constantinople and the Lombards. Pepin com- 
 menced by enriching the clergy with immense gifts, and assigning to 
 the bishops seats in the assembly of the nation. In thus consolidating 
 ecclesiastical power he occasioned a great social revolution, as was mani- 
 fested by the introduction of the Latin and the disuse of the Frankic on 
 those occasions, and by the transmuting of military reviews into theo- 
 Hia compiracy logical asscmblics. Meantime the Pope Zachary, on his part, 
 with the pope, jjjade Tcady to accomplish his engagement, the chaplain of 
 Pepin being the intermedium of negotiation. On the demand being 
 formally made, the pope decided that " he should be king who really 
 possessed the royal power." Hereupon, in March, A.D. 752, Pepin 
 caused himself to be raised by his soldiers on a buckler and proclaimed 
 King of the Franks. To give solemnity to the event, he was anointed 
 by the bishops with oil. The deposed king, Childeric, was shut up in 
 the convent of St. Omer. Next year Pope Stephen IL, driven to ex- 
 tremity, applied to Pepin for assistance against the Lombards. It was 
 during these transactions that he fell upon the device of enforcing his 
 demand by a letter which he feigned to have been written by St. Peter 
 to the Franks. And now visiting France, the pope, as an earnest of his 
 friendship, and as the token of his completion of the contract, in the 
 monastery of St. Denis, placed, with his own hands, the diadem on Pe- 
 pin's brow, and anointed him, his wife, and children, with "the holy oil, 
 thereby reviving the Jewish system of creating kings by anointment. 
 Its results, and imparting to his confederate " a divine right." Pepin now. 
 
CHARLEMAGNE THE EMPEEOE OF THE WEST. 275 
 
 finally defeated tlie Lombards, and assigned a part of the conquered 
 territory to tte pope. Thus, by a successful soldier, two important 
 events had been accomplished — a revolution in Prance, attended by a 
 change of dynasty, and a revolution in Christendom — the Bishop of 
 Eome had become a temporal sovereign. To the hilt of the sword of 
 France the keys of St. Peter were henceforth so firmly bound that, 
 though there have been great kings, and conquerors, and statesmen who 
 have wielded that sword, not one to this day has been able, though 
 many have desired, to wrench the encumbranca away. 
 
 Charlemagne, on succeeding his father Pepin, thoroughly developed 
 his policy. At the urgent entreaty of Pope Stephen III. he The reign of 
 entered Italy, subjugated the Lombards, and united the crown chariemogue. 
 of Lombardy to that of France. Upon the pagan Saxons burning the 
 church of Deventer, he commenced a war with them which lasted 
 thirty-three years, and ended in their compulsory Christianization. As 
 the circle of his power extended, he every where founded churches and 
 established bishoprics, enriching them with territorial possessions. To 
 the petty sovereigns, as they successively succumbed, he permitted the 
 title of counts. True to his own and his father's understanding with 
 the pope, he invariably insisted on baptism as the sign of submission, 
 punishing with appalling barbarity any resistance, as on the occasion 
 of the revolt, A.D. 782, when, in cold blood, he beheaded in one day 
 4500 persons at Verden. Under such circumstances, it is not to be 
 wondered at that clerical influence extended so fast ; yet, rapid as was 
 its development, the power of Charlemagne was more so. 
 
 In the church of St. Peter at Eome, on Christmas-day, A.D. 800, Pope 
 Leo III., after the celebration of the holy mysteries, suddenly He is crowned 
 placed on the head of Charlemagne a diadem, amid the ac- w^T"""''^ 
 clamations of the people, " Long life and victory to Charles, the most 
 pious Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific Emperor of the 
 Eomans." His head and body were anointed with the holy oil, and, 
 after" the example of the Caesars, the pontiff himself saluted or adored 
 him. In the coronation oath Charlemagne promised to maintain the 
 privileges of the Church. 
 
 The noble title of "Emperor of the West" was not inappropriate, for 
 Charlemagne ruled in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Hungary. An 
 inferior dignity would not have been equal to his deserts. Md carries ontws 
 His princely munificence to St. Peter was worthy of the wC^'"*"' 
 great occasion, and even in his noinor acts he exhibited a just apprecia- 
 tion of his obligations to the apostle. He proceeded to make in his do- 
 mmions such changes in the Church organization as the Italian policy 
 required, substituting, for instance, the Gregorian for the Ambrosian 
 chant, and, wherever his priests resisted, took from them by force their 
 antiphonaries ; and, as an example to insubordinates, at the request of 
 the pope burnt some of the singers along with their books. 
 
276 ACTS OF CHARLEMAGNE. 
 
 The rapid growtli of the power of Charlemagne, his overshadowing 
 pre-eminence, and the subordinate position of the pope, who had really 
 become his Italian lieutenant, are strikingly manifested by the event of 
 image-worship in the "West. On this, as we shall in another chapter 
 Hedeouneaim- See, the popes had revolted from their iconoclastic sovereigns 
 age-worship, q£ Constantinople. The second Council of Nicea had au- 
 thorized image-worship, but the good sense of Charlemagne was su- 
 perior to such idolatry. He openly expressed his disapproval, and 
 even dictated a work against it — the Carolinian bopks. The pope was 
 therefore placed in a singular dilemma, for not only had image-wor- 
 ship been restored at Constantinople, and the original cause of the dis- 
 ptite removed, but the new protector, Charlemagne, had himself em- 
 braced iconoclasm. However, it was not without reason that the pope 
 but permits at this time avoided the discussion, for a profitable sale of 
 reiic-woraiiip. bgncs and rclics, said to be those of saints, but in reaUty oh- 
 tained from the catacombs of Eome, had arisen. To the barbarian peo- 
 ple of the north these gloomy objects proved more acceptable than im- 
 ages of wood, and the traf&c, though contemptible, was more honorable 
 than the slave-trade in vassals and peasant children which had been 
 carried on with Jews and Mohammedans. Like all the great statesmen 
 of antiquity, who were unable to comprehend the possibility of a highly 
 civilized society without the existence of slavery, Charlemagne accepted 
 His pdioy as re- that unfortuuate condition as a political necessity, and at- 
 spects slavery, tempted to draw from it as much benefit as it was capable 
 of yielding to the state. , From certain classes of slaves he appointed, 
 by a system of apprenticeship, those who should be devoted to the me- 
 chanical arts and to trade. It was, however, slavery and warfare which, 
 during his own life, by making the possession of property among small 
 proprietors an absolute disadvantage, prepared the way for that rapid 
 dissolution of his empire so quickly occurring after his death. 
 
 Yet, though Charlemagne thus accepted the existence of slavery as a 
 necessary political evil, the evidences are not wanting that he was de- 
 sirous to check its abuses wherever he could. "When the Italian dukes 
 The European accuscd Pope Adrian of selling his vassals as slaves to the 
 slave-trade, garaccns, Charlemagne made inquiry into the matter, and, 
 finding that transactions of the kind had occurred in the port of Oiyita. 
 Vecchia, though he did not choose to have so infamous a scandal made 
 public, he ever afterward withdrew his countenance from that pope. 
 At that time a very extensive child slave-trade was carried on with the 
 Saracens through the medium of the Jews, ecclesiastics as well as barons 
 selling the children of their serfs. 
 
 Though he never succeeded in learning how to write, no one better 
 than Charlemagne appreciated the value of knowledge. ' He labored as- 
 siduously for the elevation and enlightenment of his people. He col- 
 
ACTS OF CHAELBMAGNE. 277 
 
 lected toeretlier learned men; ordered his clergy to turn improvementa of 
 
 ° . . , , ,. 1 T 1 1 1, T ■ the physical state 
 
 their attention to letters; established schools of rehgious of the people, 
 music; built noble palaces, churches, bridges; transferred, for the 
 adornment of his capital, Aix-la-Chapelle, statues from Italy ; organ- 
 ized the professions and trades of his cities, and gave to his towns 
 a police. Well might he be solicitous that his clergy should state of the 
 not only become more devout, but more learned. Very few of °'*'^^' 
 thera knew how to read, scarcely any to write. Of the first half of the 
 eighth century, a period of great interest, since^it includes the invasion 
 of France by the Saracens, and their expulsion, there is nothing more 
 than the most meagre annals ; the clergy understood much better the 
 use of the sword than that of the pen. The schools of Charlemagne 
 proved a failure, not through any fault of his, but because the age had 
 no demand for learning, and the Eoman pontiffs and their clergy, as far 
 as they troubled themselves with any opinion about the matter, thought 
 that knowledge was of more harm than good. 
 
 The private life of Charlemagne was stained with great immoralities 
 and crimes. , He indulged in a polygamy scarcely inferior to prfyate we of 
 that of the khalifs, solacing himself with not less than nine chnriemagne. 
 wives and many concubines. He sought to increase the circle of the 
 former, or perhaps it should be said, considering the greatness of hia 
 statesmanship, to unite the Eastern and Western empires together by a 
 marriage with the Empress Irene. This was that Irene who put out 
 the eyes of her own son in t^e porphyry chamber at Constantinople. 
 His fame extended into Asia. The Khalif Haroun al Easchid, A.D. 801, 
 sent him from Bagdad the keys of our Savior's sepulchre as a mark of 
 estlem from the Commander of the Faithful to the greatest h;, relations with 
 of Christian kings. However, there was doubtless as much *' saracena. 
 policy as esteem in this, for the Asiatic khalifs perceived the advantage 
 of a good understanding with the power that could control the emirs 
 of Spain. Always bearing in mind his engagement with the papacy, 
 that Eoman Christianity should be enforced upon Europe wherever 
 his influence could reach, he remorselessly carried into execution the 
 penalty of death that he had awarded to the crimes of, 1, refusing 
 baptism ; 2, false pretense of baptism ; 3, relapse to idolatry ; 4, the 
 murder of a priest or bishop ; 5, human sacrifice ; 6, eating meat in 
 Lent. To the pagan German his sword was a grim, but a convincing 
 missionary. To the last he observed a savage fidelity to his bond. He 
 died A.D. 814. 
 
 Such was the compact that had been established between the Church 
 and the State. As might be expected, the succeeding transactions ex- 
 hibit an alternate preponderance of one and of the other, and the degra- 
 dation of both in the end. Scarcely was Charlemagne dead course of events 
 ere the imbecile character of his son and successor, Louis the of chlrfem^e. 
 
278 EVENTS AFTER HIS DEATH. 
 
 Pious, gave the Church her opportunity. By the expulsion of his fa- 
 ther's numerous concubines and mistresses, the scandals of the palace 
 were revealed. I have not the opportunity to relate in detail how this 
 monarch disgracefully humiliated himself before the Church ; how, un- 
 der his weak government, the, slave-trade greatly increased; how every 
 shore, and, indeed, every country that could, be reached through a navi- 
 gable river, was open to the ravages of pirates, the Northmen extending 
 their maraudings even to the capture of great cities; how, in strong 
 contrast with the social decomposition into which Europe was falling, 
 Spain, under, her Mohammedan rulers, was becoming rich, populous, 
 and great ; how, on the east, the Huns and Avars, ceasing their ravages, 
 accepted Christianity, and, under their diversity of interests, the nations 
 that had been bound together by Charlemagne separated into two di- 
 visions — French and German — and civil wars between them ensued; 
 how, through the folly of the clergy, who vainly looked for protection 
 from relics instead of the sword, the Saracens ranged uncontrolled all 
 over the south, and came vdthiif a hair's-breadth of capturing Eome itself; 
 how France, at this time, had literally become a theocracy, the clergy 
 absorbing every thing that was worth having ; how the pope, trembling 
 at home, nevertheless maintaiued an external power by interfering with 
 domestic! life, as in the quarrel with King Lothaire II. and his wife; how 
 Italy, France, and Germany became, as Africa and Syria had once been, 
 full of miracles; how, through these means the Church getting the advan- 
 tage, John VIII. thought it expedient to "assert his right of disposing of 
 the imperial crown in the case of Charles the Bald (the imperial suprem- 
 acy that Charlemagne had obtained in reality implied the eventual su- 
 premacy of the pope) ; how an opportunity occurring for reconstructing 
 the empire of the West under Charles the Fat was thwarted by the im- 
 becility of that sovereign, an imbecility so great that his nobles were 
 obliged to depose him ; how, thereupon ,a number of new kingdoms 
 arose, and Europe fell, by an inevitable necessity, into a poHtical' chaos; 
 how, since there was thus no protecting government, each great land- 
 owner had to protect himself, and the rightfulness of private war he- 
 came recognized ; how, through this evil state, the strange consequence 
 ensued of a great increase in the population, it becoming the interest of 
 every lord to raise as many peasants as he could, offering his lands on 
 personal service, the value of an estate being determined by the numher 
 of retainers it could furnish, and hence arose the feudal system ; how 
 the monarchical principle, once again getting the superiority, asserted 
 its power in Germany in Henry the Fowler and his descendants, the 
 three Othos ; how, by these great monarchs, the subjection of Italy 
 was accomplished, and the morality of the German clergy vindicatedby 
 their attempts at the reforination of the papacy, which fell to the last 
 degree of degradation, becoming, in the end, an appanage of the Counts 
 
DEPLOEABLE CONDITION OF EUROPE. 279 
 
 of Tusculum, and, shameful to be said, in some instances given by pros- 
 titutes to their paramours or illegitimates, in some, to mere boys of pre- 
 cociously dissolute life ; before long, A.D. 1044, it was actually to be 
 sold for money. We have now approached the close of a thousand 
 years from the birthr of Christ ; the evil union of the Church and state, 
 their rivalries, their intrigues, their quarrels, had produced an inevita- 
 ble result, doing the same in the "West that they had done in the East : 
 disorganizing the political system, and- ending in a universal social de- 
 moralization. The absorption of small properties into large estates 
 steadily increased the number of slaves ; where there had once been 
 many free families, there was now found only a rich man. Even of this 
 class the number diminished by the same process of absorp- gocM condition 
 tion, untn there were sparsely scattered here and there ab- "f ^"'"p^- 
 bots and counts with enormous estates worked by herds of slaves, whose 
 numbers, since sometimes one man possessed more than 20,000 of them, 
 might deceive us, if we did not consider the vast surface over which 
 they were spread. Examined in that way, the west of Europe proves 
 to have been covered with forests, here and there dotted with a con- 
 vent or a town. From those countries, once full of the splendid evi- 
 dences of Eoman civilization, mankind was fast disappearing. There 
 was no political cause, until at a later time, when the feudal system was 
 developed, for calling men into existence. "Whenever there was a par- 
 tial peace, there was no occasion for the multiplication of men beyond 
 the intention of extracting from them the largest possible revenue, a 
 condition implying their destruction. Soon even the necessity for leg- 
 islation ceased ; events were left to take their own course. Through 
 the influence of the monks the military spirit declined; a vile fe- 
 tichism of factitious relics, which were working miracles in all direc- 
 tions, constituted the individual piety. Whoever died without be- 
 queathing a part of his property to#the Church, died without confession 
 Liud the sacraments, and forfeited Christian burial. Trial by battle, and 
 the ordeals of fire and boiling water, determined innocence or guilt in 
 those accused of crimes. Between places at no great distance apart in- 
 tercommunication ceased, or, at most, was carried on as in the times of 
 the Trojan War, by the peddler traveling with his packs. 
 
 In these deplorable days there was abundant reason to adopt the 
 popular expectation that the end of all- things was at hand. Expected end of 
 and that A.D. 1000 would witness the destruction of the loooT" ' 
 world. Society was dissolving, the human race was disappearing, and 
 with difficulty the melancholy ruins of ancient civilization could be 
 traced. Such was the issue of the second attempt at the union of po- 
 litical and ecclesiastical power. In a former chapter we Effects of the mion 
 saw what it "had been in the East, now we have found of«'""='ian4Btate. 
 what it was in the West. Inaugurated in selfishness, it strengthens 
 
280 LIVES OF THE POPES. 
 
 itself by violence, is perpetuated by ignorance, and yields, as its inevita- 
 ble result, social ruin. 
 
 And while things were thus going to -wreck in the state, it was no bet- 
 ter in the Church. The ill-omened union between them was bearing 
 its only possible fruit, disgrace to both — a solemn monition to all future 
 
 3d. This brings me to the third and remaining topic I proposed to 
 Value of the new considcr in this chapter, to determine the actual religious 
 fromThfuTCl'of value of the system in process of being forced upon Eu- 
 the popes. ^Qpg^ using, for the purpose, that which must be admitted as 
 
 the best test — the private lives of the popes. 
 
 To some it might seem, considering the interests of religion alone, de- 
 sirable to omit all biographical reference to the popes ; but this can not 
 Apology for refer- be done with justicc to the subject. The essential princi- 
 phy of the popes, pie, of the papacy, that the Eoman pontiff is the vicar of 
 Christ upon earth, necessarily obtrudes his personal relations upon us. 
 How shall we understand his faith unless we see it illustrated in his 
 life? Indeed, the unhappy character of those relations was the inciting 
 cause of the movements in Germany, France, and England, ending in 
 the extinction of the papacy as an actual political power, movements to 
 be understood only through a sufi&cient knowledge of the private lives 
 and opinions of the popes. It is well, as far as possible, to abstain from 
 burdening systems with the imperfections of individuals. In this case 
 they are inseparably interwoven. The signal peculiarity of the papacy 
 is that, though its history may be imposing, its biography is infamous. 
 I shall, however, forbear to speak of it in this latter respect more than 
 the occasion seems necessarily to require ; shall pass in silence some of 
 those cases which would profoundly shock my religious reader, and 
 therefore restrict myself to the ages between the middle of the eighth 
 and the middle of the eleventh cesituries, excusing myself to the im- 
 partial critic by the apology that these were the ages with which I have 
 been chiefly concerned in this chapter. 
 
 On the death of Pope Paul I., who had attained the pontificate A,D. 
 757, the Duke of Nepi compelled some bishops to consecrate Constan- 
 The popes from ^^^^t ^ue of his brothers, as pope; but more legitimate 
 A.D.T57. electors subsequently, A.D. 768, choosing Stephen IV., the 
 usurper and his adherents were severely punished ; the eyes of Con- 
 stantine were put out ; the tongue of the Bishop Theodoras was ampu- 
 tated, and he was left in a dungeon to .expire in the agonies of thirst. 
 The nephews of Pope Adrian seized his successor, Pope Leo III., A.D. 
 795, in the street, and, forcing him into a neighboring church, attempted 
 to put out his eyes and cut off his tongue ; at a later period, this pontiff' 
 trying to suppress a conspiracy to depose him, Eome became the scene 
 of a rebellion, murder, and conflagration. His successor, Stephen V ., 
 
LIVES OP THE POPES. 281 
 
 A.D. 816, was ignominiously driven from tlie city ; his successor, Paschal 
 I., was accused of blinding and murdering two ecclesiastics in the Late- 
 ran Palace; it was necessary that imperial commissioners should inves- 
 tigate the matter, but the pope died, after having exculpated himself by 
 oath before thirty bishops. John VIIL, A.D. 872, unable to resist the 
 Mohammedans, was compelled to pay them tribute; the Bishop of Na- 
 ples, maintaining a secret alliance with them, received his share of the 
 plunder they collected. Him John excommunicated, nor would he give 
 him absolution unless he would betray the chief Mohammedans and as- 
 sassinate others himself. There was an ecclesiastical conspiracy to mur- 
 der the pope ; some of the treasures of the Church were seized ; and the 
 gate of St. Pancrazia was opened with false keys, to admit the Saracens 
 into the city. Formosus, who had been engaged in these transactions, 
 and excommunicated as a conspirator for the murder of John, was sub- 
 sequently elected pope, A.D. 891 ; he was succeeded l:\y Boniface YL, 
 A.D. 896, who had been deposed from the diaconate, and again from 
 the priesthood, for his immoral and lewd life. By Stephen VII., who 
 followed, the dead body of Formosus was taken from the grave, clothed 
 in the papal habiliments, propped up in a chair, and tried before a coun- 
 cil, and the preposterous and indecent scene completed by cutting off 
 three of the fingers of the corpse and casting it into the Tiber; but 
 Stephen himself was destined to exemplify how low the papacy had 
 fallen : he was thrown into prison and strangled. In the course of five 
 years, from A.D. 896 to A.D. 900, five popes were consecrated. Leo V., 
 who succeeded in A.D. 904, was in less than two months thrown into 
 prison by Chrisbpher, one of his chaplains, who usurped his place, and 
 who, in his turn, was shortly expelled from Eome by Sergius III., who, 
 by the aid of a military force, seized the pontificate, A.D. 905. This 
 man, according to the testimony of the times, lived in criminal inter- 
 course with the celebrated prostitute Theodora, who, with her daughters 
 Marozia and Theodora, also prostitutes, exercised an extraordinary con- 
 trol over him. The love of Theodora was also, shared by John X. : she 
 first gave him the archbishopric of Eavenna, and then translated him to 
 Eome, A.D. 915, as pope. John was not unsuited to the times ; he or- 
 ganized a confederacy which perhaps prevented Eome from being cap- 
 tured by the Saracens, and the world was astonished and edified by the 
 appearance of this warhke pontiff at the head of his troops. By the 
 love of Theodora, as was said, he had maintained himself in the papacy 
 for fourteen years ; by the intrigues and hatred of her daughter Marozia 
 he was overthrown. She surprised him in the Lateran Palace ; killed 
 his brother Peter before his face ; threw him into prison, where he soon 
 died, smothered, as it was asserted, with a pillow. After a short inter- 
 val Marozia made her own son pope as John XI., A.D. 931. Many af- 
 firmed that Pope Sergius was his father, but she herself inclined to at- 
 
282 LIVES OF THE POPES. 
 
 tribute Mm to her husband Alberic, whose brother Gruido she subse- 
 sequently married. Another of her sons, Alberic, so called from his 
 supposed father, jealous of his brother John, cast him and their mother 
 Marozia into prison. After a time Alberio's son was elected pope, A.D. 
 956 ; he assumed 4he title of John XII., the amorous Marozia thus hav- 
 ing given a son and a grandson to the papacy. John was only nineteen 
 years old when he thus became the head of Christendom. His reign 
 was characterized by the most shocking immoralities, so that the Em- 
 peror Otho I. was compelled by the German clergy to interfere.. A syn- 
 od was summoned for his trial in the Church of St. Peter, before which 
 it appeared that John had received bribes for the consecration of bish- 
 ops, that he had ordained one who was but ten years old, and had per- 
 formed that ceremony over another in a stable ; he was charged ■with 
 incest with one of his father's concubines, and with so many adulteries 
 that the Lateran Palace had become a brothel ; he put out the eyes of 
 one ecclesiastic and castrated another, both dying in consequence of 
 their injuries ; he was given to drunkenness, gamblLog, and the invoca- 
 tion of Jupiter and Venus. "When cited to appear before the council, 
 he sent word that "he had gone out hunting;" and to the fathers who 
 remonstrated with hirn, he threateningly remarked "that Judas, as Well 
 as the other disciples, received from his master the power of binding 
 and loosing, but that, as soon as he proved a traitor to the comnion 
 cause, the only power he retained was that of binding his own neck." 
 Hereupon he was deposed, and Leo VIII. elected in his stead, A.D. 963 ; 
 but subsequently getting the upper hand, he seized his antagonists; cut 
 off the hand of one, the nose, finger, tongue of others. His life was 
 eventually brought to an end by the vengeance of a man whose wife he 
 had seduced. 
 
 After such details it is almost needless to allude to the annals of suc- 
 ceeding popes : to relate that John XIII. was strangled in prison ; that 
 Boniface VII. imprisoned Benedict VII., and killed him by starvation; 
 that John XIV. was secretly put to death in the dungeons of the Castle 
 of St. Angelo ; that the corpse of Boniface was dragged by the populace 
 through the streets. The sentiment of reverence for the sovereign pon- 
 tiff, nay, even of respect, had become extinct in Eome ; throughout Eu- 
 rope the clergy were so shocked at the state of things, that, in their in- 
 dignation, they began to look with approbation on the intention of the 
 Emperor Otho to take from the Italians their privilege of appointing 
 the successor of St. Peter, and confine it in his own family. But his 
 kinsman, Gregory V., whom he placed on the pontifical' throne, was very 
 soon compelled by the Eomans to fly ; his excommunications and' re- 
 ligious thunders were turned into derision by them; they were too well 
 acquainted with the true nature of those terrors ; they were living he- 
 hind the scenes. A terrible punishment awaited the Anti-pope John 
 
CONCLUSION DEAWN rEOM THE PAPAL BIOGEAPHIES. 283 
 
 XVI. Otho returned into Italy, seized him, put out his eyes, cut off his 
 nose and tongue, and sent him through the streets mounted on an ass, 
 with his face to the tail, and a wine-bladder on his head. It seemed 
 impossible that things could become worse; yet Eome had still to see 
 Benedict IX., A.D. 1033, a boy of less than twelve years, raised to. the 
 apostolic throne. Of this pontiff, one of his successors, Victor ILL., de- 
 clared that his life was so shameful, so foul, so execrable, that he shud- 
 dered to describe it. He ruled like a captain of banditti rather than 
 a prelate. The people at last, unable to bear his adulteries, homicides, 
 and abominations any longer, rose against him. In de- The papacy tonght at 
 
 n ■ . ■ ■ I- •!• 1 i _ii auQtion, A.D. 1045, by 
 
 spair 01 mamtammg his position, he put up the papacy Gregory vi. 
 
 to auction. It was bought by a presbyter named John, who became 
 
 Gregory VI., A.D. 1045. 
 
 More than a thousand years had elapsed since the birth of our Savior, 
 and such was the condition of Eome. .WeU may the his- conclusion respect, 
 torian shut the annals of these times in disgust ; well may ^ *^ wography. 
 the heart of the Christian sink within him at such a catalogue of hide- 
 ous crimes. "Well may he ask. Were these the vicegerents of God upon 
 earth — these, who had truly reached that goal beyond which the last ef- 
 fort of human wickedness can not pass ? 
 
 Not until several centuries after these events did public opinion come 
 to the true and philosophical conclusion — the total rejection The pMiosophicai 
 of the divine claims of the papacy. For a time the evils aSet"""'"' 
 were attributed to the manner of the pontifical election, as if that could 
 by any possibility influence the descent of a power which claimed to be 
 supernatural and under the immediate care of God. The manner of 
 election was this. The Eoman ecclesiastics recommended a candidate to 
 the College of Cardinals; their choice had to be ratified by The ems imputed 
 the populace of Eome, and, after that, the emperor must pa&'JSr' 
 give his approval. There were thus to be brought into agreement the 
 machinations of the lower ecclesiastics, the intrigues of the cardinals, 
 the clamors of the rabble of Eome, and the policy of the emperoi; Such 
 a system must inevitably break to pieces with its own incongruities. 
 Though we may wonder that men failed to see that it was merely a hu- 
 man device, we can not wonder that the emperors perceived the neces- 
 sity of taking the appointments into their own hands, and that Gregory 
 Vn. was resolved to confine it to the CoUege of Cardinals, to the exclu- 
 sion of the emperor, the Eoman people, and even of the rest of Christen- 
 dom — an attempt in which he succeeded. 
 
 No one can study the development of the Italian ecclesiastical power 
 without discovering how completely it depended on human „ 
 
 _ A j7j. 1 J. ^ jr , Muman origin 
 
 agency, too otten on human passion and intrigues ; how com- °^*« ^i^y- 
 pletely wanting it was of any mark of the Divine construction and care 
 —the offspring of man, not of God, and therefore bearing upon it the 
 lineaments of human passions, human virtues, and human sins. 
 
284 ARABIAN PASSAGE TO THE AGE OF REASON. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 DIGRESSION ON THE PASSAGE OF THE ARABIANS TO THEIR AGE OF 
 
 REASON. 
 
 INTLnENCE OP MEDICAL HJEAS THROUGH THE KESTOEIANS AND JEWS. 
 
 The intellectual Development of the Arabians is guided iy the Nestorians and the Jews, and is 
 in the medical Direction. — The Hasis of this Alliance is theological. 
 
 Antagonism of the Byzantine System to scientific Medicine. — Suppression of the Asclepions.— 
 Their Replacement by Miracle-cure. — The resulting Superstition and Ignorance. 
 
 Affiliation of the Arabians with the Nestorians and Jews. 
 
 1st. The Nestorians, their Persecutions, alid the Diffusion of their sectarian Ideas. — Itey in- 
 herit the old Greek Medicine. , 
 
 Sub-digression on Greek Medicine. — The Asclepums. — Philosophical Impprtance ofHippocrates, 
 who separates Medicine from Religion. — The School of Cnidos. — Its Suppression by Con- 
 slantine. 
 
 Sub-digression on Egyptian Medicine. — It is founded on Anatomy and Physiology, — Dissec- 
 tions and Vivisections. — The great Alexandrian Physicians. 
 
 2d. The Jewish Physicians. — Their Emancipation from Superstition. — They found Colleges 
 and promote Science and Letters. 
 
 The contemporary Tendency to Magic, Necromancy, the Blaclc Art. — The Phibsopher's Stone, 
 Elixir of Life, etc. 
 
 The Arabs originate scientific Chemistry. — Discover the strong Adds, Phosphorus, etc. — 
 Their geological Ideas. — Apply Chemistry to the Practice of Medicine. — Approach tf tk 
 Conflict between the Saracenic material and the European supernatural System. 
 
 The military operations of the Arabians, described in Chapter XI,, 
 overthrew the Byzantine political system, prematurely closing the Age 
 of Faith ^n the East; their intellectual procedure gave rise to an equally 
 Importance of important Tcsult, being destined, in the end, to close the Age 
 
 the influence of il . ' ■ mi f> it j ? 
 
 the Arabians. 01 h aith m the W est. The Saracens not only destroyed the 
 Italian .offshoot, they also impressed characteristic lineaments on the 
 Age of Eeason in Europe. 
 
 Events so important make it necessary for me to turn aside from the 
 special description of European intellectual advancement, and offer a di- 
 gression on the passage of the Arabians to their Age of Eeason. It is 
 impossible for us to understand their action in the great drama ahout 
 to be performed unless we understand the character they had assumed. 
 
 In a few centuries the fanatics of Mohammed had altogether changed 
 Their inteueet- ^^Q^^ appcarancc. Great philosophers, physicians, mathe- 
 uai progress, maticians, astronomers, alchemists, grammarians, had arisen 
 among them. Letters and science, in all their various departments, 
 were cultivated. 
 
 A nation stirred to its profoundest depths by warlike emigration, and 
 
FOREIGN TEACHERS OF THE ARABIANS. 285 
 
 therefore ready to make, as soon as it reaches a period of repose, a rapid 
 intellectual advance, may owe the path in which it is Thetr teachers we™ 
 
 ' .'' ..'■.. n ■ • ""^ Nestonana ami 
 
 about to pass to those who are in the position oi pointing Jews. 
 
 it out, or of officiating as teachers. The teachers of the Saracens were 
 
 the Nestorians and the Jews. 
 
 It has been remarked that Arabian science emerged out of medicine, 
 and that in its cultivation physicians took the lead, its beginnings be- 
 ins' in the pursuit of alchemy. In this chapter I have to Their scientific prog- 
 
 ^ s: rti. IIP ^^3^ ^*^ through 
 
 describe the origin of these circumstances, and therefore meaicine. 
 must consider the state of Greek and Egyptian medicine, and relate 
 how, wherever the Byzantine system could reach, true medical philoso- 
 phy was displaced by relic and shrine-curing; and how it was, that 
 while European ideas were in all directions reposing on the unsubstan- 
 tial basis of the supernatural, those of the Saracens were -resting on the 
 solid foundation of a material support. 
 
 When the Arabs conquered Egypt, their conduct was that of bigoted 
 fanatics; it justified the accusation made by some aigainst them, that 
 they burned the Alexandrian library for the purpose of heating the 
 baths. But scarcely were they settled in their new dominion when they 
 exhibited an extraordinary change. At once they became lovers and 
 zealous cultivators of learning. 
 
 The Arab power had extended in two directions, and had been sub- 
 mitted to two influences. In Asia it had been exposed to the Nestori- 
 ans, in Africa to the Jews, both of whom had suffered persecution at 
 the hands of the Byzantine government, apparently for causes of theu-tmion 
 
 ,^ •• l^ , T • T ^ ^ .ii-in. with Neatorians and 
 
 the same opinion as that which had now established it- Jews, 
 self by the sword of Mohammed. The doctrine of the unity of God 
 was their common point of contact. On this they could readily affili- 
 ate, and hold in common detestation the trinitarian power at Constan- 
 tinople. He who is suffering the penalties of the law as a heretic, or 
 who is pursued by judicial persecution as a misbeliever, will readily 
 consort with others reputed to cherish similar infidelities. Brought into 
 unison in Asia with the ISTestorians, and in Africa with the Alexandrian 
 Jews, the Arabians became enthusiastic admirers of learning. 
 
 Not that there was between the three parties thus coalescing a com- 
 plete harmony of sentiment in the theological direction ; for, though the 
 Nestorians and the Jews were willing to accept one half Medicine hecomes 
 of the Arabian dogma, that there is but one God, they «ieir neutral ground, 
 could not altogether commit themselves on the other, that Mohammed 
 is his Prophet. Perhaps estrangement on this point might have arisen, 
 but fortunately a remarkable circumstance opened the way for a com- 
 plete understanding between them. Almost from the beginning the 
 ISTestorians had devoted themselves to the study of medicine, and had 
 paid much attention to the structure and diseases of the body of man ; 
 
286 BYZANTINE OPPOSITION TO MEDICINE. 
 
 the Jews for long had produced distinguished physicians. These medi- 
 cal studies presented, therefore, a neutral ground on which the three 
 parties could intellectually unite in harmony ; and so thoroughly did 
 the Arabians affiliate with these their teachers, that they acquired from 
 them a characteristic mental physiognomy. Their physicians were theb 
 great philosophers ; their medidal" colleges were their foci of learning. 
 While the Byzantines obliterated science in theology, the Saracens il- 
 luminated it by medicine. 
 
 "When Constantine the Great and his successors, under ecclesiastical 
 influence, had declared themselves the enemies of worldly learning, it 
 Byzantine Bupprea- bccamo necessar;^ for the clergy to assume the duty of 
 sion of medicine, geeing to the physical as well as the; religious condition 
 of the people. It was unsuited to the state of things that physicians, 
 whose philosophical tendencies inclined them to the pagan party, should 
 be any longer endured. Their education in the Asclepions imparted to 
 them ideas in opposition to the new events. An edict of Constantine 
 suppressed those estaftlishnients, ample provision being, however, made 
 for replacing them by others more agreeable to the genius of Chris- 
 tianity. Hospitals and benevolent organizations were founded in the 
 chief cities, and richly endowed with money and lands. In these mer- 
 Substitution of puh- ciful Undertakings the empress-mother, Helena, was dis- 
 uc ciiarities. tiuguishcd, her example being followed by many high- 
 
 born ladies. The heart of women, which is naturally open to the deso- 
 late and afflicted, soon gives active expression tb its sympathies when it 
 is sanctified by a gentle Christian faith. In this, its legitimate direction, 
 Christianity could display its matchless benevolenpe and charities. Or- 
 ganizations were introduced upon the most extensive and varied scaje; 
 one had charge of foundlings, another of orphans, another of the poor. 
 We have already alluded to the parabolani or visitors, and of the man- 
 ner in which they were diverted from their original intent. 
 
 But, noble as were these charities, they labored under an essential de- 
 fect in having substituted for educated physicians well-meaning hut un- 
 skillful ecclesiastics. The destruction of the Asclepions was not attend- 
 ed by any suitably extensive measures for insuring professional educa- 
 Graduai fau into tion. Thc sick who wcrc placed in the benevolent institur 
 miracie-oure. ^^Q^g ^gjg^ ^^ ^j^g T^gg^^ rathcr uudcr the care of kind nurses 
 than under the advice of physicians ; and the consequences are seen in 
 the gradually increasing credulity and imposture of succeeding ages, 
 until, at length, there was an almost universal reliance on hairaculous 
 interventions. Fetiches, said to be the relics of saints, but no better 
 than those of tropical Africa, were believed to cure every disorder. 
 To the shrines of saints crowds repaired as they had at one time to the 
 temples of JEsculapius. The worshipers remained, though the name of 
 the divinity was changed. 
 
SUBSTrrUTION OF MIRACLE-CURE. 287 
 
 Scarcely were the Asclepions closed, the schools of philosophy pro- 
 hibited, the libraries dispersed or destroyed, learning brand- closing of the 
 ed as magic or punished as treason, philosophers driven into f^^^tii^-' 
 exile and as a class exterminated, when it became apparent ^°'°v^y- 
 that a void had been created which it was incumbent on the victors to 
 fill. Among the great prelates, who was there to stand in the place of 
 those men whose achievements had glorified the human race ? Who 
 was to succeed to Archimedes, Hipparchus, Euclid, Herophilus, Eratos- 
 thenes ? who to Plato and Aristotle ? The quackeries of miracle-cure, 
 shrine-cure, relic-cure, were destined to eclipse the genius of Hippoc- 
 rates, and nearly two thousand years to intervene between Archimedes 
 and Newton, nearly seventeen hundred between Hipparchus and Kep- 
 ler. A dismal interval of almost twenty centuries parts Hero, whose 
 first steam-engine revolved in the Serapion, from James "Watt, who has 
 revolutionized the industry of the world. What a fearful blank! Yet 
 not a blank, for it had its products — hundreds of patristic? folios fiUed 
 with obsolete speculation, oppressing the shelves of antique libraries, en- 
 veloped in dust, and awaiting the worm. 
 
 Never was a more disastrous policy adopted than the Byzaptine sup- 
 pression of profime learning. It is scarcely possible now to re- ^g depiora- 
 aHze the mental d.egradation produced when that system was we results. 
 at its height. Many of the noblest philosophical and scientific works 
 of antiquity disappeared from the language in which they had been 
 written, and were only recovered, for the use of later and better ages, 
 from translations which the Saracens had made into Arabic. The inso- 
 lent assumption of wisdom by those who held the sword crushed every 
 intellectual aspiration. Yet, though triumphant for a time, this policy 
 necessarily contained the seeds of its own ignominious destruction. An 
 inevitable day must come when so grievous a wrong, to the human race 
 must be exposed, and execrated, and punished — a day in which the 
 poems of Homer would once more be read, the immortal statues of the 
 (jreek sculptors find worshipers, and the demonstrations of insecurity of the 
 Euclid a consenting intellect. But that unfortunate, that Byzantine system. 
 audacious policy of usurpation once entfered upon, there was no going 
 b^ck. He who is infallible must needs be immutable. In its very na- 
 ture the action implied compulsion, compulsion implied the possession 
 of power, and the whole policy insured an explosion the moment that 
 the means of compression should be weak. 
 
 It is said that when the Saracens captured Alexandria, their victorious 
 general sent to the khalif to know his pleasure respecting the library. 
 The answer was in the spirit of the age. "If the books are confirma- 
 tory of the Koran, they are superfluous ; if contradictory, they Bigotry of the 
 are pernicious. Let them be burnt." At this moment, to aU ^'^' ^"'"=™- 
 human appearance, the Mohammedan autocrat was on the point of join- 
 
288 CAUSES OF THIS POLICY. 
 
 ing in the evil policy of the Byzantine sovereign. But fortunately it 
 was but the impulse of a moment, rectified forthwith, and a noble course 
 of action was soon pursued. The Arab incorporated into his literature 
 the wisdom of those he had conquered. In thus conceding to knowl- 
 The noble policy ^dgc a free and unembarrassed career, and, instead of re- 
 quickly pursued, pressing, encouraging to the utmost all kinds of learning 
 did the Koran take any harm? It was a high statesmanship which 
 almost from the beginning of the impulse from Mecca, bound down to 
 a narrow, easily comprehended, and easily expressed dogma the exacted 
 belief^ and in all other particulars let the human mind go free. 
 
 In the preceding paragraphs I have criticised the course of events, 
 condemning or applauding the actions and the actors as circumstances 
 seem to require, herein following the usual course, which implies that 
 men can control affairs, and that the agent is to be held responsible foi 
 The true causes his deed. We havc, however, only to consider the course 
 events. of our own lives to be satisfied to how liniited an extent 
 
 such is the case. We are, as we often say, the creatures of circum- 
 stances. In that expression there is a higher philosophy than might at 
 first sight appear. Our actions are not the pure and unmingled results 
 of our desires ; they are the offspring of many various and mixed con- 
 ditions. In that which seems to be the most voluntary decision there en- 
 ters much that is altogether involuntary — more, perhaps, than we gen- 
 erally suppose. And, in like manner, those who are imagined to have 
 iexercised an irresponsible and spontaneous influence in determining 
 public policy, and thereby fixing the fate of nations, will be found, 
 when we understand their position more correctly, to have been the crea- 
 tures of circumstances altogether independent and irrespective of them 
 — circumstances which they never created, of whose influence they only 
 availed themselves. They were placed in a current which drifted them 
 irresistibly along. 
 
 From this more accurate point of view we should therefore consider 
 the course of these events, recognizing the principle that the affairs of 
 men pass forward in a determinate way, expanding and unfolding them- 
 selves. And hence we see that the things of which we have spoken as 
 though they were matters of choice were, in reality, forced upon their 
 apparent authors by the necessity of the times. But, in truth, they 
 should be considered as the presentations of a certain phase of life 
 which nations in their onward course sooner or later assume. In the 
 individual, how well we know that a sober moderation of action, an ap- 
 propriate gravity of demeanor, belong to the mature period of life; a 
 change from the wanton willfulness of youth, which may be ushered m, 
 or its beginning marked, by many accidental incidents: in one perhaps 
 by domestic bereavements, in another by the loss of fortune, in a third 
 by ill health. We are correct enough in imputing to such trials the 
 
CULTIVATION OF SCIENCE BY THE NESTORIANS. 289 
 
 change of character, but we never deceive ourselves by supposing that 
 it would have failed to take place had those circumstances not occurred. 
 There runs an irresistible destiny in the midst of all these vicissitudes. 
 We may therefore be satisfied that, whatever may have been the par- 
 ticular form of the events of which we have had occasion succeasion of affaire 
 to speak, their order of succession was a matter of destiny, determined by law. 
 and altogether beyond the reach of any individual. We may condemn 
 the Byzantine monarchs, or applaud the Arabian khalifs — our blame 
 and our praise must be set at their proper value. Europe was passing ' 
 from its Age of Inquiry to its Age of Faith. In such a transition the 
 predestined underlies the voluntary. There are analogies between the 
 life of a nation and that of an individual, who, though he may be in one 
 respect the maker of his own fortunes for happiness or for misery, for 
 good or for evil, though he remains here or goes there, as his inclina- 
 tions prompt, though.he does this or abstains from that, as he chooses, 
 is nevertheless held fast by an inexorable fate — a fate which brought 
 him into the world involuntarily so far as he was concerned, which 
 presses him forward through a definite career, the stages of which are 
 absolutely invariable — infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age, with 
 aU their characteristic actions and passions, and which removes him from 
 the scene at the appointed time, in most cases against his will. So also it 
 is with nations ; the voluntary is only the outward semblance, covering, 
 but hardly hiding the predetermined. Over the events of life we may 
 have a control, but none whatever over the law of its progress. There 
 is a geometry that applies to nations, an equation of their curve of ad- 
 vance. That no mortal man can touch. 
 
 We have now to examine in what manner the glimmering lamp of 
 knowledge was sustained when it was all but ready to die put. Arabian science 
 By the Arabians it was handed down to us. The grotesque sorcery. 
 forms of some of those who took charge of it are not without interest. 
 They exhibit a strange mixture of the Neoplatonist, the Pantheist, the Mo- 
 hammedan, the Christian. In such untoward times, it was perhaps need- 
 ful that tlie strongest passions of men should be excited and science stim- 
 ulated by inquiries for methods of turning lead into gold, or of prolonging 
 life indefinitely. We have now to deal with the philosopher's stone, the 
 elixir vitse, the powder of projection, magical mirrors, perpetual lamps, 
 the transmutation of metals. In smoky caverns under ground, where 
 the" great work is stealthily carried on, the alchemist and his familiar 
 are busy with their alembics, cucurbites, and pelicans, maintaining their 
 fires for so many years that salamanders are asserted to be born in 
 them. 
 
 Experimental science was thus restored, though under a very strange 
 aspect, by the Arabians. Already it displayed its connection with 
 medicine — a connection derived from the influence of the Nestorians 
 
 T 
 
290 NESTORIAN TEACHERS OF THE SABACENS. 
 
 and the Jews. It is necessary for us to consider briefly the relations 
 of each, and of the Nestorians first. 
 
 In Chapter IX. we have related the rivalries of Cyril, the Bishop of 
 Alexandria, and Nestprius, the Bishop of Constantinople. The theo- 
 The Nestorians. logical point of their quarrcl was whether it is right to re- 
 gard the Virgin Mary as the mother of God. To an Egyptian still 
 tainted with ancient superstition, there was nothing shocking in such a 
 doctrine. His was the country of Isis. St. Cyril, who is to be looked 
 upon as a mere ecclesiastical demagogue, found his purposes answered 
 in adopting it without any scruple. But in Greece there still remained 
 traces of the old philosophy. A recollection of the ideas of Plaix) had 
 not altogether died out. There were some by whom it was not possi- 
 ble for the Egyptian doctrine to be received.- Such, perhaps, was Nes- 
 torius, whose sincerity was finally approved by an endurance of perse- 
 cutions, by his sufferings, and his death. He and his followers, insisting 
 on the plain inference of the last verse of the first chapter of St. Matthew, 
 together with the fifty -fifth and fifty -sixth verses of the thirteenth of the 
 same Gospel, could never be brought to an acknowledgment of the per- 
 They deny the vir- petual virginity of the new queen of heaven. We have 
 of heaven. described the issue of the Council of Ephesus: the Egyp- 
 
 tian faction gained the victory, the aid of court females being called 
 in, and Nestorius, being deposed from his office, was driven with his 
 friends into exile. The philosophical tendency of the vanquished was 
 soon indicated by their actions. While their leader was tormented in 
 an African oasis, many of them emigrated to the Euphrates, and found- 
 ed the Chaldsean Church. Under its auspices the college at Edessa, 
 with several connected schools, arose. In these were translated into 
 Syriac many Greek and Latin works, as those of Aristotle and Pliny. 
 It was the Nestorians who, in connection with the Jews, founded the 
 Tiieyijegin to cui- Hicdical coUegc of Djondcsabour, and first instituted a sys- 
 ttvate medicine, ^gj^ ^f academical houors which has descended to our 
 times. It was the Nestorians who were not only permitted by the 
 khalife the free exercise of their religion, but even intrusted with the 
 education of the children of the great Mohammedan families, a liberals 
 ty in striking contrast to the fanaticism of Europe. The Khalif Aliss- 
 The Arabs affli- cMd wcnt SO far as even to place all his public schools undei 
 iate with them, ^j^g superintendence of John Masu^, one of that sect. Un- 
 der the auspices of these learned men the Arabian academies were fur- 
 nished with translations of Greek authors, and vast libraries were col- 
 lected in Asia. 
 
 Through this connection with the Arabs, Nestprian missionaries found 
 Their great spread mcans to dissemiuatc their form of Christianity all over 
 in the East, Asia, as far as Malabar and China. The successful in- 
 
HISTORY OF GREEK MEDICINE. 291 
 
 trigues of tlie Egyptian politicians at Ephesus had no influence in those 
 remote countries, the Asiatic churches 9f' the Nestorian and Jacobite per- 
 suasions outnumbering eventually all the European Christians of ftie 
 Greek and Eoman churches combined. In later times the papal gov- 
 ernment has made great exertions to bring about an understanding with 
 them, but in vain. 
 
 The expulsion of this party from Constantinople was accomplished 
 by the same persons and policy concerned in destroying philosophy in 
 Alexandria. St. Cyril was the representative of an illiterate and un- 
 scrupulous faction that had come into the possession of andpereccutions 
 power through intrigues with the females of the imperial ""i'^''^'^'- 
 court, and bribery of eunuchs and parasites. The same spirit that had 
 murdered Hypatia tormented Nestorius to death. Of the contending 
 parties, one was respectable and had a tincture of learning, the other 
 ignorant, and not hesitating at the employment of brute force, deporta- 
 tion, assassination. Unfortunately for the world, the unscrupulous party 
 carried the day. 
 
 By their descent, the Nestorians had become the depositaries of the 
 old Greek medical science. Its great names they revered. They inherit the 
 
 mi n 1-11 • -I • 1 - old Greek medl- 
 
 They collected, with the utmost assiduity, whatever works cine, 
 remained on medical topics, whether of a Greek or Alexandrian origin, 
 from the writings of Hippocrates, called, with affectionate veneration by 
 his successors, "The Divine Old Man," down to those of the Ptolemaic 
 school. 
 
 Greek medicine arose in the temples of ^sculapius, whither the 
 sick were in the habit of resorting for the assistance of the god. It 
 does not appear that any fee was exacted for the celestial advice; 
 but the gratitude of the pa^tient was frequently displayed ori^ of Greek 
 by optional gifts, and votive tablets presented to the tem- ^ons!""^ 
 pie, setting forth the circumstances of the case, were of value to those 
 disposed to enter on the study thereof. The Asclepions thus became 
 both hospitals and schools. They exercised, from their position, a 
 tendency to incorporate medical and ecclesiastical pursuits. At this 
 time it was universally believed that every sickness was due to the 
 anger of some offended god, and especially was this supposed to be the 
 case in epidemics and plagues. Such a paralyzing notion was neces- 
 sarily inconsistent with any attempt at the relief of communities by the 
 exercise of sanitary measures. In our times it is still difficult to remove 
 from the minds of the illiterate classes this ancient opinion, or to con- 
 vince them that under such visitations we ought to help ourselves, and 
 not expect relief by penance and supplications, unless we join there- 
 with rigorous personal, domestic, municipal cleanliness, fresh air, and 
 light. The theological doctrine of the nature of disease in- ffippocrates destroys 
 dicated its means of cure. For Hippocrates was reserved iy°of dlsrale. 
 
292 REVIEW OF HIPPOCEATES. 
 
 the great glory of destroying them both, replacing them by more practi- 
 cal and material ideas, and, from the votive tablets, traditions, and other 
 sources, together with his own admirable observations, compiling a body 
 of medicine. The necessary consequence of his great success was the 
 separation of the pursuits of the physician from those of the priest. Not 
 that so great a revolution, implying the diversion of profitable gains 
 from the ancient channel, could have been accomplished without a 
 struggle. We should reverence the memory of Hippocrates for the 
 complete manner in which he effected that object. 
 
 Of the works attributed to Hippocrates, many are doubtless the pro- 
 duction of his family, his descendants, or his pupils. The inducements 
 Writings of Hip- to Htcrary forgery in the times of the Ptolemies, who paid 
 pocratea. ^gj^ j^^jg]^ priccs for books of reputation, have been the cause 
 
 of much difficulty among critics in determining such questions of au- 
 thorship. The works indisputably written by Hippocrates display an 
 extent of knowledge answering to the authority of his name ; his vivid 
 descriptions have never been excelled, if indeed they have ever been 
 equaled. The Hippocratic face of the dying is still retained in our 
 medical treatises in the original terms, without any improvement. 
 
 In his medical doctrine, Hippocrates starts with the postulate that the 
 ma opinions, body is composed of the four elements. From these are form- 
 ed the four cardinal humors. He thinks that the humors are hable to 
 undergo change; that health consists in their right constitution and 
 proper adjustment as to quantity ; disease, in their impurities and in- 
 equalities; that the disordered humors undergo spontaneous changes or 
 coction, a process requiring time, and hence the explanation of critical 
 days and critical discharges. The primitive disturbance of the humors 
 he attributed to a. great variety of causes, chiefly to the influence of sur- 
 rounding physical circumstances, such as heat, cold, air, water. Unlike 
 his contemporaries, he did not impute all the afflictions of man to the 
 anger of the gods. Along with those influences of an external kind, he 
 studied the spefcial peculiarities of the human system, how it is modi- 
 fied by climate and manner of life, exhibiting different predispositions 
 at different seasons of the year. He believed that the innate heat of the 
 body varies with the period of life, being greatest in infancy and least 
 in old age, and that hence morbific agents affect us with greater or less 
 facility at different times. For this reason it is that the physician 
 should attend very closely to the condition of those in whom he is in- 
 terested as respects their diet and exercise, for thereby he is able not 
 only to regulate their general susceptibility, but also to exert a control 
 over the course of their diseases. 
 
 Eeferring diseases in general to the condition or distribution of the 
 humors, for he regards inflammation as the passing of blood into parts 
 not previously containing it, he considers that so long as those liquids 
 
REVIEW OP HIPPOCRATES. 293 
 
 occupy the system in an unnatural or adulterated state, disease continues; 
 but as they ferment of undergo coction, various characteristic symptoms 
 appear, and, when their elaboration is completed, they are discharged by 
 perspiration or other secfetions, by alvine dejections, etc. But where 
 such a general relief of the system is not accomplished, the peccant hu- 
 mors may be localized in some particular organ or special portion, and 
 erysipelatous inflammation, mortification, or other such manifestations 
 ensue. It is in aiding this eUmination from the system that the physi- 
 cian may signally manifest his skUl. His power is displayed much 
 more at this epoch than by the control he can exert over the process of 
 coction. Now may he invoke the virtues of the hellebores, the white 
 and the black; now may he use elaterium. The critical days which 
 answer to the periods of the process of coction are to be watched with 
 anxiety, and the correspondence of the state of the patient with the ex- 
 pected condition which he ought to show at those epochs ascertained. 
 Hence the physician may be able to predict the probable course of 
 the disease during the remainder of its career, and gather true notions 
 as to the practice it would be best for him to pursue to aid Nature in 
 her operations. 
 
 It thus appears that the practice of medicine in the hands of Hippoc- 
 rates had reference rather to the course or career of disease -me nature ot 
 than to the special nature thereof Nothing more than this ''i=P"'»"'i'=«- 
 inasterly conception is wanted to impress us with his surprising scien- 
 tific power. He watches the manner in which the humors are under- 
 going their fermenting coction, the phenomena displayed in the critical 
 days, the aspect and nature of the critical discharges. He does not at- 
 tempt to check the process going on, but simply to assist the natural 
 operation. 
 
 When we consider the period at which Hippocrates lived, B.C. 400, 
 and the circumstances under which he had studied medicine, we can not 
 fail to admire the very great advance he made. His merit is conspicu- 
 ous in rejecting the superstitious tendency of his times by teaching his 
 disciples to impute a proper agency to physical causes. He altogether 
 discarded the imaginary influences then in vogue. For the gods he sub- 
 stituted, with singular felicity, impersonal Natare. It was the interest 
 of those who were connected with the temples of ^sculapius to refer all 
 the diseases of men to supernatural agency ; their doctrine being that 
 every affliction should be attributed to the anger of some ofiended god, 
 and restoration to health most certainly procured by conciliating his 
 power. So far, then, as such interests were concerned, any contradic- 
 tion of those doctrines, any substitution of the material for the super- 
 natural, must needs have met with reprehension. Yet such opposition 
 seems in no respect to have weighed with this great physician, who de- 
 veloped his theory and pursued his practice without giving himself any 
 
294 THE HIPPOOEATIC SCHOOL AND ITS RIVALS. 
 
 concern in that respect. He bequeathed an example to all who should 
 succeed him in his noble profession, and taught them not to hesitate in 
 encountering the prejudices and passions of the present for the sake of 
 the truth, and to trust for their reward in th8 just appreciation of a fu- 
 ture age. 
 
 With , such remarks we may assert that the medical philosophy of 
 Hippocrates is worthy of our highest admiration, since it exhibits the 
 ma doctrine is soicntiflc couditions of deduction and induction. The theory 
 truly seicntific. itself is compact and clear; its lineanients are completely Gre- 
 cian. It presents, to one who will contemplate it with a due allowance 
 for its times, the characteristic quick-sightedness, penetration, and power 
 of the Greek mind, fully vindicating for its author the title which has 
 been conferred upon him by his European, successors — ^the Father of 
 Medicine — and perhaps inducing us to excuse the enthusiastic assertion 
 of Gralen, that we ought to reverence the words of Hippocrates as the 
 voice of God. 
 
 The Hippocratic school of Cos found a rival in the school of Cnidos, 
 which offered not only a different view of the nature pf disease, but also 
 ThesohoDi taught a different principle for its cure. The .Cnidians paid 
 ofcnidoB. more particular attention to the special symptoms in individual 
 cases, and pursued a less active treatment, declining, whenever they 
 could, a resort to drastic purgatives, venesection, or 'Other energetic 
 means. As might be expected, the professional activity of these schools 
 called . into existence many able men, and produced many excellent 
 works: thus Philiston wrote on the regimen for persons in health; 
 Diodes on hygiene and gymnastics ; Praxagoras on the pulse, showing 
 that it was a measure of the force of disease. The Asclepion of Cnidos 
 ib destroyed by Continued Until the time of Constantino, when it was de- 
 oonatantinei gtroycd along with many othei* pagan establishments. The 
 union between the priesthood, and the profession was gradually becoming 
 less and less close; and, as the latter thus separated itself, divisions or 
 departments arose in it, both as regards subjects, such as pharmacy, 
 surgery, etc., and also as respects the position of its cultivatorSj some 
 pursuing it as a liberal science, and some as a mere industrial occupa- 
 tion. In thoSe times, as in our own, many who were not favored with 
 the gifts of fortune were constrained -to fall into the latter ranks. Thus 
 Aristotle, than whom few have ever exerted a greater intellectual influ- 
 ence upon humanity, after spending his patrimony in liberal pursuits, 
 cittsaea of phy-' ^.?P* ^° apothccary's shop at Athens. Aristotle the druggist, 
 Bida,na. behind his compter, selling medicines to chance customers, is 
 
 Aristotle the great writer, whose dictum was final with the schoolmen 
 of the Middle Ages. As a general thing however, the medical profess- 
 ors were drawn from the philosophical class. Outside of these divis- 
 ions, and though in all ages continually repudiated by the profession, 
 
EGYPTIAN MEDICINE. 295 
 
 yet continually hovering round it, was a host of impostors and quacks, 
 as there will always be so long as there are weak-minded and shallow 
 men to be deluded, and vain and silly women to believe. 
 
 When the Alexandrian Museum was originated by Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus, its studies were arranged in four faculties— literature, mathe- 
 matics, astronomy, medicine. These divisions are, how- Egyptian medicine, 
 ever, to be understood comprehensively: thus, under the TheMnBeum. 
 faculty of medicine were included such subjects as natural history. 
 The physicians who received the first appointments were Cleombrotus, 
 Herophilus, and Brasistratus ; . among the subordinate professors was 
 Philo-Stephanus, who had charge of natural history, and was directed to 
 write a book on Fishes. The elevated ideas of the founder can not be 
 better illustrated than by the manner in which he organized his medi- 
 cal school. It was upon the sure basis of anatomy. Herophilus and 
 his colleagues were authorized to resort to the dissection of the dead, 
 and to ascertain, by that only reliable method, the true PMiadeipims founds 
 structure of the human body. The strong hand of Ptol- ™dicineon.natomy. 
 emy resolutely carried out his design, though in a country where pop- 
 ular sentiment was strongly opposed to such practices, hitherto unheard 
 of in the world. To touch a corpse in Egypt was an abomination. 
 Nor was it only this great man's intention to ascertain the human struc- 
 ture : ' he also took rheasures to discover the mode in which He authorizes dis- 
 
 ' - ■ . , . , . section and liumaD 
 
 its functions are carried .forward, the manner m which it Ti™ection. 
 works. To -this end he authorized his anatomists to make vivisections 
 both of animals, and also criminals who had been condemned to death, 
 herein finding for himself that royal road in physiology which Euclid 
 once told him, at a dinner in the Museum, did not exist in geometry, 
 and defending the act from moral criticism by the plea that, as the cul- 
 prits had already forfeited their lives to the law, it was no injury to 
 make them serviceable to the interests of humanity. He- physicians of the ai- 
 rophilus had been educated at Cos ; his pathological views «='"'*"™ =*'"''-^ 
 were those known as humoralism ; his treatment active, after the man- 
 ner of Hippocrates, upon whose works he wrote commentaries. His 
 original investigations were numerous; they were embodied, with his 
 peculiar views, in treatises on the practice of medicine ; on obstetrics ; 
 on the eye ; on the pulse, which he properly referred to contractions of 
 the heart. He was 'aware of the existence of the lacteals, and their. ana- 
 tomical relation to the mesenteric glands. Erasistratus, his colleague, 
 was a pupil of Theophrastus and Chrysippus : he, too, cultivated anato- 
 my. He described the structure of the heart, its' connections with the 
 arteries and veins, but fell into the mistake that the former vessels were 
 for the conveyance of air, the latter for that of blood. He knew that 
 there are two kinds of nerves, those of motion and those of sensation. 
 He referred all fevers to inflammatory states, and in his practice differed 
 
296 THE ALEXAJSTDBIAN SCHOOLS. 
 
 from the received methods of Hippocrates in observing a less active 
 treatment. 
 
 By these physicians the study of medicine in Alexandria was laid upon 
 Improvements in 8ur- ^^^ soHd' foundatipn of auatomy. Besides them there 
 gejy and pharmacy. ^gj,g j^^ny Other iustructors in specialties; and, indeed, 
 the temple of Serapis was used for a hospital, the sick being received 
 into it, and persons studying medicine admitted for the purpose of famil- 
 iarizing themselves with the appearance of disease, precisely as in such 
 institutions at the present time. Of course, under such circumstances, 
 the departments. of surgery and pharmacy received many improvements, 
 and produced mariy able men. Among these improvements may be 
 mentioned new operations for lithotomy, instruments for crushing cal- 
 culi, for reducing dislocations, etc. The active commerce of Egypt af- 
 forded abundant opportunity for extending the materia medica by the 
 introduction of a great many herbs and drugs. 
 
 The medical school of Alexandria, which was thus originally based 
 upon dissection, in the course of time lost much of its scientific spirit. 
 Decline of Aiexan- But the influence of the first teachers may be traced through 
 drian medicine, many subscqucnt agcs. Thus Galen divides the profes- 
 sion in his time into Herophilians and Erasistratians. Various sects 
 had arisen in the course of events, as the Dogmatists, who asserted that 
 diseases can only be treated correctly by the aid of a knowledge of the 
 structure and functions, the action of drugs, and the changes induced in 
 the affected parts ; they insisted, therefore, upon the necessity of anato- 
 my,- physiology, therapeutics, and pathology. They claimed a descent 
 from Hippocrates. Their antagonists, the Empirics, ridiculed such 
 knowledge as fanciful or unattainable, and relied on experience alone. 
 These subdivisions were not limited to sects ; they may also be observed 
 under the form of schools. Even Erasistratus himself, toward the close 
 of his life, through some dispute or misunderstanding, appears to have 
 left the Museum and established a school at Smyrna. The study of the 
 various branches of medicine was also pursued by others out of the im- 
 mediate ranks of the profession. Mithridates, king of Pontus, thus de- 
 voted hims^f to the examination of poisons and the discovery of anti- 
 dotes. 
 
 "What a fall from this scientific medicine to the miracle-cure which 
 soon displaced it! What a descent from Hippocrates and the great 
 Alexandrian physicians to the shrines of saints and the monks ! 
 
 To the foregoing sketch of the state of Greek medicine in its day of 
 ThejewiBii glory, I must add an examination of the same science among 
 phyeicians. tijejcws Subsequently to the second century; it is necessary 
 for the proper understanding'of the origin of Saracen learning. 
 
 In philosophy the Jews had been gradually emancipating themselves 
 
THE JEWISH PHYSICIAH-S. 297 
 
 from the influence of ancient traditions ; their advance in this direction 
 is shown by the active manner in which they aided in the development 
 of Neo-platonism. After the destruction of Jerusalem all Syria and 
 Mesopotamia were full of Jewish schools ; but the great phi- Then emandpa- 
 
 ^ , „ , . tion from the 
 
 losophers, as weU as the great merchants oi tne nation, were supernatural, 
 residents of Alexandria. Persecution and dispersion, if they served no 
 other good purpose, weakened the grasp of the ecclesiastic. Perhaps, 
 too, repeated disappointments in an expected coming of a iiational tem- 
 poral Messiah had brought those who were now advanced in intellectu- 
 al progress to a just appreciation of ancient traditions. In this mental 
 emancipation their physicians took the lead. Por long, while their pur- 
 suits were yet in infancy, a bitter animosity had been manifested toward 
 them by the Levites, whose manner of healing was by prayer, expiatory 
 sacrifice, and miracle ; or, if they descended to less supernatural means, 
 by an application of such remedies as are popular with the vulgar every 
 where. Thus, to a person bitten by a mad dog, they would give the di- 
 aphragm of a dog to eat. As examples of a class of men soon to take 
 no obscure share in directing human progress may be mentioned Han- 
 nina, A.D. 205, often spoken of by his successors as the earliest of Jew- 
 ish physicians ; Samuel, equally distinguished as an astronomer, ac- 
 coucheur, and oculist, the inventor of a coUyrium which bore his name; 
 Eab, an anatomist, who wrote a treatise on the construction of the body 
 of man as ascertained by dissections, thereby attaining such celebrity 
 that the people, after his death, used the earth of his grave as a medi- 
 cine ; Abba Oumna, whose study of insanity plainly shows that he 
 gave a material interpretation to the national doctrine of possession ij 
 devils, and replaced that strange delusion by the scientific explanation 
 of corporeal derangement. This honorable physician made it a rule 
 never to take a fee from the poor, and never to make any difference in 
 his assiduous attention between them and the rich. These men may be 
 taken as a type of their successors to the seventh century, when the 
 Oriental schools were broken up in consequence of the Arab military 
 movements. In the Talmudic literature there are all the indications of 
 a transitional state, so far as medicine is concerned; the supernatural 
 seems to be passing into the physical, the ecclesiastical is mixed up with 
 the exact : thus a rabbi may cure disease by the ecclesiastical operation 
 of laying on of hands ; but of febrUe disturbances, an exact, though erro- 
 neous explanation is given, and paralysis of the hind legs of an animal is 
 correctly referred to the pressure of a tumor on the spinal cord. Some 
 of its aphorisms are not devoid of amusing significance : " Any disease, 
 provided the bowels remain open ; any kind of pain, provided the 
 heart remain unaffected ; any kind of uneasiness, provided the head is 
 not attacked ; aU manner of evils, except it 'be a bad woman." 
 At first, after the fall of the Alexandrian school, it was all that the 
 
298 THEIE POSITION AMONG THE ARABS. 
 
 Jewish physicians could do to preserve the learning that had descended 
 to them. But when the tumult of Arabic conquest was over, we find 
 The Arahs afsii- them becomiug the advisers of crowned heads, and exerting 
 ate with them, -j^y reasou of their advantageous position, their hberal edu- 
 cation, their enlarged views, a most important influence on the intellect- 
 ual progress of humanity. Maser Djaivah, physician to the Khalif Moa- 
 Eise of Jewish phy- wiyah, was distinguished at once as a poet, a critic, a phi- 
 BieianetoiBfluence. logopher; KaM translated many books from Greek ; Ha- 
 roun, a physician of Alexandria, whose Pandects, a treatise, unfortunate- 
 ly now lost, are saidto have contained the first elaborate description of 
 the small-ppx and method of its treatment. Isaac Ben Bmran wrote an 
 original treatise on poisons and their symptoms, and others followed Ids 
 example. The Khalif Al Easchid, who maintained political relations 
 with Charlemagne by means of Jewish, envoys, set that monarch an ex- 
 ample by which indeed he was not slow to profit, in actively patroniz- 
 Thcy found med- i^g the mcdical coUcgc at Djondesabour, and founding a 
 loaicoueges, univcrsity at Bagdad. He prohibited any person from 
 practising medicine until after a satisfactory examination before one of 
 those faculties. In the Bast the theological theory of disease and of its 
 cure was fast passing away. Of the school at Bagdad, Joshua ben Nim 
 is said to have been the most celebrated professor, the school itself act 
 ively promoting the translation of Greek works into Arabic — ^not alone 
 works of a professional, but also those of a general kind. In this man- 
 ner the writings of Plato and Aristotle were secured ; indeed, it is said 
 and promote science that almost cvery day camels laden with volumes were 
 and literature. enterjng'the gates of Bagdad. To add.tothe supply, the 
 Emperor Michael III. was conipelljed by treaty to. furnish Greek books. 
 The result of this intellectual movement could be no other than a diffii- 
 sion of light. Schools arose in Bassora, Ispahan, Samarcand, Fez, Mo- 
 rocco, Sicily, Cordova, Seville, Granada. 
 
 Through the Nestorians and the Jews the Arabs thus became ac- 
 quainted with the "medical science, of Greece and Alexandria; but to 
 this w'as added other knowledge of a more sinister kind, derivedirom 
 Intermingling of Persia, Or perhaps remotely from Chaldee sources, the Nes- 
 magic and Borceiy. toriaus having important Church establishments in Meso- 
 potamia, and the Jews long familiar with that country ; indeed, from 
 thence their ancestors originally came. More than once its ideas had 
 modified their, national religion. This extraneous knowledge was of an 
 astrological or magical nature, carried into practice by. incantations, am- 
 ulets, charms, and talismans. Its fundamental principle was that the 
 planetary bodies exercise an influence over terrestrial things. As seven 
 Dedication of por- plaucts and scveu metals were at that time known— the 
 tiZtf the raper-'* sun, the mooil, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Yenus, Saturn, be- 
 naturai. j^g ^j^q plancts of astrology— ft due allotment was made. 
 
NEOKOMANCY AND MAGIC. 299 
 
 Gold was held sacred to tlie sun, silver to tte moon, iron to Mars, etc. 
 Even the portions of time were in like manner dedicated : the seven 
 days of the week were respectively given to the seven planets of astrol- 
 ogy. (The names imposed on those days, and the order in which they 
 occur, are obviously connected with the Ptolemaic hypothesis of astron- 
 omy, each of the planets having an hour assigned to it in its order of 
 occurrence, and the planet ruling the first hour of each day giv- ongin of 
 ing its name to that day. Thus arranged, the week is a remark- ^^<'^^^ 
 able instance of the longevity of an institution adapted to the wants of 
 man. It has survived through many changes of empire, has forced it- 
 self on the ecclesiastical system of Europe, which, una,ble to change its 
 idolatrous aspect, has encouraged the vulgar error that it owes its au- 
 thenticity to the Holy Scriptures, an error too plainly betrayed by the 
 pagan names that the days bear, and also by their order of occurrence. 
 It was unknown to the classical ancients and to the inspired penmen. 
 
 These notions of dedicating portions of matter or of time to the su- 
 pernatural were derived from the doctrine of a universal spirit or soul 
 of the world, extensively believed in throughout the East. It underlies, 
 as we have seen in Chapter III., all Oriental theology, and is at once a 
 very antique and not unphilosophical conception. Of this soul the 
 spirit of man was by many supposed to be a particle like a spark given 
 off from a flame. AH other things, animate or inaniniate, brutes, plants, 
 stones, nay, tven natural forms, rivers, mountains, cascades, grottoes, 
 have each an indwelling and animating spirit. 
 
 Amulets and charms, therefore, did not derive their powers from the 
 material substance of which they consisted, but from this indwelling 
 spirit. In the case of man, his imniaterial principle was believed to cor- 
 respond to his personal bodily, form. Of the two great sects into which 
 the Jewish nation had been divided, the Pharisees accepted the Assyri- 
 an doctrine ; but the Sadducees, who denied the existence of any such 
 spirit, boaisted that theirs was the old Mosaic faith, and denounced their 
 antagonists as having been contaminated at the time of the Babylonish 
 capti-vity, before which catastrophe, according . to them, these doctrines 
 were unheard of in Jerusalem. In Alexandria, among the Aie^nMan 
 leading men there were many adherents to these opinions. °'='=!^™™<'5'- 
 Thus Plotinus wrote a book on the association of daemons with men, 
 and his disciple Porphyry proved. practically the possibility of such an 
 alliance ;• for, repairing to the temple of Isis along with Plotinus and a 
 certain Egyptian pripst, the latter, to prove his supernatural power, of- 
 fered to raise up the spirit of Plotinus himself in a visible form. A 
 magical circle was drawn, on the ground, surrounded with the customary 
 astrological signs, the invocation comhienced, the spirit appeared, and 
 Plotinus stood face to face with his own soul. In this successfiil. exper- 
 iment it is needless to inquire how far the necromancer depended upon 
 
300 THE BLACK AET. 
 
 optical contrivances, and how far upon an alarmed imagination. Per- 
 haps there was somewhat of both ; but if thus the spirit of a living man 
 could be called up, how much more likely the souls of the dead. 
 
 In reality, these wild doctrines were connected with Pantheism, which 
 These ideaeorigi. was sccrctly bclievcd in every where'; for, though, in a 
 nateiQ Pantheism, coarse mode of exprcssion, a distinction seemed thus to be 
 made between matter and spirit, or body and soul, it was held by the 
 initiated that matter itself is a mere shadow of the spirit, and the body 
 a deiusive semblance of the soul. 
 
 In the eighth century; many natural facts of a surprising and unac- 
 countable description, well calculated to make a profound impression 
 The black art. upon thosc who witncsscd them, had accumulated. They 
 were such as are now familiar to chemists. Vessels tightly closed were 
 burst open when tormented in the fire, apparently by some invisible 
 agency ; intangible vapors condensed into solids ; from colorless liquids 
 gaudy precipitates were suddenly called into existence; flames were 
 disengaged without any adequate cause ; explosions took place spon- 
 taneously. So much that was unexpected and. unaccountable, justified 
 the title of " the occult science," " the black art." Prom being isolated 
 marvels unconnected with one another, these facts had been united. 
 The Ohaldee notions of a soul of the world, and of indwelling spirits, 
 had furnished a thread on which all these pearls, for such they proved 
 to be, might be strung. 
 
 With avidity — ^for there is ever a charm in the supemataral— did 
 the Arabs receive from their Nestorian and Jewish medical instructors 
 The Arabians thcsc mystical interpretations along with true knowledge, 
 delusions, And far from resting satisfied with what their masters had 
 thus delivered, they proceeded forthwith to improve and extend it for 
 themselves. They submitted all kinds of substances to all kinds of Op- 
 erations, greatly improving the experimental processes they had been 
 taught. By exposing various bodies to the fire, they found it possible 
 to extract from them more refined portions, which seemed to concen- 
 trate in themselves the qualities appertaining in a more diffuse way to 
 the substances from which they had been drawn. These, since they 
 were often invisible at their first disengagement, yet capable of bursting 
 open4he strongest vessels, and sometimes of disappearing in explosions 
 and flames, they concluded must be the indwelling spirit or soul of the 
 body, from which the fire had driven them forth. It was the Chaldee 
 doctrine realized. Thus they obtained the spirit of wine, the spirit of 
 salt, the spirit of nitre. We still retain in commerce these designations, 
 though their significance is lost. When first introduced they had a 
 strictly literal meaning. Alchemy, with its essences, quintessences, and 
 spirits, was Pantheism materialized. God was seen to be in every thing, 
 in the abstract as well as the concrete, in numbers as well as realities. 
 
ALCHEMY. 301 
 
 Anticipating what will have hereafter to be considered in detail, I 
 may here remark that it was not the Mohammedan alone who delivered 
 • himself up to these mystic delusions ; Christendom was pre- and the chris- 
 pared for them also. In its opinion, the earth, the air, the sea, "^"^ '^°- 
 were full of invisible forms. "With more faith than even by paganism 
 itself were the supernatural powers of the images of the gods accepted, 
 only it was imputed to the influence of devils. The lunatic was troubled 
 by a like possession. If a spring discharged its waters with a periodical 
 gushing of carbonic acid gas, it was agitated by an angel ; if an unfor- 
 tunate descended into a pit and was suffocated by the mephitic air, it 
 was by some daemon who was secreted ; if the miner's torch produced 
 an explosion, it was owing to the wrath of some malignant spirit guard- 
 ing a treasure, and whose solitude had been disturbed. There was no 
 end to the stories, duly authenticated by the best human testimony, of 
 the occasional appearance of such spirits under visible forms ; there was 
 no grotto or cool thicket in which angels and genii had not been seen ; 
 no cavern without its daemons. Though the names were not yet given, 
 it was weU understood that the air had its sylphs, the earth its gnomes, 
 the fire its salamanders, the water its undines ; to the day belonged its 
 apparitions, to the night its fairies. The foul air of stagnant places as- 
 sumed the visible form of daemons of abominable aspect ; the explosive 
 gases of mines took on the shape of pale-faced, malicious dwarfe, with 
 leathery ears hanging down to their shoulders, and in garments of gray 
 cloth. Philosophical conceptions can never be disentangled from social 
 ideas ; the thoughts of man will always gather a tincture from the intel- 
 lectual medium in which he lives. 
 
 In Christendom, however, the chief application of these doctrines was 
 to the relics of martyrs and saints. As with the amulets and talismans- 
 of Mesopotamia, these were regarded as possessing supernatural powers. 
 They were a sure safeguard against evil spirits, and an unfailing relief 
 in sickness. 
 
 A singular force was given to these mystic ideas by the peculiar di- 
 rection they happened to take. As there are veins of water in the 
 earth, and apertures through which the air can gain access, an analogy 
 was inferred between its structure and that of an animal, leading to an 
 inference of a similarity of functions. From this came the theory of the 
 development of metals in its womb under the influence of Transmutation of 
 the planets, the pregnant earth spontaneously producing "^efi^-^otamy. 
 gold and silver from baser things after a definite number of lunations. 
 Already, however, in the doctrine of the transmutation of metals, it was 
 perceived that to ITature the lapse of time is nothing — to man it is ev- 
 ery thing. To Nature, when she is transmuting a worthless into a bet- 
 ter metal, what signify a thousand years ? To man, half a century em- 
 braces the period of his intellectual activity. The aim of the cultivator 
 
302 philosophek's stone and elixir of life. 
 
 of the sacred art should be to shorten the natural term ; and, since we 
 observe the influence of heat in hastening the ripening of fruits, may we 
 not reasonably expect that duly regulated degrees of fire will answer 
 the purpose ? by an exposure of base material in the furnace for a 
 proper season, may we not anticipate the wished-for event? The Em- 
 peror Caligula, who had formerly tried to make gold from orpiment 
 PMioBopher'B ^J t^® forcc of fire, was only one of a thousand adepts pursuing 
 *'™*- a similar scheme. Some trusted to the addition of a materid 
 
 substance in aiding, the fire to purge away the dross of the base body 
 submitted to it. . From this arose the doctrine of the powder of projec- 
 tion and the philosopher,'s stone. 
 
 This doctrine of the possibility of transmuting things into forms es- 
 sentially different steadily made -its way, leading, in the material direc- 
 TmuBmutatioi. and ^ou, to alchcmy, the art of making gold and silver oilt of 
 tramubstantiation. ^^^^ metals, and in theology to transubstantiation. Trans- 
 mutation and transubstantiation were .twin sisters, destined for a world- 
 wide celebrity ; one became allied to the science of Mecca, the other to 
 the theology of Eome. 
 
 While thus the Arabs joined in the pursuit of alchemy, their medical 
 tendencies led them simultaneously to cultivate another ancient delu- 
 The elixir sion, the discovcry of a universal panacea or elixir which 
 of Ufa should cure all diseases and prolong life forever. The mystical 
 experimenters for centuries had been ransacking all nature, from the 
 yellow flowers which are sacred to the sun, and gold his emblem and 
 representative on earth, down to the vilest excrements of the human 
 body. As to gold, there had gathered round that metal many fictitious 
 excellencies in addition to its real values ; it was believed that in some 
 preparation of it would be found the elixir vitse. This was the explana- 
 Potable gold, tiou of the uuwe^ried attempts at making potable gold, for it 
 was universally thought that if that metal could be obtained in a dis- 
 solved state, it would constitute the long-sought panacea. Nor did 
 it seem impossible so to increase the power of water as to impart to it 
 new virtues, and thereby enable it to accomplish the desired solution. 
 Were there not natural waters of very different properties? were there 
 not some that could fortify the memory, others destroy it ; some re-en- 
 force the spirits, some impart dullness, and some, which were highlj 
 prized, that could secure a return of love ? It had been long known 
 that both natural and artificial waters can permanently affect the health, 
 and that insjtruments may be made to ascertain their qualities. Zosi- 
 mus, the Panopolitan, had described in former times the operation of 
 distillation, by which it may be purified ; the Arabs called the apparatus 
 Chemical waters, for couductiug that experiment an alembic. His treatise 
 on the virtues and composition of waters was conveyed under the form 
 of a dream, in which there flit before us fantastically white-haired priests 
 
GUNPOWDEB, GREEK FIRE, AND INCOMBUSTIBLE MEN. 303 
 
 sacrificing before the altar; caldrons of boiling water, in which there 
 are walking about men a span long; brazen-clad warriors in silence 
 reading leaden books, and sphinxes with wings. In such incompre- 
 hensible fictions knowledge was purposely, and ignorance conveniently 
 concealed. 
 
 The practical Arabs had not long been engaged in these fascinating 
 but wild pursuits, when results of very great importance TheAraijaori^ate 
 began to aippear. In a scientific point of view, the dis- =™n«flo chemistry. 
 covery of the strong acids laid the true foundation of chemistry ; in a 
 political point of view, the invention of gunpowder revolutionized the 
 world. 
 
 There were several explosive mixtures. Automatic fire was made 
 from equal parts of sulphur, saltpetre, and sulphide of antimo- Gunpowder and 
 ny, finely pulverized and mixed into a paste, with equal parts *^«-^°"^- 
 of juice of the black sycamore and liquid asphaltum, a little quick-lime 
 being added. It was directed to keep the material from the rays of the 
 sun, which would set it on fire. 
 
 Of liquid or Greek fire we have not a precise description, since the 
 knowledge of it was kept at Constantinople as a state secret. There is 
 reason, however, to believe that it contained sulphur and nitrate of 
 potash mixed with naphtha. Of gunpowder, Marcus Grsecus, whose date 
 is probably to be referred to the close of the eighth century, gives the 
 composition explicitly. He directs us to pulverize in a marble mortar 
 one pound of sulphur, two of charcoal, and six of saltpetre. If some of 
 this powder be tightly rammed in a long narrow tube closed at one end, 
 and then set on fire, the tube^wUl fly through the air : this is clearly the 
 rocket. He says that thunder may be imitated by folding some of the 
 powder in a cover and tying it up tightly : this is the cracker. It thus 
 appears that fire-works preceded fire-arms. To the same au- mcombusti- 
 thor we are indebted for receipts for making the skin incom- '''^ ™™- 
 bustible, so that we may handle fire without being burnt. These, 
 doubtless, were received as explanations of the' legends of the times, 
 which related how miracle-workers had washed their hands in melted 
 copper, and sat at their ease in flaming straw. : 
 
 Among the Saracen names that might be mentioned as cultivators of 
 alchemy, we may recall El-Easi, Ebid Durr, Djafar or G-e- Aratian chemiBts. 
 ber, Toghrag^, who wrote an alchemical poem, and Dschildegi, one of 
 whose works Isears the significant title of " The Lantern." The defini- 
 tion of alchemy by some of these authors is very striking : the science 
 of the balance, the science of weight, the science of combustion. 
 
 To one of these chemists, Djafar, our attention may for a moment be 
 drawn. He lived toward the end of the eighth century, Djafar aiscoveis 
 and is honored by Ehases, Avicenna, and Kalid, the great ^^r^^^a,™* 
 Arabic physicians, as their rnaster. His name ia memorable in chemis- 
 
304 , piSCOVEEY OP NITBIO AND SULPHUEIC ACIDS. 
 
 try, 'Since it marks an epoch, in that science of equal importance to 
 that of Priestley and Lavoisier. He is the first to describe nitric acid 
 and aqua regia. Before him no stronger acid was known than concen- 
 trated vinegar. We can not conceive of chemistry as not possessing 
 acids. Well, then, may Eoger Bacon speak of him as the magister 
 magistrorum. He has perfectly just notions of the nature of spirits or 
 gases, as we call them ; thus he says, " Oh, son of the doctrine, when 
 and that oxidation Spirits fix thcmsclvcs in bodies, they lose their form ; in 
 increases weight. ^}^q{j. nature they are no longer what they were. When 
 you compel them to be disengaged again, this is what happens : either 
 the spirit alone escapes with the air, and the body remains fixed in the 
 alembic, or the spirit and body escape together at the same time." His 
 doctrine respecting the nature of the metals, thougb erroneous, was not 
 without a scientific value. A metal he considers to be a compound of 
 sulphur, mercury, and arsenic, and hence he infers that transmutation is 
 possible by varying tbe proportion of those ingredients. He knows that 
 a metal, when calcined, increases in weight, a discovery of the greatest 
 importance, as eventually brought to bear in the destruction of the doc- 
 trine of Phlogiston of Stahl, and which has been imputed to Europeans 
 of a much later time. He describes the operations of distillation, subli- 
 mation, filtration, various chemical apparatus, water-baths, sand-baths, 
 cupels of bone-earth, of the use of whicb he gives a singularly clear de- 
 scription. A chemist reads with, interest Djafar's antique method of 
 obtaining nitric acid by distilling in a retort Cyprus vitriol, alum, and 
 saltpetre. He sets forth its corrosive power, and shows how it may be 
 He solves the prob- made to dissolvc even gold itself, by adding a portion of 
 lem of potable gold, g^-^ ammoniac. Djafar may thus be considered as having 
 solved the grand alchemical problem of obtaining gold in a potable 
 state. Of course, many trials must have been made on the influence 
 of this solution on the animal system, respecting which such extrava- 
 gant anticipations had been entertained. The disappointment that en- 
 sued was doubtless the cause that the records of these trials have not 
 descended to us. 
 
 With Djafar may be mentioned Ehazes, bom A.D. 860, physician-in- 
 Ehazes discover cl^ief to the great hospital at Bagdad. To him is due the 
 sulphuric acid. gj,g^ dcscription of the preparation and properties of sul- 
 phuric acid. He obtained it, as the Nordhausen variety is stijl made, 
 by the distillation of dried green vitriol. To him are also due the first 
 indications of the preparation of absolute alcohol, by distilling spirit of 
 wine from quick-lime. As a curious discovery made by the Saracens 
 Bechii discovers '^^J hic mentioned the experiment of Achild Bechil, who, by 
 phosphorus. distilling together the extract of urine, clay, lime, and pow- 
 dered charcoal, obtained an artificial carbuncle, which shone in the dark 
 " like a good moon." This was phosphorus. 
 
ARABIAN SCIENTIFIC WORKS. 305 
 
 And now there arose among Arabian physicians a correctness of 
 thought and breadth of view altogether surprising. It might almost be 
 supposed that the following lines were written by one of our own con- 
 temporaries ; they are, however, extracted from a chapter of Geological views 
 Avicenna on the origin of mountains. This author was born "'■■*^"=«'"»- 
 in the tenth century. " Mountains may be due to two different causes. 
 Either they are effects of upheavals of the crust of the earth, such as might 
 occur during a violent earthquake, or they are the effect of Water, which, 
 cutting for itself a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being 
 of different kinds, some soft, some hard. The winds and waters disinte- 
 grate the one, but leave the other intact. Most of the eminences of the 
 earth have had this latter origin. It would require a long period of 
 time for all such changes to be accomplished, during which the mount- 
 ains themselves might be somewhat diminished in size. But that water 
 has been the main cause of these effects is proved by the existence of 
 fossil remains of aquatic and other animals on many mountains." Avi- 
 cenna also explains the nature of petrifying or incrusting waters, and 
 mentions aerolites, out of one of which a sword-blade was made, but 
 he adds that, the metal was top brittle to be of any use. A mere cata- 
 logue of some of the works of Avicenna will show the then existing state 
 of the Arabian mind: 1. On the Utility and Advantage of ms i^orka indicate 
 
 ^---_T- TT-. ,. ^ f^ 'p T-ki • '^^ attainment of 
 
 Science ; 2. Of Health and Eemedies; 3. Canons of Fhysic ; the times. 
 4. On Astronomical Observations ; 5. Mathematical Theorems ; 6. On the 
 Arabic Language and its Properties; 7. On the Origin of the Soul and 
 Eesurrection of the Body ; 8. Demonstration of Collateral Lines on the 
 Sphere; 9. An Abridgment of Euclid; 10. On Finity and Infinity ; 11. 
 On Physics and Metaphysics ; 12. An Encyclopedia of Human Knowl- 
 edge, in 20 vols., etc., etc. The perusal of such a catalogue is suf&cient 
 to excite profound attention when we remember what was the contem- 
 poraneous state of Europe. 
 
 The pursuit of the elixir made a well-marked impression upon Arab 
 experimental science, confirming it in its medical applica- Effect of the search 
 tion. At the foundation of this application lay the princi- pi-acticai medicine, 
 pie that it is possible to relieve the diseases of the human body by purely 
 material means. As the science advanced it gradually shook off its fe- 
 tichisms, the spiritual receding into insignificance, the material coming 
 into bolder relief Not, however, without great difficulty was a way 
 forced for the great doctrine that the influence of substances on the con- 
 stitution of man is altogether of a material kind, and not at all due to 
 any indwelling or animating spirit ; that it is of no kind of use to prac- 
 tice incantations over drugs, or to repeat prayers over the mortar in 
 which medicines are being compounded, since the effect will be the 
 same, whether such has been done or not ; that there is no kind of effi- 
 cacy in amulets, no virtue in charms ; and that, though saint-relics may 
 
 U 
 
306 AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. 
 
 serve to excite the imagination of the ignorant, they are altogether be- 
 neath the attention of the philosopher. 
 
 This last sentiment it was which brought Europe and Africa into in- 
 Medical conflict be- tcUectual collision. The Saracen and Hebrew physicians 
 Africa. had become thoroughly materialized. Throughout Chris- 
 
 tendom the practice of medicine was altogether supernatural. It was in 
 the hands of ecclesiastics; and saint-relics, shrines, and miracle-cures were 
 a source of lioundless profit. On a subsequent page I shall have to de- 
 scribe the circumstances of the conflict that ensued between material 
 philosophy on one side, and supernatural jugglery on the other; to 
 show how the Arab system gained the victory, and how, out of that 
 victory, the industrial life of Europe arose. The Byzantine policy in- 
 augurated in Constantinople and Alexandria was, happily for the world, 
 in the end-overthrown. To that future page I must postpone the great 
 achievements of the Arabians in the fullness of their Age of Eeason. 
 When Europe was hardly more enlightened than Caffraria is now, tlie 
 Saracens were cultivating and even creating science. Their triumpLs 
 in philosophy, mathematics, "astronomy, chemistry, medicine, proved to 
 be more glorious, more durable, and therefore more important than their 
 military actions had been. 
 
 CHAPTEK'XIV. 
 
 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST— (Coniinaerf). 
 
 IMAGE-WOESHIP AND THE MONKS 
 
 Origin o/"lMiGE-woESHiP. — Inutility of Images discovered in Asia and Africa during the Sanr 
 
 cen Wars. — Mise of Iconoclasm. 
 The Emperors prohibit Image-worship. — The Monks, aided by court Femaks, sustainit. — Final 
 
 Victory of the latter. 
 Image-worship in the West sustained by the Popes. — Quarrel between the Emperor and the 
 
 Pope. — The Pope, aided by the Monks, revolts and allies himself with the Franks. 
 The Monks. — History of the Rise and Development of Monasticism. — Hermits and CcenoUtes, 
 
 — Spread of Monastidsm from Egypt over Europe.' — Monk Miracles and Legends.— En- 
 
 manization of the monastic Establishments. — They materialize Religion, and impress ihetr 
 
 Ideas on Europe. 
 
 The Arabian influence, allying itself to philosophy, was henceforth 
 productive of other than military results. To the loss of Africa and 
 Asia was now added a disturbance impressed on Europe itself, ending 
 infl-uence of ^''^ ^^^ dccomposition of Christianity into two forms, Greek 
 tho Ai-abians. g^j^^ Latin, and in three great political events— the emancipa- 
 tion of *he popes from the emperors of Constantinople, the usurpation 
 of power by a new dynasty in France, the reconstruction of a Eoman 
 empire in the West. » 
 
IMAGE-WORSHIP. 307 
 
 It was the dispute respecting ,tlie worship of images which led to 
 those great events. The acts of the Mohammedan khalifs and of the 
 iconoclastic or image-breaking emperors occasioned that dispute. 
 
 Nothing could be more deplorable than the condition of southern 
 Europe when it first felt the intellectual influence of the Arabians. Its 
 old Eoman and Greek populations had altogether disappeared; the 
 races of half-breeds and mongrels substituted for them were woraWp of reiics 
 immersed in fetichism. An observance of certain ceremo- "-""^ '"^^^■ 
 liials constituted a religious life ; there seems to have been no percep- 
 tion of morality. A chip of the true cross, some iron filings from the 
 chain of St. Peter, a tooth or bone of a martyr, were held in adoration ; 
 the world was full of the stupendous miracles which these medicines 
 had performed. But especially were painted or graven images of holy 
 personages supposed to be endowed with such powers. They had be- 
 come objects of actual worship. The facility with which the Empress 
 Helena, the mother of Constantiae the Great, had given an aristocratic 
 fashion to this idolatry, showed that the old pagan ideas had never 
 really died out, and that the degenerated populations received with ap- 
 proval the religious conceptions of their great predecessors. The early 
 Christian fathers believed that paintipg and sculpture were forbidden 
 by the Scriptures, and that they were therefore wicked arts ; and, though 
 the second Council of Nicea asserted that the use of images had always 
 been adopted by the Church, there are abundant facts to prove that the 
 actual worship of them was not indulged in until the fourth century, 
 when, on the occasion of its occurrence in Spain, it was condemned by 
 the Council of lUiberis. During the fifth century the practice of intro- 
 ducing images into churches increased, and in the sixth it had become 
 prevalent. The, common people, who had never been able to itsrapia spread 
 comprehend doctrinal mysteries, found their religious wants ^ Christendom, 
 satisfied in turning to these effigies. With singular obtuseness, they be- 
 lieved that the saint was present in his image, though hundreds of the 
 same kind were in existence, and each having an equal and exclusive 
 right to the spiritual presence. The doctrine of invocation of departed 
 saints, which assumed prominence in the fifth century, was greatly 
 strengthened by these graphic forms. Pagan idolatry had reappeared. 
 
 At first the simple cross was used as a substitute for the amulets and 
 charms of remoter times; it constituted a fetich able to expel evil spirits, 
 and even Satan himself This being, who had become singularly de- 
 based from what he was in the noble- Oriental fictions, was an imbecile 
 and malicious, though not a malignant spirit, affrighted not only at 
 pieces of wood framed in the shape of a cross, but at the form thereof 
 made with the finger in the air. A subordinate daemon simjie fetiches re- 
 was supposed to possess every individual at his birth, but i''"™* ^^ ™*ees. 
 this was cast out by baptism. When, in the course of time, the cross 
 
308 CONTINUANCE OF THE OLD IDOLATRIES. 
 
 became a crucifix, offering a representation of the dying Eedeemer, it 
 might be supposed to have gathered increased virtue; andTsoon, in addi- 
 tion to that adorable form, were introduced images of the Virgin, the 
 apostles, saints, and martyrs. The ancient times seemed to have come 
 back again, when these pictures were approached with genuflexions, lu- 
 minaries, and incense. The doctrine of the more intelligent was that 
 they were aids to devotion, and that, among people to whom the art of 
 reading was unknown, they served the useful purpose of recalling sacred 
 events in a kind of hieroglyphic manner. But among the vulgar, and 
 monks, and women, they were believed to be endowed with supernat- 
 Bieeding and wink- Ural powcr. Of somc, the wounds could bleed ; of others, 
 mg images. ^j^g g^^g could wiuk ; of othcrs, the limbs could be raised. 
 
 In ancient times, the statues of Minerva could brandish spears, and those 
 of Venus could weep. 
 
 In truth, the populations of the Greek and Latin countries were no 
 more than nominally converted and superficially Christianized. The 
 Idolatry never old traditions and practices had never been forgotten. A 
 in'GrSJI''attd tcndcncy to idolatry seemed to be the necessary incident of 
 "°*y- the climate. Not without reason have the apologists of the 
 
 clergy af&rmed that image-worship was insisted upon by the people, 
 and that the Church had to admit ideas that she had never been able to 
 eradicate. After seven hundred years of apostolic labor, it was found 
 that the populace of Greece and Italy were apparently in their old state, 
 and that actually nothing at all had been accomplished ; the new-comers 
 had passed into the track of their extinct predecessors. It is often said 
 that the restoration of image-worship was owing to the extinction of 
 civilization by the Northern barbarians. But this is not true. In the 
 blood of the German nations the taint of idolatry is, but small. In 
 their own countries they gave it little encouragement, and, indeed, hast- 
 ened quickly to its total rejection. The sin lay not with them, but with 
 the Mediterranean people. 
 
 Nor are those barbarians to be held accountable for the so-called ex- 
 tinction of civilization in Italy. The true Eoman race had prematurely 
 died ; it came to an untimely end in consequence of its dissolute, its 
 Influence of the violeut life. Its civilization would have spontaneously died 
 barbarians. ^j[^^ j^ jja,d uo barbarian been present ; and, if these intruders 
 produced a baneful effect at first, they compensated for it in the end. 
 As, when fresh coal is added to a fire that is burning low, a still farther 
 diminution will ensue, perhaps there may be a risk of entirely putting 
 it out, but in due season, if all goes well, the new material will jom 
 in the contagious blaze. The savages of Europe, thrown into the de- 
 caying foci of Greek and Eoman light, perhaps did for a time reduce 
 the general heat j but, by degrees, it spread throughout their mass, and 
 the bright flame of modem civilization was the result. Let those who 
 
ICONOCLASM. 309 
 
 lament the intrusion of these men into the classical countries, reflect 
 upon the result which must otherwise have ensued — the last spark 
 would soon have died out, and nothing but ashes have remained. 
 
 Three causes gave rise to Iconoclasm, or the revolt against image- 
 worship : 1st, the remonstrances and derision of the Moham- origin of icon- 
 medans ; 2d, the good sense . of a great sovereign, Leo the °°'^™- 
 Isaurian, who had risen by his merit from obscurity, and become the 
 founder of a new dynasty at Constantinople ; 3d, the detected inability 
 of these miracle-working idols and fetiches to protect their worshipers 
 or themselves against an unbelieving enemy. Moreover, an impression 
 was gradually making its way among the more intelligent classes that 
 religion ought to free itself from such superstitions. So important were 
 the consequences of Leo's actions, that some have been disposed to as- 
 sign to his reign the first attempt at making policy depend on theology ; 
 and to this period, as I have elsewhere remarked, they therefore refer 
 the ^commencement of the Byzantine empire. Through one hundred 
 and twenty years, six emperors devoted themselves to this reformation. 
 But it was premature. They were overpowered by the populace and 
 the monks, by the bishops of Eome, amdby a superstitious and wicked 
 woman. 
 
 It had been a favorite argument against the pagans how little their 
 gods could do for them when the hour of calamity came, wheii their 
 statues and images were insulted and destroyed, and hence how vain 
 was such worship, how imbecile such gods. When Africa inutmty of mi- 
 and Asia, which were full of relics and crosses, pictures and Sscovered'Sf''' 
 images, fell before the Mohammedans, those conquerors re- sIom/^ 
 taliated the same logic with no little effect. There was hardly one of 
 the fallen towns which had not some idol for its protector. Eemem- 
 bering the stern objurgations of the prophet against this deadly sin, pro- 
 hibited at once by the commandment of God and repudiated by the rea- 
 son of man, the Saracen khalifs had ordered all the Syrian images to be 
 destroyed. Amid the derision of the Arab soldiery and the Deatmotion 
 tears of the terror-stricken worshipers, those orders were re- falty a' 
 morselessly carried into effect, except in some cases where the ■*^'=''^- 
 temptation of an enormous ransom induced ^ese avengers of the unity 
 of God to swerve from, their duty. Thus the piece of linen cloth on 
 which it was feigned that our Savior' had impressed his countenance, 
 and which was the palladium of Edessa, was carried off by the victors 
 at the capture of that town, and subsequently sold to Constantinople at 
 the profitable price of twelve thousand pounds of silver. This picture, 
 and also some other celebrated ones, it was said, possessed the property 
 of multiplying themselves by contact, with other surfaces, as jn modern 
 times we multiply photographs. Such were the celebrated images 
 "made without hands." 
 
310 
 
 THE ICONOCLASTIC EMPEEOES. 
 
 It was currently asserted that the immediate origin of Iconoclasm was 
 due to the Khalif Yezed, who had completed the destruction of the 
 Syrian images, and to two Jews, who stimulated Leo the Isaurian to his 
 The emperor task. However that may be, Leo published an edict. A D 
 
 prohibits im- l_^_ i -i • o • m -*~»-'-^. 
 
 age-worship. 726, prohibitmg the worship of images. This was followed 
 by another directing their destruction, and the whitewashing of the walls 
 of churches ornamented with them. Hereupon the clergy and the 
 monks rebelled ; the emperor was denounced as a Mohammedan and a 
 Jew. He ordered that a statue of the Savior in that part of the city 
 called Chalcopratia should be removed, and a riot was the consequence. 
 One of his of&cers mounted a ladder and struck the idol with an axe 
 upon its face; it was an incident like that enacted some centuries before 
 in the temple of Serapis at Alexandria. The sacred image, which had 
 often arrested the course of Nature and worked many miracles, was now 
 found to be unable to protect or to avenge its own honor. A rabble 
 of women interfered in its behalf; they threw down the ladder and kill- 
 ed the ofi&cer ; nor was the riot ended until the troops were called ia 
 Themonka ^^^ ^ great massacre perpetrated. The monks spread the sedi- 
 sustainit. .j-^Qj^ jj^ g^ij parts ofthe empire; they even attempted to proclaim 
 a new emperor. Leo was every where denounced as a Mohammedan 
 infidel, an enemy of the Mother of God ; but with inflexible resolution 
 he persisted in his determination as long as he lived. 
 
 His son and successor, Constantine, pursued the same iconoclastic pol- 
 icy. From the circumstance of his accidentally defiling the font from 
 which he was being baptized, he had received the suggestive name of 
 Copronymus. His subsequent career was asserted by the monks to 
 have been foreshadowed by his sacrilegious beginnings. It was pub- 
 They accuse Hcly asscrtcd that he was an atheist. In truth, his biography, 
 of atheism, in many respects, proves that the higher cla,sses in Constanti- 
 nople were largely infected with infidelity. The patriarch deposed upon 
 oath that Copronymus had made the most irreligious confessions to 
 him, as that our Savior, far frorn being the Son of Grod, was, in his opin- 
 ion, a mere man, born of his mother in the common way. The truth 
 of these accusations was perhaps, in a measure, sustained by the revenge 
 that the emperor took on the patriarch for his indiscreet revelations.. 
 He seized him, put out his eyes, caused him to be led through the city 
 mounted on an ass, with his face to the tail, and then, as if to show his 
 unutterable cgntempt for all religion, with an exquisite malice appoint- 
 ed him to his oflS.ce again. 
 
 If such was the religious condition of the emperor, the higher clergy 
 were but little better. A council was summoned by Constantine, A.D. 
 754, at Constantinople, which was attended by 388 bishops. It asserted 
 Council of constan- for itsclf the positiou of the seventh general council. It 
 imrie-wOTship! ' unauimously decreed that all visible symbols of Christy 
 
EESISTANCE TO ICONOCLASM. 311 
 
 except in the Eucharist, were blasphemous or heretical; that image- 
 worship was a corruption of Christianity and a renewed form of pagan- 
 ism ; it. directed all statues and paintings to be removed from the 
 churches and destroyed, and degraded every ecclesiastic and excom- 
 municated every layman who should be concerned in setting them up 
 again. It concluded its labors with prayers for the emperor who had 
 extirpated idolatry and given peace to the Church. 
 
 But this decision was by no means quietly received. The monks 
 rose in an uproar; some raised a clamor in their caves, some uproar among 
 from the tops of their pillars ; one, in the church of St. Mam- ""^ "'™'"- 
 mas, insulted the emperor to his face, denouncing him as a second apos- 
 tate Julian. 'Noi could he deliver himself from the plague by the 
 scourging, strangling, and drowning of individuals. In his wrath, Oo- 
 pronymus, plainly discerning that it was the monks on one side and the 
 government on the .other, determined to strike at the root of the evil, 
 and to destroy monasticistn itself. He drove the holy men out tj,3 emperor 
 of their cells and cloisters ; made the consecrated virgins marry ; '■«'*"^*^- 
 gave up the buildings for civil uses ; burnt pictures, idols, and all kinds 
 of relics ; degraded the patriarch from his of&ce, scourged him, shaved 
 off his eyebrows, set him for public derision in the circus in a sleeveless 
 shirt, and then beheaded him. Already he had consecrated a eunuch 
 in his stead. Doubtless these atrocities strengthened the bishops of 
 Eome in their resolve to seek a protector from such a master among 
 the barbarian kings of the "West. 
 
 Constantine Copronymus was succeeded by his son, Leo the Chazar, 
 who, durmg a short 'reign of five years, continued the iconoclastic pol- 
 icy. On his death his wife Irene seized the government, Ee-catabiiahment of 
 ostensibly in behalf of her son. This woman, pre-em- S"the m'SdeLs. 
 inently wicked and superstitious beyond her times, undertook the res- 
 toration of images. She caused the patriarch to retire from his dignity, 
 appointed one of her creatures, Tarasius, in his stead, and summoned 
 another council. In this second Council of Mcea that of Constantino- 
 ple was denounced as a synod of fools and atheists, the worship of im- 
 ages was pronounced agreeable to Scripture and reason, and in conform- 
 ity to the tisages and traditions of the Church. 
 
 Irene, saluted as the s6(,cond Helena, and set forth by the monks as an 
 exemplar of piety, thus accomplished the restoration of image- worship. 
 In a few years this ambitious woman, refusing to surrender his rightful 
 dignity to her son, caused him to be seized, and, in the porphyry cham- 
 ber in which she had borne him, put out his eyes. Constantinople, long 
 familiar with horrible crimes, was appalled at such an unnatural deed. 
 
 During the succeeding reigns to that of Leo the Armenian, matters 
 remained without change; but that emperor resumed the Eesnmption of icom- 
 policy of Leo the Isaurian. By an edict he prohibited "/eJor"""''*' 
 
312 IMAGE-WOBSHIP IN THE WEST. 
 
 image-worship, and banished the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had 
 admonished him that the apostles had made images of the Savior and 
 the Virgin, and that there was at Eome a picture of the Transfigura- 
 tion, painted by order of St. Peter. After the murder of Leo, his suc- 
 cessor,' Michael the Stammerer, showed no encouragement to either 
 party. It was affirmed that he was given to profane jesting, was in- 
 credulous as to the resurrection of the dead, disbelieved the existence 
 of the devil, was indifferent whether images were worshiped or not, and 
 recommended the patriarch to bury the decrees of Constantinople and 
 Nicea equally in oblivion. His successor and son, however, observed 
 Their Sara- ^'^ such impartiality. To Saracenic tastes, shown by his build- 
 cpnic tastes. ^^^ ^ palace like that of the khalif; to a devotion for poetry, 
 exemplified by branding some of his own stanzas on his image-worship- 
 ing enemies ; to the composition of music and its singing by himself as an 
 amateur in the choir ; to mechanical knowledge, displayed by hydraulic 
 contrivances, musical instruments, organs, automatic singing-birds sit- 
 ting in golden trees, he added an abomination of monks and a determ- 
 ined iconoclasm. Instead of merely whitewashing the walls of the 
 churches, he adorned them with pictures of beasts and birds. Icono- 
 clasm had now fairly become a struggle between the emperors and the 
 monks. 
 
 Again, on the death of TheophOus, image-worship triumphed, and 
 Final restoration of triumphed in the samc manner as before. His widow, 
 ite ImTrSs Tto- Theodora, alarmed by the monks for the safety of the soul 
 ^""^ of her husband, purchased absolution for him at the price 
 
 of the restoration of images. 
 
 Such was the issue of Iconoclasm in the East. The monks proved' 
 stronger than the emperors, and, after a struggle of 120 years, the im- 
 ages were finally restored. « In the West far more important conse- 
 quences followed. 
 
 To image-worship Italy was devoutly attached. When the first edict 
 Image-worship of I^^o was made known by the exarch, it produced a rebel- 
 in the West, jjqjj^ q^ ^jjich Popc Gregory II. took advantage to suspend 
 the tribute paid by Italy. In letters that he wrote to the emperor he 
 defended the popular delusion, declaring that the first Christians had 
 caused'pictures to be made of our Lord, of his brother James, of Stephen, 
 and all the martyrs, and had sent them throughout the w6rld ; the rea- 
 son that God the Father had not been painted was that his countenance 
 was not known. These letters display a most audacious presumption 
 of the ignorance of the emperor respecting common Scripture incidents, 
 It is sustained ^'^'^1 ^s somc havc remarked, suggest a doubt of the pope|s fa- 
 by the pope, miliarity with the sacrcd volumc. He points out the differ 
 ence between the statues of antiquity, which are only the representa' 
 tions of phantoms, and the images of the Church, which have approvec 
 
FmXL SEPABATION OF THE GREEK AND LATIN CHUECHES.' 313 
 
 themselves, by numberless miracles, to be the genuine forms of the Sa- 
 vior, his mother, and his saints. Eeferring to the statue of St. Peter, 
 which the emperor had ordered to be broken to pieces, he declares that 
 the Western nations regard that apostle as a god upon earth, and omi- 
 nously threatens the vengeance of the pious barbarians if it should be 
 destroyed. In this defense of images Gregory found an active coadju- 
 tor in a Syrian, John of Damascus, who had witnessed the rage of the 
 khalifs against the images of his own country, and whose hand, having 
 been cut off by those tyrants, was miraculously rejoined to his body by 
 an idol of the Virgin to which he prayed. 
 
 But Gregory was not alone in his policy, nor John of Damascus in 
 his controversies. The King of the Lombards, Luitprand, and by the Lom- 
 also perceived the advantage of putting himself forth as the ^^^ ^"'^■ 
 protector of images, and of appealing to the Italians, for their sake, to 
 expel the Greeks from the country. The pope acted on the principle 
 that heresy in a sovereign justifies withdrawal of allegiance, the Lom- 
 bard that it excuses the seizure of possessions. Luitprand accordingly 
 ventured on the capture of Eavenna. An immense booty, the accumu- 
 lation of the emperors, the Gothic kings, and the exarchs, which was 
 taken at the storm of the town, at once rewarded his piety, stimulated 
 him to new enterprises of a like nature, and drew upon him the atten- 
 tion of his enemy the emperor, whom he had plundered, and of his con- 
 federate the pope, whom he had overreached. 
 
 . This was the position of affairs. If the Lombards, who were Arians, 
 and therefore heretics, should succeed in extending their sway all over 
 Italy, the influence and prosperity of the papacy must come Position of affairs 
 to an end ; their action on the question of the images was *' "^ "™^- 
 altogether of an ephemeral and delusive kind, for all the Arian nations 
 preferred a simple worship like that of primitive times, and had never 
 shown any attachment to the adoration of graven forms. If, on the oth- 
 er hand, the pope should continue his allegiance to Constantinople, he 
 must be liable to the atrocious persecutions so often and so recently in- 
 flicted on the patriarchs of that city by their tyrannical master ; and the 
 breaking of that connection in reality involved no surrender of any solid 
 advantages, for the emperor was too weak to give protection from the 
 Lombards. Already had been experienced a portentous difiiculty in 
 sending relief from Constantinople, on account of the naval ThesaracenBdom. 
 superiority of the Saracens in the Mediterranean. For the terranl™!'^ ^''^' 
 taxes paid to the sovereign no real equivalent was received ; but Eome, 
 m Ignominy, was obliged to submit, like an obscure provincial town, to 
 the mandates of the Eastern court. Moreover, in her eyes, the emperor," 
 by reason of his iConoclasm, was a heretic. But if alliance with the 
 Lombards and allegiance to the Greeks were equally inexpedient, a 
 third course was possible. A mayor of the palace of the Frankish kings 
 
314 ALLIANCE OF THE LATIN CHUBCH WITH PEANCE. 
 
 cauaesoftheaiu- had successfuUv led his armies asrainst the Arahs from 
 
 ance of the popes „. ,•'.., . 
 
 and the Franks. Spam, and had gamed the great victory of Tours. If the 
 Franks, under the influence of their climate or the genius of their race 
 had thus far sliown no encouragement to images, in all other respects 
 they were orthodox, for they had been converted by Catholic mission- 
 aries ; their kings, it is true, were mere phantoms, but Charles Martel 
 had approved himself a great soldier; he was, therefore, an ambitious 
 man. There was Scripture authority for raising a subordinate to sov- 
 ereign power ; the prophets of Israel had thus, of old, with oU anointed 
 kings. And if the sword of France was gently removed from the king- 
 ly hand that was too weak to hold it, and given to the hero who had 
 already shown that he could smite terribly with it — if this were donehy 
 the authority of the pope, acting as the representative of God, how great 
 the gain to the papacy ! A thousand years migbt not be enough to sep- 
 arate the monarchy of France from the theocracy of Italy. 
 
 The resistance which had sprung up to the imperial edict for the de- 
 struction of images determined the course of events. The pope rebelled, 
 and attempts were made by the emperor to seize or assassinate him. A 
 vKevoit of the fear that the pontiff might be carried to Constantinople, and 
 
 popefromthe , .■*- -."., -. .1^,. 
 
 emperor. the preparations making to destroy the images in the church- 
 es, united all Italy. A council was held at Eome, which anathematized 
 the Iconoclasts. In retaliation, the Sicilian and other estates of thfe 
 Church were confiscated. Gregory III., who in the piean time succeed- 
 ed to the papacy, continued the policy of his predecessor. The emperor 
 was defied. A fleet, which he fitted out in support of the exarch, was 
 lost in a storm. With this termination of the influence of Constantino- 
 ple in Italy came the imminent danger that the pope must acknowledge 
 the supremacy of the Lombards. In his distress Gregory turned to 
 AUiance of the Charlcs Martel. He sent him the keys of the sepulchre of 
 Franks. St. Pctcr, and implored his assistance. The die was cast, 
 Papal Eome revolted from her sovereign, aiid became indisgoluUy 
 bound to the barbarian kingdoms. To France a new dynasty was 
 given, to the pope temporal power, and to the west of Europe a fic- 
 titious Eoman empire. 
 
 The monks had thus overcome the image-breaking emperors, a result 
 The monks, which proves them to have already become a formidable power 
 in the state. It is necessary, for a proper understanding of the great 
 events with which henceforth they were connected, to describe their on- 
 gin and history. 
 
 In the iconoclastic quarrel they are to be regarded as the representa- 
 tives of the common people in contradistinction to the clergy; often, in- 
 deed, the representatives of the populace, infected with all its instincts 
 of superstition and fanaticism. They are the upholders of miracle- 
 
HISTOEY OF MONASTICIgM. 315 
 
 cures, invocation of saints, -worship of images, clamorous b,ssert- Their tot 
 ers of a unity, of faith in the Church— a unity which they never 5™"*°° 
 practiced, but which offered a convenient pretext for a bitter persecution 
 of heresy and paganism, though they were more than half pagan them- 
 selves. 
 
 It was their destiny to impress on the practical life of Europe that 
 mixture of Christianity and heathenism engendered by political events 
 in Italy and Greece. Yet, while they thus co-operated in ^^a subsequent 
 great affairs, they themselves exhibited, in the most signal ™p™™™nt. 
 manner, the force of that law of continuous variation of opinion and 
 habits to which all enduring communities of men must submit. Born 
 of superstition, obscene in their early life, they end in luxury, refine- 
 ment, learning. Theirs is a history to which we may profitably attend. 
 
 From very early times there had been in India zealots who, actuated 
 by a desire of removing themselves from the temptations of so- ^he first 
 ciety and preparing for another life, retired into solitary places. ''^™''=- 
 Such also were the Essenes among the Jews, and the Therapeutse in 
 Egypt. Pliny speaks of the blameless life of the former when he says, 
 " They are the companions of palms ;" nor does he hide his astonish- 
 ment at an immortal society in which no one is ever born. Their ex- 
 ample was not lost upon more devout Christians, particularly afier the 
 infiuence of Magianism began to be felt. Though it is sometimes said 
 that the first of these hermits were Anthony and Paulus, they dpubtless 
 are to be regarded as only having rendered themselves more illustrious 
 by their superior sanctity among a crowd of worthies who had preceded 
 them or were^ their contemporaries. As early as the second and third 
 centuries the practice of retirement had commenced among Christians ; 
 soon after it had become common. The date of Hilarion is about A.D. 
 328, of Basil A.D. 360. Eegarding prayer as the only occupation in 
 which man may profitably engage, they gave no more attention to the 
 body than the wants of nature absolutely demanded. A little dried 
 fruit or bread for food, and water for drink, were sufficient for its Th^;^ ^eif- 
 support; occasionally a particle of salt might be added, but the *'*™'- 
 use of warm water was looked upon as betraying a tendency to luxury. 
 The incentives to many of their rules of life might excite a smile, if it 
 were ^ight^to smile at the acts of earnest men. Some, like the innocent 
 Essenes, who would do nothing whatever on the Sabbath, observed 
 the day before as a fast, rigorously abstaining from food and drink, 
 that nature might not force them into sin on the morrow. For some, 
 it was not enough, by the passive means of abstinence, to refrain from 
 fault or reduce the body to subjection, though starvation is the anti- 
 dote for desire ; the more active, and, perhaps, more effectual opera- 
 tion of periodical flagellations and bodily torture were added. Ingenu- 
 ity was taxed to find new means of personal infliction. A hermit who 
 
316 . HEEMITS, AERIAL AND SOLITAET, 
 
 never permitted himself to sleep more tlian an liour without being 
 awakened endured torments not inferior to those of the modern fakir 
 who crosses his arms on the top of his head, and keeps them there for 
 years, until they are wasted to the bone, or suspends himself to a pole 
 by means of a hook inserted in the flesh of his back. 
 
 Among the Oriental sects there are some who believe that the Su- 
 Profonnd con- prcme Being is perpetually occupied with the contemplation 
 God. * of himself, and that the nearer man can approach to a state of 
 
 total inaction the more will he resemble God. For successive years tlie 
 Indian sage never raises his eyes from his navel ; absorbed in the pro- 
 found contemplation of it, his perennial reverie is unbroken by any 
 outward suggestions, the admiring by-standers administering, as chance 
 offers, the little food and water that his wants require. Under the influ- 
 Aeriai martyrs, ^ncc of similar idcas, in the fifth century, St. Simeon Stylites, 
 Holy birds. yj]^Q ^^ ]^jg youth had oftcn been saved from suicide, by as- 
 cending a column he had built, sixty feet in height, and only one foot 
 square at the top, departed as far as he could from earthly affairs, and 
 approached more closely to heaven. Upon this elevated retreat, to which 
 he was fastened by a chain, he endured, if we may believe the incredible 
 story, for thirty years the summer's sun and the winter's frost. From ■ 
 afar the passer-by was edified by seeing the motionless figure of the holy 
 man, with outstretched arms like a cross, projected against the sky, in his 
 favorite attitude of prayer, or expressing his thankfulness for the many • 
 mercies of which he supposed himself to be the recipient by rapidly 
 striking his forehead against his knees. Historians relate that a curious 
 spectator counted twelve hundred and forty-four of these motions, and 
 then abstained through fatigue from any farther tally, though the un- 
 wearied exhibition was still going on. This " most holy aerial martyr," 
 as Bvagrius calls him, attained at last his reward, and Mount Telenissa 
 witnessed a vast procession of devout admirers accompanying to the 
 grave his mortal remains. 
 
 More commonly, however, the hermit declined the conspicuous noto- 
 riety of these "holy birds," as they were called by the profane, and, re- 
 tiring to some cave in the desert, despised the comforts of life, and gave 
 himself up to penance and prayer. Among men who had thus alto- 
 gether exalted themselves above the wants of the flesh, there was no 
 The monks in- tolcration for its lusts. The sinfulness of the marriage rela- 
 sistoncciiiiacy. ^jgjj^ ^nd the pre-emiucnt value of chastity, followed from 
 their principles. If it was objected to such practices that by their uni- 
 versal adoption the human species would soon be extinguished, and no 
 man would remain to offer praises to God, these zealots, remembering 
 the temptations from which they had' escaped, with truth rephed that 
 there would always be sinners enough in the world to avoid that disas- 
 ter, and that out of their evil works good would be brought. St. Jerome 
 
MENTAL CONDITION OF HERMITS. . 317 
 
 offers us the pregnant reflection that, though it may be marriage that 
 fills the earth, it is virginity that replenishes heaven. 
 
 If they were not recorded by many truthful authors, the extravagan-^ 
 cies of some of these enthusiasts would pass belief. Men and women 
 ran naked upon all fours, associating themselves with the beasts of the 
 field. In the spring season, when the grass is tender, the gr^- Grazing her- 
 ing hermits of Mesopotamia went forth to the plains, sharing ™"°- 
 with the cattle their filth and their food. Of some, notwithstanding a 
 weight of evidence, the stupendous biography must tax their admirers' 
 credulity. It is affirmed that St. Ammon had never seen his own body 
 uncovered ; that an angel carried him on his back over a river which he 
 was obliged to cross ; that at his death he ascended to heaven through 
 the skies, St. Anthony being an eye-witness of the event — St. Anthony, 
 who was guided to the hermit Paulus by a centaur; that Didymus 
 never spoke to a human being for ninety years. 
 
 From the Jewish anchorites, who of old sought a retreat beneath^he 
 shade of the palms of Engaddi, who beguiled their weary hours in thfe 
 chanting of psalms by the bitter waters of the Dead Sea ; from the phil- 
 osophic Hindu, who sought for happiness in bodily inaction and mental 
 exercise, to these Christian solitaries, the stages of delusion are inaancher- 
 numerous and successive. It would not be difficult to present ™"^- 
 examples of each step in the career of debasement. To one who is ac- 
 quainted with the working and accidents of the human brain, it will ex- 
 cite ho surprise that an asylum for those hermits who had become hope- 
 lessly insane was instituted at Jerusalem. 
 
 The biographies of these recluses, for ages a source of consolation to 
 the faithful in their temptations, are not to be regarded as mere works 
 of fiction, though they abound in supernatural occurrences, and are the 
 forerunners of the dsemonology of the Middle Ages. The whole world 
 was a scene of daemoniac adventures, of miracles and wonders. So far 
 from being mere impostures, they relate nothing more than may be wit- 
 nessed at any time under similar conditions. In the brain of canseaof hai- 
 man, impressions of whatever he has seen or heard, of what- i""°»*'™=- 
 ever has been made manifest to him by his other senses, nay, even the 
 vestiges of his former thoughts, are stored up. These traces are most 
 vivid at first, but, by degrees, they decline in force, though they, prob- 
 ably never completely die out. During our waking hours, while we are 
 perpetually receiving new impressions from things that surround us, 
 such vestiges are overpowered, and can not attract the attention of the 
 mind. But in the period of sleep, when external influences cease, they 
 present themselves to our regard, and the mind, submitting to the delu- 
 sion, groups them into the fantastic forms of dreams. By the use of 
 opium and other drugs which can blunt our sensibility to passing 
 events, these phantasms may be made to emerge. They also offer them- 
 selves in the delirium of fevers and in the hour of death. 
 
318 EXPLAJfATION OF THEIR TEMPTATIONS. 
 
 It is imraaterial in wHat manner or by wliat agency our susceptibility 
 to the impressions of surrounding obj ects is benumbed, whether by drugs 
 Supernatural or slcep, Or disease, as soon as their force is no greater than 
 appearances. ^]^^^ ^^ forms already registered in the brain, these last will 
 emerge before us, and dreams or apparitions are the result. So liable is 
 the mind Ijp practice deception on itself, that with the utmost difficulty 
 it is aware of the delusion. No man can submit to long-continued and 
 rigorous fasting without becoming the subject of these hallucinations; 
 and the more he enfeebles his organs of sense, the more vivid is the ex- 
 hibition, the more profound the deception. An ominous sentence may 
 perhaps be incessantly whispered in his ear ; to his fixed and fascinated 
 eye some grotesque or abominable object may perpetually present itself. 
 To the hermit, in the solitude of his cell, there doubtless often did ap- 
 pear, by the uncertain light of his lamp, obscene shadows of diabolical 
 import ; doubtless there was many an agony with fiends, many a stnig- 
 gl^with monsters, satyrs, and, imps, many an earnest, solemn, and man- 
 ful controversy with Satan himself, who sometimes came as an aged man, 
 sometimes with a countenance of horrible intelligence, and sometimes as 
 a female fearfully beautiful. St. Jerome, who, with the utmost difficulty, 
 had succeeded in extinguishing all carnal desires, ingenuously confesses 
 how sorely he was tried by this last device of the enemy, how nearly 
 the ancient flames were rekindled. As to the reality of these appari- 
 tions, why should a hermit be led to suspect that they arose from the 
 natural working of his own brain ? Men never dream that they are 
 dreaming. To him they were terrible realities ; to us they should be 
 the proofs of insanity, but not of imposture. 
 
 If, in the prison discipline of modern times, it has been found" that sol- 
 itary confinement is a punishment too dreadful for the most hardened 
 convict to bear, and that, if persisted in, it is liable to lead to insanity, 
 how much more quickly must that unfortunate condition have been in- 
 duced when the trials of religious distress and the physical enfeeblement 
 arising from rigorous fastings and incessant watchings were added. To 
 the dreadful ennui which precedes that state, one of the ancient monks 
 pathetically alludes when he relates how often he went forth and re- 
 turned to his cell, and gazed on the sun as if he hastened too slowly to 
 his setting. And yet such fearful solitude is but of brief duration. Even 
 though we flee to the desert we can not be long alone. Cut off from so- 
 Deiusions crea- ^ial convcrse, the mind of man engenders companions for 
 ted ly the mind, itsclf-^companions like the gloom from which they have 
 emerged. It was thus that to St. Anthony appeared the Spirit of For- 
 nication, under the form of a lascivious negro boy ; it was thus that mul- 
 titudes of demons of horrible aspect cruelly beat him nearly to death, 
 the brave old mfen defying them to the last, and telling them that he did 
 not wish to be spared one of their blows ; it was thus that in the night. 
 
CEREBRAL SIGHT, OR INVERSE VISION. 319 
 
 with hideous laughter, they burst into his cell, under the form of lions, 
 serpents, scorpions, asps, lizards, panthers, and wolves, each attacking 
 him in its own way ; thus that when, in his dire extremity, he lifted his 
 eyes for help, the roof disappeared, and amid beams of light the Savior 
 looked down ; thus it was with the enchanted silver dish that Satan 
 gave him, which, being touched, vanished in smoke ; thus with the gi- 
 gantic bats and centaurs, and the two lions that helped him to scratch a 
 grave for Paul. ' 
 
 The images that may thus emerge from the brain have been classed 
 by physiologists among the phenomena of inverse vision, or cerebral 
 sight. Elsewhere I have given a detailed investigation of their nature 
 (Human Physiology, p. 401), and, persuaded that they have played a far 
 more important part in human thought than is commonly supposed, 
 have thus expressed myself: " Men in every part of the world, even 
 among nations the most abiect and barbarous, have an abid- important i^iig- 
 
 *=• -.,. p ... . ious results of ce- 
 
 ing faith not only m the existence of a spirit that animates rebrai sight 
 us, but also in its immortality. Of these there are multitudes who have 
 been shut out from all communion with civilized countries, who have 
 never been enlightened by revelation, and who are mentally incapable 
 of reasoning out for themselves arguments in support of those great 
 truths. Under such circumstances, it is not very likely that the uncer- 
 tainties of tradition, derived from remote ages, could be any guide- to 
 them, for traditions soon disappear except they be connected with the 
 wants of daily life. Can there be, in a philosophical view, any thing 
 more interesting than the manner in which these defects have been pro- 
 vided for by implanting in the very organization of every man the means 
 of constantly admonishing him of these facts — of recalling them with an 
 unexpected vividness before him even after they have become so faint 
 as almost to die out? Let him be as debased and benighted a savage as 
 he may, shut out from all communion w^th races whom Providence has 
 placed in happier circumstances, he has still the same organization, and 
 is liable to the same physiological incidents as ourselves. Like us, he 
 sees in his visions the fading forms of landscapes which are a future woria. 
 perhaps connected with some of his most grateful recollections, and what 
 other conclusion can he possibly derive from these unreal pictures than 
 that they are the foreshadowings of another land beyond that in which 
 his lot is cast. Like us, he is revisited at intervals by the resemblances 
 bf those whom he has loved or hated whUe they were alive, nor can he 
 ever be so brutalized as not to discern in such manifestations suggestions 
 which to him are incontrovertible proofs of the existence and immortality 
 immortality of the soul. Even in the most refined social con- "^""^ '""^■ 
 ditions we are never able to shake off the impressions of these occur- 
 rences, and are perpetually drawing from them the same conclusions as 
 did our uncivilized ancestors. Our more elevated condition of life in no 
 
320 DEVELOPMENT OF EREMITISM INTO MONASTICISM. 
 
 respect relieves us from the inevitable consequences of our own organ- 
 ization any more than it relieves us from infirmities and disease. In 
 these respects, all over the globe we are on an equality. Savage or civ- 
 ilized, we carry within us a mechanism intended to present to us me- 
 mentoes of the most solemn facts with which we can be -concerned, and 
 the voice of history tells us that it has ever been true to its design. It 
 wants only moments of repose or sickness, when the influence of exter- 
 nal things is diminished, to come into full play, and these are precisely 
 the ]jiioments when we are best prepared for the truths it is going to sug- 
 gest. Such a mechanism is in keeping with the manner in which the 
 course of nature is fulfilled, and bears in its very style the impress of in-- 
 variability of action. It is no respecter of persons. It neither permits 
 the haughtiest to be free from its monitions, nor leaves the humblest 
 without the consolation of a knowledge of another life. Liable to no 
 mischances, open to no opportunities of being tampered with by the de- 
 signing or interested, requiring no extraneous human agency for its ef- 
 fect, biit always present with each man wherever he may go, it marvel- 
 ously extracts from vestiges of the impressions of the past oyerwhelm- 
 ing proofs of the reality of the future, and gathering its power from what 
 would seem to be a most unlikely source, it insensibly leads us, no mat- 
 ter who or where we may be, to a profound belief in the immortal and 
 imperishable, from phantoms that have scarcely made their appearance 
 before they are ready to vanish away." 
 
 From such beginnings the monastic system of Europe arose — that sys- 
 Amelioration of t^m which prcscuts US with learning in the place of ferocious 
 monasticiam. jgnorance, with overflowing charity to mankind in the place 
 of malignant hatred ,of society. The portly abbot on his easy-going pal- 
 frey, his hawk upon his fist, scarce looks like the lineal descendant of 
 the hermit starved into insanity. How wide the interval between the 
 monk of the third and the moijk of the thirteenth century — ^between tie 
 caverns of Thebais and majestic monasteries hiding the relics of ancient 
 learning, the hopes of modern philosophy — between the butler arranging 
 his well-stocked larder, and the jug of cold water and crust of bread. A 
 thousand years had turned starvation into luxury, and alas ! if the spoil- 
 ito final cor- ^^s of the Ecformation are to be believed, had converted yisions 
 ruptiona. qJ lovcliuess into breathing and blushing realities, who exer- 
 cised their charms with better effect than of old their phantom sisters 
 had done. 
 
 The successive stages to this end may be briefly described. Around 
 the cell of some eremite like Anthony, who fixed his retreat on Mount 
 Colzim, a number of humble inaitators gathered, emulous of his austen- 
 The modiflcationa ti^s and of his picty. A similar sentiment impels thena to 
 of eremitism. obscrve Stated hours of prayer. Necessity for supporting 
 the body indicates some pursuit of idle industry, the plaiting of mats or 
 
SPREAD OF MONASTICISM. 321 
 
 maMng of baskets. So strong is the instinctive tendency of man to as- 
 sociation, that even communities of madmen may organize. Hilarion is 
 said to have been the first who established a monastic community. Per- 
 haps it may have been so. He went into the desert when he was only 
 fifteen years old. Eremitism thus gave birth to Coenobitism, and the 
 evils of solitude were removed. Yet stUl there remained rigorous an- 
 chorites who renounced their associated brethren as they had renounced 
 the world, and the monastery was surrounded by their circle of solitary 
 cells — a Laura, it was called. In Egypt, the sandy deserts on each side 
 of the rich valley of the river offered great facilities for such a mode of 
 life : that of Nitria was full of monks, the climate being mild, Nmnier „f 
 and the wants of man satisfied with ease. It is said that there *''*''"'^»- 
 were at one time in that country of these religious recluses not less than 
 seventy-sis thousand males and twenty-seven thousand females. With 
 countless other uncouth forms, under the hot sun of that climate they 
 seemed to be spawned from the mud of the Nile. As soon as from some 
 celebrated hermitage a monastery had formed, the associates submitted 
 to the rules of brotherhood. Their meal, eaten in silence, consisted of 
 bread and water, oil, and a little salt. The bundle of papyrus which 
 had served tie monk for a seat by day, while he made his baskets or 
 mats, served him for a pillow by night. Twice he was roused from his 
 sleep by the sound of a horn to offer up his prayers. The culture of su- 
 perstition was compelled by inexorable rules. A discipline of penalties, 
 confinement, fasting, whipping, and, at a later period, even mutilation, 
 was inflexibly administered. 
 
 -From Egypt and Syria monachism spread like an epidemic. It was 
 first introduced into Italy by Athanasius, assisted by some of spread of mo- 
 the disciples of Anthony ; but Jerome, whose abode was in e^™" "" 
 Palestine, is celebrated for the multitude of converts he made to a life 
 of retirement. Under his persuasion, many of the high-born ladies of 
 Eome were led to the practice of monastic habits, as far as was possible, 
 in 'secluded spots near that city, on the ruins of temples, and even in the 
 Forum. Some were induced to retreat to the Holy Land, after bestow- 
 ing their wealth for pious purposes. ' The silent monk insinuated him- 
 self into the privacy of families for the purpose of making proselytes 
 by stealth. Soon there was not an unfrequented island in the Mediter- 
 ranean, no desert shore, no gloomy valley, no forest, no glen, no volcanic 
 crater, that did not witness exorbitant selfishness made the rule of life. 
 There were multitudes of .hermits on the desolate coasts of the Black 
 Sea. They abounded from the freezing Tanais to the sultry Tabenn^. 
 In rigorous personal life and in supernatural power the West acknowl- 
 edged no inferiority to the East ; his admiring imitators challenged even 
 the desert of Thebais to produce the equal of Martin of Tours. The 
 solitary anchorite was soon supplanted by the coenobitic establishment, 
 
 X 
 
322 EASTEEN AND WESTEEN MONKS. 
 
 the monastery. It became a fashion among the rich to give all that 
 they had to these institutions for the salvation of their own souk. There 
 was now no need of basket-making or the weaving of mats. The broth- 
 erhood increased rapidly. Whoeyer wanted to escape from the barba- 
 rian invaders, or to avoid the hardships of serving in the imperial army 
 — ■whoever had become discontented with his worldly affairs, or saw 
 in those dark times no inducements in a home and family of his own 
 Increase of found in the monastery a sure retreat. The number of these 
 houses. religious houses eventually became very great. They were usu- 
 ally placed on the most charming and advantageous sites, their solidity 
 and splendor illustrating the necessity of erecting durable habitations 
 for societies that were immortal. It often fell out that the Church laid 
 claim to the services of some distinguished monk. It was significantly 
 observed that the road to ecclesiastical elevation lay through the mon- 
 astery porch, and often ambition contentedly wore for a season the cowl, 
 that it might seize more surely the mitre. 
 
 Though the monastic system of the East included labor, it was greatly 
 Difference of inferior to that of the West in that particular. The Oriental 
 ind wSu monk, at first making selfishness his rule of hfe, and his own 
 "'""H- salvation the grand object, though all the world efee should per- 
 ish, in his maturer period occupied his intellectual powers in refined dis- 
 putations of theology. Too often he exhibited his physical strength in 
 the furious riots he occasioned in the streets of 'the great cities. He was 
 a fanatic and insubordinate. On the other hand, the Occidental monk 
 showed far less disposition for engaging in the discussion of things above 
 reason, and expended his strength in useful and honorable labor. Be- 
 ileath his hand the wilderness became a garden. To a considerable'ex- 
 tent this difference was due to physiological peculiarity, and yet it must 
 not be concealed that the circumstances of life in the cases were not 
 without their effects. The old countries of the Bast, with their worn- 
 out civilization and worn-out soil, offered no inducements comparable 
 with the barbarous but young and fertile West, where to the ecclesiastio 
 the most lovely and inviting lands were open. Both, however, coincided 
 in this, that they regarded the affairs of life as presenting perpetual in- 
 terpositions of a providential or rather supernatural kind-mangels and 
 devils being in continual conflict for the soul of every man, who migtt 
 become the happy prize of the one or the miserable prey of the other. 
 These spiritual powers were perpetually controlling the course of nature 
 and giving rise to prodigies. The measure of holiness in a saint was the 
 Legends of West- numbcT of miraclcs he had worked. Thus, in the life of St. 
 em saints; Benedict, it is related that when his nurse Cyrilla let fall a 
 stone sieve, her distress was changed into rejoicing by the prayer of the 
 holy child, at which the broken parts came together and were made 
 whole ; that once, on receiving his food in a basket, let down to his oth- 
 
MIEACLES OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 323 
 
 erwise inaccessible cell, the devil vainly tried to vex him by breaking 
 the rope ; that once Satan, assuming the form of a blackbird, nearly 
 blinded him by flapping his wings ; that once, too, the same tempter ap- 
 peared as a beautiful Eoman girl, to whose fascinations, in his youth, St. 
 Benedict had been sensible, and from which he now hardly escaped by 
 rolling himself among thorns. Once, when his austere rules and severity 
 excited the resentment of the monastery over which he was abbot, the 
 brethren — for monks have been known to do such things — attempted to 
 poison him, but the cup burst asunder as soon as he took it into his 
 hands. "When the priest Florentius, being wickedly disposed, attempted 
 to perpetrate a like crime by means of an adulterated loaf, a raven car- 
 ried away the deadly bread from the hand of St. Benedict. Instructed 
 by the devil, the same ecclesiastic drove from his neighborhood the holy 
 man, by turning into the garden of his monastery seven" naked girls ; 
 but scarcely had the saint taken to flight, when the chamber in which 
 his persecutor lived fell in and buried him beneath its ruins, though the 
 rest of the house was uninjured. Under the guidance of two visible an- 
 gels, who walked before him, St. Benedict continued his journey to Monte 
 Casino, where he erected a noble monastery ; but even here miracles did 
 not cease ; for Satan bewitched the stones, so that it was impossible for 
 the masons to move them until they were released by powerful prayers. 
 A boy, who had stolen from the monastery to visit his parents, was not 
 only struck dead by God for his fault, but the consecrated ground threw 
 forth his body when they attempted to bury it, nor could it be made to 
 rest until the consecrated bread was laid upon it. Two garrulous nuns, 
 who had been excommunicated by St. Benedict for their perverse prat- 
 ing, chanced to be buried in the church. On the next administration 
 of the sacrament, when the deacon commanded all those who did not 
 communicate to depart, the corpses rose out of their graves and walked 
 forth from the church. 
 
 Volumes might be filled with such wonders, which edified the religious 
 for centuries, exacting implicit belief, and being regarded as The character of 
 of equal authority with the miracles of the Holy Scriptures. ""^^^ nuraciea. 
 
 Though monastic life rested upon the principle of social abnegation, 
 monasticism, in singular contradiction thereto, contained within itself the 
 principle of organization. As early as A.D. 370, St. Basil, the hbc and prog- 
 Bishop of Csesarea, incorporated the hermits and coenobites of tic oraerB?"""' 
 his diocese into one order, called after him the Basilian. One hundred 
 and fifty years later, St. Benedict, under a milder rule, organized those 
 who have passed under his name, and found for them occupation in suit- 
 able employments of manual and intellectual labor. In the ninth cen- 
 tury, another Benedict revised the rule of the order, and made it more 
 austere. Offshoots soon arose, as those of Clugni, A.D. 900 ; the Carthu- 
 sians, A.D. 1084 ; the Cistercians, A.D. 1098. A favorite pursuit among 
 
324 
 
 CIVILIZING AGENCY OF THE MONKS. 
 
 them being literary labor, they introduced great improvements in the 
 copying of manuscripts ; and in their illuminatioij and illustration are 
 found the germs of the restoration of painting and the invention of cur- 
 sive handwriting. St. Benedict enjoined his order to collect books. It 
 has been happily observed that he forgot to say any thing about their 
 nature, supposing that they must all be religious. The Augustinians 
 were founded in the eleventh century. They professed, however, to be 
 a restoration of the society founded ages "before by St. Augustine. 
 
 The influence to which monasticism attained may be judged of from 
 TheBenedic- the boast of the Benedictines that "Pope John XXlI., who 
 tinea. jjg^ ^^ 1334, aftcr an exact inquiry, found that, since the first 
 
 rise of the order, there had been of it 24 popes, near 200 cardinals, 7000 
 archbishops, 15,000 bishops, 15,000 abbots of renown, above 4000 saints, 
 and upward of 37,000 monasteries. There have been likewise, of this 
 order, 20 emperors and 10 empresses, 47 kings and above 50 queens, 20 
 sons of emperors, and 48 sons of kings ; about 100 princesses, daughters 
 of kings and emperors; besides dukes, marquises, earls, countesses, etc., 
 innumerable. The order has produced a vast number of authons and 
 other learned men. Their Eabanus set up the school of Germany. Their 
 Alcuin founded the University of Paris. Their Dionysius Bxiguus per' 
 fected ecclesiastical computation. Their Guido invented the scale of mu- 
 sic ; their Sylvester, the organ. They boast to have produced Anselm, 
 Ildefonsus, and the Venerable Bede." 
 
 We too often date the Christianization of a community from the con- 
 version of its sovereign, but it is not in the nature of things that that 
 should change the hearts of men. Of what avail is it if a barbarian 
 chieftain drives a horde of his savages through the waters of a river by 
 way of extemporaneous or speedy baptism? Such outward forms are of 
 ciTiUzation of little Hioment. It was mainly by the monasteries that to the 
 monks. peasant class of Europe was pointed out the way of civilization, 
 
 The devotions and charities ; the austerities of the brethren ; their ab- 
 stemious meal ; their meagre clothing, the cheapest of the country in 
 which they lived ; their shaven heads, or the cowl which shut out the 
 sight of sinful objects ; the long staff in their hands; their naked feet 
 and legs ; their passing forth on their journeys by twos, each a watch 
 upon his brother ; the prohibitions against eating outside of the wall of 
 the monastery, which had its own mill, its own bake-house, and what- 
 ever was needed in an abstemious domestic economy ; their silent hos- 
 pitality to the wayfarer, who was refreshed in a separate apartment; the 
 lands around their buildings tamed from a wilderness into a garden, 
 and, above all, labor exalted and ennobled by their holy hands, and cel- 
 ibacy, forever, in the eye of the vulgar, a proof of separation from the 
 world and a sacrifice to heaven — these were the things that arrested the 
 attention of the barbarians of Europe, and led them on to civilization. 
 
ULTIMATE EFFECTS OF MONASTICISM. 325 
 
 In our own material age, the advocates of the monastery have plaintive- 
 ly asked, Where now shall we find an asylum for the sinner who is sick 
 of the world — for the man of contemplation in his old age, or for the 
 statesman who is tired of affairs ? It was through the leisure procured 
 by their wealth that the monasteries produced so many cultivators of 
 letters, and transmitted to us the literary relics of the old times. It was 
 a fortunate day when the monk turned from the weaving Their later intei- 
 of mats to the copying of manuscripts — a fortunate day i^'ii"' influence, 
 when he began to compose those noble hymns and strains of music 
 which will live forever. From the " Dies Iras" there rings forth grand 
 poetry even in monkish Latin. The perpetual movements of the mo- 
 nastic orders gave life to the Church. The Protestant admits that to a 
 resolute monk the Eeformation was due. 
 
 With these pre-eminent merits, the monastic institutipn had its evils. 
 Through it was spread that dreadful materialization of relig- rphcir materiau. 
 ion which, for so many ages, debased sacred things ; through ^^awo^ofreugion. 
 it that worse than pagan apotheosis, which led to the adoration — for 
 such it really was — of dead men ; through it were sustained relics and 
 lying miracles, the belief in falsehoods so prodigious as to disgrace the 
 common sense of man. The apostles and martyrs of old were forgotten ; 
 nay, even the worship of God was forsaken for shrines that could cure 
 all diseases, and relics that could raise the dead. Through it was devel- 
 oped that intense selfishness which hesitated at no sacrifice either of the 
 present or the future, so far as this life is concerned, in order to insure 
 personal happiness in the next — a selfishness which, in the delusion of 
 the times, passed under the name of piety ; and the degree of abasement 
 from the dignity of a man was made the measure of the merit of a 
 monk. 
 
326 AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 THE AGE OP FAITH IN THE WEST. THE THREE ATTACKS : NORTHERN 
 OE MORAL; WESTERN OR INTELLECTUAL ; EASTERN OR MILITAET. 
 
 THE NORTHERN OE MORAL ATTACK ON THE ITALIAN SYSTEM, AND US TEMPOBABT BEPTOSB. 
 
 Geographical Boundaries of Italian Christianity. — Attacks upon it. 
 
 The Northern or moral Attack. — The Emperor of Germany insists on a reformation in the Pa. 
 pacy. — Gerbert, the representative of these Ideas, is made Pope. — They are ioth poisoned hy 
 the Italians. 
 
 Commencement of the intelleciual Rejection of the Italian System. — Originates in the Arabim doc- 
 trine of the supremacy of Reason over Authority. — The question of Transuhstantiation. — Bisi 
 and development of Scholasticism. — Mutiny among the Monies. ^ 
 
 Gregory VII. spontaneously accepts and enforces a Reform in the Church. — Overcomes thi 
 Emperor of Germany. — Is on the point of establishing a European Theocracy. — The Popes 
 seize the military and monetary Resources of Europe through the Crusades. 
 
 The realm of an idea may often be defined by geometrical lines. 
 
 If from Eome, as a centre, two lines be drawn, one of which passes 
 The geograph- eastward, and touches the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, 
 o?LatSehr£ the other westward, and crosses the Pyrenees, nearly all those 
 tianity. Mediterranean countries lying to the south of these lines were 
 
 living, at the time of which we speak, under the dogma, "There is but 
 one God, and Mohammed is his prophet ;" but the countries to the north 
 had added to the orthodox conception of the Holy Trinity the adoiration 
 of the Virgin, tbe' worsbip of images, the invocation of saints, and a de- 
 vout attachment to relics and shrines. 
 
 I have now to relate how these lines were pushed forward on Europe, 
 Foreea acting that to the cast by military, that to the west by intellectual 
 upon it. force. On Epme, as on a pivot, they worked ; now opening, 
 now closing, now threatening to curve round at their extremes and com- 
 press paganizing Christendom in their clasp ; then, through the convul- 
 sive throes of the nations they had inclosed, receding from one another 
 and quivering throughout their whole length, but receding only for an 
 instant, to shut more closely again. 
 
 It was as if from the hot sands of Africa invisible arms were put forth, 
 enfolding Europe in their grasp, and struggling to join their hands to 
 give to paganizing Christendom a fearful and mortal compression. There 
 were struggles and resistances, but the portentous hands clasped at last. 
 Historically, we call the pressure that was then made the Eeformation. 
 
 Not without difficulty can we describe the convulsive struggles of na- 
 
THE PRESSURES UPON ROME. 327 
 
 tions so as to convey a clear idea of the forces acting upon theni. I 
 have now to devote many perhaps not uninteresting, certainly not unin- 
 structive pages to these events. 
 
 In this chapter I begin that task by relating the consequences of the 
 state of things heretofore described — the earnestness of converted Ger- 
 many and the immoralities of the popes. 
 
 The Germans insisted on a reformation among ecclesiastics, and that 
 they should lead lives in accordance with religion. This The Germans in- 
 moral attack was accompanied also by an intellectual one, in tie papacy. 
 arising from another source, and amounting to a mutiny in the Church 
 itself In the course of centuries, and particularly during the more re- 
 cent evil times, a gradual divergence of theology from morals had taken 
 place, to the dissatisfaction of that remnant of thinking men who here 
 and there, in the solitude of monasteries, compared the dogmas of theol- 
 ogy with the dictates of reason. Of those, and the number was yearly 
 increasing, who had been among the Arabs in Spain, not a few had be- 
 come infected with a love of philosophy. 
 
 Whoever compares the tenth and twelfth centuries together can not 
 fail to remark the great intellectual advance which Europe was making. 
 The ideas occupying the minds of Christian men, their very Eeappeamnce 
 turn of thought, had altogether changed. The earnestness of "f piiu<'=»pi'y- 
 the Germans, commingling with the knowledge of the Mohammedans, 
 cduld no longer be diverted from the misty clouds of theological discus- 
 sion out of which Philosophy emerged, not in the Grecian classical vest- 
 ure in which she had disappeared at Alexandria, but in the grotesque 
 garb of the cowled and mortified monk. She timidly came back to the 
 world as Scholasticism, persuading men to consider, by the light of their 
 own reason, that dogma which seemed to put common sense at defiance 
 — ^transubstantiation. Scarcely were her whispers heard in the ecclesi- 
 astical ranks when a mutiny against authority arose, and since it was 
 necessary to' combat that mutiny with its own weapons, the Church was 
 compelled to give her countenance to Scholastic Theology. 
 
 Lending himself to the demand for morality, and not altogether refus- 
 ing to join in the intellectual progress, a great man, Hildebrand, brought 
 on an ecclesiastical reform. He raised the papacy to its maximum of 
 power, and prepared the way for his successors tO' seize the material re- 
 sources of Europe through the Crusades. 
 
 Such is an outline of the events with which we have now to deal. 
 A detailed analysis of those events shows that there were three direc- 
 tions of pressure upon Eome. The pressure from the West xhe three pres.- 
 and that from the East were Mohammedan. Their resultant ""^"^ iponsome. 
 was a pressure from the North : it was iessentiaUy Christian. WhUe those 
 were foreign, this was domestic. It is almost immaterial in what order 
 we consider them ; the manner in which I am handling the subject leads 
 
328 THE LIFE OF GERBEET, 
 
 me, however, to treat of the Northern pressure first, then of that of the 
 West, and on subsequent pages of that of the East. 
 
 It had become absolutely necessary that something should be done for 
 the reformation of the papacy. Its crimes, such as we have related in 
 Foreign influ- Chapter XII., Outraged religious men. To the master-spirit 
 
 enoe for reform- J- ' ° ° , . , . - r ^" 
 
 ing the papacy, oi the movement for accomplishing this end we must closely 
 look. He is the representative ,of influences that were presently to ex- 
 ert a most important agency. In the train of the Emperor Otho IE., 
 when he resolved to put a stop to all this wickedness, was Gerbert, a 
 French ecclesiastic, born in Auvergne. In his boyhood, while a scholar 
 Life of Gerbert. in the Abbey of Avrillac, he attracted the attention of his su- 
 periors ; among others, of the Count of Barcelona, wjio took him into 
 Spain. There he became a proficient in the mathematics, astronomy, 
 and physics of the Mohammedan schools. He spoke Arabic with the 
 His Saracen Auency of a Saraccn. His residence at Cordova, where the kha- 
 education. jjf patrouized all the learning and science of the age, and his 
 subsequent residence in Eome, wliere he found an inconceivable igno- 
 rance and immorality, were not lost upon his future life. He established 
 a school at Eheims, where he taught logic, music, astronomy, explained 
 Virgil, Statins, Terence, and introduced what were at that time regarded 
 as wonders, the globe and the abacus. He labored to persuade his coun- 
 trymen that learning is far to be preferred to the sports of the field. He 
 observed the stars through tubes, invented a clock, and an organ playfid 
 by steam. He composed a work on Ehetoric. Appointed Abbot of 
 Bobbio, he fell into a misunderstanding with his monks, and had to re- 
 tire first to Eome, and then to resume his school at Eheims. In the po- 
 litical events connected with the rise of Hugh Capet, he was again 
 brought into prominence. The speech of the Bishop of Orleans at the 
 Council of Eheims, which was his composition, shows us how his Mo- 
 hammedan education had led him to look upon the state of things in 
 Hia reproach- Christendom : " There is not one at Eome, it is notorious, who 
 chmoS^ " knows enough of letters to qualify him for a door-keeper; 
 with what face shall he presume to teach who has never learned ?" He 
 does not hesitate to allude to papal briberies and papal crimes: "If 
 King Hugh's embassadors could have bribed th^ pope and Crescentius, 
 his affairs had taken a different turn." He recounts the disgraces and 
 crimes of the pontiffs : how John XII. had cut off the nose and tongue 
 of John the Cardinal ; how Boniface had strangled John XHI. ; how 
 John XIY. had been starved to death in the dungeons of the Castle of 
 St. Angelo. He demands, " To such monsters, full of all infamy, void of 
 all knowledge, human and divine, are all the priests of God to submit 
 — men distinguished throughout the world for their learning and holy 
 lives ? The pontiff who so sins against his brother — who, when admon- 
 ished, refuses to hear the voice of counsel, is as a publican' and a siiiner. 
 
THE LIFE OF GEBBERT. 329 
 
 With a prophetic inspiration of the accusations of the Eeformation, he 
 asks, " Is he not Anti-Christ?" He speaks of him as " the Man of Sin," 
 " the Mystery of Iniquity." Of Eome he says, with an emphasis doubt- 
 less enforced by his Mohammedan experiences, " She has already lost 
 the allegiance of the East ; Alexandria, Antioch, Africa, and Asia are 
 separate from her ; Constantinople has broken loose from her ; the in- 
 terior of Spain knows nothing of the pope." He says, "How do your 
 enemies say that, in deposing Arnulphus, we should have waited for the 
 judgment of the Eoman bishop ? Can they say that his judgment is be- 
 fore that of God which our synod pronounced ? The Prince of the Eo- 
 man bishops and of the apostles themselves proclaimed that Grod must 
 be obeyed rather, than men ; and Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, an- 
 nounced anathema to him, though he were an angel, who should preach 
 a doctrine different to that which had been delivered. Because the pon- 
 tiff Marcellinus offered incense to Jupiter, must, therefore, all bishops 
 sacrifice ?" In all this there is obviously an insurgent spirit against the 
 papacy, or, rather, against its iniquities. 
 
 In the progress of the political movements Gerbert was appointed 
 to the archbishopric of Eheims. On this occasion, it is not ^^ ecclesiastical 
 without interest that we observe his worldly wisdom. It advancement, 
 was desirable to conciliate the clergy — ^perhaps it might be done by the 
 encouragement of marriage. He had lived in the polygamic court of 
 the khalif, whose family had occasionally boasted of more than forty 
 sons and forty daughters. Well then may he say, " I prohibit not mar- 
 riage. I condemn not second marriages. I do not blame the eating of 
 flesh." His election not only proved unfortunate, but, in the tortuous 
 policy of the times, he was removed from the exercise of his episcopal 
 functions and put under interdict. The speech of the Eoman legate^ 
 Leo, who presided at his condemnation, gives us an insight into the na- 
 ture of his offense, of the intention of Eome to persevere in her igno- 
 rance and superstition, and is an amusing example of ecclesiastical argu- 
 ment: " Because the vicars of Peter and their disciples will not have for 
 their teachers a Plato, a Virgil, a Terence, and the rest of the herd of 
 philosophers, who soar aloft hke the birds of the air, -and dive into the 
 depths like the fishes of the sea, ye say that they are not worthy to be 
 door-keepers, because they know not how to make verses. Peter is, in- 
 deed, a door-keeper— but of heaven !" He does not deny the systematic 
 bribery of the pontifical government, but justifies it. " Did not the Sa- 
 vior receive gifts of the wise men?" Nor does he deny the crimes of 
 the pontiffs, though he protests against those who would expose them, 
 remmding them that " Ham was cursed for uncovering his father's na- 
 kedness." In all this we see the beginnings of that struggle between 
 Mohammedan learning and morals and Italian ignorance and crime, at 
 last to produce such important results for Europe. 
 
330 POISONING OF GERBERT AND OTHO. 
 
 Once more.G-erbert retired to tlie court of the emperor. It was at the 
 time that Otho III. was contemplating a revolution in the empire and a 
 reformation of the Church. He saw how useful Gerbert might be to his 
 policy, and had him appointed Archbishop of Eavenna, and, on the death 
 of Gregory v., issued his decree for the election of Gerbert as pope. The 
 Gerbert the pope, low-born Frcnch ecclcsiastic, thus attaining to the utmost 
 height of human ambition, took the name of Sylvester II., a name full 
 of meaning. 
 
 But Eome was not willing thus to surrender her sordid interests ; she 
 revolted. Tusculum, the disgrace of the papacy, rebelled. It required 
 the arms of the emperor to sustain his pontiff. 'For a moment it seemed 
 as if the Eeformation might have been anticipated by many centuries^ 
 that Christian Europe might have been spared the abomiaable papal 
 disgraces awaiting it. There was a learned and upright pope, an able' 
 and youthful emperor ; but Italian revenge, in the person of Stephania, 
 the wife of the murdered Crescentius, blasted all these expectations. 
 From the hand of that outraged but noble criminal, who, with more than 
 Eoman firmness of purpose, could deliberately barter her virtue for ^ 
 Poisoning of vcngeauce, the unsuspecting emperor took the poisoned cup. 
 and pope, and left Eome only to die. He was but twenty-two years of 
 age. Sylvester, also, was irretrievably ruined by the drugs that had 
 been stealthily mixed with his food. He soon followed his patron to 
 the grave. His steam organs, physical experiments, mechanical inven- 
 tions, foreign birth, and want of orthodoxy, confirmed the awful impu- 
 tation that he was a necromancer. The mouth of every one was full of 
 stories of mystery and magic in which Gerbert had borne a part. Afar 
 off in Europe, by their evening firesides, the goblin-scared peasants whis- 
 pered to one another that in the most secret apartment of the palace at 
 Eome there was concealed an impish dwarf, who wore a turban, and had 
 a ring that could make him invisible, or give him two different bodies 
 at the same time ; that, in the midnight hours, strange sounds had been 
 heard, when no one was within but the pope ; that, while he was among 
 the infidels in Spain, the future pontiff had bartered his soul to Satan, 
 on condition that he would make him Christ's vicar upon earth, and now 
 it was plain that both parties had been true to their compact. In their 
 privacy, hollow-eyed monks muttered to one another under their cowls, 
 " Homagium diabolo fecit et male finivit." 
 
 To a degree of wickedness almo^ irremediable had things thus come. 
 The sins of the pontiffs were repeated, without any abatement, in all the 
 clerical ranks. Simony and concubinage prevailed to an extent that 
 threatened the authority of the Church over the coarsest minds. Eccle- 
 siastical promotion could in all directions be obtained by purchase; in 
 all directions there were priests boasting of illegitimate families. But 
 yet, in the Church itself, there were men of irreproachable life, who, like 
 
MUTINY IN THE CHURCH. 331 
 
 Peter Damiani, lifted up their voices against the prevailing commencing pro. 
 
 ,,_..' ,^ 11,1 • i • test m the Church 
 
 scandal. He it was who proved that nearly every priest in against its Bins. 
 Milan had purchased his preferment and lived with a concubine. The 
 immoralities thus forced upon the attention of pious men soon began to 
 be followed by the consequences that might have been expected. It is 
 but a step" from the condemnation of morals to the criticism of faith. 
 The developing intellect of Europe could no longer bear the acts or the 
 thoughts that it had heretofore submitted to. The dogma of transub- 
 stantiation led to revolt. 
 
 The early fathers delighted to point out the agreement of doctrines 
 flowing from the principles of Christianity with those of Primitive agree- 
 
 ^ iT-i i-ni • 11 ment of philosO' 
 
 Greek philosophy, ior long it was asserted that a corre- phy and theology, 
 spondence between faith and reason exists ; but by degrees, as one dog- 
 ma after another of a mysterious and unintelligible kind was introduced, 
 and matters of belief could no longer be co-ordinated with the conclu- 
 sions of the Understanding, it became necessary to force the latter into a 
 subordinate position. The great political interests involved in Their gradual 
 these questions suggested the expediency and even necessity »''™'"'''°- 
 of compelling such a subordination by the application of civil power. 
 In this manner, as we have described, in the reign of Constantine the 
 Great, philosophical discussions of religious things came to be discoun- 
 tenanced, and implicit faith required in the decisions of existing author- 
 ity. Philosophy was subjugated and enslaved by theology. We shall 
 now see what were the circumstances of her revolt. 
 
 In the solitude of monasteries there was every inducement for those 
 who had become weary of self-examination to enter on the contempla- 
 tion of the external world. Herein they found a field offering to them 
 endless occupation, and capable of worthily exercising their acuteness. 
 But it was not possible for them to take the first step without offending 
 against the decisions established by authority. The alter- The mutiny against 
 native- was stealthy proceeding or open mutiny ; but be- araongthe°mS?° 
 fore mutiny there occurs a period of private suggestion and another of 
 more extensive discussion. It was thus that the German monk Gots- 
 chalk, in the ninth century, occupied himself in the profound problem 
 of predestination, enduring the scourge and death in prison pereecution of 
 for the sake of his opinion. The presence of the Saracens in Go'^chaik, 
 Spain offered an incessant provocation to the restless intellect of the 
 West, now rapidly expanding, to indulge itself in such forbidden ex- 
 ercises. Arabian philosophy, unseen and silently, was diffusing itself 
 throughout Prance and Europe, and churchmen could sometimes con- 
 template a refuge from their enemies among the infidel. In his extrem- 
 ity, Abelard himself expected a retreat among the Saracens — a protec- 
 tion from ecclesiastical persecution. 
 
 In the conflict with Gotschalk on the matter of predestination was al- 
 
332 ATTACK ON TEAKSUBSTANTIATION. 
 
 who seta upreMon ready foieshadowed the attempt to set up reason againsl 
 against authority, authority. John Erigena, who was employed by Hincmar, 
 the Archbishop of Eheims, on that occasion, had already made a pilgrim- 
 age to the birthplaces of Plato and Aristotle, A.D. 825, and indulged 
 the hope of uniting philosophy and religion in the manner pr6posed by 
 the ecclesiastics who were studying in Spain. • 
 
 i^rom Eastern sources John Erigena had learned the doctrines of the 
 eternity of matter, and even of the creation, with which, indeed, he con- 
 John Ei-igena faua fouuded the Deity himself He was, therefore, a Pantheist; 
 into Pantheism, accepting the Oriental ideas of emanation and absorption 
 not only as respects the soul of man, but likewise all material things. 
 In his work " On the Nature of Things," his doctrine is, " That, as all 
 things were originally contained in God, and proceeded from him into 
 the different classes by which they are now distinguished, so shall they 
 finally return to him and be resolved into the source from which they 
 came ; in other words, that as, before the world was created, there was 
 no being but God, and the causes of all things were in him, so, after the 
 end of the world, there will be no being but God, and the causes of all 
 things in him." This final resolution he denominated deification, or the- 
 osis. He even questioned the eternity of hell, saying, with the empha- 
 sis of a Saracen, " There is nothing eternal but God." It was impossi- 
 ble, under such circumstances, that he should not fall under the rebuke, 
 of the Church. 
 
 Transubstantiation, as being, of the orthodox doctrines, the least ree- 
 The confuct be- oncilablc to reason, was the first to be attacked by the new 
 stantiation. philosophcrs. What was, perhaps, in the beginning, no more 
 than a jocose Mohammedan sarcasm, became a solemn subject of ecclesi- 
 astical discussion. Erigena strenuously upheld the doctrine of the Ster- 
 corists, who derived their name from the fact that they asserted a part 
 of the consecrated elements to be voided from the body in the manner 
 customary with other relics of food ; a doctrine which was denounced 
 by the orthodox, who declared that the priest could " make God," and 
 that the eucharistic elements were not liable to digestion. 
 
 And now, A.D.1050,Berengar of Tours prominently brought forward 
 Opinions of Be- thc controvcrsy respecting the real presence. The question 
 rengar of Tours, jj^d been formularizcd by Eadbert under the term transub- 
 stantiation, and the opinions entertained respecting the sacred elements 
 greatly differed ; mere fetish notions being entertained by some, by oth- 
 ers the most transcendental ideas. In opposition to Eadbert and the or- 
 thodox party, who asserted that those elements ceased to be what to the 
 senses they appeared, and actually became transformed into the body 
 and blood of the Savior, Berengar held that, though there is a real pres- 
 ence in them, that presence is of a spiritual nature. These heresies were 
 condemned by repeated councils, Berengar himself being offered the 
 
THE DOOTBINES OF ABELAED, 833 
 
 choice of death or recantation. He wisely preferred the latter, but more 
 wisely resumed his offensive doctrines as soon as he had escaped from 
 the hands of his persecutors. As might be supposed from the philosoph- 
 ical indefensibility of the orthodox doctrine, Berengar's opinions, which, 
 indeed, issued from those of Brigena, made themselves felt in the highest 
 ecclesiastical regions, and, from the manner in which Gregory VII. dealt 
 with the heresiarch, there is reason to believe that he him- ^he pope private- 
 self had privately adopted the doctrines thus condemned. '^ adopto them. 
 
 But it is in Peter Abelard that we find the representative of the in- 
 surgent spirit of those times. The love of Heloisa seems-in our eyes 
 to be juslfified by his extraordinary intellectual power. In his oratory, 
 "The Paraclete," the doctrines of faith and the mysteries of re- Peter Ateiard 
 
 T • -1 • T 1 -KT 1 ■ among the in- 
 
 ligion were without any restraint discussed. JNo subject was surgents. 
 too profound or too sacred for his contemplation. By the powerful and 
 orthodox influence of St. Bernard, " a morigerous and mortified monk," 
 the opinions of Abelard were brought under the rebuke of the authori- 
 ties. In vain he appealed from the Council of Sens to Eome ; the power 
 of St. Bernard at Eome was paramount. "He makes void the gt.Bemara 
 whole Christian faith by attempting to comprehend the nature ""^"^ i"™- 
 of Grod through human reason. He ascends up into heaven ; he goes 
 down into hell. Nothing can elude him, either in the height above or 
 in the nethermost depths. His branches spread over the whole earth. 
 He boasts that he has disciples in Eome itself, even in the College of 
 Cardinals. He draws the whole earth after him. It is time, therefore, 
 to silence him by apostolic authority." Such was the report of the 
 Council of Sens to Eome, A.D. 1140. 
 
 Perhaps it was not so much the public accusation that Abelard denied 
 the doctrine of the Trinity, as his assertion of the supremacy of reason 
 ^rwhich clearly betrayed his intention of breaking the thraldom of au- 
 thority — ^that insured his condemnation. It was impossible to restrict 
 the rising discussions within their proper sphere, or to keep them from 
 the perilous ground of ecclesiastical history. Abelard, in his The hoofsio 
 work entitled " Sic e't Non," sets forth the contradictory opin- ^' *'°°-" 
 ions of the fathers, and exhibits their discord and strifes on great doc- 
 trinal points, thereby insinuating how little of unity there was in the 
 Church. It was a work suggesting a great deal more than it actually 
 stated, and was inevitably calculated to draw down upon its author the 
 indignation of those whose interests it touched. 
 
 Out of the discussions attending these events sprang the celebrated 
 doctrines of NominaHsm and Eealism, though the terms scholastic phuos- 
 themselves seem not to have been introduced till the end of "'^^^^ ™^ "*'• 
 the twelfth century. The Eealists thought that the general types of 
 things had a real existence ; the Nominalists, that they were merely a 
 mental abstraction expressed by a word. It was therefore the old Greek 
 
334 SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 dispute revived. Of tlie Nominalists, Eosceliri of Compiegne, a little be- 
 NominaiiBm fo^e A.D. 1100, was the first distinguislied advocate ; his ma- 
 ana Eeaiiam. terializiug views, as might be expected, drawing upon him the 
 reproof of the Church. In this contest, Anselm, the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, attempted to harmonize reason in subordination to faith, and 
 again, by his example, demonstrated the necessity of submitting all such 
 questions to the decision of the human intellect. 
 
 The development of scholastic philosophy, which dates from the time 
 of Erigena, was accelerated by two distinct causes : the dreadful mate- 
 rialization into which, in Europe, all sacred things had fallen, and the 
 The Arabs in iHustrious example of the Mohammedans, who already, by their 
 mote^theae physical inquiries, had commenced a career destined to end in 
 disousBions. Tjrilliant results. The Spanish universities were filled with ec- 
 clesiastics from many parts of Europe. Peter the Yenerable, the friend 
 and protector of Abelard, who had spent much time in Cordova, and not 
 only spoke Arabic fluently, but actually translated the Koran into Latin, 
 mentions that, on his first arrival in Spain, he found many learned men, 
 even from England, studying astronomy. The reconciliation of many 
 of the dogmas of authority with common sense was impossible for men 
 of understanding. Could the clear intellect of such a statesman as Hil- 
 debrand be for a moment disgraced by accepting the received view of a 
 doctrine like that of transubstantiation ? His great difficulty was to rec- 
 oncile what had been rendered orthodox by the authority of the Church 
 with the suggestions of reason, or even with that reverence for holy 
 things which is in the heart of every intelligent man. In such senti- 
 ments we find an explanation of the lenient dealings of that stern eccle- 
 siastic with the heretic Berengar. He saw that it was utterly impossi- 
 ble to offer any defense of many of the materialized dogmas of the age, 
 but then those dogmas had been put forth as absolute truth by the 
 Church. Things had come to the point at which reason and theology 
 must diverge ; yet the Italian statesmen did not accept this issue with- 
 Eiaeof scMaa- ^ut au additional attempt, and, under their permission, Scho- 
 tic Theology. ig^g^^Q Theology, which originated in the scholastic philosophy 
 of Erigena and his followers, sought, in the strange union of the Holy 
 Scriptures, the Aristotelian Philosophy, and Pantheism, to construct a 
 scientific basis for Christianity. Heresy was to be combated with the 
 weapons of the heretics, and a co-ordination of authority and reason ef- 
 fected. Under such auspices scholastic philosophy pervaded the schools, 
 giving to some of them, as the University of Paris, a fictitious reputa- 
 tion, and leading to the foundation of others in other cities. It answered 
 the object of its politic promoters in a double way, for it raised around 
 the orthodox theology an immense and impenetrable bulwark of what 
 seemed to be profound learning, and also diverted the awakening mmd 
 of Western Europe to occupations which, if profitless, were yet exciting, 
 
THE IMPORTANCE OF SCHOLASTICISM TO THE CHURCH. 835 
 
 and without danger to the existing state of things. In that manner was 
 put off for a while the inevitable day in which philosophy and theology 
 were to be brought in mortal conflict with each other. It was doubtless 
 seen by Hildebrand and his followers that, though Berengar had set the 
 example of protesting against the principle that the decision of a major- 
 ity of voters in a councU or other collective body should ever be re- 
 ceived as ascertaining absolute truth, yet so great was the uncertainty of 
 the principles on which the scholastic philosophy was found- Jta advantages in 
 ed, so undetermined its mental exercise, so ineffectual the oflhe ohnreL^ ° 
 results to which it could attain, that it was unlikely for a long time to 
 disturb the unity of doctrine in the Church. While men were reason- 
 ing round and round again in the same vicious circle without finding 
 any escape, and indeed without seeking any, delighted with the dexter- 
 ity of their movements, but never considering whether they were mak- 
 ing any real advance, it was unnecessary to anticipate inconvenience 
 from their progress. * 
 
 Here stood the difficulty. The decisions of the Church were asserted 
 to be infallible and irrevocable ; her philosophy, if such it can be called 
 — as must be the case with any philosophy reposing upon a The pwioBoph- 
 final revelation from God — was stationary. But the awaken- the chS*° 
 ing mind of the West was displaying, in an unmistakable way, its pro- 
 pensity to advance. As one who rides an untuly horse will sometimes 
 divert him from a career which could not be checked by main force by 
 reining him round and round, and thereby exhausting his spirit and 
 strength, and keeping him in a narrow space, so the wanton efforts of 
 the mind may be guided, if they can not be checked. These princi- 
 ples of policy answered their object for a time, until metaphysical were 
 changed for physical discussions. Then it became impossible to divei t 
 the onward movement, and on the first great question arising— that of 
 the figure and place of the earth— a question dangerous to the last de- 
 gree, since it inferentially included the determination of the position of 
 man in the universe, theology suffered an irretrievable defeat. Between 
 her and philosophy there was thenceforth no other issue than a mortal 
 duel. 
 
 Though Erigena is the true founder of Scholasticism, Eoscelin, al- 
 ready mentioned as renewing the question of Pla,tonic TJni- cou„eof scho- 
 versals, has been considered by some to be entitled to that i='=«™>»- 
 distinction. After him, William of Champeaux opened a school of logic 
 in Paris, A.D. 1109, and from that time the University made it a promi- 
 nent study.' On the rise of the mendicant orders. Scholasticism received 
 a great impulse, perhaps, as has been afiirmed, because' its disputations 
 suited their illiterate state ; Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican, and Duns 
 Scotus, the Franciscan, founding rival schools, which wrangled for three 
 centuries. In Italy, Scholasticism never prevailed as it did in France 
 
836 CONCENTRATION OF PAPAL POWER. 
 
 and elsewHere, and at last it died away, its uselessness, save in the po- 
 litical result "before mentioned, having been detected. 
 
 The middle of the eleventh century ushers in an epoch for the papacy 
 Reaction in the and for Europc. It is marked by an attempt at a moral ref- 
 
 papaoy agaviat ■ J nn i 1. j. l i? • i . , 
 
 these presBures. ormatiou IB. the (Jhurch — by a struggle tor securing the inde- 
 pendence of the papacy both of the Emperors of Germany and of the 
 neighboring Italian nobles — thus far the pope being the mere officer of 
 the emperor, and often the creature of the surrounding nobility — by the 
 conversion of the temporalities of the Church, heretofore indirect, into 
 absolute possessions, by securing territories given " to the Church, the 
 blessed Peter,.and the Eoman republic" to the first of those beneficiaries, 
 Preparation for a excluding the last. As cvcnts proceeded, these minor af- 
 
 concentration of„, , ^ „,,. ^ 
 
 the papal power, fairs couverged, and out of their union arose the great con- 
 flict of the imperial and papal powers for supremacy. The same policy 
 which had succeeded in depriving the Eoman people of any voice in ap- 
 pointments of popes — which had geculari^d the Church in Italy, for a 
 while seized all the material resources of Europe through the device of 
 the Crusades, and nearly established a papal autocracy in all Europe. 
 These political events demand from us a notice, since from them arose 
 intellectual consequences of the utmost importance. 
 
 The second Lateran Council, under Nicolas II., accomplished the re- 
 sult of vesting the elective power to the papacy in the cardinals. That 
 was a great revolution. It was this council which gave to Berengar his 
 choice between death and recantation- There were at this period three 
 Three partien powcrs engaged in Italy — ^the Imperial, the Church party, and 
 in Italy. ^j^g xtaliaii nobles. It was for the sake of holding the last in 
 check — ^for, since it was the nearest, it required the most unremitting at- 
 tention—that Hildebrand had advised the popes who were his immediate 
 predecessors to use the Normans, who were settled in the south of the 
 peninsula, by whom the lands of the nobles were devastated. Thus the 
 difficulties of their position led the popes to a repetition of their ancient 
 policy ; and as they had, in old times, sought the protection of the Frank- 
 ish, kings, so now they sought that of the Normans. But in the midst 
 of the dissensions and tumults of the times, a great man was emerging— 
 HUdebrand, who, with 9,lmost superhuman a;bnegation, again and again 
 Hildebrand be- abstained from making himself pope. On the death of Al- 
 comes pope, exaudcr II. his opportunity came, and, with acceptable force, 
 he was raised to that dignity, A.D. 1073. 
 
 Scarcely was HUdebrand Pope Gregory YII. when he vigorously pro- 
 Hfldebrana cccdcd to Carry into effect the policy he had been preparing 
 a reform, during the pontificates of his predecessors. In many respects 
 the times were propitious. The blameless lives of the German popes 
 had cast a veil of oblivion over the abominations of their Italian prede- 
 cessors. Hildebrand addressed himself to tear out every vestige of si- 
 
THE POLICY OF HILDEBRAND. 3^7 
 
 mony and concubinage with a remorseless hand. That task must be 
 finished before he could hope to accomplish his grand project of an ec- 
 clesiastical autocracy in Europe, with the pope at its head, and the cler- 
 gy, both in their persons and property, independent of the civil power ; 
 and it was plain that, apart from all moral considerations, the supremacy 
 of Eome in such a system altogether turned on the celibacy Ngjg„,ity„f „gii,,. 
 of the clergy. If marriage was permitted to the ecclesias- ^'^yoithecieigy. 
 tic, what was to prevent hinr from handing down, as an hereditary pos- 
 session, the wealth and dignities he had obtained. In such a state of 
 things, the central government at Eome nee jsgairily stood at every dis- 
 advantage against the local interests of an individual, and still more so 
 if many individuals should combine together to promote, in common, 
 similar interests. 'Bit very different would it be if the promotion must 
 be looked for from Eome — very different as regards the hold upon pub- 
 lic sentiment, if such a descent from father to son was absolutely pre- 
 vented, and a career fairly opened to all irrespective of their station in 
 life. To the Church it was to the last degree important that a man 
 should derive his advancement from her, not from his ancestor. In the 
 trials to which she was perpetually exposed, there could be no doubt 
 that by such persons her interests would be best served. 
 
 In these circumstances Gregory VII. took his course. The synod held 
 at Eome in the first year of his pontificate denounced the marriage of 
 the clergy, enforcing its decree by the doctrine that the effi- it ia enforced, 
 cacy of the sacraments altogether depended on their being administer- 
 ed by hands sinless in that respect, and made all communicants partners 
 in the pastoral crime. "With a provident foresight of the coming oppo- 
 sition, he carried out the policy he had taught his predecessors of con- 
 ciliating the Normans in the south of Italy, though he did The pops seeks 
 not "hesitate to resist them, by the aid of the Countess Ma- of theKormaL. 
 tilda, when they dared to touch the possessions of the Church. It was 
 for the sake of this that the Norman invasion of England under "William 
 the Conqueror had already been approved of, a consecrated standard and 
 a ring containing a hair from the head of St. Peter sent him, and per- 
 mission given for the replacement of Saxon bishops and other dignita- 
 ries by Normans. It was not forgotten how great had been the gains 
 to the papacy, three centuries before, by changing the dynasty of the 
 Franks;, and thus the policy of an Italian town gave a permanent im- 
 press to the history of England. Hildebrand foresaw that the sword of 
 the Italian-Norman would be wanted to carry out his projected ends. 
 He did not hesitate to authorize the overthrow of a Saxon dynasty by 
 the French-Norman, that he might be more sure of the fidelity of that 
 sword. "Without the countenance of the pope, the Norman could never 
 have consolidated his power, nor even held his ground in England. 
 
 From these movements of the papacy sprang the conflict with the 
 
 Y 
 
338 CONFLICT BETWEEN THE EMPEEOE AND HILDEBEAND. 
 
 The conflict on Emperors of Germany respecting investitures. The Bishop 
 inveBtiturea. gf Milan — who, it appears, had perjured himself in the quar- 
 rel respecting concubinage— had been excommunicated by Alexander II. 
 The imperial council appointed as his successor one Godfrey ; the pope 
 had nominated Atto. Hereupon Alexander had summoned the empe- 
 ror to appear before him on a charge of simony, and granting investi- 
 tures without his approbation. While the matter was yet in abeyance, 
 Alexander died ; but Gregory took up the contest. A synod he had as- 
 sembled ordered that, if any one should accept investiture from a lay- 
 man, both the giver and receiver should be excommunicated. The pre- 
 tense against lay-investiture was that it was a usurpation of a papal 
 right, and that it led to the appointment of evil and ignorant men ; the 
 reality was a determination to extend papal powerj by making Eome the 
 fountain of emolument. Gregory, by.his movements, had thus brought 
 upon himself three antagonists — the imperial power, the Italian nobles, 
 and the married clergy. The latter, unscrupulous and exasperated, met 
 him with his own weapons, not hesitating to calumniate his friendship 
 with the Countess Matilda. It was also suspected that they were con- 
 nected with the outrage perpetrated by the nobles that took place in 
 Outrage on Rome. On Christmas night, A.D. 1075, in the midst of a vie- 
 Hiidebrand. ^q^^ tsUu, while the popc was administering the communion, a 
 band of soldiers burst into the church, seized Gregory at the altar, strip- 
 ped and wounded him, and haling him on horseback behind one of the 
 soldiers, carried him off to a strong-hold, from which he was rescued by 
 the populace by force. But, without wavering for a moment, the un- 
 daunted pontiff pressed on his conflict with the imperial power, sum- 
 moning Henry to Eome to account for his delinquencies, and threaten- 
 ing his excommunication if he should not appear before an appointed 
 day. In haste, under the auspices of the king, a synod was assem'bled 
 at Worms ; charges against the pope of licentious life, bribery, necro- 
 mancy, simony, murder, a-theism, were introduced, and sentence of depo- 
 sition pronounced against him. On his side, Gregory assembled the 
 third Lateran Council, A.D. 1076, placed King Henry under interdict, 
 absolved his subjects from allegiance, and deposed him. A series of 
 He defines the constitutions, clcarly defining the new bases of the papal sys- 
 Church, tern, was published. They were to the following effect: "That 
 the Ronlan pontifi" can alone be called universal ; that he algne has a 
 right to depose bishops ; that his legates have a right to preside over all 
 bishops in a general council ; that he can depose absent prelates ; that 
 he alone has a right to use imperial ornaments ; that princes are bound 
 to kiss his feet, and his only; that he has a right to depose emperors; 
 that no synod or council summoned without his commission can be call- 
 ed general ; that no book can be called canonical without his authonty; 
 that his sentence can be annulled by none, but that he may annul the 
 
HILDEBEAiitD'S VICTORY. 339 
 
 decrees of -all ; that the Eoman Churcli has been, is, and will continue to 
 be infallible ; that whoever dissents from it ceases to be a catholic Chris- 
 tian, and that subjects may be absolved from their allegiance to wicked 
 princes." The power that could assert such resolutions was near its cul- 
 mination. 
 
 And now was manifest the superiority of the spiritual over the tem- 
 poral power. The quarrel with Henry went on, and, after a hard strug- 
 gle and many intrigues to draw the Normans over to him, that monarch 
 was compelled to submit, and in the depth of winter to cross ^^ overcomes the 
 the snowy Alps, under circumstances of unparalleled hard- ■"^"^ °' Germany, 
 ship, to seek absolution from his adversary. Then -ensued the scene at 
 Canosa — a penitent in white raiment standing in the dreary snow of 
 three winter days, January, 1077, cold and fasting at the gate, seeking 
 pardon and reconcihation of the inexorable pontiff; that penitent was the 
 King of Germany. Then ensued the dramatic scene at the sacrament, 
 in which the gray-haired pontiff called upon Heaven to strike him dead 
 upon fhe spot if he were not innocent of the crimes of which he had 
 been accused, and dared the guilty monarch to do the same. 
 
 Whoever will reflect on these interesting events can not fail to discern 
 two important conclusions. The tone of thought through- condusiona from 
 out Europe had changed within the last three ages ; ideas ""^^ °^^°''- 
 were entertained, doctrines originated or controverted, a policy conceived 
 and attempted altogether in advance of the old times. Intellect, both 
 among the clergy and the laity, had undergone a great development. 
 But the peculiar character of the papal power is also ascertained — that 
 it is worldly, and the result of the policy of man. The outrage on Hil- 
 debrand shows how that power had diminished at its centre, but the vic- 
 tory, over Henry that it maintained its strength at a distance. Natural 
 forces diminish as the distance increases ; this unnatural force displayed 
 an opposite quality. 
 
 Gregory had carried his point. He had not only beaten back the 
 Northern attack, but had established the supremacy of the ecclesiastical 
 over the temporal power, and that point, with inflexible reso- culmination 
 lution, he maintained, though in its consequences it cost Ger- asticai power' 
 many a civil war. But, while he was thus unyielding in his temporal 
 policy, there is reason to suppose that he was not without misgivings in 
 his theological belief. In the war between Henry and his rival Kodolph, 
 Gregory was compelled by policy to be at first neutral. He occupied 
 himself with the Eucharistic controversy. This was at the time that he 
 was associated with Berengar, who lived with him for a year. Nor did 
 the pope think it unworthy of himself to put forth, in excuse Friendship of 
 of the heretic; a vision, in which the Virgin Mary had assert- and^Beren^r. 
 ed the orthodoxy of Berengar ; but, as his quarrel with King Henry, 
 went on to new excommunications and depositions, a synod of bishops 
 
340 HIS EVENTUAL DEFEAT AND DEATH. 
 
 presumed to condemn him as a partisan of Berengar and a necromancer. 
 On the election of Gilbert of Kavenna as antipope, Gregory, without hes- 
 itation, pushed his principles to their consequences, denouncing kingship 
 as a wicked and diabolical usurpation, an infraction of the equal rights 
 The German con- of man. Hereupon Henry determined to destroy him or to 
 test resumed. -j^g destroyed; and descending again into Italy, A.D.1081, 
 for three successive years laid siege to Kome. In vain the amorous Ma- 
 tilda, with more than the devotion of an ally, endeavored to succor her 
 beleaguered friend. The city surrendered to Henry at Christmas, A.D. 
 1084. With his antipope he entered it, receiving from his hands the 
 imperial crown. Ihe Norman allies of Hildebrand at last approached 
 in strength. The emperor was compelled to retreat. A feeble attempt 
 to hold the city was made. The Normans took it by surprise, and re- 
 leased Gregory from his imprisonment in the Castle of St. Angelo. An 
 awful scene ensued. Some cpnflicts between the citizens and the Nor- 
 mans occurred ; a battle in the streets was the consequence, and Eome 
 was pillaged, sacked, and fired. Streets, churches, palaces, were left a 
 heap of smoking ashes.. The people by thousands were massacred, 
 The Saracens, of whom there were multitudes in the Norman army, were 
 The Mohammedana i^ t^6 Etcmal City at last, End, horrible to be said, were 
 support imdej)rand. t]^gj,g ^g ^^g j^jj.^^ supportcrs of the Vicar of Christ. Ma- 
 trons, nuns, young wom'en, were defiled. Crowds of men, women, and 
 children were carried off and sold as slaves. It was the treatment of a 
 Sack of Home, and city takcu by storm. In consternation, the blasted pontiff 
 death of the pope, reared, with his infidel deliverers, from the ruined capital 
 to Salerno, and there he died, A.D. 1085. 
 
 He had been dead ten years, when a policy was entered upon by the 
 papacy which imparted to it more power than all the exertions of Greg- 
 The craaadea. ory. The Crusadcs were instituted by a French pope. Urban 
 11. Unpopular in Italy, perhaps by reason of his foreign birth, he 
 aroused his native country for the recovery of the Holy Land. He be- 
 gan his career in a manner not now unusual, interfering in a quarrel be- 
 tween Philip of France and his wife, taking the part of the latter, as ex- 
 perience had shown it was always advisable for a pope to do. Soon, 
 however, he devoted his attention to something more important than 
 these matrimonial broils. It seems that a European crusade was first 
 distinctly conceived of and its value most completely comprehended by 
 Gerbert, to whom, doubtless, his Mohammedan experiences had suggest- 
 ed it. In the first year of his pontificate, he wrote an epistle, in the name 
 of the Church of Jerusalem, to the Church throughout the world, ex- 
 horting Christian soldiers to come to her relief either with arms or money. 
 It had been subsequently contemplated. by Gregory "VII- For many 
 years, pilgrimages to Palestine had been on the increase ; a very valua- 
 ble export trade in relics from that country had arisen ; crowds from 
 
THE CRUSADKS. 341 
 
 all parts of Europe liad of late made their way to Jerusalem, for the sin- 
 gular purpose of being present at the great assize which the Scriptures 
 were supposed to prophesy would soon take place in the Valley of Je- 
 hoshaphat. The Mohammedans had inflicted on these pious persons 
 much maltreatment, being unable to comprehend the purport of their ex- 
 traordinary journey, and probably perceiving a necessity of putting some 
 restriction upon the apparition of such countless multitudes. Peter the 
 Hermit, who had witnessed the barbarities to which his Christian breth- 
 ren were exposed, and the abominations of the holy places now in the 
 hands of the infidel, roused Europe, by his preaching, to a frantic state ; 
 and Urban, at the CouncU of Clermont, A.D. 1095, gave au- TheCouncii 
 thdrity to the Holy War. "It is the will of God," was the t?£'^i 
 unanimous shout of the council and the populace. The period- "="™'i«- 
 ical shower of shooting stars was seen with remarkable brilliancy on 
 April 25th, and mistaken by the council for a celestial monition that 
 the Christians must precipitate themselves in like manner on the East. 
 From this incident we may perceive how little there was of inspiration 
 in these blundering and violent ecclesiastical assemblages ; the moment 
 that they can be brought to a scientific test their true nature is detected. 
 As a preliminary exercise, a ferocious persecution of the Jews of France 
 had burst forth, and the blood and tortures of multitudes offered a tardy 
 expiation for the crimes that their ancestors had committed at the Cru- 
 cifixion in Jerusalem, more than a thousand years before. 
 
 It does not fall within my plan to give a detailed description of the 
 Crusades. It is enough to say that, though the clergy had promised the 
 protection of God to every one who would thus come to his assistance — 
 an ample reward for their pious work in this life, and the happiness of 
 heaven in the next — Urban's crusade failed not only disas- The first cmaade. 
 trously, but hideously, so far as the ignorant rabbles, under Peter the 
 Hermit and Walter the Penniless, were concerned. Nevertheless, 
 under the better-organized expeditions that soon followed, Jerusalem 
 was captured, July 15th, A.D. 1099. The long and ghastly line of bones 
 whitening the road through Hungary to the East showed how different 
 a thing it was for a peaceable and solitary pilgrim to beg his way, with 
 his staff, and wallet, and scallop-shell, and a disorderly riot of thousands 
 upon thousands to rush forward without any subordination, any organ- 
 ization, trusting only to the providence of God. The van of the Cru- 
 sades consisted of two hundred and seventy-five thousand men, accom- 
 panied by eight horses, and preceded by a goat and a goose, into which 
 some one had told them that the Holy Ghost had entered. Driven to 
 madness by disappointment and famine — expecting, in their ignorance, 
 that every town they came to must be Jerusalem — in their extremity 
 they laid hands on whatever Was in their way. Their track was mark- 
 ed by robbery, bloodshed, and fire. In the first crusade more than half 
 
342 RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES. 
 
 a million of men died. It was far more disastrous than the Moscow 
 retreat. 
 
 But still, in a military sense, the first crusade accomplished its object, 
 storming of The Capture of Jerusalem, as might be expected under such cir- 
 Jerusalem, cumstanccs, was attended by the perpetration of atrocities al- 
 most beyond belief. What a contrast to the conduct of the Arabs I 
 When thB Khalif Omar took Jerusalem, A.D. 637, he rode into the city 
 by the side of the Patriarch Sophronius, conversing with him on its an- 
 tiquities. At the hour of prayer, he declined to perform his deyotions 
 in the Church of the Eesurrection, in which he chanced to be, but prayed 
 on the- steps of the Church of ,Constantine ; " for," said he to the patri- 
 arch, "had I done so, the Mussulmen in a future age would have in- 
 fringed the treaty, under color of imitating my example." But, in the 
 capture by the Crusaders, the brains of young children were dashed out 
 against the walls ; infants were pitched over the battlements ; every wom- 
 an that could be seized was violated ; men were roasted at fires ; some 
 were ripped up, to see if they had swallowed gold ; the Jews were driven 
 into their synagogue, and there burnt ; a massacre of nearly 70,000 per- 
 sons took place; and the pope's legate was seen "partaking in the tri- 
 umph." 
 
 It had been expected by the politicians who fitst projected these wars 
 Political results ^^^^ they would heal the divisions of the Latin and Greek 
 of the Crusades, churchcs, and give birth to a European republic, under the 
 spiritual presidency of the pope. In these respects they proved a fail- 
 ure. It does not appear that the popes themselves personally had ever 
 any living faith in the result. Not one of them ever joined a crusade; 
 and the Church, as a corporation, took care to embark very little money 
 in these undertakings. But, though they did not answer to the original 
 intention, they gave, in an indirect way, a wonderful stimulus to the pa- 
 pal power. Under the plausible pretenses offered by them, the pope ob- 
 Give to Rome taincd coutrol over the person of every Christian man from the 
 meVaSdmon- highest to the lowcst. The cross once taken, all civil control 
 67 in Europe. Q^gj. ^]^q Crusadcr ceased— he became the man of the Church. 
 Under those pretenses also, a right was imperceptibly acquired of rais- 
 ing revenue in all parts of Europe ; even the clergy might be assessed. 
 A drain was thus established on the resources of distant nations for an 
 object which no man dared to gainsay ; if he adventured on any such 
 thing, he must encounter the odium of an infidel — an atheist. A steady 
 stream of money flowed into Italy. Nor was it alone by this taxation 
 of every Christian nation without permission of its government— this 
 empire within every empire — immense wealth accrued to the projectors, 
 , while the infatuation could be kept up, by the diminished rate at which 
 land could be obtained. Domains were thrown into the market; there 
 were few purchasers except the Church. Immense domains were also 
 
BEENAED OF CDAIEVAUX. 343 
 
 given away by weak-minded sinners, and those on the point of death, 
 for the salvation of their spuls. Thus, all things considered, the effect 
 of the Crusades, though not precisely that which was expected, was of 
 singular advantage to the Church, giving it a commanding strength it 
 had never possessed before. 
 
 In their resistance to the German attack the popes never hesitated at 
 any means. They prompted Prince Henry to revolt against their great 
 antagonist, his father ; they intervened, not to rebuke, but to abet him, 
 when he threw his father into prison and deprived him of the necessa- 
 ries of life. They carried their vengeance beyond the grave. When 
 the aged emperor, broken in heart, escaped from their torment, and was 
 honorably buried by the Bishop of Liege, that prelate was forthwith ex- 
 communicated and compelled to disinter the corpse. But crimes like 
 these, against which human nature revolts, meet with a retribution. 
 This same Prince Henry, becoming Henry Y., was forced by Resistance of 
 circumstances to resume his father's quarrel, and to refuse to Heniyv. 
 yield his right jaf granting investitures. He marched upon Eome, and 
 at the point of the sword compelled his adversary. Pope Paschal IT., to 
 surrender all the possessions and royalties of the Church — compelled 
 him to crown him emperor — ^not, however, until the pontiff had been 
 subjected to the ignominy of imprisonment, and brought into condem- 
 nation among his ov^n party. 
 
 Things seemed to be going to ruin in Eome, and such must inevita- 
 bly have been the issue, had not an extraneous influence arisen in Ber- 
 nard of Clairvaux, to whom Europe learned to look up as the Bernard of 
 beater down of heresies, theological and political. He had been stimniateB 
 a pupil of William of Champeaux, the vanquished rival of Ab- cmsade. 
 elard, and Abelard he hated with a religious and personal hate. He 
 was a wonder-worker, though some of his miracles now only excite a 
 smile; as when he excommunicated the flies which infested a church, 
 and they all fell down dead and were swept out by the basketful. He 
 has been described as " the mellifluous doctor, whose works are not sci- 
 entific, but full of unction." He could not tolerate the principle at the 
 basis of Abelard's philosophy — the assertion of the supremacy of reason. 
 Of Arnold of Brescia — who carried that principle to its political conse- 
 quences, and declared that the riches and power of the clergy were in- 
 consistent with their profession — he was the accuser and punisher. Ber- 
 nard preached a new crusade, authenticating his power by miracles, af- 
 firmed to be not inferior to those of our Savior ; promising to him who 
 should slay an unbeliever happiness in this life and Paradise in the life 
 to come. This second crusade was conducted by kings, and included 
 fanatic ladies, dressed in the armor of men ; but it ended in ruin, its failure. 
 
 It was reserved for the only Englishman who ever attained to the pa- 
 pacy to visit Eome with the punishment she had so often inflicted upon 
 
344 SUMMARY OF THE FOREGOING EVENTS. 
 
 others, Nicolas Breakspear — Hadrian IV. — put the Eternal City under 
 interdict, thereby ending the republic which, the partisans of Arnold of 
 Brescia had set up. But herein he was greatly aided by a change of 
 sentiment in many of the inhabitants of Eome, who had found to their 
 cost that it was more profitable for their city to be the centre of Chris- 
 tianity than the seat of a phantom republic. As an equivalent for his 
 coronation by Adrian, Frederick Barbarossa agreed to surrender to the 
 Church Arnold of Brescia. With indecent haste, the moment she had 
 Murder of Arnold obtained possessiou of her arch enemy she put him to death 
 of Brescia. — ^^^ delivering him over to the secular arm, as the custom 
 
 had been, but murdering him with her own hand. Seven centuries 
 have elapsed, and the blood of Arnold is still crying from the ground for 
 retribution. Notwithstanding a new— the third — crusade, things went 
 from bad to worse in the Holy Land. Saladin had retaken Jerusalem, 
 A.D. 1187. Barbarossa was drowned in a river in Pisidia. Eichard of 
 England was treacherously imprisoned ; nor did the pope interfere for 
 this brave soldier of the Cross. In the mean time, the Emperors of Ger- 
 many had acquired Sicily by marriage — an incident destined to be of 
 Birth of Fred- ^^ little importance in the history of Europe; for, on the 
 eriok II. death of the Emperor Henry VI. at Messina, his son Freder- 
 ick, an infant not, two years old, was left to be brought up in that isl- 
 and. What the consequences were we shall soon see. 
 
 If we review the events related in this chapter, we find that theidol- 
 Beviev of atry and immorality into which Eome had fallen had become 
 ing eventB. connected with material interests sufficiently powerful to cause 
 their perpetuation ; that converted Germany insisted on a reform, and 
 therefore made a moral attack upon the Italian system, attempting to 
 carry it into effect by civil force. This attack was, properly speaking, 
 purely moral, the intellectual element accompanying it being derived 
 from Western or Arabian influences, as will be shown in the next chap- 
 ter ; and, in its resistance to this, the papacy was not only successful, but 
 actually was able to retaliate, overthrowing the Emperors of Germany, 
 and being even on the point of establishing a European autocracy, with 
 the pope at its head. It was in these events that the Eeformation be- 
 gan, though circumstances intervened to postpone its completion to the 
 era of Luther. Henceforth we see more and more plainly the attitude 
 in which the papacy, through its material interests, was compelled to 
 stand, as resisting all intellectual advancement. Our subject has there- 
 fore here to be left unfinished until we shall have described the Moham- 
 medan influences making pressures on the West and the East. 
 
THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. 345 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST— ^Continued). 
 
 THE WESTEEN OK INTELLECTnAL ATTACK ON THE ITALIAN gTSIBM. 
 
 The intellectual Condition of Christendom contrasted with that of Arabian Spain. 
 
 Diffusion of Arabian intellectual Influences through France and Sicily. — Example of Saracen 
 
 Science in Alhazen, and of Philosophy in Algazzali. — Innocent III. prepares to combat these 
 
 Influences. — Results to Western Europe of the Sack of Constantinople by the Catholics. 
 The spread of Moliammedan light Literature is followed by Heresy. — The crushing of Heresy in 
 
 the South of France by armed Force, the Inquisition, mendicant Orders, auricular Confession, 
 
 and Casuistry, 
 The rising Sentiment is embodied in Frederick II. in Sicily. — His Conflict with and Overthrow 
 
 by the Pope. — Spread of Mutiny among the mendicant Orders. 
 
 A PEESSUEE upon the Italian system had meantime been arising in 
 the West. It was due to the presence of the Arabs in Spain. The pressure 
 
 _ . 1 r> 11' n T • from the West 
 
 It IS necessary, therefore, to relate the circumstances oi their upon Rome, 
 invasion and conquest of that country, and to compare their social and 
 intellectual condition with the contemporary state of Christendom. 
 
 From the barbarism of the native people of Europe, who could scarce- 
 ly be said to have emerged from the savage state, unclean in Barbarism 
 person, benighted in mind, inhabiting huts in which it was a "f'^^T^- 
 mark of wealth if there were bulrushes on the floor and straw mats 
 against the wall ; miserably fed on beans, vetches, roots, and even the 
 bark of trees; clad in garments of untanned skin, or at the best of leath- 
 er — ^perennial in durability, but not conducive to personal purity — a 
 state in which the pomp of royalty was sufficiently and satisfactorily 
 manifested in the equipage of the sovereign, an ox-cart, drawn by not 
 less than two yokes of cattle, quickened in their movements by the goads 
 of pedestrian serfs, whose legs were wrapped in wisps of straw ; from a 
 people, devout believers in all the wild fictions of shrine-miracles and 
 preposterous relics ; from the degradation of a base theology, and from 
 the disputes of ambitious ecclesiastics for power, it is pleasant to turn to 
 the southwest corner of the continent, where, under auspices of a very 
 different kind, the irradiations of light were to break forth. The cres- 
 cent in the West was soon to pass eastward to its full. 
 
 But I must retrace my steps through four centuries, and resume the 
 description of the Arabian movement after the subjugation of Africa, as 
 related on page 247. 
 
 These were the circumstances of the Arab conquest of Spain. In that 
 
846 MOHAMMEDAN CONQUEST OF SPAIN. 
 
 country the Arian Creed liad been supplanted by the orthodox, and the 
 Arab Invasion customary persecutious had set in. From the time of the Em- 
 of Spain. peror Hadrian, who had transported 50,.000 Jewish families 
 into Spain, that race had singularly increased, and, as might be expect- 
 ed, had received no mercy at the hands of the orthodox. Ninety thou- 
 sand individuals had recently suffered compulsory baptism, and so had 
 been brought under the atrocious Catholic law that whoever has been 
 baptized shall be compelled to continue the observances of the Church. 
 The Gothic monarchy was elective, and Eoderic had succeeded to the 
 throne, to the prejudice of the heirs of his predecessor. Though a very 
 brave soldier, he was a luxurious and a licentious man. It was the cus- 
 tom of the Goths to send their children to Toledo to be educated, and, 
 under these circumstances, a young girl of extraordinary beauty, the 
 daughter of Count Julian, governor of Ceuta in Africa, was residing 
 there. King Eoderic fell passionately in love with her, and, being una- 
 ble to overcome her virtuous resolution by persuasion, resorted to vio- 
 lence. The girl found means to inform her father of what had occurred. 
 "By the living God!" exclaimed the count, in a paroxysm of rage, "I 
 will be revenged." But, dissembling his wrath, he crossed over into 
 Spain, had an understanding with Oppas, the Archbishop of Toledo, and 
 other disaffected ecclesiastics, and, under specious pretenses, lulled the 
 suspicions of Eoderic, and brought his daughter away. And now he 
 opened communications with the Emir Musa, prevailing upon him to at- 
 tempt the conquest of the country, and offering that he himself would 
 take ihe lead. The conditions were settled between them, and the con- 
 sent of the khalif to the expedition obtained. Tarik, a lieutenant of the 
 emir, was sent across the Straits with the van of the army. He landed 
 on the rock called, in memory of his name, Gibraltar, April, A.D.711. 
 In the battle that ensued, a part of Eoderic's troops, together with the 
 Archbishop of Toledo, consummated their treasonable compact, and de- 
 lta conqtTest. scrtcd to the Arabs ; the rest were panic-stricken. In the rout, 
 Eoderic himself was drowned in the waters of the Guadalquivir. 
 
 Tarik now proceeded rapidly northward, and was soon joined by his 
 superior, the Emir Musa, who was not, perhaps, without jealousy at his 
 success. As the Arab historians say, the Almighty delivered the idola- 
 ters into their hand, and gave them one' victory after another. As the 
 towns successively fell, they left them in charge of the Jews, to whose 
 revenge the conquest was largely due, and who could be thoroughly 
 trusted ; nor did they pause in their march until they had passed the 
 French frontier and reached the Ehone. It was the intention of Musa 
 to cross the European continent to Constantinople, subjugating the 
 Frank, German, and Italian barbarians by the way. At this time it 
 seemed impossible that France could escape the fate of Spain; and if 
 she fell, the threat of Musa would inevitably have come to pass, that he 
 
AEBEST OF THE MOHAMMEDAN ADVANCE. 847 
 
 would preach the Unity of God in the Vatican. But a quarrel had arisen 
 between him and Tank, who had been imprisoned and even scourged. 
 The friends of the latter, however, did not fail him at the court of Da- 
 mascus. An envoy from the Khalif Alwalid appeared, ordering Musa 
 to desist from his enterprise, to return to Syria, and exonerate himself 
 from the things laid to his charge. But Musa bribed the envoy to let him 
 advance. Hereupon the angry khalif dispatched a second messenger, 
 who, in face of the Moslems and Christians, audaciously arrested him, at 
 the head of his troops, by the bridle of his horse. The conqueror of 
 Spain was compelled to return. He was cast into prison, fined 200,000 
 pieces of gold, publicly whipped, and his life with difficulty spared. As 
 is related of Belisarius, Musa was driven as a beggar to solicit charity, 
 and the Saracen conqueror of Spain ended his days in grief and abso- 
 lute want. 
 
 These dissensions among the Arabs, far more than the sword of 
 Charles Martel, prevented the Mohammedanization of France. Their 
 historians admit the great check received at the battle of Arrest of Moham- 
 Tours, in which Abderrahman was killed ; they call that ^ Europe." 
 field the Place of the Martyrs ; but their accounts by no means corre- 
 spond to the relations of the Christian authors, who afSrm that 375,000 
 Mohammedans fell, but only 1500 Christians. The defeat was not so dis- 
 astrous but that in a few months they were able to resume their ad- 
 vance, and their progress was arrested only by renewed dissensions 
 among themselves — dissensions not alone among the leaders in Spain, 
 but also more serious ones of aspirants for the khalifate in Asia. On 
 the overthrow of the Ommiade house, Abderrahman, one of that family,- 
 escaped to Spain, which repaid the patronage of its conquest by acknowl- 
 edging him as its sovereign. He made Cordova the seat of his govern- 
 ment. Neither he nor his immediate successors took any other title 
 than that of emir, out of respect to the khalif, who resided at Bagdad, 
 the metropolis of Islam, though they maintained a rivalry with him in 
 the patronage of letters and science. Abderrahman himself strengthen- 
 ed his power by an alliance with Charlemagne. 
 
 Scarcely had the Arabs become firmly settled in Spain before they 
 commenced a brilliant career. Adopting what had now be- civilisation 
 come the established policy of the Commanders of the Faithful Iftj^Tip^n' 
 in Asia, the Khalifs of Cordova distinguished themselves as ^^ ^''^^^■ 
 patrons of learning, and set an example of refinement strongly contrast- 
 ing with the condition of the native European princes. Cordova, under 
 their administration, at its highest point of prosperity, boasted of more 
 than two hundred thousand houses, and more than a million of inhabit- 
 ants. After sunset, a man might walk through it in a straight line for 
 ten miles by the light of the public lamps. Seven hundred years after 
 this time there was not so much as one public lamp in London. Its 
 
348 LUXURY OF THE SPANISH MOHAMMEDANS. 
 
 strgets were solidly paved. In Paris; centuries subsequently, whoever 
 stepped over his threshold on a rainy day stepped up to his ankles in 
 mud. Other cities, as Granada, Seville, Toledo, considered themselves 
 rivals of Cordova. The palaces of the khalifs were magnificently deco- 
 rated. Those sovereigns might well look down with supercilious con- 
 tempt on the dwellings of the rulers of Germany, Prance, and England, 
 which were scarcely better than stables — chimneyless, windowless, and 
 with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape, like the wigwams of 
 certain Indians. The Spanish Mohammedans had brought with them 
 Their palaces ^^^ ^^^ luxuries and prodigalities of Asia. Their residences 
 and gardera. g^od forth agaiust the clear blue sky, or were embosomed in 
 woods. ;They had polished marble balconies, overhanging orange-gar- 
 dens ; courts with cascades of water ; shady retreats provocative of slum- 
 ber in the heat of the day ; retiring-rooms, vaulted with stained glass, 
 speckled with gold, over which streams of water were made to gush; 
 the floors and walls were of exquisite mosaic. Here, a fountain of quick- 
 silver shot up in a glistening spray, the glittering particles faUing with 
 a tranquil sound like fairy bells ; there, apartments into which cool air 
 was drawn from flower-gardens, in summer, by means of ventilating 
 towers, and in the winter through earthen pipes, or caleducts,'imbedded 
 in the walls — ^the hypocaust, in the vaults below, breathing forth vol- 
 umes of warm and perfumed air through these hidden passages. The 
 walls were not covered with wainscot, but adorned with arabesques, and 
 paintings of agricultural scenes and views of Paradise. From the ceil- 
 ings, corniced with fretted gold, great chandeliers hung, one of which, it is 
 ■ said, was so large that it contained 1084 lamps. Clusters of frail marble 
 columns surprised the beholder with the vast weights they bore. In 
 the boudoirs of the sultanas they were sometimes of verd antique, and 
 Iricrusted with lapis lazuli. The furniture was of sandal and citron 
 wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ivory, silver, or relieved with gold and 
 precious malachite. In orderly confusion were arranged vases of rock 
 crystal, Chinese porcelains, and tables of exquisite mosaic. The winter 
 apartments were hung with rich tapestry ; the floors were covered with 
 embroidered Persian carpets. Pillows and couches, of elegant forms, 
 were scattered about the rooms, which were perfumed with frankincense. 
 It was the intention of the Saracen architect, by excluding the view of 
 the external landscape, to concentrate attention on his work ; and smce 
 the representation of the human form was religiously forbidden, and that 
 soujce qf decoration denied, his imagination ran riot with the complica- 
 ted arabesques he introduced, and sought every opportunity of replac- 
 ing the prohibited works of art by the trophies and rarities of the gar- 
 den. For this reason, the Arabs never produced artists ; religion turn- 
 ed them from the beautiful, and made them soldiers, philosophers, and 
 men of affairs. Splendid flowers and rare exotics ornamented the cour^ 
 
THEIE SOCIAL LIFE. 349 
 
 yards and even tte inner chambers. Great care was taken to make due 
 provision for tlie cleanliness, occupation, and amusement of the inmates. 
 Through pipes of metal, water, both warm and cold, to suit the season of 
 the year, ran into baths of marble ; in niches, where the current of air 
 could be artificially directed, hung dripping alcarazzas. There were 
 whispering-galleries for the amusement of the women ; labyrinths and 
 marble play -courts for the children ; for the master himself, grand li- 
 braries. The IS^halif Alhakem's was so large that the cata- Libraries and 
 logue alone filled forty volumes. He had also apartments for ^'"^^ of taste, 
 the transcribing, binding, and ornamenting of books. A taste for calig- 
 raphy and the possession of splendidly-illuminated manuscripts seems 
 to have anticipated in the khalifs, both of Asia and Spain, the taste for 
 statuary and paintings among the later popes of Eome. 
 
 Such were the palace and gardens of Zehra, in which Abderrahman 
 III. honored his favorite sultana. The edifice had 1200 col- me court of aij- 
 umns of Greek, Italian, Spanish, and African marble. Its deiTahnmnni. 
 hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls. Through the long 
 corridors of its seraglio black eunuchs silently glided. The ladies of the 
 harem, both wives and concubines, were the most beautiful that could be 
 found. To that establishment alone 6300 persons were attached. The 
 body-guard of the sovereign was composed of 12,000 horsemen, whose 
 cimeters and belts were studded with gold. This was that Abderrah- 
 man who, after a glorious reign of fifty years, sat down to count the 
 number of days of unalloyed happiness he had experienced, and could 
 only enumerate fourteen. " Oh man !" exclaimed the plaintive khalif, 
 " put not thy trust in this present world." 
 
 E"o nation has ever excelled the Spanish Arabs in the beauty and 
 costliness of their pleasure-gardens. To them, also, we owe soOsa iiawta 
 the introduction of very many of our most valuable cultivated "f "^^Moors. 
 fruits, such as the peach. Eetaining the love of their ancestors for the 
 cooling effect of water in a hot climate, <they spared no pains in the su- 
 perfluity of fountains, hydraulic works, and artificial lakes in which fish 
 were raised for the table. Into such a lake, attached to the palace of Cor- 
 dova, many loaves were cast each day tor feed the fish. There were also 
 menageries of foreign animals ; aviaries of rare birds ; manufactories in 
 which skUled workmen, obtained from foreign countries, displayed their 
 art in textures of silk, cotton, linen, and all the miracles of the loom ; 
 in jewelry and filigree-work, with which they ministered to the female 
 pride of the sultanas and concubines. Under the shade of cypresses cas- 
 cades disappeared ; among flowering shrubs there were winding walks, 
 bowers of roses, seats cut out of the rock, and crypt-like grottoes hewn 
 in the living stone. Nowhere was ornamental gardening better under- 
 stood; for not only did the artist try to please the eye as it wandered 
 over the pleasant gradation of vegetable color and form — he also boast- 
 
350 UOHAMMEDAN LITERATURE. 
 
 ed his success in the gratification of the sense of smell by the studied 
 succession of perfumes from beds of flowers. 
 
 To these Saracens we are indebted for many of our personal comforts. 
 Their domes- Kcligiously clcanly, it was not possible for them to clothe, ac- 
 tic life. cording to the fashion of the natives of Europe, in a garment 
 unchanged till it dropped to pieces of itself, a loathsome mass of vermin, 
 stench, and rags. No Arab who had been a minister of state. Or the 
 associate or antagonist of a sovereign, would have offered such a specta- 
 cle as the corpse of Thomas a Becket when his haircloth shirt was re- 
 moved. They taught us the use of the often-changed and often-washed 
 under-garment of linen or cotton, which still passes among ladies under 
 its old Arabic name. But to cleanliness they were not unwilling to add 
 ornament. Especially among women of the higher classes was the love 
 of finery a passion. Their outer garments were often of silk, embroid- 
 ered and decorated with gems and woven gold. So fond were the Moor- 
 ish women of gay colors, and the lustre of chrysolites, hyacinths, eme- 
 ralds, and sapphires, that it was quaintly said that the interior of any 
 public building in which they were permitted to appear looked like a 
 flower-meadow in the spring besprinkled with rain. 
 
 In the midst of all this luxury, which can not be regarded by the his- 
 They cultivate lit- toriau with disdain, since in the end it produced a most im- 
 erature, music, pgrtant rcsult in the south of France, the Spanish khalifs, 
 emulating the example of their Asiatic compeers, and in this strongly 
 contrasting with the popes of Eome, were not only the patrons, but the 
 personal cultivators of all the branches of human learning. One of 
 them was himself the author of a work on polite literature in not less 
 than fifty volumes ; another wrote a treatise on algebra. When Zaryab 
 the musician came from the East to Spain, the Khalif Abderrahman rode 
 forth to meet him in honor. The College of Music in Cordova was sus- 
 tained by ample government patronage, and is said to have produced 
 many illustrious professors. 
 
 The Arabs never translated into their own tongue the great Greek 
 poets, though they so sedulously collected and translated the Greek phi- 
 losophers. Their religious sentiments and sedate character caused them 
 but disapprove to abominate the lewdness of our classical mythology, and to 
 mythoTo^" dcnouncc indignantly any connection between the licentious, 
 impure Olympian Jove and the Most High God as an insufferable and 
 unpardonable blasphemy. Haroun Alraschid had gratified his curidity 
 by causing Homer to be translated into Syriac, but he did not adven- 
 ture on rendering the great epics into Arabic. Notwithstanding this 
 aversion to our graceful but not unobjectionable ancient poetry, among 
 them originated the Tensons, or poetic disputations, carried afterward 
 to perfection among the Troubadours ; from them, also, the Provepgals 
 learned to erfaploy jongleurs. Across the Pyrenees, literary, philosoph- 
 
ITS DIFFUSION IN EUROPE. 351 
 
 ical, and military adventurers were perpetually passing; and thus the 
 luxury, the taste, and, above all, the chivalrous gallantry and elegant 
 courtesies of Moorish society found their way from Granada xhc south 
 and Cordova to Provence and Languedoc. The French, and llZlS^ 
 German, and English nobles imbibed the Arab admiration for ""''' '"'<"• 
 the horse ; they learned to pride themselves on skillful riding. Hunt- 
 ing and falconry became their fashionable pastimes ; they tried to emu- 
 late that Arab skill which had produced the celebrated breed of Anda- 
 lusian horses. It was a scene of grandeur and gallantry ; the pastimes 
 were tilts and tournaments. The refined society of Cordova prided it- 
 self in its politeness. A gay contagion also spread from the beautiful 
 Moorish miscreants to their sisters beyond the mountains ; the South of 
 France was full of the witcheries of female fascinations, and of dancing 
 to the lute and mandolin. Even in Italy and Sicily the love-song be- 
 came the favorite composition ; and out of these genial but not ortho- 
 dox beginnings the polite literature of modern Europe arose, tight nujratnre 
 The pleasant epidemic spread by degrees along every hill- iiyMiditaiy.'"' 
 side and valley. In monasteries, voices that had vowed celibacy might 
 be heard caroling stanzas of which St Jerome would hardly have 
 approved ; there was many a juicy abbot, who could troll forth in jo- 
 cund strains, like those of the merry sinners of Malaga and Xeres, the 
 charms of women and wine, though one was forbidden to the Moslem 
 and one to the monk. The sedate graybeards of Cordova had already 
 applied to the supreme judge to have the songs of the Spanish Jew, 
 Abraham Ibn Sahal, prohibited ; for there was not a youth, nor woman, 
 nor child in the city who could not repeat them by heart. Their im- 
 moral tendency was a public scandal. The light gayety of Spain was 
 reflected in the coarser habits of the northern countries. It was an arch- 
 deacon of Oxford who some time afterward sang, 
 
 " Mihi sit propositum in tabeima mori, 
 Vinum sit appositum morientis ori, 
 Ut dicant, cum renerint angelorum chori ; 
 'Dens sit propitius huic potatori,' " etc. 
 
 Even as early as the tenth century, persons having a taste for learn- 
 ing and for elegant amenities found their way into Spain from all ad- 
 joining countries ; a practice in subsequent years still more indulged in, 
 when it became illustrated by the brilliant success of Gerbert, who, as 
 we have seen, passed from the infidel University of Cordova to the pa- 
 pacy of Epme. 
 
 The khalifs of the West carried out the precepts of Ali, the fourth 
 successor of Mohammed, in the patronage of literature. They ^he Arabian 
 established libraries in all their chief towns ; it is said that °°'""'' 'y***™- 
 not fewer than seventy were in existence. To every mosque was attach- 
 ed a public school, in which the children of the poor were taught to read 
 
852 SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 and ■write, and instructed in the precepts of the Koran. For those in 
 easier circumstances there were academies, usually arrafiged in twenty- 
 five or thirty apartments, each calculated for accommodating four stu- 
 dents ; the academy being presided over by a rector. In Cordova, Gra- 
 nada, and other great cities, there were universities frequently under the 
 ■ superintendence of Jews ; the Mohammedan maxim being that the real 
 learning of a man is of more public importance than any particular re- 
 ligious opinions he may entertain. In this they followed the example 
 of the Asiatic khalif, Haroun Alraschid, who actually conferred the su- 
 perintendence of his schools on John Masu^, a Nestorian Christian. The 
 Mohammedan liberality was in striking contrast with the intolerance of 
 Europe. Indeed, it may be doubted whether at this time any European 
 nation is sufficiently advanced to follow such an example. In the uni- 
 versities, the professors of polite literature gave lectures upon Arabic 
 classical works ; others taught rhetoric, or composition, or mathematics, 
 or astronomy, or other sciences. From these institutions many of the 
 practices observed in our colleges were derived. They held Commence- 
 ments as we do, at which poems were read and orations delivered in 
 presence of the public. They had also, in addition to these schools of 
 general learning, professional ones, particularly for medicine. 
 
 With a pride perhaps not altogether inexcusable, the Arabians boast- 
 cuwvatioa of gram- ed of their language as being the most perfect spoken by 
 
 jnnr, rhetoric, com- -nj-i in- mi in i i 
 
 poaitioD. man. Mohammed himself, when challenged to produce a 
 
 miracle in proof of the authenticity of his mission, uniformly pointed to 
 the composition of the Koran, its unapproachable excellence vindicating 
 its inspiration. The orthodox Moslems — the Moslems are those who 
 are submissively resigned to the Divine will — are wont to assert that 
 every page of that book is indeed a conspicuous miracle. It is not then 
 surprising that, in the Arabian schools, great attention was paid to the 
 study of language, and that so many celebrated grammarians were pro- 
 duced. By these scholars, dictionaries, similar to those now in use, were 
 composed ; their copiousness is indicated by the circumstance that one 
 of them consisted of sixty volumes, the definition of each word being il- 
 lustrated or sustained by quotations from Arab authors of acknowledged 
 repute. They had also lexicons of Greek, Latin, Hebrew ; and cyclope- 
 dias such as the Historical Dictionary of Sciences of Mohammed Ibn Ab- 
 dallah, of Granada. In their highest civilization and luxury they did 
 not forget the amusements of their forefathers — ^listening to the tale-tell- 
 er, who never failed to obtain an audience in the midst of Arab tents. 
 Around the evening fires in Spain the wandering literati exercised their 
 wonderful powers of Oriental invention, edifying the eager listeners by 
 such narrations as those that have descended to us in the Arabian Nighte 
 Entertainments. The more sober and higher efforts of the educated 
 were, of course, directed to pulpit eloquence, in conformity to the exam- 
 
MOORISH LITEEATUEE AND HISTOEIES. 853 
 
 pie of all the great Oriental khalifs, and sanctified by the practice of the 
 Prophet himself. Their poetical productions embraced all the modem 
 minor forms — satires, odes, elegies, etc. ; but they never produced any 
 work in the higher walks of poesy, no epic, no tragedy. Perhaps this 
 was due to their false fashion of valuing the mechanical ex- Defects of their 
 ecution of a work. They were the authors and introducers ""^''""'''^ 
 of rhypie ; and such was the luxuriance and abundance of their lan- 
 guage, that, in some of their longest poems, the same rhyme is said to 
 have been used alternately from the beginning to the end. Where such 
 mechanical triumphs were popularly prized, it may be supposed that the 
 conception and spirit would be indifferent. Even among the Spanish 
 women there were not a few who, like Velada, Ayesha, Labana, Algasa- 
 nia, achieved reputation in these compositions ; and some of them were 
 daughters of khalifs. And this is the more interesting to us, since it 
 was from the Provengal poetry, the direct descendant of these efforts, 
 that European literature arose. Sonnets and romances at last displaced 
 the grimly-orthodox productions of the wearisome and ignorant fathers 
 of the Church. 
 
 If fiction was prized among the Spanish Arabs, history was held in 
 not less esteem. Every khalif had his own historian. The instincts of 
 the race are perpetually peeping out ; .not only were there historians of 
 the Commanders of the Faithful, but also of celebrated horses and illus- 
 trious camels. In connection with history, statistics were cultivated ; this 
 having been, it may be said, a necessary study from the first, enforced 
 on the Saracen officers in their assessment of tribute on conquered mis- 
 believers, and subsequently continued as an object of taste. It was, 
 doubtless, a similar necessity, arising from their position, that stamped 
 such a remarkably practical aspect on the science of the Arabs Tieir taste 
 generally. Many of their learned men were travelers and voy- cai scien«. 
 agers, constantly moving about for the acquisition or diffusion of knowl- 
 edge, their acquirements being a passport to them wherever they went, 
 and a sufficient introduction to any of the African or Asiatic courts. 
 They were thus continually brought in contact with men of affairs, sol- 
 diers of fortune, statesmen, and became imbued with much of their prac- 
 tical spirit; and hence the singularly romantic character which the bi- 
 ographies of many of these men display, wonderful turns of prosperity, 
 violent deaths. The scope of their literary labors offers a subject well 
 worthy of meditation ; it contrasts with the contemporary ignorance of 
 Europe. Some wrote on chronology ; some on numismatics ; some, now 
 that military eloquence had become objectless, wrote on pulpit oratory; 
 some on agriculture and its allied branches, as the art of irrigation. Not 
 one of the purely mathematical, or mixed, or practical sciences was 
 omitted. Out of a list too long for detailed quotation, I may recall a few 
 names : Assamh, who wrote on topography and statistics, a brave sol- 
 
 Z 
 
354 
 
 SCIENTIFIC "WRITINGS. 
 
 dier, who was killed in the invasion of France, A.D. 720 ; Avicenna 
 Their continued the great phvsician and philosopher, who -died A.D. 1037 • 
 
 inclination to the , "^ , ,,^ , i i ■ p ■'vfi , 
 
 study of medicine. Averrhoes, 01 Cordova, the chief commentator on Aristotle 
 
 A.D. 1198. It was his intention to unite the doctrines of Aristotle with 
 those of the Koran. To him is imputed the discovery of spots upon the 
 sun. The leading idea of his philosophy was the numerical unity of the 
 souls of mankind, though parted among millions of living individuals. 
 He died at Morocco. Abu Othman wrote on zoology ; Alberuni, on 
 gems — ■ he had traveled to India to procure information ; Ehazes, Al 
 Abbas, and Al Beithar, on botany — the latter had been in all parts of 
 the world for the purpose of obtaining specimens. Ebn Zoar, better 
 known as Avenzoar, may be looked upon as the authority in Moorisli 
 pharmacy. Pharmacopoeias were published by the schools, improve- 
 ments on the old ones of the Nestorians : to them may be traced the in- 
 troduction of many Arabic words, such as sirup, julep, elixir, still used 
 among our apothecaries. A competent scholar might furnish not only 
 an interesting, but valuable book, founded on the remaining relics of the 
 Reiicaofthe Arab vocabularv : for,- in whatever direction we may look, 
 
 Arab vocab- . •/ ' 
 
 niary. WO mcct, in the various pursuits of peace and war, of letters 
 and of science, Saracenic vestiges. Our dictionaries tell us that such is 
 the origin of admiral, alchemy, .alcohol, algebra, chemise, cotton, and 
 hundreds of other words. The Saracens commenced the apphcation of 
 chemistry, both to the theory and practice of medicine, in. the explana- 
 tion of the functions of the human body and in the cure of its diseases. 
 Nor was their surgery behind their, medicine. Albucasis, of Cordova, 
 Their medicine shriuks uot from the performance of the most formidable op- 
 and surgery, eratious in his own and in the obstetrical art ; the actual cau- 
 tery and the knife are used without hesitation. He has left us ample 
 descriptions of the surgical instruments then employed ; and from him 
 we learn that, in operations on females in which considerations of deli- 
 cacy intervened, the services of properly instructed women were secured. 
 How different was all this from the state of things in Europe : the Chris- 
 tian peasant, fever-stricken or overtaken by accident, hied to the nearest 
 saint-shrinp and expected a miracle ; the Spanish Moor relied on the pre- 
 scription or lancet of his physician, or the bandage and knife of Bis 
 surgeon. 
 
 In mathematics the Arabians acknowledged their indebtedness to two 
 sources, Greek and Indian, but they greatly improved upon both. The 
 Liberality of the Asiatic khalifs had made exertions to procure translations 
 Asiatic khalifs. gf guclid, Apollonius, Archimedes, and other Greek geome- 
 ters. Almaimon, in a letter to the Emperor Theophilus, expressed his 
 desire to visit Constantinople if his public duties would have permitted. 
 He requests of him to allow. Leo the mathematician to come to Bagdad 
 to impart to him a portion of his learning, pledging his word that he 
 
ABITHMETIO AND ASTRONOMY. 355 
 
 ■would restore him quickly and safely again. " Do not," says the high- 
 minded khalif, " let diversity of religion or of country cause you to re- 
 fuse my request. Do what friendship would concede to a friend. In 
 return,! offer you a hundred weight of gold, a perpetual alliance and 
 peace." True to the instincts of his race and the traditions of his city, 
 the Byzantine sourly and insolently refused the request, saying that 
 " the learning which had illustrated the Eoman name should never be 
 imparted to a barbarian." 
 
 From the Hindus the Arabs learned arithmetic, especially that valu- 
 able invention termed bv us the Arabic numerals, but hon- Their great im- 
 
 •^ , - - - provements in 
 
 orably ascribed by them to its proper source, under the des- arithmetic. 
 ignation of " Indian numerals." They also entitled their treatises on 
 the subject " Systems of Indian Arithmetic." This admirable notation 
 by nine digits and cipher occasioned a complete revolution in arithmet- 
 ical computations. As in the case of so many other things, the Arab 
 impress is upon it ; our word cipher, and its derivatives, ciphering, etc., 
 recall the Arabic word tsaphara or ciphra, the name for the 0, and mean- 
 ing that which is blank or void. Mohammed Ben Musa, said to be the 
 earliest of the Saracen authors on algebra, and who made the great im- 
 provement of substituting sines for chords in trigonometry, wrote also 
 on this Indian system. He lived at the end of the ninth century ; be- 
 fore the end of the tenth it was in common use among the African and 
 Spanish mathematicians. Ebn Junis, A.D. 1008, used it in his astronom- 
 ical works. From Spain it passed into Italy, its singular advantage in 
 commercial computation causing it to be eagerly adopted in the great 
 trading cities. "We still use the word algorithm in reference to calcula- 
 tions. The study, of algebra was intently cultivated among the Arabs, 
 who gave it the name it bears. Ben Musa, just referred to, was the in- 
 ventor of the common method of solving quadratic equations. In the 
 application of mathematics to astronomy and physics they Their astronom- 
 had been long distinguished. Almaimon had determined i""! diBooveries. 
 with considerable accuracy the obliquity of the ecliptic. His result, 
 with those of some other Saracen astronomers, is as follows : 
 
 A.D. 830. Almaimon 23° 35' 52" 
 
 " 879. Albategnius, at Aracte 23° 35' 00 
 
 " 987. Aboul Wefa, at Bagdad 23° 35' 00 
 
 " 995. Aboul Rihan,with a quadrant of 25 feet radius 23° 35' 00 
 
 " 1080. Arzachael 23° 34' 00 
 
 Almaimon had also ascertained the size of the earth from the measure- 
 ment of a degree on the shore of the Eed Sea — an operation implying 
 true ideas of its form, and in singular contrast with the doctrine of Con- 
 stantinople and Eome. "While the latter was asserting, in all its absurd- 
 ity, the flatness of the earth, the Spanish Moors were teaching geography 
 in their common schools from globes. In Africa, there was still pre- 
 
356 ASTRONOMICAL DISOOVEEIES. 
 
 served, with almost religious reverence, in the library at Cairo, one of 
 brass, reputed to have belonged to the great astronomer Ptolemy. Al 
 Idrisi made one of silver for Koger II., of Sicily ; and Gerbert used one 
 which he had brought from Cordova in the school he established at 
 Rheims. It cost a struggle of several centuries, illustrated by some mar- 
 tyrdoms, before the dictum of Lactantius and Augustine could be over- 
 thrown. Among problems of interest that were solved may be men- 
 tioned the determination of the length of the ygar by Albategnius and 
 Thebit Ben Corrah ; and increased accuracy was given to the correction 
 of astronomical observations by Alhazen's great discovery of atmospherip 
 refraction. Among the astronomers, some composed tables ; some wrote 
 on the measure of time ; some on the improvement of clocks, for which 
 purpose they were the first to apply the pendulum ; some on instru- 
 ments, as the astrolabe. The introduction of astronomy into Christian 
 Europe has been attributed to the translation of the works of Moham- 
 med Fargani. In Europe, also, the Arabs were the first to build observ- 
 atories ; the Giralda, or tower of Seville, was erected under the super- 
 intendence of Geber, the mathematician, A.D. 1196, for that purpose. 
 Its fate was not a little characteristic. After the expulsion of the Moors 
 it was turned into a belfry, the Spaniards not knowing what else to do 
 with it. 
 
 I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of 
 Europe tries to Europs has coutrived to put out of sight our scientific obli- 
 tiona'to them.* gations to the Mohammedans. Surely they can not be much 
 longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancor and national con- 
 ceit can not be perpetuated forever. "What should the modem astrono- 
 mer say when, remembering the contemporary barbarism of Europe, he 
 finds the Arab Abul Hassan speaking of tubes, to the extremities of 
 which ocular and object diopters, perhaps sights, were attached, as used 
 at Meragha? what when he reads of the attempts of Abderrahman Sufi 
 at improving the photometry of the stars? Are the astronomical tables 
 of Ebn Junis (A.D. 1008), called the Hakemite tables, or the Ilkanic ta- 
 bles of Nasser Eddin Tasi, constructed at the great observatory just men- 
 tioned, Meragha, near Tauris, A.D. 1259, or the measurement of time by 
 pendulum oscillations, and the methods of correcting astronomical ta- 
 bles by systematic observations — are such things worthless indications 
 of the mental state ? The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Eu- 
 rope, as, before long, Christendom will have to confess ; he has indelibly 
 written it on the heavens, as any one may see who reads the names of 
 the stars on a common celestial globe. 
 
 Our obligations to the Spanish Moors in the arts of life are even more 
 impTOvements in "larked than in the higher branches of science, perhaps only 
 the arts ofufe. bgcause our auccstors were better prepared to take advan- 
 tage of things connected with daily affairs. They set an example of skill- 
 
IMPBOVEMENTS IN PEACTIOAL ART. 857 
 
 ful agriculture, the practice of which was regulated by a code of laws. 
 Not only did they attend to the cultivation of plants, introducing very 
 many new ones ; they likewise paid great attention to the breeding of 
 cattle, especially sheep and the horse. To them we owe the introduc- 
 tion of the great products, rice, sugar, cotton, and also, as we have pre- 
 viously observed, nearly all the fine garden and orchard fruits, together 
 with many less important plants, as spinach and saffron. To them Spain 
 owes the culture of silk ; they gave to Xeres and Malaga their celebrity 
 for making wine. They introduced the Egyptian system of irrigation 
 by flood-gates, wheels, and pumps. They also promoted many import- 
 ant branches of industry ; improved the manufacture of textile fabrics, 
 earthenware, iron, steel ; the Toledo sword-blades were every where 
 prized for their temper. The Arabs, on their expulsion from Spain, car- 
 ried the manufacture of a kind of leather, in which they were acknowl- 
 edged to excel, to Morocco, from which country the leather itself has now 
 taken its name. They also introduced inventions of a more ominous kind 
 — gunpowder and artillery. The cannon they used appeared to have 
 been made of wrought iron. But perhaps' they more than compensated 
 for these evil contrivances by the introduction of the mariner's compass. 
 The mention of the mariner's compass might lead us correctly to infer 
 that the Spanish Arabs were interested in commercial pur- Their commerce, 
 suits, a conclusion to which we should also come when we consider the 
 revenues of some of their khalife. That of Abderrahman III. is stated 
 at five and a half millions sterling — a vast sum if considered by its mod- 
 ern equivalent, and far more than could possibly be raised by taxes on 
 the produce of the soil. It probably exceeded the entire revenue of all 
 the sovereigns of Christendom taken together. From Barcelona and 
 other ports an immense trade with the Levant was maintained, but it 
 was mainly in the hands of the Jews, who, from the first invasion of 
 Spain by Musa, had ever been the, firm allies and collaborators of the 
 Arabs. Together they had participated in the dangers of the invasion ; 
 together they had shared its boundless success ; together they had held 
 in irreverent derision, nay, even in contempt, the woman-worshipers and 
 polytheistic savages beyond the Pyrenees — as they mirthfully called 
 those whose long-delayed vengeance they were in the end to feel ; to- 
 gether they were expelled. Against such Jews as lingered behind the 
 hideous persecutions of the Inquisition were directed. But in the days 
 of their prosperity they maintained a merchant marine of more than a 
 thousand ships. They had factories and consuls on the Tanais. "With 
 Constantinople alone they maintained a great trade ; it ramified from 
 the Black Sea and East Mediterranean into the interior of Asia • it 
 reached the ports of India and China, and extended along the African 
 coast as far as Madagascar. Even in these commercial affairs the singu- 
 lar genius of the Jew and Arab shine forth. In the midst of the tenth 
 
358 
 
 BEVIEW OF ALHAZEN. 
 
 century, when Europe was about in the same condition that Caffraria is 
 now, enlightened Moors, lilce Abul Cassem, were writing treatises on the 
 principles of trade and commerce. As on so many other occasions^ on 
 these affairs they have left their traces. The smallest weight they used 
 in trade was the grain of barley, four of which were equal to one sweet 
 pea, called in Arabic carat. We still use the grain as our unit of 
 weight, and still -speak of gold as being so many carats fine. 
 
 ■ Such were the Khalifs of the West ; such their splendor, their luxury, 
 obugationa to their knowledge ; such some of the obligations we are under 
 
 the Khalifs of , ,,.° '. ,.,_,,.. ° . , 
 
 the West. to them — obligations which Christian J^jurope, with singular 
 insincerity, has ever been fain to hide. The cry against the misbeliever 
 has long outlived the Crusades. Considering the enchanting country 
 over which -they ruled, it was not without reason that they caused to be 
 engraven on the public seal, " The servant of the Merciful rests content- 
 ed in the decrees of God." What more, indeed^ could Paradise give 
 them? But, considering also the evil end of all this happiness and 
 pomp, this learning, liberality, and wealth, we may well appreciate the 
 solemn truth which these monarchs, in their day of pride and power, 
 grandly wrote in the beautiful mosaics on their palace walls, an ever- 
 recurring monition to him who owes dominion to the sword, " There is 
 no conqueror but Grod." 
 
 The value of a philosophical or political system may be determined 
 by its fruits. On this principle I examined in Chapter XII. the Italian 
 system, estimating its religious merit from the biographies of the popes, 
 which afford the proper criterion. In like manner, the intellectual state 
 Examination of the Mohammedau nations at successive epochs may be as- 
 
 of Mohammed- -in i-- •'•i 
 
 an science. ccrtamed irom what is its proper criterion, the contempora- 
 neous scientific manifestation. 
 
 At the time when the Moorish influences in Spain began to exert a 
 pressure on the Italian system, there were several scientific writers, frag- 
 ments of whose works have descended to us. As an architect may judge 
 of the skill of the ancient Egyptians in his art from a study of the Pyr- 
 amids, so from these relics of Saracenic learning we may demonstrate 
 the intellectual state of the Mohammedan people, though much of theii; 
 work has been lost and more has been purposely destroyed. 
 
 Among such writers is Alhazen ; his date was about A.D. 1100. It 
 appears that he resided both in Spain and Egypt, but the details of his 
 Review of biography are very confused. Through his optical works, which 
 of AihTzen. havo becu translated into Latin, he is best known to Europe. 
 He was the first to correct the Greek misconception as to the nature of 
 vision, showing that the rays of light come from external objects to the 
 He comets the ^ye, and do not issue forth from the eye and impinge on ex- 
 theory of vision, ^grnal things, as, up to his time, had been supposed. His ex- 
 planation does not depend upon mere hypothesis or supposition, but is 
 
EEVIEW OF ALHAZEN. 359 
 
 plainly based upon anatomical investigation as well as on geometrical 
 discussion. He determines that the retina is the seat of vis- ^^^'^™^"^*| 
 ion, and that impressions made by light upon it are conveyed retina, 
 along the optic nerve to the brain. Though it might not be convenient, 
 at the time when Alhazen lived, to make such an acknowledgment, no 
 one could come to these conclusions, nor, indeed, know any thing about 
 these facts, unless he had been' engaged in the forbidden practice of dis- 
 section. With felicity he explains that we see single when we EipiainB sin- 
 use both eyes, because of the formation of the visual images on ^'^ "°'°°- 
 symmetrical portions of the two retinas. To the modern physiologist 
 the mere mention of such things is as significant as the occurrence of an 
 arch in the interior of the pyramid is to the architect. But Alhazen 
 shows that our sense of sight is by no means a reliable guide, and that 
 there are illusions arising from the course which the rays of light may 
 take when they suffer refraction or reflection. It is in the discussion of 
 one of these physical problems that his scientific greatness truly shines 
 forth. He is perfectly aware that the atmosphere decreases in density 
 with increase of height ; and from that consideration he Traces the course 
 shows that a ray of light, entering it obliquely, follows a through the air. 
 curvilinear path which is concave toward the earth ; and that, since the 
 mind refers the position of an object to the direction in which the ray 
 of light from it enters the eye, the result must be an illusion as respects 
 the starry bodies ; they appear to us, to use the Arabic term, nearer to 
 the zenith than they actually are, and not in their true place. Astronomical 
 We see them in the direction of the tangent to the curve of re- "f™"''""- 
 fraction as it reaches the eye. Hence also he shows that we actually see 
 the stars, and the sun, and the moon before they have risen and after 
 they have set — a wonderful illusion. He shows that in its passage 
 through the air the curvature of a ray increases with the increasing den- 
 I sity, and that its path does not depend on vapors that chance to be pres- 
 ent, but on the variation of density in the medium. To this refraction 
 he truly refers the shortening, in their vertical diameter, of The horizontal 
 the horizontal sun and moon ; to its variations he imputes ™'' '""' "°°°- 
 the twinkling of the fixed stars. The apparent increase of size of the 
 former bodies when they are in the horizon he refers to a mental decep- 
 tion, arising from the presence of intervening terrestrial objects. He 
 shows that the effect of refraction is to shorten the duration of night and 
 darkness by prolonging the visibility of the sun, and considering the re- 
 flecting action of the air, he deduces that beautiful explanation of the 
 nature of twilight — ^the light that we perceive before the rising Explains the 
 and after the setting of the sun — ^which we accept at the pres- *'^siit. 
 ent time as true. With extraordinary acuteness, he applies the principles 
 with which he is dealing to the determination of the height Determines the 
 of the atmosphere, deciding that its limit is nearly 58^ miles, m^wphere.' **'' 
 
360 BEVIEW OF ALHAZEN. 
 
 All this is very grand. Shall we compare it with the contemporane- 
 ous monk miracles and monkish philosophy of Europe? It would make 
 a profound impression if communicated for the first time to a scientific 
 society in our own age. Nor perhaps does his merit end here. If the 
 Book of the Balance of Wisdom, for a translation of which we are in- 
 debted to M. Khanikoff, the Eussian consul-general at Tabriz, be the pro- 
 duction of Alhazen, of which there seems to be internal proof, it offers us 
 evidence of a singular clearness in mechanical conception for which we 
 should scarcely have been prepared, and, if it be not his, at all events it 
 indisputably shows the scientific acquirements of his age. In that book 
 The weight is plainly set forth the connection between the weight of the at- 
 of the air, mosphere and its increasing density. The weight of the atmos- 
 phere was therefore understood before Torricelli. He shows that a body 
 will weigh differently in a rare and in a dense atmosphere ; that its loss 
 Principles of of Weight will be greater in proportion as the air is more dense. 
 hydroBtatica. ^e considcrs the force with which plunged bodies will rise 
 through heavier media in which they are immersed, and discusses the 
 submergence of floating bodies, as ships upon the sea. He understands 
 the doctrinfe of the centre of gravity. He applies it to the investigation 
 Theory of the of balauccs and steelyards, showing the relations between the 
 balance. centre of gravity and the centre of suspension — when those 
 instruments will set and when they will vibrate. He recognizes gravity 
 as a force ; asserts that it diminishes with the distance ; but falls into 
 the mistake that the diminution is as the distance, and not as its square. 
 He considers gravity as terrestrial, and fails to perceive that it is uni- 
 versal — ^that was reserved for Newton. He knows correctly the relation 
 Gravity; capu- between the velocities, spaces, and times of falling bodies, 
 
 lary attraction ; ., , t . -n /» .n • tt • 
 
 the hydrometer, and has vcry distiuct idcas 01 capillary attraction, ile im- 
 proves the construction of that old Alexandrian invention, the hydrome- 
 ter — the instrument which, in a letter to his fair but pagan friend Hy- 
 patia, the good Bishop of Ptolemais, Synesius, six hundred years before, 
 requests her to have made for him in Alexandria, as he wished to try 
 the wines he is using, his health being a little delicate. The determina- 
 Tabiea of ape- tio^is of the densities of bodies, as given by Alhazen, approach 
 eiflo gravitiea. ^ery closcly to our own ; in the case of mercury they are even 
 more exact than some of those of the last century. I join, as, doubtless, 
 all natural philosophers will do, in the'pious prayer of Alhazen, that, in 
 the day of judgment, the All-Merciful will take pity on the soul of Abu- 
 r-Eaihan, because he was the first of the race of men to construct a table 
 of specific gravities ; and I will add Alhazen's name thereto, for he was 
 the first to trace the curvilinear path of a ray of light through the air. 
 Though more than seven centuries part him from our times, the physi- 
 ologists of this age may accept him as their compeer, since he received 
 and defended the doctrine, now forcing its way, of the progressive de- 
 
EBN JUNIS, THE A8TE0N0MEE. 361 
 
 velopment of animal forms. He upheld the affirmation of those who 
 said that man, in his progress, passes through a definite sue- The theory of 
 cession of states; not, however, "that he was once a bull, and o( organiBms. 
 was then changed to an ass, and afterward into a horse, and after that 
 into an ape, and finally became a man." This, he says, is only a mis- 
 representation by " common people" of what is really meant. The " com- 
 mon people" who withstood Alhazen have representatives among us, 
 themselves the only example in the Fauna of the world of that non-de- 
 velopment which they so loudly affirm. At the best they are only pass- 
 ing through some of the earlier forms of that series of transmutations to 
 which the devout Mohammedan in the above quotation alludes. 
 
 The Arabians, with all this physical knowledge, do not appear to have 
 been in possession of the thermometer, though they knew the great im- 
 portance of temperature measures, employing the areometer for that pur- 
 pose. They had detected the variation in density of liquids by heat, 
 but not the variation in volume. In their measures of time they were 
 more successful ; they had several kinds of clepsydras. A balance clep- 
 sydra is described in the work from which I am quoting. But it was 
 their great astronomer, Ebn Junis, who accomplished the most valuable 
 of all chronometric improvements. He first applied the pendu- xhependn- 
 lum to the measure of time. Laplace, in the fifth note to his '"™ '^'■"*- 
 Systeme du Monde, avails himself of the observations of this philosopher, 
 with those of Albategnius and other Arabians, as incontestible proof of 
 the diminution of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit. He Astronomica! 
 states, moreover, that the observation of Ebn Junis of the ob- Junis. 
 liquity of the ecliptic, properly corrected for parallax and refraction, 
 gives for the year A.D. 1000 a result closely approaching to the theoret- 
 ical. He also mentions another observation of Ebn Junis, October 31, 
 A.D. 1007, as of much importance in reference to the great inequalities 
 of Jupiter and Saturn. I have already remarked that, in the writings of 
 this great Arabian, the Arabic numerals and our common arith- The Arabic 
 metical processes are currently used. From Africa and Spain """^™''- 
 they passed into Italy, finding ready acceptance among commercial men, 
 who recognized at once their value, and, as William of Malmesbury 
 says, being a wonderful relief to the "sweating calculators;" an epithet 
 of which the correctness will soon appear to any one who will try to do 
 a common multiplication or division sum by the aid of the old Eoman 
 numerals. It is said that Gerbert — Pope Sylvester — was the first to in- 
 troduce a knowledge of them into Europe ; he had learned them at the 
 Mohammedan university of Cordova. It is in allusion to the cipher, 
 which follows the 9, but which, added to any of the other digits, in- 
 creases by tenfold its power, that, in a letter to his patron, the Emperor 
 Otho III., with humility he playfully but truly says, " I am like the last 
 of all the numbers." 
 
362 REVIEW OF ALGAZZALI. 
 
 The overthrow of the Eoman by the Arabic numerals foreshadowed 
 the result of a far more important — a political — contest between those 
 rival names. But, before showing how the Arabian intellect pressed 
 upon Eome, and the convulsive struggles of desperation which Kome 
 Arabian phi- made to rcsist it, I must for a moment consider the former un- 
 loaophy. ^^^ auothcr point of view, and speak of Saracen philosophy. 
 And here Algazzali shall be my guide. He was born A.D. 1058. 
 
 Let us hear him speak for himself. He is relating his attempt to de- 
 tach himself from the opinions which he had imbibed in his childhood: 
 The writings "I Said to mysclf, 'My aim is simply to know the truth of 
 ofAigazzau. ^j^jingg . consequently, it is indispensable for me to ascertain 
 what is knowledge.' Now it was evident to me that certain knowledge 
 must be that which explains the object to be known in such a manner 
 that no doubt can remain, so that in future all error and conjecture re- 
 specting it must be impossible. Not only would the understanding then 
 need no efforts to be convinced of certitude,' but security against error is 
 in such close connection with knowledge, that, even were an apparent 
 The certitude proof of falsehood to be brought forward, it would cause no 
 of knowledge, (jgubt, becausc no suspicion of error would be possible. Thus, 
 when I have acknowledged ten to be more than three, if any one were 
 to say, ' On the contrary, three is more than ten, and, to prove the truth 
 of my assertion,! will change this rod into a serpent,' and if he were to 
 change it, my conviction of his error would remain unshaken. His ma- 
 noeuvre would only produce in me admiration for his ability. I should 
 not doubt my own knowledge. 
 
 " Then was I convinced that knowledge which I did not possess in 
 this manner, and respecting which I had not this certainty, could inspire 
 me with neither confidence nor assurance ; and no knowledge without 
 assurance deserves the name of knowledge. 
 
 " Having examined the state of my own knowledge, I found it divest- 
 ed of all that could be said to have these qualities, unless perceptions of 
 the senses and irrefragable, principles were to be considered such. I 
 then said to myself, 'Now, having fallen into this despair, the only hope 
 unreiiahiiity of acquiring incontestable convictions is by the perceptions of 
 ofthosenaes. ^j^g seuscs and by necessary, truths.' Their evidence seemed 
 to me to be indubitable. I began, however, to examine the objects of 
 sensation and speculation, to see if they possibly could admit of doubt. 
 Then doubts crowded lipon me in such numbers that my incertitude be- 
 came complete. Whence results the confidence I have in sfensible things. 
 The strongest of all our senses is sight; and yet, looking at a shadow, 
 and perceiving it to be fixed and immovable, we judge it to be deprived 
 of movement ; nevertheless, experience teaches us that, when we return 
 to the same place an hour after, the shadow is displaced, for it does not 
 vanish suddenly; but gradually, little by little, so as never to be at rest. 
 
EEVIEW OF ALGAZZALI. 363 
 
 If we look at the stars, they seem to be as small as money -pieces ; but 
 mathematical proofs convince us that they are larger than the earth. 
 These and other things are judged by the senses, but rejected by reason 
 as false. I abandoned the senses, therefore, having seen all my confi- 
 dence in their truth shaken. 
 
 " ' Perhaps,' said I, ' there is no assurance but in the notions of reason, 
 that is to say, first principles, as that ten is more than three ; the same 
 thing can not have been created and yet have existed from all eternity ; 
 to exist and not to exist at the same time is impossible.' 
 
 " Upon this the senses replied, ' What assurance have you that your 
 confidencQ in reason is not of the same nature as your confi- uiireiiabmt7 
 dence in us? When you relied on us, reason stepped in and °*'«»=°°- 
 gave us the lie ; had not reason been there, you would have continued 
 to rely on us. Well, may there not exist some other judge superior to 
 reason, who, if he appeared, would refute the judgments of reason in- the 
 same way that reason refuted us ? The non-appearance of such a judge 
 is no proof of his non-existence.' 
 
 " I strove in vain to answer the objection, and my difiiculties increased 
 when I came to reflect on sleep. I said to myself, ' During Th^ J^^,^e 
 sleep, you give to visions a reality and consistence, and you °f^''«^™- 
 have no suspicion of their untruth. On awakening, you are made aware 
 that they were nothing but visions. What assurance have you that all 
 you feel and know when you are awake does actually exist? It is all 
 true as respects your condition at that moment; but it is nevertheless 
 possible that another condition should present itself which should be to 
 your awakened state that which to your awakened state is now to you 
 sleep ; so that, as respects this higher condition, your waking is but 
 sleep.' " 
 
 It would not be possible to find in any European work a clearer state- 
 ment of the skepticism to which philosophy leads us than what is thus 
 given by this Arabian. Indeed, it is not possible to put the argument 
 in a more effective way. His perspicuity is in singular contrast with 
 the obscurity of many metaphysical writers. i 
 
 " Eeflecting on my situation, I found myself bound to this world by 
 a thousand ties, temptations assailing me on all sides. I then examined 
 my actions. The best were those relating to instruction and education, 
 and even there I saw myself given up to unimportant sciences, intcuectuai 
 all useless in another world. Eeflecting on the aim of my ^<^i<'^- 
 teaching, I found it was not pure in the sight of the Lord. I saw that 
 all my efforts were directed toward the acquisition of glory to myself. 
 Having, therefore, distributed my wealth, I left Bagdad and retired into 
 Syria, where I remained two years in solitary struggle with my soul, 
 combating my passions, and exercising myself in the purification of my 
 heart and in preparation for the other world." 
 
364 EEVIEW OF ALGAZZALI. 
 
 This is a very beautiful picture of the mental struggles and the ac- 
 tions of a truthful and earnest man/- In all this the Christian philoso- 
 pher can sympathize with the devout Mohammedan. After all, they 
 are not very far apart. Algazzali is not the only one to whom such 
 thoughts have occurred, but he has found words to tell his experience 
 better than any other man. And what is the conclusion at which he 
 Aigazzaii'a arrivcs? The life of man, he says, is marked by three stages: 
 ages of man. ii^j^g Q^^^^ ^^ infantile stage, is that of pure sensation; the sec- 
 ond, which begins at the age of seven, is that of understanding ; the third 
 is that of reason, by means of which the intellect perceives the necessary, 
 the possible, the absolute, and all those higher objects which. transcend 
 the understanding. But after this there is a fourth stage, when another 
 eye is opened, by which man perceives things hidden from others-r-peir 
 ceives all that will be — perceives the things' that escape the perceptions 
 of reason, as the objects of reason escape the understanding, and as the 
 objects of the understanding escape the* sensitive faculty. This is 
 prophetism." Algazzali thus finds a philosophical basis for the rule of 
 life, and reconciles religion and philosophy. 
 
 And now I have to turn from Arabian civilized life, its science, its 
 philosophy, to another, a repulsive state of things. With reluctance I. 
 come back to the Italian system, defiling the holy name of religion with 
 its intrigues, its bloodshed, its oppression of human thought, its hatred 
 of intellectual advancement. Especially I have now to direct attention 
 Renewal of the op- to two countrics, the sccues of important events — countries 
 medan influences, in wMch thc Mohammcdau influences began' to take effect 
 and to press upon Eome. These are the South of France and Sicily. 
 
 Innocent III. had been elected pope at the early age of thirty-seven 
 years, A.D. 1198. The papal power had reached its culminating point. 
 The weapons of the Church had attained their utmost force. In Italy, 
 in Germany, in France and England, interdicts and excommunications 
 vindicated the pontifical authority, as in the cases of the Duke of Raven- 
 na, the Emperor Otho, Philip Augustus of France, King John of En- 
 gland. In each of these cases it was not for the sake of sustaining great 
 moral principles or the rights of humanity that the thunder was launch' 
 ed — it was in behalf of temporary political interests ; interests that, m 
 Germany, were sustained at the cost of a long war, and cemented hy as- 
 inteifeicnoe of safsination ; in Prance, strengthened by the well-tried device 
 France" ' " of au intervention in a matrimonial broil — ^the domestic quar- 
 rel of the king and queen about Agnes of Meran. " Ah ! happy Sala- 
 din!" said the insulted Philip, when his kingdom was put under inter- 
 dict ; " he has no pope above him. I too will turn Mohammedan. 
 
 So, likewise, in Spain, Innocent interfered in the matrimonial life oi 
 the King of Leon. The remorseless venality of the papal government 
 
POLICY OF INNOCENT III. 365 
 
 was in every direction felt. Portugal had already been ad- i„spainand 
 vanced to the dignity of a kingdom on payment of an annual ^°'^"S'^ 
 tribute to Eome. The King of Aragon held his kingdom as feudatory 
 to the pope. 
 
 In England, Innocent's interference assumed a different aspect. He 
 attempted to assert his control over the Church in spite of in England; ae- 
 
 ■^ . ^ . -, . ^ -r T nouncea Magna 
 
 the king, and put the nation under mterdict because John charta. 
 would not permTt Stephen Langton to be Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 It -was utterly impossible that affairs could go on with such an empire 
 within an empire. For his contumacy, John was excommunicated ; but, 
 base as he was, he defied his punishment for four years. Hereupon his 
 subjects were released from their allegiance, and his kingdom offered to 
 any one who would conquer it. In his extremity, tjie King of England 
 is said to have sent a messenger to the Emir Al Mouenim, offering to 
 become a Mohammedan. The religious sentiment was then no higher 
 in him than it was, under a hke provocation, in the King of France, 
 whose thoughts turned in the same direction. But, pressed irresistibly 
 by Innocent, John was compelled to surrender his realm, agreeing to pay 
 to the pope, in addition to Peter's pence, 1000 marks a year as a token 
 of vassalage. When the prelates whom he had refused or exiled return- 
 ed, he was compelled to receive them on his knees — ^humiliations which 
 aroused the indignation of the stout English barons, and gave strength 
 to those movements which ended in extorting Magna Charta. Never, 
 however, was Innocent more mistaken than in the character of Stephen 
 Langton. John had, a second time, formally surrendered his realm to 
 the pope, and done homage to the legate for it; but Stephen Langton 
 was the first — at a meeting of the chiefs of the revolt against the king, 
 held in London, August 25th, 1213 — to suggest that they should demand 
 a renewal of the charter of Henry I. From this suggestion Magna Charta 
 originated. Among the miracles of the age, he was the greatest miracle 
 of all ; his patriotism was stronger than his profession. The wrath of 
 the pontiff knew no bounds when he learned that the Great Charter had 
 been conceded. In his bull, he denounced it as base and ignominious ; 
 he anathematized the king if he observed it ; he declared it null and 
 void. It was not the policy of the Eoman court to permit so much as 
 the beginnings of such freedom. The appointment of Simon Langton 
 to the archbishopric of York was annulled. One De Gray was substi- 
 tuted for him. It illustrated the simony into which the papal govern- 
 ment had fallen, that De Gray had become, in these transactions, indebt- 
 ed to Eome $50,000. In fact, through the operation of the Crusades, all 
 Europe was tributary to the pope. He had his fiscal agents The drain of 
 in every metropolis ; his traveling ones wandering in all direc- Sat aranto-. 
 tions, in every country, raising revenue by the sale of dispensations for 
 all kinds of offenses, real and fictitious — money for the sale of appoint- 
 
366 THE FOUETH CRUSADE, 
 
 ments, higB, and low — a steady drain of money from every realm. Fifty 
 years after the time of which we are speaking, Eobert Grostete, the Bish- 
 op of Lincoln and friend of Eoger Bacon, caused to be ascertained the 
 amount received by foreign ecclesiastics in England. He found it to be 
 thrice the income of the king himself This was on the occasion of In- 
 nocent I^. demanding provision to be made for three hundred additional 
 Italian clergy by the Church of England, and that one of his nephews— 
 a mere boy — ^should have a stall in Lincoln cathedral. 
 
 While thus Innocent III. was interfering and intriguing with every 
 court, and laying every people under tribute, he did not for a moment 
 Goading of Eu- permit his attention to be diverted from the Crusades, the 
 crusade. singular advantages of which to the papacy had now been 
 
 fully discovered. They had given to the pope a suzerainty in Europe, 
 the control of its military as well as its monetary resources. Not that a 
 man like Innocent could permit himself to be deluded by any hopes of 
 eventual success. The Crusades must inevitably prove, so far as their 
 avowed object was concerned, a failure. The Christian inhabitants of 
 Palestine were degraded and demoralized beyond description. Their 
 ranks were thinned by apostasy to Mohammedanism. In Europe, not 
 only had the laity begun to discover that the money provided for the 
 wars in the Holy Land was diverted from its purpose, and, in some in- 
 explicable manner, found its way into Italy — even the clergy could not 
 conceal their suspicions that the proclamation of a crusade was merely 
 the preparation for a swindle. Nevertheless, Innocent pressed forward 
 his schemes, goading on Christendom by throwing into its face the 
 taunts of the Saracens. " Where," they say, " is your God, who can not 
 deliver you out of our hands ? Behold ! we have defiled your sanctua- 
 ries ; we have stretched forth our arm ; we have taken at the first as- 
 sault, we hold in despite of you, those your desirable places, where your 
 superstition had its beginning. Where is your God ? Let him arise and 
 protect you and himself" " If thou be the Son of God, save thyself if 
 thou canst ; redeem the land of thy birth from our hands. Eestore thy 
 cross, that we have taken, to the worshipers of the Cross." With great 
 difiiculty, however. Innocent succeeded in preparing the fourth crusade, 
 A.D. 1202. The Venetians consented to furnish a fleet of transports. 
 But the expedition was quickly diverted from its true purpose; the Ve- 
 netians employing the Crusaders for the capture of Zara from the Kmg 
 of Hungary. Still worse, and shameful to be said — ^partly from the lust 
 of plunder, and partly through ecclesiastical machinations — it again turn- 
 The crusade is ed asido for an attack upon Constantinople, and took that city 
 Surerf cou- by Storm, A.D. 1204, thereby establishing Latin Christianity 
 Btantiuopie. ^^ ^j^g Eastcm mctropolis, but, alas ! with bloodshed, rape, 
 and fire. On the night of the assault more houses were burned than 
 could be found in any three of the largest cities in France. Even Chns- 
 
SACK OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 367 
 
 tian historians compare with shame the storming of Con- sack of that cuy 
 stautinople by the CathoHcs with the capture of Jerusalem fy tbe cathoucs. 
 by Saladin. Pope Innocent himself was compelled to protest against 
 enormities that had outrun his intentions. He says : " They practiced 
 fornications, incests, adulteries in the sight of men. They abandoned 
 matrons and virgins, consecrated to God, to the lewdness of grooms. 
 They lifted their hands against the treasures of the churches — what is 
 more heinous, the very consecrated vessels — tearing the tablets of silver 
 from the very altars, breaking in pieces the most sacred things, carrying 
 off crosses and relics." In St. Sophia, the silver was stripped from the 
 pulpit ; an exquisite and highly -prized table of oblation was broken in 
 pieces ; the sacred chalices were turned into drinking-cups ; the gold 
 fringe was ripped off the veil of the sanctuary. Asses and horses were 
 led into the churches to carry off the spoil. A prostitute mounted the 
 patriarch's throne, and sang, with indecent gestures, a ribald song. The 
 tombs of the emperors were rifled ; and the Byzantines saw, at once with 
 amazement and anguish, the corpse of Justinian — which even decay and 
 putrefaction had for six centuries spared in his tomb — exposed to the 
 violation of a mob. It had been understood among those who insti- 
 gated these atrocious proceedings that the relics were to be brought 
 into a common stock and equitably divided among the conquerors ; but 
 each ecclesiastic seized and secreted whatever he could. The idolatrous 
 state of the Eastern Church is illustrated by some of these rel- The reuca 
 ics. Thus the Abbot Martin obtained for his monastery in Al- '°™* ^^™' 
 sace the following inestimable articles : 1. A spot of the blood of our Sa- 
 vior; 2. A piece of the true cross; 3. The arm of the Apostle James; 
 4. Part of the skeleton of John the Baptist ; 5. — I hesitate to write such 
 blasphemy — " A bottle of the milk of the Mother of God !" In con- 
 trast with the treasures thus acquired may be set relics of a very differ- 
 ent kind, the remains of ancient art which they destroyed : and works of 
 1. The bronze charioteers from the Hippodrome ; 2. The she- "'' *^"'''5''''- 
 wolf suckling Eomulus and Remus ; 3. A group of a Sphinx, river- 
 horse, and crocodile ; 4. An eagle tearing a serpent ; 5. An ass and his 
 driver, originally cast by Augustus in memory of the victory of Actium ; 
 6. A Bellerophon and Pegasus ; 7. A bronze obelisk ; 8. Paris present- 
 ing the apple to Venus ; 9. An exquisite statue of Helen ; 10. The Her- 
 cules of Lysippus ; 11. A Juno, formerly taken from the temple at Sa- 
 mos. The bronzes were melted into coin, and thousands of manuscripts 
 and parchments were burned. From that time the works of many an- 
 cient authors disappeared altogether. 
 
 With well-dissembled regret, Innocent took the new order of things 
 in the city of Constantinople under his protection. The Bishop of Eome 
 at last appointed the Bishop of Constantinople. The acknowledgment 
 of papal supremacy was complete. Eome and Venice divided between 
 
368 THE LITEEATURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 
 
 The pope and them the ill-gotteii gains of their undertaking. If any thing 
 the spoil. had been wanting to open the eyes of Europe, surely what 
 had ftius ocGurred should have been enough. The pope and the doge 
 — the trader "in human credulity and the trader of the Adriatic — had 
 shared the spoils of a crusade meant by religious men for the relief of 
 Works of art odr- ^^^ Holy Land. The bronze horses, once brought by Au- 
 ned to Venice, gustus from Alexandria, afber his victory over Antony, and 
 transferred from Eome to Constantinople by its founder, were set before 
 the Church of St. Mark. They were the outward and visible sign of a 
 less obvious event that was taking place. For to Venice was brought a 
 residue of the literary treasures that had escaped the fire and the de- 
 stroyer ; and while her comrades in the outrage were satisfied, in their 
 ignorance, with fictitious relics, she took possession of the poor remnant 
 of the glorious works of art, of letters, and of science. Through these 
 was hastened the intellectual progress of the West. 
 
 So fell Constantinople, and fell by the parricidal hands of Christians. 
 The days of retribution for the curse she had inflicted on Western civil- 
 The punish- ization were now approacfiing. In these events she received 
 stantinopie. a first installment of her punishment. Three hundred years 
 before, the historian Luitprand, who was sent by the Emperor Otho I. 
 to the court of Nicephorus Phocas, says of her, speaking as an eye-wit- 
 ness, " That city, once so wealthy, so flourishing, is now famished, lying, 
 perjured, deceitful, rapacious, greedy, niggardly, vainglorious ;" and since 
 Luitprand's time she had been pursuing a downward career. It might 
 have been expected that the concentration of all the literary and scien- 
 tific treasures of the Eoman empire in Constantinople should have given 
 rise to great mental vigor — that to Europe she would have been a bril- 
 liant focus of light. But when the works on jurisprudence by Tribe- 
 The literary nian. Under Justinian, have been mentioned, what is there that 
 rf timt™ity. remains ? There is Stephanus, the grammarian, who wrote a 
 dictionary, and Procopius, the historian, who was secretary to Belisarius 
 in his campaigns. There is then a long interval almost without a liter- 
 ary name, to Theophylact Simocatta, and to the Ladder of Paradise of 
 John Climacus. The mental excitement of the iconoclastic dispute pre- 
 sents us with John of Damascus ; and the ninth century, the Myriobib- 
 lion and Nomacanon of Photius. Then follows Constantino Porphyro- 
 genitus, vainly and voluminously composing ; and Basil 11. doubtless 
 truly expresses the opinion of the time, as he certainly does the verdict 
 of posterity as regards the works of his country, when he says that learn- 
 ing is useless and unprofitable lumber. The Alexiad of Anna Comne- 
 na, and the history of Byzantine affairs by Nicephorus Bryennius, hard- 
 ly redeem their age. This barrenness and worthlessness was the eiteot 
 of the system introduced by Constantino the Great. The long line of 
 emperors had been consistent in one policy — ^the repression or expulsion 
 
ITS CULMINATION. 369 
 
 of philosophy ; . and yet it is the uniform testimony of those ages that 
 the Eastern convents were full of secret Platonism — that, in stealth, the 
 doctrines of Plato were treasured up in the cells of Asiatic monks. The 
 Byzantines had possessed in art and letters all the best models in the 
 world, yet in a thousand years they never produced one original. Mil- 
 lions of Greeks never advanced one step in philosophy or science — never 
 made a single practical discovery, composed no poem, no tragedy worth 
 perusal. The spirit of their superficial literature — ^if literature it can be 
 called — is well shadowed forth in the story of the patriarch Photius, who 
 composed at Bagdad, at a distance from his library, an analysis of 280 
 works he had formerly read. The final age of the city was signalized 
 by the Baarlamite controversy respecting the mysterious light The absurdity 
 of Mount Thabor — the possibility of producing a beatific vis- uaipmauitT ' 
 ion, and of demonstrating, by an unceasing inspection of the navel for 
 days and nights together, the existence of two eternal principles, a visi- 
 ble and an invisible God ! 
 
 What was it that produced this barrenness, this intellectual degrada- 
 tion in Constantinople? The tyranny of Theology over cause of au this. 
 Thought. 
 
 But with the capture of Constantinople by the Latins other important 
 events were occurring. Every where an intolerance of papal Heresy follows 
 power was engendering. The monasteries became infected, "'«™'"'«- 
 and even from the holy lips of monks words of ominous import might 
 be heard. In the South of France the intellectual insurrection first took 
 form. There the influence of the Mohammedans and Jews beyond the 
 Pyrenees began to manifest itself. The songs of gallantry ; spread of gay 
 tensons, or poetical contests of minstrels ; satires of gay defi- spain."'^'' '^'"" 
 ance; rivalry in praise of the ladies; lays, serenades, pastourelles, re- 
 dondes, such as had already drawn forth the condemnation of the sedate 
 Mussulmen of Cordova, had gradually spread through Spain and found 
 a congenial welcome in France. The Troubadours were singing in the 
 langue d'Oc in the south, and the Trouv&es in the langue T^e Troubadours 
 d'Oil in the north. Thence ,the merry epidemic spread to ™* Trouy^res. 
 Sicily and Italy. Men felt that a relief from the grim ecclesiastic was 
 coming. Kings, dukes, counts, knights, prided themselves on their gen- 
 tle prowess. The humbler minstrels found patronage among ladies and 
 at courts; sly satires against the priests, and amorous ditties, secured 
 them a welcome among the populace. "When the poet was deficient in 
 voice, a jongleur went with him to sing ; and often there was added the 
 pleasant accompaniment of a musical instrument. The Provengal or 
 langue d'Oc was thus widely diffused; it served the purposes of those 
 unacquainted with Latin, and gave the Italians a model for thought and 
 versification, to Biirope the germs of many of its future melodies. While 
 the young were singing, the old were thinking ; while the gay were car- 
 
 Aa 
 
370 THE TROUBADOURS OF LAITGUEDOC. • 
 
 lied away with romance ; the grave were falling into heresy. But true 
 Commencing re- to her instincts and traditions, the Church had shown her 
 ' ™'»°'=^<'<'K™«- determination to deal rigorously with all such movements.' 
 Already, A.D. 1134> Peter de Brueys had been burned in Languedoo for 
 denying infant baptism, the worship of the cross, and transubstantiation. 
 .Already Henry the Deacon, the disciple of Peter, had been disposed of 
 by St. Bernard. Already tbe valleys of Piedmont were full of Wal- 
 denses. Already the Poor Men of Lyons were proclaiming the porten- 
 tous "doctrine that the sanctity of a priest lay not in his office, but in the 
 manner of his life. They denounced the wealth of the Church, and the 
 intermingling of bishops in bloodshed and war ; they denied transub- 
 stantiation, invocation of saints, purgatory, and especially directed their 
 hatred against the sale of indulgences for sin. The rich cities of Langue- 
 doc were full of misbelievers. They were given up to poetry, music, 
 dancing. Their people, numbers of whom had been in the Crusades or 
 in Spain, had seen the Saracens. Admiration had taken the place 'of 
 detestation. Amid shouts of laughter, the Troubadours went through 
 the land, wagging their heads, and slyly winking their eyes, and sing- 
 ing derisive songs about the amours of the priests, and amply earning 
 denunciations as lewd blasphemers and atheists. Here was a state of 
 Innocent m. things demanding the attention of Innocent. The methods he _ 
 the'§,read'of took for its coiTection have handed his name down to the mal- 
 hereay. edictious of posterity. He dispatched a missive to the Count 
 of Toulouse — who already lay under excommunication for alleged inter- 
 meddling with the rights of the clergy — charging him with harboring 
 heretics and giving offices of emolument to Jews. The count was a man 
 of gay life, having, in emulation of some of his neighbors across the Pyr- 
 enees, not less than three wives. His offenses of that kind were, how- 
 ever, eclipsed by those with which he was now formally charged. - It 
 chanced that, in the ensuing disputes, the pope's legate was murdered. 
 There is no reason to believe that Eaymond was concerned in the crime. 
 But the indignant pope held him responsible ;' instantly ordered to be 
 published in all directions his excommunication, and called upon West- 
 He proclaims a ^m Christendom to engage in a crusade against him,- offer- 
 the connt^of"" ing, to whoovcr chose to take them, the wealth and posses- 
 Touionse, g^p^g of the offender. So thoroughly was he seconded by 
 the preaching of the monks, that half a million of men, it is affirmed, 
 took up arms. 
 
 For the count there remained nothing but to submit. He surrender- ■ 
 and diacipunea ^d up his strong placcs, was compelled to acknowledge the 
 ^^- crimes alleged against him, and the justice of his punishment. 
 
 He swore that he would no longer protect heretics. Stripped naked to 
 Ms middle, with a rope round Ms neck, he was led to the altar, and there 
 scourged. But the immense army that had assembled was not to be sat- 
 
THE CEUSABB IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE^ 871 
 
 isfied' by these inflictions on an individual, though the pope might be. 
 They had come for blood and plunder, and blood and plunder they 
 must have. Then followed such scenes of horror as the sun had never 
 looked on before. The army was of&cered by Eoman and French prel- 
 ates ; bishops were its generals, an archdeacon its engineer. It was the 
 Abbot Arnold, the legate of the pope, who, at the capture of AtrocMea of the 
 
 ' ° \. '■ ' ■/} T : Crusaders in the 
 
 Beziers, was inquired of by a soldier, more merciiul or more south of France, 
 weary of murder than himself, how he should distinguish and save the 
 Catholic from the heretic. " Kill them all," he exclaimed ; " God will 
 know his own." At the Church of St. Mary Magdalene 7000 persons 
 were massacred, the infuriated Crusaders being excited to madness by 
 the wicked assertion that these wretches had been guilty of the blasphemy ' 
 of saying, in their merriment, " S. Mariam Magdalenam fuisse concubi- 
 nam Christi." It was of no use for them to protest their innocence.. In 
 the town twenty thousand were slaughtered, and the place then fired, to 
 be left a monuraent of papal vengeance. At the massacre of Lavaur 
 400 people were burned in one pUe ; it is remarked that " they made a 
 wonderful blaze, and went to bum everlastingly in hell." Language 
 has no powers to express the atrocities that took place at the capture of 
 the different towns. Ecclesiastical vengeance rioted in luxury. The 
 soil was steeped in the blood of men — ^the air polluted by their burning. 
 From the reek of murdered women, mutilated' children, and blasted cit- 
 ies, the Inquisition, that infernal institution, arose. Its pro- institution of the 
 jectors intended it not only to put an end to public teach- i"9™'«°"- 
 ing, but even to private thought. In the midst of these awful events, 
 Innocent was called to another tribunal to render his account. He died 
 A.D. 1216. 
 
 It was during the pontificate of this great criminal that the mendicant 
 orders were established. The course of ages had brought Establishment of 
 an unintelligibility into public worship. The old dialects -"^ai™!' "rfem 
 had become obsolete ; new languages were forming. Among those class- 
 es, daily increasing in number, whose minds were awakening, an earnest 
 desire for instruction was arising. Multitudes were crowding to hear 
 philosophical discourses in the universities, and heresy was spreading 
 very fast. But it was far from being confined to the intelligent. The 
 lower orders furnished heretics and fanatics too. To antagonize the la- 
 bors of these zealots — who, if they had been permitted to go on uncheck- 
 ed, would quickly have disseminated their doctrines through aU classes 
 of society — the Dominican and Franciscan orders were founded. They 
 were well adapted to their duty. It was their business to move among 
 the people, preacl^ing to them, in their own tongue, wherever an audi- 
 ence could be collected. The scandal under which the Church was la- 
 boring because of her wealth could not apply to these, who lived by 
 begging alms. Their function was not to secure their own salvation, 
 but that of other men. 
 
372 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS, 
 
 St. Dominic was born A.D. 1170. His birth and life were adorned 
 St. Dominic, with the cugtomary prodigies. Miracles and wonders were 
 necessary for any thing to make a sensation in the West. If his was 
 not an immaculate conception, he was free from original sin. He was 
 regarded as the adopted son of the Yirgin ; some were even disposed to 
 assign him a higher dignity than that. He began his operations fn Lan- 
 guedoc ; but, as the prospect opened out before him, he removed from 
 that unpromising region to Eome, the necessary centre of all such un- 
 dertakings as his. Here he perfected his organization ; instituted his 
 friars, nuns, and tertiaries ; and consolidated his pretensions by the work- 
 ing of many miracles. He exorcised three matrons, from .whom Satan 
 issued forth under the form of a great black cat, which ran up a bell-rope 
 and vanished. A beautiful nun resolved to leave her convent. Happen- 
 ing to blow her nose, it dropped off into her handkerchief; but, at the 
 fervent prayer of St. Dominic, it was replaced, and in gratitude, tempered 
 by fear, she remained. St. Dominic could also raise the dead. Never; 
 theless, he died A.D. 1221, having worthily obtained the title of the burn- 
 er and slayer of heretics. To him has been attributed the glory or the 
 crime of being the inventor of ' the Holy Inquisition.' In a very few 
 years his order boasted of nearly 500 monasteries, scattered over Eu- 
 rope, Asia, Africa. ' 
 
 St. Francis, the compeer of St. Dominic, was bom A J). 1182. His foi- 
 st. Francis, lowcrs delighted to point out, as it would seem not without ir- 
 reverence, a resemblance to the incidents that occurred at the birth of 
 our Lord. A prophetess foretold it ; he was born in a stable ; angels 
 sung forth peace and good- will in the air ; one, under the form of Simeon, 
 bore him to baptism. In early life he saw visions and became ecstatic. 
 His father, Peter Berna];dini, a respectable tradesman, endeavored to re- 
 strain his eccentricities, at first by persuasion, but eventually more forci-. 
 bly, appealing for assistance to the bishop, to prevent the young en- 
 thusiast fix>m squandering his means in alms to the poor. 'On that func- 
 tionary's gently remonstrating, and pointing out to Francis his filial obli- 
 gations, he stripped himself naked before the people, exclaiming, "Peter 
 Bernardini was my father ; I have now but one Father, he that is in 
 heaven." . At this affecting^ renunciation of all earthly possessions and' 
 earthly ties, those present burst into tears, and the good bishop threw 
 his own mantle over him. When a man has come to this pass, there is 
 nothing he can not accomplish. 
 
 It is related that, when application was first made to Innocent to au- 
 Authoriaation of thorizc the Order, he refused ; but, very soon recognizing the 
 thfflB orders. advantages that would accrue, he gave it his hearty patron- 
 age. So rapid was the increase, that in A.D. 1219 it numbered not fewer 
 than five thousand brethren. It was founded on the principles of chas- 
 tity, poverty, obedience. They were to live on alms, but never to re- 
 
THE MENDICANT OEDEES AND AUEICULAE CONFESSION. 373 
 
 ceive money. After a life of devotion to the Church, St. Francis attain- 
 ed his reward, A.D. 1226. Two years previously, to his death, by a mi- 
 raculous intervention there were impressed on his person marks answer- 
 ing to the wounds on our Savior. These were the celebrated stigmata. 
 A black growth, like oails, issued forth from the palms of his hands and 
 his feet ; a wound from which blood and w'ater distilled opened in his 
 side. It is not to be wondered at that these prodigies met with general 
 belief. This was the generation which received as inestimable relics, 
 through Andrew of Hungary, the heads of St. Stephen and St. Margaret, 
 the hands of St. Bartholomew and St. Thomas, a slip of the rod of Aaron, 
 and one of the water-pots of the marriage at Cana in» Galilee. 
 
 The papal government quickly found the prodigious advantage aris- 
 ing from the institution of these mendicant orders. Vowed influence derived 
 to poverty, living on alms, the hosts of friars, begging and &om these orders. ^ 
 barefoot, pervaded all Europe, coming in contact, under the most favor- 
 able circumstances, with the lowest grades of society. They lived and 
 moved among the populace, and yet were held sacred. The accusations 
 of dissipation and luxury so forcibly urged against the regular clergy 
 were altogether inapplicable to these rope -bound, starving fanatics. 
 Through them the Italian government had possession of the ear of Eu- 
 rope. The pomp of worship in an unknown tongue, the gorgeous so- 
 lemnities of the Church, were far more than compensated by the preach- 
 ing of these missionaries, who held forth in the vernacular wherever an 
 audience could be had. Among the early ones, some had been accus- 
 tomed to a wandering life. Brother Pacificus, a disciple of St. Francis, 
 had been a celebrated Trouv^re. In truth, they not only warded off the 
 present pressing danger, but through them the Church retained her hold 
 upon the laboring classes for several subsequent centuries. The pope 
 might truly boast that the Poor Men of the Church were more than a 
 match for the Poor Men of Lyons. Their influence began to diminish 
 only when they abandoned their essential principles, joined in the com- 
 mon race for plunder, and became immensely rich. 
 
 Not only did Innocent III. thus provide himself with an ecclesiastic- 
 al militia suited to meet the obviously impending insurrection, he in- 
 creased his power greatly but insidiously by the formal introduction of 
 auricular confession. It was by the fourth Lateran Council that introduction 
 the necessity of auricular confession was first formally estab- confession, 
 lished. Its aim was that no heretic should escape, and that the absent 
 priest should be parq.mount even in the domestic circle. In none but a 
 most degraded and superstitious society can such an infamous institu- 
 tion be tolerated. It invades the sacred privacy of life — makes a man's 
 wife, children, and servants his spies and accusers. When any religious 
 system stands in need of such a social immorality, we may be sure that 
 it is irrecoverably diseased; and hastening to its end. 
 
374 rREDEEICK II. 
 
 Auricular confession led to an increasing necessity for casuistry, 
 Development though that science was not fujly developed untU the time of 
 of oasuiBtiy. ^]^g Jesuits, when it gave rise to an extensive literature, with a 
 lax system and a false morality, guiding the penitent rather with a view 
 to his usefulness to the Church than to his own reformation, and not 
 hesitating at singular indecencies in its portion having reference to mar- 
 ried life. 
 
 Great historical events often find illustrations" in representative men. 
 Such is the case in the epoch we are now considering. On one side 
 Attitude of In- stauds Innoceut, true to the instincts of his party, interfering 
 nocent III. ^^^-j^ all.the European nations ; launching forth his interdicts 
 and excommunications ; steeped in the blood of French heretics ; hesi- 
 tating at no atrocity, even the outrage and murder of women and chil- 
 dren, the ruin of flourishing cities, to compass his plans ; in all directions, 
 under a thousand pretenses, draining Europe of its money ; calling to 
 his aid hosts of begging friars ; putting forth imposture miracles ; organ- 
 izing the Inquisition, and invading the privacy of life by the contriv- 
 ance of auricular confession. 
 
 On the other side stands Frederick II., the Emperor of Germany. 
 Attitude of His early life, as has been already mentioned, page 344, was 
 Frederick n. gpe^^ Jq Sicily, in familiar intercourse with Jews and Arabs, 
 and Sicily to the last was the favored portion of his dominions. To his 
 many other accomplishments he added the speaking of Arabic as fluent- 
 ly as a Saracen. He delighted in the society of Mohammedan ladies, 
 who thronged his court. His enemies asserted that his chastity was not 
 improved by his associations with these miscreant beauties. The Jew- 
 ish and Mohammedan physicians and philosophers taught him to sneer 
 at the pretensions of the Church. From such ridicule it is but a short 
 ffia Mohammed- Step to the shaking off of authority. At this time the Span- 
 an tendenoiea. ^^T^ Mohammcdaus had become widely infected with irrelig- 
 ion ; their greatest philosophers were infidel in their own infidelity. 
 The two sons of Averrhoes of Cordova were residents at- Frederick's 
 court. Their father was one of the ablest men their nation ever pro- 
 duced : an experienced astronomer, he had translated-the Almagest, and, 
 it is af&rmed, was the first who actually saw a transit of Mercury across 
 the sun; a voluminous commentator on the works of Plato and Aris- 
 totle, but a disbeliever in all revelation. Even of Mohammedanism he 
 said, alluding to the prohibition which the Prophet had enjoined on the 
 use of the flesh of swine, " That. form of religion is destitute of every 
 thing that can commend it to the approval of any understanding, unless 
 it be that of a hog." In the Sicilian court, surrounded by such unholy 
 He cultivates influences, the character of the young emperor was formed, 
 af dVerSy!""' Italian poetry, destined for such a brilliant future, here first 
 found a voice in the sweet Sicilian dialect; The emperor and his chan- 
 
* FEEDEEICK II. - 375 
 
 cellor were c>altivators of the gay sciencej and in the composition of son- 
 nets were rivals. A love of amatory poetry had spread from the South 
 of France. 
 
 "With a view to the recovery of the Holy Land, Honorius III. had 
 made Frederick marry Yolinda de Lusignan, the heiress of the kingdom 
 of Jerusalem. It was not, therefore, to he wondered at that Frederick's 
 frivolities soon drew upon him the indignation of the gloomy Pope 
 Gregory IX., the very first act of whose pontificate was to summon a 
 new crusade. To the exhortations and conftnands of the aged pope the 
 emneror lent a most reluctant ear, postponing, from time to Eefuses to go 
 
 -1 i.T TTiiT-Tifi on a crusade, 
 
 time, the period of his departure, and dabbling m doubtiul and then goea. 
 negotiations, through his Mohammedan friends, with the Sultan of Egypt. 
 He embarked at last, but in three days returned. The octogenarian 
 pope was not to be trifltsd with, and pronounced his excommunication. 
 Frederick treated it with ostensible contempt, but appealed to Christen- 
 dom, accusing Rome of avaricious intentions. Her of&cials, he said, were 
 traveling in all directions, not to preach the Word of God, but to extort 
 monev. " The primitive Church, founded on povo'ty and Presumes to re- 
 
 ,.. ■, , „ 1 11 ■ mi Vi buke the pontif- 
 
 simplicity, brought forth numberless samts. The Komans icai government. 
 are now rolling in wealth. What wonder that the walls of the Church 
 are undermined to the base, and threaten utter ruia." For saying this 
 he underwent a more tremendous excommunication ; but his partisans 
 in Eome, raising an insurrection, expelled the pope. And now Fred- 
 erick set sail, of his own accord, on his crusading expedition. On reach- 
 ing the Holy Land, he was received with joy by the knights and pil- 
 grims ; but the clergy held aloof from him as an excommunicated per- 
 son. The pontiff had dispatched a swift-sailing ship to forbid their hold- 
 ing intercourse with him. His private negotiations with the His Mcnd- 
 Sultan of Egypt now came to maturity. The Christian camp the suuan, 
 was thronged with infidel delegates : some came to discuss philosophical 
 subjects, some were the bearers of presents. Elephants and a bevy of 
 dancing-girls were courteously sent by the sultan to his friend, who, it is 
 said, was not insensible to the witcheries of the Oriental beauties. He 
 wore a Saracen dress. In his privacy he did not hesitate to say, " I 
 came not here to deliver the Holy City, but to maintain my estimation 
 among the Franks." To the sultan he appealed, " Out of your goodness, 
 surrender to me Jerusalem as it is, that I may be able to lift up my head 
 among the kings of Christendom." Accordingly, the city ^o gives up je- 
 was surrendered to him. The object of his expedition was ''''='^™ "> i"™- 
 accomplished. But the pope was not to be deceived by such collusions. 
 He repudiated the transactions altogether, and actually took measures 
 to lay Jerusalem and the Savior's sepulchre under interdict, and this in 
 the face of the Mohammedans. While the emperor proclaimed his suc- 
 cesses to Europe, the pope denounced them as Coming from the union of 
 
376 INSTITUTIONS OF FREDEKICK. ' 
 
 The pope de- Christ and Belial ; alleging four accusations against Fredericli: ; 
 noLiDces him. ^ rpj^g^^. j^g jjg^^j gj^g^ ^j^g sword wHch he had received from 
 
 the altar of St. Peter for the defense of the faith, as a present to the Sul- 
 tan of Babylon ; 2. That he had permitted the preaching of the Koran 
 in the holy Temple itself; 3. That he had excluded the Christians of 
 Antioch from his treaty ; 4. That he had bound himself, if a Christian 
 army should attempt to cleanse the Temple and city from Mohammedan 
 defilements, to join the Saracens. > 
 
 Frederick crowned himself at Jerusalem, unable to find any ecclesias- 
 tic who dared to perform the ceremony, and departed from the Holy 
 Land. It was time, for Eome was intriguing against him at home, a 
 false report of his death having been industriously circulated. He forth- 
 with prepared to enter on his conflict with the pontiff. His Saracen 
 Frederick cataij. colonies at Nocera and Luceria, in* Italy, could supply him 
 posts in Italy, with 30,000 Mussiilman soldiers, with whom it was impossi- 
 ble for his enemies to tamper. He managed to draw over the general 
 sentiment of Europe to his side, and publicly offered to convict the pope 
 himsdf of negotiations with the infidels ; but his antagonist, convenient- 
 ly impressed with a sudden horror of shedding blood, gave way, and 
 peace -between the parties was made. It lasted nearly nine years. 
 
 In this period, the intellectual greatness of Frederick, and the tenden- 
 cies of the influences by which he was enveloped, were strikingly mani- 
 iiis political fested. In advance of his age, he deyoted himself to the politi- 
 inBtitutiona. ^^^ improvement of Sicily. He instituted representative parlia- 
 ments ; enacted a system of wise laws ; asserted the principle of equal 
 rights and equal burdens, and the supremacy of the law over all, even 
 the nobles and the Church. He provided for the toleration of all pro- 
 fessions, Jew and Mohammedan, as well as Christian ; emancipated all 
 the serfs of his domains ; instituted cheap justice for the poor ; forbade 
 private war ; regulated commerce — prophetically laying down some of 
 those great principles, which only in our own time have been finally re- 
 ceived as true ; established markets and fairs ;, collected large libraries ; 
 caused to be translated such works as those of Aristotle and Ptolemy ; 
 built menageries for natural history ; founded in Naples a great uni- 
 versity ; patronized the medical college at Salernum ; made provisions 
 for the education of promising but indigent youths. All over the land 
 splendid architectural triuTnphs were created. Under him the Italian 
 language first rose above a patois. Sculpture, painting, and music were 
 patronized. His chancellor is said to have been the author of the old- 
 est sonnet. 
 
 In the eye of Eome all this was an abomination. Were hupian laws 
 to take the precedence of the law of God ? Were the clergy to be de* 
 graded to a level with the laity ? Were the Jew and the Mohammedan 
 to be permitted their infamous rites ? Was this new-born product of 
 
HIS CONFLICT WITH THE POPE. 377 
 
 the Insolence of human intellect — ^this ^o-called science — to be brought 
 into competition with theology, the heaven-descended ? Frederick and 
 his parliaments, his laws and universities, his libraries, his stat- They are de- 
 nes, his pictures and sonnets, were denounced. Through all, ■"■""^i 
 the ever-watchful eye of the Church discerned the Jew and the Saracen, 
 and held them up to the abhorrence of Europe. But Gregory was not 
 unwilling to show what could be done by himself in the same direction. 
 He caused a compilation of the Decretals to be issued, intrusting the 
 work to one Eaymond de Pennaforte, who had attained to celebrity as 
 a literary opponent of the Saracens. It is amusing to remark that even 
 this simple work of labor could not be prondulgated without the custom- 
 ary embellishments. It was given out that an angel watched over his 
 shoulder all the time he was writing. 
 
 Meantime an unceasing vigilance was maintained against the danger- 
 ous results that would necessarily ensue from Frederick's movements. 
 In Eome, many heretics were burned; many condemned-to imprison- 
 ment for life. The quarrel between the pope and the em- 'omtreakofhis 
 
 -^ ^ _ ^ ^ . ■*■ -^ quarrel with the 
 
 peror was again resumed ; the latter bemg once more excom- pope, 
 municated, and his body delivered over to Satan for the good of his 
 soul. Again Frederick appealed to all the sovereigns of Christendom. 
 He denounced the pontiff as an unworthy vicar of Christ, " who sits in 
 his court like a merchant, weighing out dispensations for gold — ^himself 
 writing and signing the bulls, perhaps counting the money. He has but 
 one cause of enmity against me, that I refused to marry to his niece my 
 natural son Enzio, now King of Sardinia." " In the midst of the Church 
 sits a frantic prophet, a. man of falsehood, a polluted pfiest." To this 
 Gregory replied. The tenor of his answer may be gathered from its 
 commencement : " Out of the sea a beast is arisen, whose name is writ- 
 ten all over ' Blasphemy.' " " He falsely asserts that I am en- who rouses 
 raged at his refusing his consent to the marriage of my niece against him. 
 with his natural son. He lies more impudently when he says that I 
 have pledged my faith to the Lombards." " In truth, this pestilent king 
 maintains, to use his own words, that the world has been deceived by 
 three impostors — Jesus Christ, Moses, and Mohammed ; that of these 
 two died in honor, and the third was hanged on a tree. Even now, he 
 has asserted, distinctly and loudly, that those are fools who aver that God, 
 the Omnipotent Creator of the world, was born of a woman." This was 
 in allusion to the celebrated and mysterious book, "De Tribus Imposto- 
 ribus," in the authorship of which Frederick was accused of haying been 
 concerned. 
 
 The pontiff had touched the right cord. The begging friars, in all di- 
 rections, added to the accusations. " He has spoken of the Host as a 
 mummery ; he has asked how many gods might be made out of a corn- 
 field ; he has affirmed that, if the princes of the world would stand by 
 
378 HIS EXCOMMUNICATION AND DEATH. 
 
 him, he would easily make for mankind a better faith and a better rule 
 of life ; he has laid down the infidel maxim that ' God expects not a man 
 to believe any thing that can not be demonstrated by reason.' " The 
 opinion of Christendom rose against Frederick ; its sentiment of piety 
 was shocked. ,The pontiff proceeded to depose him, and offered his 
 Frederick uses his crown to Eobcrt of Francc. But the Mussulman troops of 
 Saracen troops, ^j^g empcror Were too much for the begging friars of the 
 pope. His Saracens were marching across Italy in all directions. The 
 pontiff himself would have inevitably fallen into the hands of his mortal 
 enemy had he not found a deliverance in death, A.D. 1241. Frederick 
 had declared that he would not respect his sacred person, but, if victori- 
 ous, would teach him the absolute supremacy of the temporal power. 
 It was plain that he had no intention of respecting a rehgion which he 
 had not hesitated to denounce as " a mere absurdity." 
 
 Whatever may have been the intention of Innocent IV. — who, after 
 the short pontificate of Celestine TV. and an interval, succeeded — ^he was 
 borne into the same policy by the irresistible force of circumstances. 
 The deadly quarrel with the emperor was renewed. To escape his wrath, 
 Innocent fled to France, and there in safety called the Council of Lyons. 
 In a sermon, he renewed all the old accusations — the heresy and sacri- 
 lege — the peopling of Italian cities with Saracens, for the purpose of 
 overturning the Yicar of Christ with those infidels — ^the friendship with 
 the Sultan of Egypt — the African courtesans — the perjuries and blas- 
 Excommu- phemies. Then was proclairned the sentence of excommunica- 
 Fiedeiick. tion and deposition. The pope and the bishops inverted the 
 torches they h^d in their hands until they went out, uttering the male- 
 diction, " So may he be extinguished." Again the emperor appealed to 
 Europe, but this time in vain. Europe would not forgive him his blas- 
 phemy. Misfortunes crowded upon -him ; his friends forsook him ; his 
 favorite: son, Enzio, was taken prisoner ; and he never smiled again after 
 detecting his intimate, Pietro de Vinea, whom he had raised from beg- 
 gary, in promising the monks that he would poison him. The day had 
 been carried by a resort to all means justifiable and unjustifiable, good 
 and evil. For thirty years Frederick had combated the Church and the 
 Guelph party, but he sunk in the conflict at last. "When Innocent heard 
 of the death of his foe, he might doubtless well think that what he had 
 once asserted had at last become true: "We are no mere- mortal man; 
 we have the place of God upon earth." In his address to the clergy of 
 The triumph. Sicily he exclaimed, " Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth 
 at hia death, ^g gjj^^ . foj. ^^^ lightning and tempest wherewith God Al- 
 mighty has so long menaced your heads have been changed by the death 
 of this man into refreshing zephyrs and fertilizing dews." This is that 
 superhuman vengeance which hesitates not to strike the corpse of a man. 
 Eome never forgives him who has told her of her impostures face to 
 face ; she never forgives him who has touched her goods. 
 
ST. LOUIS OF FRANCE, 879 
 
 The Saracenic influences had thus found an expression in the South 
 of France and in Sicily, involving many classes of society, from the Poor 
 Men of Lyons to the Emperor of Germany ; but in both places they 
 were overcome by the admirable organization and unscrupulous vigor 
 of the Church. She handled her weapons with singular dex- Power of the 
 
 - . , . „, .,T . , Church at 
 
 tenty, and contrived to extract victory out oi humiliation and this moment. 
 defeat. As ever since the days of Constantine, she had partisans in ev- 
 ery city, in every village, in every family. And now it might have ap- 
 peared that the blow she had thus deUvered was final, and that the world, 
 in contentment, must submit to her will. She had again succeeded in 
 putting her iron heel on the neck of knowledge, and had stamped upon 
 it amid the hatred of Christendom, reviling it as the monstrous but legit- 
 imate issue of the detested Mohammedanism. 
 
 But the fate of men is by no means an indication of the fate of prin- 
 ciples. -The fall of the Emperor Frederick was not followed by the de- 
 struction of the influences he represented. These not only yitauty of Frea- 
 survived him, but were destined, in the end, to overcome the '™'''° p™"'!"'^- 
 power which had transiently overthrown them. We are now entering 
 on the history of a period which ofiers to us not only exterior opposi- 
 tion to the current doctrines, but, what is more ominous, interior mutiny. 
 Notwithstanding the awful persecutions in the South of France — not- 
 withstanding the establishment of auricular confession as a detective 
 means, and the Inquisition as a weapon of punishment — notwithstand- 
 ing the influence of the French king, St. Louis, canonized by the grateful 
 Church — ^heresy, instead of being extirpated, extended itself among the 
 laity, and even spread among the ecclesiastical ranks. St. Louis, st. Lams. 
 the representative of the hierarchical party, gathers influence only from 
 the circumstance of his relations with the Church, of whose interests he 
 was a fanatical .supporter. So far as the affairs of his people were con- 
 cerned, he can hardly be looked upon as any thing better than a simple- 
 ton. His reliance for checking the threatened spread of heresy was a 
 resort to violence — the fagot and the sword. In his opinion, " A man 
 ought never to dispute with a misbeliever except with his sword, which 
 he ought to drive into the heretic's entrails as far as he could." It was 
 the signal glory- of his reign that he secured for France that inestimable 
 relic, the crown of thorns, -ffhis peerless memento of our Sa- ma superstition, 
 vior's passion he purchased in Constantinople for an immense sum. But 
 France was doubly and enviably enriched ; for the Abbey of St. Denys 
 was in possession of another, known to be equally authentic. Besides 
 the crown, he also secured the sponge that was dipped in vinegar ; the 
 lance of the Eoman soldier ; also the swaddling-cloth.es in which the Sa- 
 vior had first lain in the manger ; the rod of Moses ; and part of the 
 skull of John the Baptist. These treasures he deposited in the " Holy 
 Chapel" of Paris. 
 
380 . ACTION OF THE INQUISITIOX. 
 
 Under the papal auspices, St. Louis determined on a, crusade ; and 
 and crusade, nothing, except what we have already mentioned, can better 
 show his mental imbecility than his disregard of all suitable arrange- 
 ments for it. He thought that,' provided the troops could be made to 
 lead a religious life, all would go well; that the Lord would fight his 
 own battles, and that no provisions of a military or worldly kind were 
 needed. In such a pious reliance on the support of God, he reached 
 Egypt with his expedition in June, A.D. 1249. The ever-conspicuous 
 valor of the French troops could maintain itself in the battle-field, but 
 not against pestilence and famine. In March of the following year, as 
 might have been foreseen. King Louis was the prisoner of the sultan, 
 and was only spared 'the indignity of being , carried about as a public 
 Its total faiiiire. spcctaclc iu the Mohammsdan towns by a ransom, at first 
 fixed at a million of Byzantines, but by the merciful sultan volunta- 
 rily reduced one fifth. Still, for a time, Louis lingered in the East, ap- 
 parently stupefied by considering how God could in this manner have 
 abandoned a man who had come to his help. Never was there a cru- 
 sade with a more shameful end. 
 
 Notwithstanding thfc support of St. Louis in his own dominions, the 
 intellectual revolt spread in every direction, and that not only in France, 
 The Inquisition b^t throughout all CatholicEuropc. In vain the Inquisition 
 Jwt'thetater exerted all its terrors— and what could be more terrible than 
 lectuai revolt, j^g f^^j^ q£ proccdure ? It sat in secret ; no witness, no advo- 
 cate was present ; the accused was simply informed that he was charged 
 with heresy, it- was not said by whom.. He was made to swear that he 
 would tell the truth as regarded himself, and also respecting other per- 
 sons, whether parents, children, friends, strangers. If he resisted he was 
 committed to a solitary dungeon, dark and poisonous; his food was di- 
 minished ; every thing was done to drive him into insanity. Then the 
 familiars of the Holy Office, or others in its interests, were by degrees to 
 work upon him to extort confession as to himself or accusations against 
 others. But this fearful tribunal did not fail to draw upon itself the in- 
 dignation of men. Its^ victims, condemned for heresy, were perishing m 
 all directions. The usual apparatus of death, the stake and fagots, had 
 become unsuited to its wholesale and remorseless vengeance. The con- 
 victs were so numerous as to require pens made of stakes and filled with 
 straw. It was thus- that, before the Archbishop of Eheims and seven- 
 Burnings of t^sn othcr' prelatcs, one hundred and eighty-three heretics, to- 
 heretics. gather with their pastor, were burned alive. Such outrages 
 against humanity can not be perpetrated without bringing in the end a 
 retribution. In other countries the rising indignation was exasperated 
 by local causes ; in England, for instance, by the continual intrusion oi 
 Italian ecclesiastics into the richest benefices. Some of them were mere 
 boys,; many were non-residents ; some had not so much as seen the coun- 
 try from which they drew their ample wealth. The Archbishop of York 
 
INCREASE of HERESY. 381 
 
 was excommunicated, with torches and bells, because he would not be- 
 stow the abundant revenues of his Church on persons from beyond the 
 Alps ; but for all this " he was blessed by the people." The archbish- 
 opric of Canterbury was held, A.D. 1241, by Boniface of Savoy, to whom 
 had been granted by the pope the first-fruits of all the benefices in his 
 province. His rapacity was boundless. From all the ecclesiastics and 
 ecclesiastical establishments under his control he extorted enormous 
 sums. Some, who, like the Dean of St. Paul's, resisted him, were excom- 
 municated ; some, like the aged Sub-prior of St. Bartholomew's, were 
 knocked down by his own hand. Of a military turn — ^he often wore a 
 cuirass under his robes — ^he joined his brother, the 'Archbishop of Lyons, 
 who was besieging Turin, and wasted the revenues of his see in England 
 in intrigues and petty military enterprises against his enemies in Italy. 
 
 Not among the laity alone was there indignation against such a state 
 of things. Mutiny broke out in the ranks of the Church. It Mutiny ariBing 
 was not that among the' humbler classes the sentiment of pi- ™ "^' chnrch. 
 ety had become diminished. The Shepherds, under the leadership of, 
 the Master of Hungary, passed by tens of thousands through France to 
 excite the clergy to arouse for the rescue of good King Louis, in bond- 
 age to the Mussulmen. They asserted that they were commissioned by 
 the Virgin, and were fed miraculously by the Master. Originating in 
 Italy, the Flagellants also passed, two by two, thro.ugh every The shepherds 
 city, scourging themselves for thirty-three days in memory ^iFiageUanta. 
 of the years of our Lord. These dismal enthusiasts emulated each oth- 
 er, and were rivals of the mendicant friars in their hatred of the clergy. 
 The mendicants were beginning to justify that hesitation whjch Innocent 
 displayed when he was first importuned to authorize them. The papacy 
 had reaped from these orders much good ; it was now to gather a feav- 
 ful evil. * They had come to be learned men instead of ferocious bigots. 
 They were now, indeed, among the most learned men of their times. 
 They had taken possession of many of the seats of learning. In the 
 University of Paris, out of twelve chairs of theology, three only were oc- 
 cupied by the regular clergy. The mendicant friars had enter- The menai- 
 ed into the dangerous paths of heresy. They became involved are affected. 
 in' that fermenting leaven that had come from Spain, and among them 
 revolt broke out. 
 
 With an unerring instinct, Kome traced the insurrection to its true 
 source. We have only to look at the measures taken by the popes to 
 understand their opinion. Thus Innocent III., A.D. 1215, regulaited, by 
 his legate, the schools of Paris, permitting the study of the Di- Home prohib- 
 alectics of Aristotle, but forbidding his physical and metaphys- of scieMe! ^ 
 leal works and their commentaries. These had come through an Arabic 
 channel. A rescript of Gregory XI., A.D. 1231, interdicts those on nat- 
 ural philosophy until they had been purified by the theologians of the 
 Church. These regulations were confirmed by Clement lY., A.D. 1265. 
 
382 THE AGE OF fIi' 
 
 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 
 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST— (Coniinwed). 
 
 OVEBTHROW OT THE ITALIAN SYSTEM BT THE COMBINED INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL ATrACK. 
 
 Progress oflrreligion among the mendicant Orders. — Puhlicaiioa of heretical Boohs.— The Ev- 
 erlasting Gospel and the Comment on the Apocalypse. 
 
 Conflict between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII. — Outrage upon and death of the Pope. 
 
 The French King removes the Papacy from Some to Avignon. — Post-mortem Trial of the Pops 
 ■ for Atheism and Immorality. — Causes and Consequences of the Atheism of the Pope. 
 
 The Templars fall into Infidelity. — Their Trial,' Conviction, and Punishment. 
 
 Immoralities of the Papal Court at Avignon. — Its return to Rome, — Causes, of the great Schism, 
 
 — Disorganization of the Italian System. — Decomposition of the Papacy. — Three Popes. 
 \The Council of Constance attempts to convert the papal Autocracy into a constitutional Monareilj. 
 — It murders John Huss and Jerome of Prague. — Pontificate of Nicolas V. — End of the in- 
 tellectual influence of the Italian System, 
 
 About the close of the twelfth century appeared- among the mendi- 
 The Everiaat- cant friars that ominous work, which, under the title of "The 
 ing Gospel Everlasting-Gospcl," struck terror into the Latin hierarchy. 
 It was affirmed that an angel had brought it from heaven, engraven on 
 copper plates, and had given it to a priest called Cyril, who delivered it 
 to the Abbot Joachim. The abbot had been dead about fifty years, 
 ■when there was put forth, A.D. 1250, a true exposition of the tendency 
 Introduction to it of .Ms book, uQ^cr the form of an introduction, by John of 
 tie F?anoSi3? Parma, the general of the Franciscans, as was universally 
 suspected or alleged. Notwithstanding its heresy, the work displayed 
 an enlarged and masterly conception of the historical progress of hu- 
 manity. In this introduction, John of Parma pointed out that the Ab- 
 b5t Joachim, who had not only performed a pilgrimage to the Holy 
 Land, but had been reverenced as a prophet, received as of unimpeach- 
 able orthodoxy, and canonized, had accepted as his fundamental position- 
 that Roman Christianity had done its work, and had now come to its in- 
 evitable termination. He proceeded to show that there are epochs or 
 ages in the Divine government of the world ; that, during the Jewish 
 dispensation, it had been under the immediate influence of God the Fa- 
 ther ; during the Christian dispensation, it had been under that of God 
 the Son ; and that the time had now arrived when it would be under 
 the influence of God the Holy Ghost; that, in the coming ages, there 
 would be no longer any need of faith, but that all things would be ac- 
 cording to wisdom and reason. It was the ushering in of a new time. 
 So spake, with needful- obscurity, the Abbot Joachim, and so, more plain- 
 
THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL. 383 
 
 ly, the General of the Franciscans in his Introduction. " The Everlast- 
 ing Gospel" was declared- by its adherents to have supplanted the New 
 Testament, as that had supplanted the Old — these three books constitut- 
 ing a threefold revelation, answering to the Trinity of the Godhead. 
 At once there was a cry from the whole hierarchy. The Pope, Alex- 
 ander rV., without delay, took measures for the destruction Attempts to ae- 
 of the book. Whoever tept or concealed a copy was excom- '*"'' ""' ^"^ 
 municate. But among the lower mendicants — ^the Spiritualists, as they 
 were termed — ^the work was held in the most devout repute. With 
 them it had taken the place of the Holy Scriptures. So far from being 
 suppressed, it was followed, in about forty years, A.D. 1297, by the Com- 
 ment on the Apocalypse, by John Teter Oliva, who, in Sic- ^he comment on 
 ily, had accepted the three epochs or ages, and divided the ""^ Apocalypse. 
 middle one — the Christian — into seven stages : the age of the Apostles ; 
 that of the Martyrs ; that of Heresies ; that of Hermits ; that of the Mo- 
 nastic System ; that of the overthrow of Anti-Christ, and that of the com- 
 ing Millennium. He agreed with his predecessors in the impending 
 abolition of Eoman Christianity, stigmatized that Church as the purple 
 harlot, and with them affirmed that the pope and aU his hierarchy had be- 
 come superfluous and obsolete — " their work was done, their doom seal- 
 ed." His zealous followers declared that the sacraments of spread of these 
 the Church were now all useless, those administering them ecclesiastics. 
 having no longer any jurisdiction. The burning of thousands of these 
 " Fratricelli" by the Inquisition was altogether inadequate to suppress 
 them. Eventually, when the Eeformation occurred, they mingled among 
 the followers of Luther. 
 
 To the internal and doctrinal troubles thus befalling the Church, ma- 
 terial and foreign ones of the most viM importance were soon Approacung 
 added. The true reason of the difficulties into which the pa- the church, 
 pacy was falling was now coming conspicuously into light. It was ab- 
 solutely necessary that money should be drawn to Eome, and the sov- 
 ereigns of the Western kingdoms, France and England, from which it 
 had hitherto been largely obtained, were determined that it should be so 
 no longer. They had equally urgent need of all that could be extorted 
 themselves. In France, even by St. Louis, it was enacted that the papal 
 power in the election of the clergy should be restrained ; and, complain- 
 ing of the drain of money from the kingdom to Eome, he applied the ef- 
 fectual remedy of prohibiting any such assessments or taxations f6r the 
 future. 
 
 We have now reached the pontificate of Boniface VIII., an epoch in 
 . the intellectual history of Europe. Under the title of Celestine V. a vis- 
 ionary hermit had been raised to the papacy — visionary, for pet^j Morrone 
 Peter Morrone (such was his name) had long been indulged "^ p"*^ 
 in apparitions of angels and the sounds of phantom bells in the air. 
 
384 POPE BONIFACE VIII. 
 
 Peter was escorted from his cell to his supreme position by admiring 
 crowds ; but it very sooa became apparent that the life of an anchorite 
 is not a preparation for the duties of a- pope. The conclave of cardinals 
 had elected him, not from any impression of his suitableness, but be- 
 cause they were evenly balanced in two parties, neither of which woilld 
 give way. They were therefore driven to a temporary and available 
 election. But scarcely had this been done when his incapacity became 
 conspicuous and his removal imperative. It is said that the friends of 
 Benedetto Graetani, the ablest of the cardinals, through a hole perforated 
 in the pope's chamber wall, at midnight, in a hollow voice, warned him 
 that he retained his dignity at the peril of his soul, and in the name of 
 ceiestinev. God Commanded him to abdicate. And so, in spite of all im- 
 abdication, portuuity, he did. His abdication was considered by many pi- 
 ous men as striking a death-blow at papal infallibility. 
 
 It was during his pontificate that the miracle of Loretto occurred. 
 The miracle The housc inhabited by the Virgin immediately after her con- 
 of Loretto. ception,had been converted on the death of the Holy Family, 
 into a chapel, and St. Luke had presented to it an image, carved by his 
 own hands, still known as our Lady of Loretto. Some angels, chancing 
 to be, at Nazareth when the ^aracen conquerors approached, fearing that 
 the sacred relic might fall into their possession, to8k the house bodOy in 
 their hands, and, carrying it through the air, after several halts, finally 
 deposited it at Loretto in Italy. 
 
 So Benedetto Gaetani, whether by such wily procurements or not, be- 
 Boniface VIII. Came Pope BonifaceVIIL, A.D. 1294. His election was prob- 
 ably due to King Charles, who held twelve electoral votes, the bitter per- 
 sonal animosity of the Colonnas having been either neutralized or over- 
 come. The first care of Boniface was to consolidate his power and re- 
 lieve himself of a rival. In the opinion of many it was not possible for 
 a pope to abdicate. Confinement in prison soon (A.D. 1296) determined 
 Ascent of Pope ce- t^^^ qucstion. The soul of Celestine was seen by a monk 
 lestine to heaven, ascending the skics, which opened to receive it into heav- 
 en ; and a splendid funeral informed his enemies that they must now ac- 
 knowledge Boniface as the unquestioned pope. But the princely Co- 
 lonnas, the leaders of the Ghibelline faction in Eome, who had resisted 
 the abdication of Celestine to the last, and were, therefore, mortal ene- 
 Quarrei of Boniface ^lies of Bouifacc, revolted. He pubHshed a bull against 
 and tiie Colonnas. ^^Qxa ] he excommunicatcd them. "With an ominous an- 
 ticipation of the future— for they were .familiar with the papal power, 
 and knew where to touch it to the quick — they appealed to a " General 
 Council." Since supernatural weapons did not ^eem to avail, Boniface 
 proclaimed a crusade against them. The issue , answered his expecta- 
 tions. Palestrina, one of their strong-holds, which in a moment of weak- 
 ness they had surrendered, was utterly devastated and sown with salt. 
 
HIS QUAREEL WITH PHILIP THE FAIR. 385 
 
 The Colonnas fled, some of them to France. There, in King Philip the 
 Fair, they found a friend, who was destined to avenge their wrongs, and 
 to inflict on the papacy a blow from which it never recovered. 
 
 This was the state of affairs at the commencement 'of the quarrel be- 
 tween Philip and Boniface. The Crusades had brought all Europe un- 
 der taxation to Rome, and loud complaints were every where made 
 against the drain of money into Italy. Things had at last come to such 
 a condition that it was not possible to continue the Crusades pecuniary necea- 
 wirthout resorting to a taxation of the clergy, and this was 8M«|°fK"™«- 
 the true reason of the eventual lukewarmness, and even opposition to 
 them. But the stream of money that had thus been passing into Italy 
 had engendered habits of luxury and extravagance. Cost what it might, 
 money must be had in Home. The perennial necessity under which the 
 kings of England and France found themselves — the necessity of reve- 
 nue for the carrying out of their temporal projects — could only be satis- 
 fied in the same way. The wealth of those nations had insensibly glided 
 into the hands of the Church. In England, Edward I. com- xhe King of 
 pelled the taxation of the clergy. They resisted at first, but pSf'tTe^SS' 
 that sovereign found an ingenious and effectual remedy. He *"'"''' *"^^^- 
 directed his judges to hear no cause in which an ecclesiastic wa,s a com- 
 plainant, but to try every suit brought against them ; asserting that those 
 who refused to share the burdens of the state had no right to the pro- 
 tection of its laws. They forthwith submitted. In the nature and effi- 
 cacy of this remedy we for the first time recognize the agency of a class 
 of men soon to rise to power — the lawyers. 
 
 In France, Philip the Fair made a similar attempt. It was not to be 
 supposed that Rome would tolerate this trespassing on what Themngof 
 she considered her proper domain, and accordingly Boniface tempSit' 
 issued the bull " Gkrids laicos," excommunicating kings who should 
 levy subsidies on ecclesiastics. Hereupon Philip determined that, if the 
 French clergy were not tributary to him, France should not be tributary 
 to the pope, and issued an edict prohibiting the export of gold and silver 
 from France without his license. But he did not resort to these extreme 
 measures until he had tried others which perhaps he considered less 
 troublesome. He had plundered the Jews, confiscated their property, 
 and expelled them from his dominions. The Church was fairly next in 
 order ; and, indeed, the mendicant friars of the lower class, who, as we 
 have seen, were disaffected by the publication of " The Everlasting Gos- 
 pel," were loud in their denunciations of her wealth, attrib- j^ abetted ijy me 
 utmg the prevailing religious demoralization to it. They ''«gp''sMws. 
 pointed to the example of our Lord and his discf^les ; and when their 
 antagonists replied that even He condescended to make use of money, 
 the malignant fanatics maintained their doctrines, amid the applause of 
 a jeering populace, by answering that it was not St. Peter, but Judas 
 
 Bb 
 
386 THE ENEMIES OF BONIFACE. 
 
 who was intrusted with the purse, and that the pope stood in need of the 
 bitter rebuke which Jesus had of old administered to his prototype Pe- 
 ter, saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan; for thou savorest not of the 
 thiVigs that be of "God, but of the things that be of men" (Mark, viii., 33). 
 Under that authority they af&rmed that they might stigmatize the great 
 culprit without guilt. So the king ventured to put forth his hand and 
 touch what the Church had, and she cursed him to his face. At first a 
 literary war ensued : the pope published his bull, the king his reply. 
 Already the policy which Philip was following, and the ability he was 
 displaying, manifested that he had attached to himself that new power 
 and aiiy sua- of which the King of England had taken advantage — a power 
 
 tained by the ° " „ , , . . , ^ , 
 
 lawyeis. soou to Decome the mortal enemy oi the ecclesiastic — the law- 
 yers. In the mean time, money must be had in Eome; when, by the 
 Device of the siugularly felicitous device of the proclamation of a year of 
 jubilee. jubilee, A.D. 1300, large sums were again brought into Italy. 
 Boniface had thus four antagonists on his hands — the King of France, 
 The four enemies the Colonuas, the lawycrs, and the mendicants. By the lat- 
 of Boniface. ^gj.^ ^^^-^ j^jg^ ^^^ ^^^^ jjg ^^^ Cordially hated. Thus the 
 
 higher English Franciscans were enraged against him because he re- 
 fused to let them hold lands. They attempted to bribe him with 40,000 
 ducats ; but he seized the money at the banker's, under the pretense that 
 it had no owners, as the mendicants were vowed to poverty, and then 
 denied the privilege. As to the lower Franciscans, heresy was fast 
 spreading among them. They were not only infected with the doctrines 
 of " The Everlasting Gospel," but had even descended into the abyss of 
 irreligion one step more, by placing St. Francis in the sftad of our Sa- 
 vior. They were incessantly repeating in the ears of the laity that the 
 pope was Anti-Christ, " the Man of Sin." The quarrel between Philip 
 coiusion between and Bonifacc was every moment increasing in bitterness, 
 and thrpope.""^ The formcr seized and imprisoned a papal nuncio, who had 
 been selected because he was known to be personally offensive ; the lat- 
 ter retaliated by the issue of bulls protesting against such an outrage, 
 interfering between the king and his French clergy, and citing the lat- 
 ter to appear in Rome and take cognizance of their master's misdoings. 
 The monarch was actually invited to be present and hear his own doom. 
 In the lesser bull — if it be authentic — and the king's rejoinder, both par- 
 ties seem to have lost their temper. This was followed by the celebrated 
 The bull "4m. bull "AuscuUa Fill,'- at which the king's indignation knew 
 cuua Fiiv jjQ bounds, ^e had it publicly burned in Paris at the sound 
 of a trumpet; assembled the States-General ; and, under the advicfe of 
 his lawyers, skillfully brought the issue to this : Does the king hold 
 the realm of France of God or of the pope ? Without difficulty it might 
 be seen how the French clergy would be compelled to act : since many 
 of them held fiefs of the king, all were in fear of the intrusion of Itahan 
 
THEIK CHARGES BEFOEE THE STATES-GENERAL. 387 
 
 ecclesiastics into the rich benefices. France, therefore, supported her 
 monarch. On his side, Boniface, in the bull "Vnam Sane- Thebun"crnam 
 tarn," asserted his power by declaring that it is necessary ^'»"=<«"»-" 
 to salvation to believe that " every human being is subject to the Pontiff 
 of Eome." Philip, foreseeing the desperate nature of the approaching 
 conflict, and aiming to attach his people firmly to him by putting him- 
 self forth as their protector against priestly tyranny, again skillfully ap- 
 pealed to their sentiments by denouncing the Inquisition as an atrocious 
 barbarity, an .outrage on human rights, violating all law, resorting to 
 new and unheard-of tortures, and doing deeds at which men's minds re- 
 volt with horror. In the South of France this language was thoroughly 
 understood. The lawyers, among whom William de Nogaret wiiuam ae 
 was conspicuous, ably assisted him ; indeed, his whole movement ''"saret. 
 exhibited the extraordinary intelligence of his advisers. It has been af- 
 firmed, and is, perhaps, not untrue, that De Nogaret's father had been 
 burned by the Inquisition. The great lawyer was bent on revenge. 
 The States-General, under his suggestions, entertained four propositions : 
 1. That Boniface was not the true pope; 2. That he was a Action of the 
 heretic; 3. That "he was a simoniac; 4. That he was a man statea-Generai. 
 weighed down with crimes. De Nogaret, learning from the Colonnas 
 how to touch the papacy in a vital point, demanded that the whole sub- 
 ject should be referred to a " General Council" to be summoned by the 
 king. A second meeting of the States-General was held. William de 
 Plaisian,theLordof Vezenoble, appeared with charges against the pope. 
 Out of a long list, many of which could not possibly be true, some may 
 be mentioned : that Boniface neither believed in the immortal- Accusations 
 ity nor incorruptibility of the soul, nor in a life to come, nor p^"° 
 in the real presence in the Eucharist; that he did not observe the fasts 
 of the Church — not even Lent ; that he spoke of the cardinals, monks, 
 and friars as hypocrites ; that the Holy Land had been lost through his 
 fault ; that the subsidies for its relief had been embezzled by him ; that 
 his holy predecessor, Celestine, through his inhumanity had been brought 
 to death ; that he had said that fornication and other obscene practices 
 are no sin ; tljat he was a Sodomite, and had caused clerks to be mur- 
 dered in his presence ; that he had enriched himself by simony ; that his 
 nephew's wife had borne him two illegitimate sons. These, with other 
 still more revolting charges, were sworn to upon the Holy Gospels. The 
 king appealed to "a general council and to a legitimate pope." 
 
 The quarrel had now become a mortal one. There was but one 
 course for Boniface to take, and he did take it. He excommunicated 
 the king. He deprived him of his throne, and anathematized his pos- 
 terity to tlje fourth generation. The bull was to be suspended in the 
 porch of the Cathedral of Anagni on September 8 ; but William de No- 
 garet and one of the Colonnas had already passed into Italy. They 
 
388 • DEATH OF BONIFACE. — REMOVAL OF THE PAPACY. 
 
 hired a troop of banditti, and on September 7 attacked the pontiff in 
 his palace at Anagni. The doors of a church which protected him were 
 strong, but they yielded to fire. The brave old man, in his pontifical 
 robes, with his crucifix in one hand and the keys of St. Peter in the oth- 
 er, sat down on his throne and confronted his assailants. His cardinals 
 had fled through a sewer. So little reverence was there for God's vicar 
 upon earth, that Sciarra Colonna raised his hand to kill him on the spot; 
 but the blow was arrested by De Nogaret, who, with a bitter taunt, told 
 him that here, in his own city, he owed his life to the mercy of a servant 
 of the King of France — a servant whose father had been burned by the 
 Hie seizure by Inquisition. The pontiff was spared only to be placed, on a 
 and Mb death, miserable horse, with his face to the tail, and led off to prison. 
 They meant to transport him to France to await the general council. 
 He was rescued, returned to Eome, was seized and imprisoned again. 
 On the 11th of October he was dead. 
 
 Thus, after a pontificate of nine eventful years, perished Boniface VIH. 
 His history and his fate show to what a gulf Eoman Christianity was 
 approaching. His successor, Benedict XI., had but a brief enjoyment 
 of power ; long enough, however, to learn that the hatred of the King 
 of France had not died with the death of Boniface, and that he was de- 
 termined not only to pursue the departed pontiff's memory beyond the 
 grave, but also to effect a radical change in the papacy itself. A basket 
 of figs was presented to Benedict by a veiled female. She had brought 
 them, she said, from the Abbess of St. Petronilla. In an unguarded mo- 
 Poisoning of mcnt the pontiff ate of them without the customary precaution 
 Benedict XI. ^^ having them previously tasted. Alas ! what was the state 
 of morals in Italy ? A dysentery came on ; in a few days he was dead. 
 But the Colonnas had already taught the King of France how one should 
 work who desires to touch the popedom ; the event that had just occur- 
 red was the preparation for putting their advice into operation. The 
 undeiBtanding be- ^i^^g Came to an Understanding with Bernard de Goth, the 
 thfArchbtahl) rf* Archbishop of Bordeaux. Six conditions were arranged 
 Bordeaux. between them : 1. The reconciliation between the Church 
 
 and the king ; 2. The absolution of all persons engaged ip the affair of 
 Boniface ; 3. Tenths from the clergy for five years ; 4. The condemna- 
 tion of the memory of Boniface ; 5. The restoration of the Colonnas ; 
 6. A secret article ; what it was time soon showed. A swift messenger 
 carried intelligence to the king's partisans in the College of Cardinals, 
 and Bernard became Clement V. "It will be long before we seejhe 
 face of another pope in Eome !" exclaimed the Cardinal Matteo Orsini,. 
 with a prophetic instinct of what was coming when the conspiracy reach- 
 ed its development. His prophecy was only too true. Now appeared 
 what was that sixth, that secret article negotiated between King Philip 
 and De Goth. Clement took up his residence at Avignon in France. 
 
POST-MORTEM TRIAL OF BONIFACE. 
 
 The tomb of the apostles was abandoned. The Eternal City Removal of 
 had ceased to be the metropolis of Christianity. toAvignoD. 
 
 But a French prelate had not bargained with a French king for the 
 most eminent dignity to which a European can aspire without having 
 given an equivalent. In as good faith as he could to his contract, in as 
 good faith as he could to his present pre-eminent position, Clement V. 
 proceeded to discharge his share of the obligation. To a certain extent 
 King Philip was animated by an undying vengeance against his enemy, 
 whom he considered as having escaped out of his grasp, but he was also 
 actuated by a sincere desire of accomplishing a reform in the Church 
 through a radical change in its constitution. He was resolved that the 
 pontiffs should be accountable to the kings of France, or that France 
 should more directly influence their conduct. To reconcile men to this, 
 it was for him to show, with the semblance of pious reluctance, what was 
 the state to which morals and faith had come in Eome. The trial of the 
 dead Boniface was therefore entered upon, A.D. 1310. The Post-mortem 
 Consistory was opened at Avignon, March 18. The proceed- Bmiface. °^* 
 ings occupied many months; many witnesses were examined. The 
 main points attempted to be established by their evidence seem to have 
 been these: "That Boniface had declared his belief that there was no 
 such thing as divine law — what was reputed to be such was merely the 
 invention of men to keep the vulgar in awe by the terrors of eternal 
 punishment ; that it was a falsehood to assert the Trinity, and fatuous 
 to believe it ; that it was falsehood to say that a virgin had ^he accusations 
 brought forth, for it was an impossibility ; that it was false- °«™^' ^'"^■ 
 hood to assert that bread is transubstantiated into the body of Christ ; 
 that Christianity is false, because it asserts a future life, of which there 
 is no evidence save that of visionary people." It was in evidence that 
 the pope had said, " God may do the worst with me that he pleases in 
 the future life ; I believe as every educated man does, the vulgar believe 
 otherwise. We have to speak as they do, but we must believe and 
 think with the few." It was sworn to by those who had heard him dis- 
 puting with some Parisians that he had maintained "that neither the 
 body nor the soul rose again." Others testified that " he neither be- 
 lieved in the resurrection nor in the sacraments of the Church, and had 
 denied that carnal gratifications are sins." The Primicerio of St. John's, 
 at Naples, deposed that, when a cardinal, Boniface had said in his pres- 
 ence, " So that God gives me the good things of this life, I care not a 
 bean for that to come. A man has no more a soul than a beast. Did 
 you ever see any one who had arisen from the dead ?" He took delight 
 in deriding the blessed Virgin ; " for," said he, " she was no more a vir- 
 gin than my mother." As to the presence of Christ in the Host, " It is 
 nothing but paste." Three knights of Lucca testified that when certain 
 venerable embassadors, whose names they gave, were in the presence of 
 
390 THE KING ABANDONS THE PROSECUTION. 
 
 the pope at the time of the jubilee, and a chaplain happened to invoke 
 the mercy of Jesus on a person recently dead, Boniface appalled all 
 around him by exclaiming, "What a fool, to commend him to Christ! 
 He could not help himself, and how can he be expected to help others? 
 He was no Son of God, but a shrewd man and a great hypocrite." It 
 might seem impossible to exceed such blasphemy ; and yet the witnesses 
 went on to testify to a conversation which he held with the brave old 
 Sicilian admiral, Eoger Loria. This devout sailor made the remark, in 
 the pope's presence, that if, on a certain occasion, he had died, it was his 
 trust that Christ would have had mercy on him. To this Boniface re- 
 plied, " Christ! he was no Son of God ; he was a man, eating and drink- 
 ing like ourselves ; he never rose from the dead ; no man has ever risen. 
 I am far mightier than he. I can bestow kingdoms and humble kings." 
 Other witnesses deposed to having heard him affirm, " There is no harm 
 in simony. There is no more harm in adultery than in rubbing one's 
 hands together." Some testified to such immoralities and lewdness in 
 his private life that the pages of a modern book can not be soiled with 
 the recital. 
 
 In the mean time, Clement did all in his power to save the blackened 
 memory -of his predecessor. Every influence that could be brought to 
 bear on the revengeful or politic king was resorted to, and at last with 
 Philip consenta succcss. Perhaps Philip saw that he had fully accomplished 
 
 to atistam from ,. '■^ , '■ ^ . •' '■ 
 
 tiie prosecution, his oDjcct. He had uo dcsigu to dcstroy the papacy. His 
 aim was to revolutionize it — to give to the kings of France a more thor- 
 ough control over it ; and, for the accomplishment of that purpose, to 
 demonstrate to what a condition it had come through the present sys- 
 tem. Whatever might be the decision, such evidence had been brought 
 forward as, notwithstanding its contradictions and apparent inconsisten- 
 cies, had made a profound impression on every thinking man. It was 
 the king's consummate policy to let the matter remain where it was. 
 Accordingly, he abandoned all farther action. The gratitude of Clem- 
 ent was expressed in a bull exalting Philip, attributing his action to pi- 
 ety, exempting him from all .blame, annulling past bulls prejudicial to 
 him, revoking all punishments of those who had been concerned against 
 Boniface except fifteen persons, on whom a light and nominal penance 
 was inflicted. In November, A.D. 1311, the Council of Vienne met. In 
 the following year three cardinals appeared before it to defend the or- 
 thodoxy and holy life of Pope Boniface. Two knights threw down their 
 gauntlets to maintain his innocence by wager of battle. There was no 
 accuser ; no one took up the gage ; and the council was at liberty qui- 
 etly to dispose of the matter. 
 
 How far the departed pontiff was guilty of the charges alleged against 
 The religious him was, therefore, never fairly ascertained. But it was a tre- 
 Pope Boniface, meudous, an appalling fact that charges of suqh a character 
 
CAUSES OF THE IMPIETY OP BONIFACE. 391 
 
 could be even so much as brought forward, much more that a succeed- 
 ing pontiff had to listen to them, and attribute intentions of piety to the 
 accuser. The immoralities of which Boniface was accused were such as 
 in Italy did not excite the same indignation as among the more moral 
 people beyond the Alps ; the heresies were those every where pervad- 
 ing the Church. We have already seen what a profound impression 
 " The Everlasting Gospel" had made, and how many followers and mar- 
 tyrs it had. What was alleged against Boniface was only that he had 
 taken one step more in the downward course of irreligion. His fault 
 lay in this, that in an evil hour he had given expression to thoughts 
 which, considering his position, ought to have remained locked up in 
 his inmost soul. As to the rest, if he was avaricious, and accumulated 
 enormous treasures, such as it was said the banditti of the Colonnas 
 seized when they outraged his person, he was no worse than many other 
 popes. Clement V., his successor, died enormously rich ; and, what was 
 worse, did not hesitate to scandalize Europe by his prodigal munificence 
 to the beautiful Brunisard, the Countess of Talleyrand, his lady. 
 
 The religious condition of Boniface, though not admitting of apology, 
 is capable of explanation. By the Crusades all Europe had been its causes, 
 wrought up to a fanatical expectation, doomed necessarily to disappoint- 
 ment. From them the papacy had derived prodigious advantages both 
 in money and power. It was now to experience fearful evils. It had 
 largely promised rewards in this life, and also in the world to come, to. 
 those who would take up the Cross-, it had deliberately pitted Chris- 
 tianity against Mohammedanism, and staked the authenticity of each on 
 the issue of the conflict. In the face of the whole world it had put forth 
 as the true criterion the possession of the holy places, hallowed by the 
 life, the siifferiags, the death, the resurrection of the Eedeemer. What- 
 ever the result might be, the circumstances under which this had been 
 done were such that there was no concealing, no dissembling. In all 
 Europe there was not a family which had not been pecuniarily involved 
 in the Crusades, perhaps not one which had not furnished men. Was it 
 at all to be wondered at that every where the people, accustomed to the 
 logic of trial by battle, were terror-stricken when they saw the result? 
 Was it to be wondered at that even still more dreadful heresies sponta- 
 neously suggested themselves ? Was it at all extraordinary that, if there 
 had been popes sincerely accepting that criterion, the issue should be a 
 pope who was a sincere misbeliever? Was it extraordinary that there 
 should be a loss of papal prestige ? It was the papacy which had vol- 
 untarily, for its own ends, brought things into this evil channel, and the 
 papacy deserved a just retribution of discredit and ruin. It had wrought 
 oh the devout temper of religious Europe for its own sinister purposes ; 
 it had drained the Continent of its blood, and perhaps of what was more 
 highly prized^ts money ; it had established a false issue, an unwar- 
 
392 THE PROCESS AGAINST THE TEM^LAES. 
 
 ran table criterion, and now came the time for it to reap consequences of 
 a different kind — intellectual revolt among the people, heresy among the 
 clergy. Nor was the pope without eminent comrades in his sin. The 
 Apostasy of the Templars, whose duty it had been to protect pilgrims on the 
 Tempiai-s. ^^^ ^ Jerusalem — who had therefore been long and thor- 
 oughly familiar with the state of events in Palestine — had been treading 
 in the same path as the pope. Dark rumors had begun to circulate 
 throughout Europe that these, the very vanguard of Christianity, had 
 not only proved traitors to their banner, but had actually become Mo- 
 hammedanized. On their expulsion from the Holy Land, at the close 
 of the Crusades, they spread all over Europe, to disseminate by stealth 
 their fearful heresies, and to enjoy the riches they had. acquired in the 
 service they had betrayed. Men find a charm in having it mysteriously 
 and secretly divulged to them that their long-cherished opinions are all 
 a delusion. There was something fascinating in hearing privately, from 
 those who could speak with authority, that, after all, Mohammed was not 
 an impostor, but the author of a pure and noble Theism ; that Saladin 
 was not a treacherous assassin, a despicable liar, but a most valiant, 
 courteous, and gentle knight. In his proceedings against the Templars, 
 King Philip the Fair seems to have been animated by a pure intention 
 of checking the disastrous spread of their opinions ; yet William de No- 
 garet, who was his chief adviser on this matter as on that of Boniface, 
 was not without reasons of personal hatred. It was said that he divided 
 his wrath between the Templars and the pope. They had had some 
 connection with the burning of his father, and vengeance he was resolved 
 to Wreak upon them. Under color of the charges against them, all the 
 They are arrest- Tcmplars in Fraucc Were simultaneously arrested in the 
 edaad tried. ^^^^ ^f ^^^ ^^^^ Octobcr 13, A.D. 1307, SO Well devised 
 were the measures. The grand master, Du Molay, was secured, not, 
 however, without some perfidy. Now were openly brought forward the 
 charges which struck Europe with consternation. Substantiation of 
 them was offered by witnesses, but it was secured by submitting the ac- 
 cused to torture. The grand master, Du Molay, at first admitted their 
 guilt of the accusations alleged. After some hesitation, the pope issued 
 a bull, commanding the King of England to do what the King of France 
 had already done, to arrest the Templars and seize their property. His 
 declaration, that one of the order, a man of high birth, had confessed to 
 himself his criminality, seems to have made a profound impression on 
 the mind of the English king, and of many other persons until that time 
 reluctant to believe. The Parliament and the University of Paris ex- 
 pressed themselves satisfied with the evidence. New examinations were 
 held, and new convictions were made. The pope issued a bull address- 
 ed to all Christendom, declaring how slowly, but, alas I how certainly, 
 he had been compelled to believe in the apostasy of the order, and com- 
 
BURNING OF THEIE GRAND MASTER. 893 
 
 manding that every where proceedings should be instituted against it. 
 A papal commission assembled in Paris, August 7, A.D. 1309. The 
 grand master was had before it. He professed his belief in the Catholic 
 faith, but now denied that the order was guilty of the charges alleged 
 against it, as also did many of the other knights. Other witnesses were, 
 however, brought forward, some of whom pretended to have abandoned 
 the order on account of its foul acts. At the Porte St. Antoine, on many 
 pleasant evenings in the following May, William de Nogaret reveled 
 in the luxury of avenging the shade of his father. One hundred and 
 thirteen Templars were, in slow succession, burned at stakes. r„„nd guiity 
 The remorseless lawyer was repaying the Church in her own ""* p^i'^ea. 
 coin. Yet of this vast concourse of sufferers all died protesting their in- 
 nocence ; not one proved an apostate. Notwithstanding this most sig- 
 nificant fact — for those who were ready to lay down their lives, and to 
 meet with unshaken constancy the fire, were surely the bravest of the 
 knights, and their dying declaration is worthy of our most rever6nt con- 
 sideration — things were such that no other course was possible than the 
 abolition of the order, and this accordingly took place. The pope him- 
 self seems to have been satisfied that the crimes had been perpetrated 
 under the instigation or temptation of Satan ; but men of more enlarged 
 views appear to have concluded that, though the Templars were inno- 
 cent of the moral abominations charged against them, a familiarity with 
 other forms of belief in the East had undoubtedly sapped their faith. 
 After a weary imprisonment of six years, imbittered by many hardships, 
 the grand master, Du Molay, was brought up for sentence. He had been 
 found guilty. "With his dying breath, " before Heaven and earth, on the 
 verge of death, when the least falsehood bears like an intolerable weight 
 on the soul," he declared the innocence of the order and of himself. The 
 vesper-bell was sounding when Du Molay and a brother convict were 
 led forth to their stakes, placed on an island in the Seine. King Burning of 
 Philip himself was present. As the smoke and flames envel- ^" ^°^''^- 
 oped them they continued to affirm their innocence. Some averred that 
 forth from the fire Du Molay's voice sounded, "Clement! thou wicked 
 and false judge, I summon thee to meet me within forty days at the bar 
 of God." Some said that he also summoned the king. In the follow- 
 ing year King Philip the Fair and Pope Clement the Fifth were both 
 dead. 
 
 John XXII., elected after an interval of more than two years spent in 
 rivalries and intrigues between the French and Italian cardinals, con- 
 tinued the residence at Avignon. His movements took a practical turn 
 in the commencement of a process for the^recovery of the treasures of 
 Clement from the "Viscount de Lomenie. This was only a part of the 
 wealth of the deceased pope, but it amounted to a million and three 
 quarters of florins of gold. The Inquisition was kept actively at work 
 
394 THE DISPUTE RESPECTING THE BEATIFIC VISION. 
 
 for the extermination of the believers in " The Everlasting Grospel," and 
 the remnant of the Albigenses and Waldenses. But all tTiis had no other 
 result than that which eventually occurred — an examination of the au- 
 thenticity and rightfulness of the papal power. With an instinct as to 
 the origin of the misbelief every where spreading, the pope published 
 bulls against the Jews, of whom a bloody persecution had arisen, and 
 ordered that all their Talmuds and other blasphemous books should be 
 Marauio'a work, bumed. A physician, Marsilio of Padua, published a work. 
 
 "The Defender J^ ./ . ' ^ ' ■*- J 
 
 of Peace." " The Defender of Peace." 1% was a philosophical examina- 
 tion of the principles of government, and of the nature and limits of the 
 sacerdotal power. Its democratic tendency was displayed by its demon- 
 stration that the exposition of the law of Christianity rests not with the 
 pope nor any other priest, but with a general council ; it rejected the 
 papal political pretensions ; asserted that no one can be rightfully ex- 
 communicated by a pope alone, and that he has no power of coercion 
 over human thought ; that the civil immunities ef the clergy ought to 
 be ended ; that poverty and humility ought alone to be their character- 
 istics ; that society ought to provide them with a decent sustenance, but 
 nothing more : their pomp, extravagance, luxury, and usurpations, es- 
 pecially that of tithes, should be abrogated ; that neither Christ nor the 
 Scriptures ever gave St. Peter a supremacy over the other apostles ; that, 
 if history was to be consulted, St. Paul, and not St. Peter, was bishop of 
 Eome — ^indeed, it was doubtful whether the latter was ever in that city, 
 the Acts of the Apostles being silent on that subject. From these and 
 many other such arguments he drew forty-one conclusions adverse to 
 the political and ecclesiastical supremacy of the pope. 
 
 It is not necessary to consider here the relations of John XXII. with 
 Louis of Bavaria, nor of the antipope Nicholas ; they belong merely to 
 political history. But, as if to show how thfi intellectual movement was 
 working its way, the pontiff himself did not escape a charge of heresy. 
 Though he had so much of temporal affairs upon his hands, John did 
 The "beatif- ^lot hesitate to raise the great question of the " beatific vision." 
 io vision." jjj j^jg opinion, the dead, even the saints, do not enjoy the be- 
 atific vision of God until after the Judgment-day. At once there was a 
 demand among the orthodox, "What! do not the apostles, John, Peter, 
 nay, even the blessed Virgin, stand yet in the presence of God?" The 
 pope directed the most learned theologians to examine the question, 
 himself entering actively into the dispute. The University of Paris was 
 involved. The King of France declared that his realm should not be 
 polluted with such heretical doctrines. A single sentence explains the 
 practical direction of the dogma, so far as the interests of the Church 
 were concerned : " If the saints stand not in the presence of God, of what 
 use is their intercession? What is the use of addressing prayers to 
 them ?" The folly of the pontiff perhaps might be excused by his age. 
 
EESTORATIOlir OF- THE PAPACY TO EOME. 395 
 
 He "Was now nearly ninety years old. That lie had not guided himself 
 according to the ■prevailing sentiment of the lower religious orders, who 
 thought that poverty was essential to salvation, appeared at his death, 
 A.D. 1334. He left eighteen millions of gold florins in specie, and seven 
 millions in plate and jewels. 
 
 His successor, Benedict XII., disposed of the question of the " beatifio 
 vision:" "It is only those saints who do not pass through h is explained by 
 Purgatory that immediately behold the Godhead." The Benedict xii. 
 pontificate of Benedict, which was not without many good features, hard- 
 ly verified the expression with which he greeted the cardinals when they 
 elected him, " You have chosen an ass." His was a gay life. There is 
 a tradition that to him is due the origin of the proverb, "As drunk as a 
 pope." 
 
 In the subsequent pontificate of Clement VI., A.D. 1342, the court at 
 Avignon became the most voluptuous in Christendom. It voiuptnousness 
 was crowded with knights and ladies, painters and other art- "' -^"s"™- 
 ists. It exhibited a day-dream of equipages and banquets. The pon- 
 tiff himself delighted in female society, but, in his weakness, permitted 
 his lady, the Countess of Turenne, to extort enormous revenues by the 
 sale of ecclesiastical promotions. Petrarch, who lived at Avignon at 
 this time, speaks of it as a vast brothel. His own sister had been se- 
 duced by the holy father, John XXII. During all these years the Eo- 
 mans had made repeated attempts to force back the papal court to their 
 city. With its departure all their profits had gone. But the fatal pol- 
 icy of electing Frenchmen into the College of Cardinals seemed to shut 
 out every hope. The unscrupulous manner in which this was done is 
 illustrated by the fact that Clement made one of his Matives, a lad of 
 eighteen, a cardinal. For a time the brief glories of Eienzi cast a Eienzi. 
 flickering ray on Eome ; but Eienzi was only a demagogue — an impos- 
 tor. It was the deep impression made upon Europe that the residence 
 at Avignon was an abandonment of the tomb of St.Peter, that compelled 
 Urban V. to return to Eome. This determination was strengthened by 
 a desire to escape out of the power of the kings of France, and to avoid 
 the free companies who had learned to extort bribes for sparing Avig- 
 non from plunder. He left Avignon, A.D. 1367, amid the reluctant 
 grief of his cardinals, torn from that gay and dissipated city, and in dread 
 of the recollections and of the populace of Eome. And well it might 
 be so ; for not only in Eome, but all over Italy, piety was held in no re- 
 spect, and the discipline of the Church in derision. When Urban sent 
 to Barnabas Visconti, who was raising trouble in Tuscany, a bull of ex- 
 communication by the iands of two legates, Barnabas actually iirevercnce 
 compelled them, in his presence, to eat the parchment on which viscS. °° 
 the bull was written, together with the leaden seal and the silken string, 
 and, telling them that he hoped it would sit as lightly on their stomachs 
 
396 THE GREAT SCHISM. 
 
 as it did on his, sent them back to their master ! In a little time — it 
 was but two years — absence from France became insupportable; the 
 pope returned to Avignon, and there died. It was reserved for his suc- 
 The popes re- ccssor, Gregory XI., finally to end what was termed, from its 
 turn to Rome, geyenty years' duration, the Babylonish captivity, and restore 
 the papacy to the Eternal City, A.D. 1376. 
 
 But, though the popes had thus returned to Rome, the effects of King 
 caases of the Philip's policy still continued. On the death of Gregory XI., 
 igreat schism, ^-j^^ couclave, meeting at Eome — ^for the conclave must meet 
 where the pope dies — elected Urban VI., under intimidation of the Eo- 
 man populace, who were determined to retain the papacy in their city ; 
 but, escaping away to Fondi, and repenting what they had thus done, 
 they proclaimed his election void, and substituted Clement YII. for him. 
 They were actually at one time on the point of choosing the King of 
 France as pope. Thus began the great schism. It was, in reality, a 
 struggle between Prance and Italy for the control of the papacy. The 
 former had enjoyed it for seventy years; the latter was determined to 
 recover it. The schism thus rested originally on political considerations, 
 but these were doubtless exasperated by the conduct of Urban, whose 
 course was overbearing and even intolerable to his supporters. Nor did 
 he amend as his position became more consolidated. In A.D. 1385, sus- 
 pecting his cardinals of an intention to seize him, declare him a heretic, 
 and burn him, he submitted several of them to the torture in his own 
 presence, while he recited his breviary. Escaping from Nocera, where 
 he had been besieged, he caused the Bishop of Aquila to be killed on the 
 road-side. Oth^s he tied in sacks, and threw into the sea at Genoa. It 
 was supposed, not without reason, that he was insane. 
 
 If there had been formerly pecuniary dif&culty in supporting one pa- 
 Pecuniary ne- pal court, it, of course, bccame greater now that there were 
 
 lessities of the '^ n i in n • • i t i i 
 
 rival popes, two. buch troubles, evcry day mcreasing, led at length to m- 
 auspicious political movements. There was an absolute necessity for 
 drawing money to Eome and also to Avignon. The device of a jubilee 
 was too transitory and inadequate, even though, by an improvement in 
 the theory of that festival, it was expedited by thirty -three years, answer- 
 ing to our Savior's life. At Avignon, the difficulty of Clement, who was 
 of amiable and polished manners, turned on the French Church being 
 obliged to support him ; and it is not to be wondered at that the French 
 clergy looked with dislike on the pontifical establishment among them, 
 since it was driven by its necessities to prey on all their best benefices. 
 Under such circumstances, no other course was possible to the rival 
 popes and their successors than a thorough reorganization of the papal 
 Organization financial system — the more complete development of simony, 
 of simony, indulgcnccs, and other improper sources of emolument. In 
 this manner Boniface IX. tripled the value of the annats upon the pa- 
 
THE GEEAT SCHISM. 397 
 
 pal books. Usurers or brokers, intervening between the purcliasers of 
 benefices and the papal exchequer, were established, and it is said that, 
 under the pressing difficulties of the case, benefices were known to have 
 been sold, many times in succession, to different claimants' in one week. 
 Late applicants might obtain a preference for appointments on making 
 a cash payment of twenty-five florins ; an increased preference might be 
 had for fifty. It became, at last, no unusual thing to write to kings and 
 prelates for subsidies — a proof how greatly the papacy had been weak- 
 ened by the events of the times. 
 
 But religious Europe could not bear with such increasing scandals. 
 The rival popes were incessantly accusing each other of false- indignation 
 hood and all manner of wickedness. At length the public sen- Europe. 
 timent found its expression in the Council of Pisa, called by the cardi- 
 nals on their own responsibility. This council summoned the two popes 
 — Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII. — before it ; declared the crimes and 
 excesses imputed to them to be true, and deposed them both, appointing 
 in their stead Alexander V. There were now, therefore, three Three popes. 
 popes. But, besides thus rendering the position of things worse than it 
 was before in this respect, the councU had taken the still more extraor- 
 dinary step of overthrowing' the autocracy of the pope. It had been 
 compelled by the force of circumstances to destroy the very foundation 
 of Latin Christianity by assuming the position of superiority over the 
 vicar of Christ. Now might be discerned by men of reflection the pure- 
 ly human nature of the papacy. It had broken down. Out of the the- 
 ological disputes of preceding years a political principle was obviously 
 emerging ; the democratic spirit was developing itself, and the hierarchy 
 was in rebellion against its sovereign. 
 
 Nor was this great movement limited to the clergy. In every direc- 
 tion the laity participated in it, pecuniary questions being in very many 
 instances the incentive. Things had come to such a condition that it 
 seemed to be of little moment what might be the personal character of 
 the pontiff; the necessities of the position irresistibly drove him to re- 
 plenish the treasury by shameful means. Thus, on Alexander's death, 
 Balthazar Cossa, an evil but an able man, who succeeded as Balthazar cos- 
 JohnXXin., was not only compelled to extend the existing ^^'^^vove. 
 simoniacal practices of the ecclesiastical brokers' offices, but actually to 
 derive revenue from the licensing of prostitutes, gambling-houses, and 
 usurers. In England, for ages a mine of wealth to Eome, the tendency 
 of things was shown by such facts as the remonstrance of the Commons 
 with the crown on the appointment of ecclesiastics to all the Dissatisfaction 
 great offices; the allegations made by the "Good Parliament" ^ England, 
 as to the amount of money drawn by Eome from the kingdom. They 
 asserted that it was five times as much as the taxes levied by the king, 
 and that the pope's revenue from England was greater than the revenue 
 
398 WICLIF. 
 
 of any prince in Christendom. It was shown again by such facts as the 
 passage of the statutes of Mortmain, Provisors, and Prsemunire, and by 
 the universal clamor against the mendicant orders. This dissatisfaction 
 with the clergy was accompanied by a desire for knowledge. Thou- 
 sands*of persons crowded to the universities both on the Continent and 
 in England. In a community thus well prepared, Wiclif found no diffi- 
 wiciif,theEn- culty in disseminating his views. He had adopted in many 
 giisii reformer, particulars the doctrines of Berengar. He taught that the 
 bread in the Eucharist is not the real body of Christ, but only its image ; 
 that the Koman Church has no true claim to headship over other church- 
 es ; that its bishop has no more authority than any other bishop ; that 
 it is right to deprive a delinquent Church of temporal possessions ; that 
 no bishop ought to have prisons for the punishment of those obnoxious 
 to him ; and that the Bible alone is a sufficient guide for a Christian 
 He tranBiatea ™an. His translation of the Bible into English was the prac- 
 the Bible. ^-jjg^j carrying out of that assertion for the benefit of his own 
 countrymen. All classes of society were becoming infected. The gov- 
 ernment for a season vacillated. It was said that every other man in 
 England was a Lollard. The Lollards were Wiclifites. But the Church 
 at last persuaded the government to let her try her hand, and the statute 
 " de heretico comburendo" was passed, A.D.1400. William Sautree, a 
 Burning of En- pncst who had turned Wiclifite, was the first English mar- 
 giiaii heretics, ^^j.^ John Badbcc, a tailor, who denied tran substantiation- 
 accused of having said that, if it were true, there were 20,000 gods in ev- 
 ery corn-field in England — next suffered in like manner at the stake, in 
 presence of the Prince of Wales. Lord Cobham, the head of the Lol- 
 lards, who had denounced the pope as Anti-Christ, the Son of Perdition, 
 was imprisoned ; but escaping, became involved in political movements, 
 and suffered at length the double penalty forlieresy and treasoji, being 
 hung on a gallows with a fire blazing at his feet. It is interesting to re- 
 mark the social rank of these three early martyrs. Heresy was pervad- 
 ing all classes, from the lowest to the highest. 
 
 The Council of Constance met A.D. 1415. It had a threefold object : 
 1. The union of the Church under one pope; 2. The reformation of the 
 clergy ; 3. The suppression of heresy. Its policy from the first was de- 
 termined. It proclaimed itself supreme. It demanded the abdication 
 The Council of of the poDC, Johu XXIII. ; exhibited articles of accusation 
 
 Constance de- . \ , „ , n -i • lij. 
 
 pose the pope, agaiust him, some oi them oi such enormity as almost to pass 
 belief, and justifying the epithet that he was "a devil, incarnate." The 
 suffrage of the council was changed. The plan of voting by nations, 
 which reduced the Italians to a single vote, was introduced. These in- 
 cidental facts may indicate to us that there were present men who un- 
 derstood thoroughly how to manage the machinery of such an assembly, 
 and that the remark of .lEneas Sylvius, afterward Pope Pius II., re- 
 
THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. — JOHN HUSS. 399 
 
 specting the Council of Basle was equally true as to that of Constance, 
 that it was not so much directed by the Holy Ghost as by the passions 
 of men. The influence that lawyers were now exercising in social af- 
 fairs — their habits of arrangement, of business, and intrigue, is striking- 
 ly manifested in- the management of these assemblages ; their arts had 
 passed to the clergy, and even in part to the people. But how vast was 
 the change that had occurred in the papacy from the voluntary abdica- 
 tion of Celestine to the compulsory abdication of John ! 
 
 To this council, also, came John Huss, under a safe-conduct from the 
 Emperor Sigismund. Scarcely, however, had he arrived when ^nd murdei 
 he was imprisoned, this treachery being excused from the ne- ''°^^ ^^'' 
 cessity of conceding it to the reforming party. On June 5th, A.D. 1416, 
 Huss was brought in chains before the council. It was declared unlaw- 
 ful to keep faith with a heretic. His countrymen, the Bohemian lords 
 present, protested against such a perfidy, and loudly demanded his re- 
 lease. Articles of accusation, derived from his works, were presented. 
 He avowed himself ready to defend his opinions. The uproar was so 
 great that the council temporarily adjourned. Two days after the trial 
 was resumed. It was ushered in by an eclipse of the sun, said to have 
 been total at Prague. No one of the bloodthirsty ecclesiastics laid to 
 heart the solemn monition that, after his moment of greatest darkness 
 was over, the sun shone forth with recovered effulgence again. The 
 emperor was present, with all the fathers. The first accusation entered 
 on related to transubstantiation. On this and on succeeding occasions 
 the emperor took part in the discussions, among other things observing 
 that, in his opinion, the prisoner was worthy of death. After a lengthy 
 inquiry into his alleged errors, a form of recantation was prepared for 
 Huss. With a modest firmness he declined it, concluding his noble an- 
 swer with the words, " I appeal to Christ Jesus, the one all- u^^,^ conduct 
 powerful and all-just Judge. To him I commend my cause, °'H"=»- 
 who will judge every man, not according to false witnesses and erring 
 councils, but according to truth and man's desert." On July 1st the 
 council met in full session. Thirty articles against Huss were read. 
 Among other things, they alleged that he believed the material bread to 
 be unchanged after the consecration. In his extremity the prisoner 
 looked steadfastly at the traitor Sigismund, and solemnly exclaimed, 
 " Freely came I here under the safe-conduct of the emperor." The con- 
 science-stricken monarch blushed. Huss was then made to kneel down 
 and receive his sentence. It condemned his writings and his body to 
 the flames. ' 
 
 He was then degraded and despoiled of his orders. Some of the bish- 
 ops mocked at him ; some, more merciful, implored him to recant. They 
 cut his hair in the form of a cross, and set upon his head a high paper 
 crown on which devils were painted. " We devote thy soul to the devils 
 
400 MABTYEDOM OF JEEOMB OF PEAGUE. 
 
 in hell." " And I commend my soul to tlie most merciful Lord Christ 
 Jesus." He -was then led forth. They passed by the bishop's palace, 
 where Huss's books were burning. As they tied him with a piece of 
 chain to his stake, the painted crown fell off, but the soldiers replaced it. 
 "Let him and his devils be burned together." As the flames closed 
 Heiahumed. ovcr him, he chautcd psalms and prayed to the Eedeemer. 
 Can that be true which requires for its support the murder of a true man ? 
 So acted, without a dissenting voice, the Council of Constance. It 
 feared the spread of heresy, but it did not fear, perhaps did not consider 
 that higher tribunal to whose inexorable verdict councils, and popes, and 
 emperors must submit — posterity. It asserted itself to be under the in- 
 spiration of the Holy Ghost. It took profit by a shameful perfidy. It 
 was a conclave of murderers. It stifled the voice of an earnest man, 
 solemnly protesting against a doctrine now derided by all Europe. The 
 revolution it was compassing it inaugurated in blood, not alone that of 
 It murders, Johu Huss, but also of Jcromc of Prague. These martyrs were 
 
 also, Jerome _^ . _. . ^. . . *' 
 
 of Plague, no common men. roggio iiracciolini, an eye-witness, says, in 
 a letter to Leonardo Aretino, speaking of the eloquence of Jerome, 
 " When I consider what his choice of words was, what his elocution. 
 His singular what his rcasoniug, what his countenance, his voic6, his action, 
 eloquence. J must affirm, however much we may admire the ancierits, that 
 in such a cause no one could have approached nearer to the model of 
 their eloquence." 
 
 John XXIII. was compelled to abdicate. Gregory XII. died. Some 
 time after, Benedict XIII. followed him. Theicouncil had elected Mar- 
 tin v., and in him found a master who soon put an end to its attempts. 
 It had deposed one pope and elected another ; it had cemented the dom- 
 What the ■ iiiant creed with blood ; it had authorized the dreadful doctrine 
 council did. ^-j^^^ ^ difference in religious opinion justifies the breaking of 
 plighted faith between man and man ; it had attempted to perpetuate 
 its own power by enacting that councils should be held every five years ; 
 but it had not accomplished its great object — ecclesiastical reform. 
 
 In a room attached to the Cathedral of Basle, with its roof of green and 
 party-colored tiles, the modern traveler reads on a piece of paper this in- 
 Tiie Council scriptiou : " The room of the council, where the famous Coun- 
 of Basle. ^jj ^f gj^g^j ^^^ assemblcd. In this room Pope Eugene IV. 
 was dethroned, and replaced by Felix V., Duo of Savoie and Cardinal of 
 Eepaile. The council began 1431, and lasted 1448." That chamber, 
 with its floor of little red earthen flags and its oaken ceiling, witnessed 
 great events. ' 
 
 The democratic influence pervading the Church showed no symptoms 
 of abatement. The fate of Huss had been avenged in blood and fire by 
 the Bohemian sword. Eugenius IV., now pontiff, was afraid that nego- 
 tiations would be entered upon with the Hussite chiefs. Such a treaty, 
 
THE COUNCIL OF BASLE. 401 
 
 he affirmed, would be blaspliemy against God and an insult to the pope. 
 He was therefore bent on ^he prorogatidn of the council, and spared no 
 means to accomplish his purpose. Its ostensible object was the refor- 
 mation of the clergy ; its real intent was to convert the papal autocracy 
 into a constitutional monarchy. To this end it cited the pope, and, on 
 his non-appearance, declared him and seventeen of the cardinals i^^""'"^*;^ 
 in contumacy. He had denounced it as the Synagogue of Sa- contnnmcy. 
 tan ; on its part, it was assuming the functions of the Senate of Chris- 
 tendom. It had prepared a great seal, and asserted that, in case of the 
 death of the pope, the election of his successor was vested in it. It was 
 its firm purpose never again to leave that great event in the hands of a 
 conclave of intriguing Italian cardinals, but to intrust it to the represent- 
 atives of united Christendom; After a due delay since he was declared 
 in contumacy, the council suspended the pope, and, slowly moving to- 
 ward its object, elected Amadeus of Savoy, Felix Y., his successor. It 
 was necessary that its pope should be a rich man, for the council had 
 but slender means of offering him pecuniary support. Amadeus had 
 that qualification. And perhaps it was far from being, in the eyes of 
 many, an inopportune circumstance that he had been married and had 
 children. We may discern, through the shifting scenes of the intrigues 
 of the times, that the Grerman hierarchy had come to the resolution that 
 the election of the pope should be taken from the Italians and hb reai id- 
 given to Europe ; that his power should be restricted ; that he '™*'™=- 
 should no longer be the irresponsible vicar of God upon earth, but the 
 accountable chief executive o£B.cer of Christendom ; and that the right 
 of marriage should be conceded to the clergy. These are significantly 
 Teutonic ideas. 
 
 We have pursued the story of these events nearly as far as is neces- 
 sary for the purpose of this book. We shall not, therefore, cause and dose 
 follow the details of the new schism. It fell almost without °' ""'=' '™°"'='- 
 interest on Europe, ^neas Sylvius, the ablest man of the day, in three 
 words gives us the true insight into the state of things : " Faith is dead." 
 On the demise of Eugenius IV., Nicolas V. succeeded. An understand- 
 ing was had with those in the interest of the council. It was dissolved. 
 JFelix Y. abdicated. The morality of the times had improved. The an- 
 tipope was neither blinded nor murdered. The schism was at an end. 
 
 Thus we have seen that the personal immoralities and heresy of the 
 popes brought on the interference of the Kinar of France, who End of the intei- 
 not only shook the papal system to its basis, but destroyed of the papacy, 
 its prestige by inflicting the most conspicuous indignity upon it. For 
 seventy years Eome was disfranchised, and the rivalries of France and 
 Italy produced the great schism, than which nothing could be more prej- 
 udicial to the papal power. We have seen that, aided by the pecuniary 
 difficulties of the papacy, the rising intellect of Europe made good its 
 
 Co 
 
402 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. 
 
 influence, and absolutely deposed the pope. It was in vain to deny the 
 authenticity of such a council; there stood the accomplished fact. At 
 this moment there seemed no other prospect for the Italian system than 
 utter ruin ; yet, wonderful to be said, a momentary deliverance came 
 from a quarter whence no man would have expected. The Turks were 
 the saviors of the papacy. 
 
 At this point is the true end of the Italian system — that system which 
 had pressed upon Europe like a nightmiare. The great men of the times 
 — the statesmen, the philosophers, the merchants, the lawyers, the gov- 
 erning classes — they whose weight of opinion is recognized by the un- 
 educated people at last, had shaken off the incubus and opened their 
 eyes. A glimmering of the true state of things was breaking upon the 
 clergy. No more with the vigor it once had possessed was the papacy 
 again to domineer over human thought and be the controlling agent of 
 European affairs. Convulsive struggles it might make, but they were 
 only death-throes. The sovereign pontiff must now descend from the 
 autocracy he had for so many ages possessed, and become a small po- 
 tentate, tolerated by kings in that subordinate position only because of 
 the remnant of his influence on the uneducated multitude and those of 
 feeble minds. 
 
 CHAPTER XVm. 
 
 THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST— {Concluded). 
 
 EFFECT OF THE EASTERN OR MILITARY ATTACK. — GENERAL RETIEW OP THE AGE OP FAITH. 
 
 The Fall of Constantinople. — Its momentary Effect on ike Italian System. 
 
 General Eeview op the intellectual Condition in the Age of Faith. — Supernatiif 
 ralism and its Logic spread all over Eury>e. — It is destroyed by the Jews and Arabians. — 
 Its total Extinction. 
 
 The Jewish Physicians. — Their Acquirements and Influence. — Their Collision with the Imposture- 
 medicine of Europe. — Their Effect on the higher Classes.- — Opposition to them. 
 
 Two Impulses, the Intellectual and Moral, operating against the Mediceval state of Things. — 
 Downfall of the Italian System through the intellectual Impulse from the West and the moral 
 from the North. — Action of the former through Astronomy. — Origin of the moral Impulse. — 
 Their conjoint irresistible Effect. — Discovery of the state of Affairs in Italy. — The Writings 
 of Machiavelli. — What the Church had actually done. 
 
 Entire Movement of the Italian System determined from a consideration of the four Reoolts 
 against it. 
 
 From the "West I have now to return to the East, and to describe the 
 The Eastern pressurc made by Mohammedanism on that side. It is illus- 
 pressure. tratcd by many great events, but, above all, by the loss of Con- 
 stantinople. The Greek Church, so long out of sight that it is perhaps 
 almost forgotten by the reader, comes for a moment before us like a 
 spectre from the dead. 
 
THE INVASION OF EUEOPE BY THE TUEKS. 403 
 
 A wandering tribe of Turks had found its way into Asia Minor, and, 
 under its leader Ertogrul and his son Othman, consolidated its Appearance 
 power and commenced extending its influence by possessions "fi^ Turks. 
 taken from the sultans of Iconium and the Byzantine empire. The 
 third prince of the race instituted the Janissaries, a remarkable military 
 force, and commenced driving the Greeks out of Asia Minor. His son 
 Soliman crossed the Hellespont and captured Gallipoli, thus securing a 
 foothold in Europe, A.D. 1358. 
 
 This accomplished, the Turkish influence began to extend rapidly. 
 Thrace, Macedon, and Servia were subdued. Sigismund, Extenaion'of their 
 the King of Hungary, was overthrown at the battle of Ni- p»'^er m Europe, 
 copolis by Bajazet. Southern Greece, the countries along the Danube, 
 submitted, and Constantinople would have fallen had it not been for the 
 unexpected irruption of Tamerlane, who defeated Bajazet and took him 
 prisoner. The reign of Mohammed I., who succeeded, was occupied in 
 the restoration of Turkish affairs. Under Amurath II., possession of the 
 Euxine shore was obtained, the fortifications across the Isthmus of Cor- 
 inth were stormed, and the Peloponnesus entered. 
 
 Mohammed II. became the Sultan of the Turks A.D. 1451. From 
 the moment of his accession, he turned all his powers to the capture of 
 Constantinople. Its sovereigns had long foreseen the inevitable event, 
 and had made repeated attempts to secure military aid from The Byzantine 
 the West. They were ready to surrender their religious be- S ft^we'at!*^'' 
 lief. On this principle, the monk Barlaam was dispatched on an embassy 
 to Benedict XII. to propose the reunion of the Greek and Latin church- 
 es, as it was delicately termed, and to obtain, as an equivalent for the 
 concession, an army of Franks. As the danger became more urgent, 
 John Palseologus I. sought an interview with Urban V., and, having been 
 purified from his heresies respecting the supremacy of the pope and the 
 double procession of the Holy Ghost, was presented before the pontiff in 
 the Church of St. Peter. The Greek monarch, after three genuflexions, 
 was permitted to kiss the feet of the holy father and to lead by its bridle 
 his mule. But, though they might have the will, the popes had lost the 
 power, and these great submissions were productive of no good. Thirty 
 years subsequently, Manuel, the son and successor of. Palseologus, took 
 what might have seemed a more certain course. He traveled to Paris 
 and to London to lay his distress before the kings of France and En- 
 gland, but he received only pity, not aid. At the Council of Constance 
 Byzantine embassadors appeared. It was, however, reserved for the syn- 
 ods of Ferrara and of Florence to mature, as far as might be, the nego- 
 tiation. The second John Palseologus journeyed again into Italy, A.D. 
 1438 ; and while Eugenius was being deposed in the chamber at Basle, 
 he was consummating the union of the East and the West in the Cathe- 
 dral of Florence. In the pulpit of that edifice, on the sixth of July of 
 
404 THE SIEGE .OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 
 
 The Greek Church ^^^^ jear, a Eoman cardinal and a Greek archbishop em- 
 yield, to the Latin. ^^.^^.^^ ^^]^ ^^^^j, ^^f^^^ ^^^ TpeoTpls ; Te Dcum was chant- 
 ed in Greek, mass was celebrated in Latin, and the Creed was read with 
 the " Filioque." The successor of Constantine the Great had given up 
 his religion, but he had received no equivalent — no aid. The state of 
 the Church, its disorders and schisms, rendered any conimunitj of action 
 in tKp West impossible. 
 
 The last, the inevitable hour at length struck. Mohammed II. is said 
 Mohammed 11. to have been a learned man, a,ble to express himself in five 
 different languages ; skillful in mathematics, especially in their practical 
 application to engineering; an admirer of the fine arts; prodigal in his 
 ' liberality to Italian painters. In Asia Minor, as in Spain, there was free 
 thinking among the disciples of the Prophet. It was afiirmed that the 
 sultan, in his moments of relaxation, was often heard to deride the relig- 
 ion of his country as an imposture. His doubts in that particular were, 
 however, compensated for by his determination to carry out the inten- 
 tion of so many of his Mohaipmedan predecessors — the seizure of Con- 
 stantinople. . 
 
 At this time the venerable city had so greatly declined that it con- 
 The siege of Con- taiucd Only 100,000 inhabitants — out of them only 4970- 
 stantinopie. g^j^jg qj, ^jijijig to bear arms. The besieging force was more 
 than a quarter of a million of men. As Mohammed pressed on his 
 works, the despairing emperor in vain looked for the long-promised ef- 
 fectual Western aid. In its extremity, tbe devottd metropolis was di- 
 vided by religious feuds ; and wben a Latin priesjb officiated in St. Sophia, 
 there were many who exclaimed that they would rather see the turban 
 of the sultan than the tiara of the pope. In several particulars the siege 
 of Constantinople marked out the end of old ages and the beginning of 
 new. Its walls were shaken by the battering-rams of the past, and over- 
 thrown by cannon, just then coming into general use. Upon a plank 
 road, shipping were passed through the open country, in the dajkness of 
 a single night, a distance of ten miles. The works were pushed forward 
 toward the walls, on the top of whicb the pacing sentinel at length could 
 bear the shouts of the Turks by their nocturnal fires. They were sounds 
 sucb as Constantinople might well listen to. She had taught something 
 different for many a long yeai. " God is God ; tbere is but one God." 
 In the streets an image of the Virgin was carried in solemn procession. 
 Never or now she must come to the help of those who had. done so 
 mucb for her, who bad made her a queen in heaven and a goddess upon 
 earth. The cry of her worshipers was in vain. 
 
 On May 29th, 1453, the assault was delivered. Conlstantipe Palseolo- 
 gus, the last of the Eoman emperors, putting off his purple, that no man 
 might recognize and insult his corpse when the catastrophe was over, 
 fell, as became a Eoman emperor, in. the breach, . After, his deatt resist- 
 
ITS CAPTURE. 405 
 
 ance ceased, and the victorious Turks poured into the town. Faiioftheoitj. 
 To the Church of St. Sophia there rushed a promiscuous crowd of wom- 
 en and children, priests, monks, religious virgins, and — men. Supersti- 
 tious to the last, in this supreme moment they expected the fulfillment 
 of a prophecy that, when the Turks should have forced their way to the 
 square hefore that church, their progress would be arrested, for an angel 
 with a sword in his hand would descend from heaven and save the city 
 of the Lord. The Turks burst into the square, but the angel never came. 
 
 More than two thirds of the inhabitants of Constantinople were car- 
 ried prisoners into the Turkish camp — the men for servitude, the women 
 for a still more evil fate. The churches were sacked. From the dome 
 ofSt. Sophia its glories were torn down. The divine images, for the sake 
 of which Christendom had been sundered in former days, unresistingly 
 submitted to the pious rage of the Mohammedans without working a 
 single miracle, and, stripped of their gems and gold, were brought to 
 their proper value in the vile uses of kitchens and stables. On that 
 same day the muezzin ascended the loftiest turret of St. Sophia, and over 
 the City of the Trinity proclaimed the Oneness of God. The sultan per- 
 formed his prayers at the great altar, directing the edifice to be purified 
 from its idolatries and consecrated to the worship of God. Thence he 
 repaired to the palace, and, reflecting on the instability of human pros- 
 perity, repeated, as he entered it, the Persian verse : " The spider has 
 woven his web in the imperial palace ; the owl hath sung her watch» 
 song on the towers of Afrasiab." 
 
 This solemn event — -the fall of Constantinople — accomplished, there 
 was no need of any reconciliation of the Greek and Latin churches. 
 The sword of Mohammed had settled their dispute. Constantinoijle 
 had submitted to the fate of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage. 
 Christendom was struck with consternation. The advance xerrorof christen- 
 of the Turks in Europe was now very rapid. Corinth and co^fanttoop^e. ° 
 Athens fell, and the reduction of Greece was completed. The confines 
 of Italy were approached A.D. 1461. The Mohammedan flag con- 
 fronted that peninsula along the Adriatic coast. In twenty years more 
 Italy was invaded. Otranto was taken ; its bishop killed at the door 
 of his church. At this period, it was admitted that the Turkish infan- 
 try, cavalry, and artillery were the best in the world. Soliman the 
 Magnificent took Belgrade A.D. 1520. Nine years afterward f^^^^^i 
 the Turks besieged Vienna, but were repulsed. Soliman now ""^ ''"'^• 
 prepared for the subjugation of Italy, arid was only diverted from it by 
 an accident which turned him upon the Venetians. It was not until the 
 battle of Lepanto that the Turkish advance was fairly checked. Even 
 as it was, in the complicated policy and intrigues of Europe its different 
 sovereigns could not trust one another ; their common faith had ceased 
 to be a common bond ; in aU it had been weakened, in some destroyed. 
 
406 CONDITION OF THE CHURCH AFTER THIS EVENT. 
 
 Mneas Sylvius, speaking of Christendom, says, " It is a body -without a 
 head, a republic without laws or magistrates. The pope or the emperor 
 may shine as lofty titles, as splendid images ; but they are unable to com- 
 mand, and no one is willing to obey." But, during this period of Turk- 
 ish aggression; had not the religious dissensions of Christendom been de- 
 cently composed, there was imminent danger that Europe would have 
 been Mohammedanized. A bitter experience of past ages, as well as of 
 the prtesent, had taught it that the Eoman Church was utterly powerless 
 against such attacks. Safety was to be looked for, not in any celestial 
 aid, but in physical knowledge and pecuniary resources, carried out in 
 the organization of armies and fleets. Had her authority been derived 
 from the source she pretended, she should have found an all-sufficient 
 protection in prayer — indeed, not even that should have been required. 
 Men discovered at last that her Litanies and her miracles were equally 
 of no use, and that she must trust, like any other human tyranny, to can- 
 non and the sword. 
 
 The Turkish aggression led to the staying of the democratic outbreak 
 Effect of the in the bosom of the Church — the abstaining for a season from 
 
 Turkish in-„- „- , -r . 
 
 vasion. any farther sap of the papal autocracy, it was necessary that 
 ecclesiastical disputes, if they could not be ended, should, at all events, 
 be kept for a time in abeyance, and so indeed they were, until the pent- 
 up dissensions burst forth in " the Eeformation." And thus, as we have 
 related, by Mohammedan knowledge in the West papal Christianity was 
 well-nigh brought to ruin ; thus, by a strange paradox, the Mohammed- 
 an sword in the East gave it for a little longer a renewed lease of polit- 
 ical power, though never again of life. 
 
 To Nicolas V., a learned and able pope, the catastrophe of Constant!^ 
 nople was the death-blow. He had been the intimate friend of Cosmo 
 Nicolas V. a ^e' Mcdici, and from him had imbibed a taste for letters and 
 patron of art. ^^^ ^^^^ j^jj-g j^jg patron, he had no love for liberty. It was thus 
 through commerce that the papacy first learned to turn to art. The en- 
 suing development of Europe was really based on the commerce of up- 
 per Italy, and not upon the Church. The statesmen of Florence were 
 the inventors of the balance of power. A lover of literature, Nicolas 
 was the founder pf the Vatican Library. He clearly perceived the only 
 course in which the Eoman system could be directed ; that it was unfit 
 for, and, indeed, incompatible with science, but might be brought in uni- 
 son with art. Its influence upon the reason was gone, but the Senses yet 
 remained for it. In continuing his policy, the succeeding popes acted 
 Gradual rise of with wisdom. " They gratified thei genius of their institutions, 
 the fine arts, ^f ^.j^gjj, country, and their age. In the abundant leisure of 
 monasteries, the monks had found occupation in the illumination of man- 
 uscripts. Prom the execution of miniatures they gradually rose to an 
 undertaking of greater.works. In that manner painting had originated 
 
REVIEW OF THE AGE OF FAITH. 407 
 
 in Italy in the twelfth century. Sculpture, at first merged in architec- 
 ture, had extricated herself from that bondage in the fourteenth. -The 
 mendicant orders, acquiring wealth, became munificent patrons. From 
 caligraphic illustrations to the grand works of Michael Angelo and Eaf- 
 faele is a prodigious advance, yet it took but a short time to accom- 
 plish it. 
 
 I have^ow completed the history of the European Age of Faith as far 
 as is necessary for the purposes of this book. It embraces a Keyiew of the 
 period of more than a thousand years, counting from the reign ^^"^ °' ^'"■^ 
 • of Constantino. It remains to consider the intellectual peculiarity that 
 marks the whole period— to review briefly the agents that exerted an 
 influence upon it and conducted it to its close. 
 
 Philosophically, the most remarkable peculiarity is the employment 
 of a false logic, a total misconception of the nature of evi- ^,5]'j^t?i'of'the" 
 dence. It is illustrated by miracle-proofs, trial by battle, or- Age of rauh. 
 deal tests, and a universal belief in supernatural agency even for ob- 
 jectless purposes. On the principles of this logic, if the authenticity of 
 a thing or the proof of a statement be required, it is supposed to be fur- 
 nished by an astounding illustration of Gomething else. If the character 
 of a princess is assailed, she offers a champion, he proves victorious, and 
 therefore she was not frail. If a national assembly, after a The character 
 long discussion, can not decide "whether children should in- ''f''=i»B"=- 
 herit the property of their father during the lifetime of their grandfa- 
 ther," an equal number of equal combatants is chosen for each side; 
 they fight; the champions of the children prevail, and therefore the law 
 is fixed in their favor. A relic of some martyr is bought at a great 
 price ; no one seeks to criticise the channel through which it has come, 
 but every one asks. Can it work a miracle? A vast institution demands 
 the implicit obedience of all men. It justifies its claim, not by the his- 
 tory of the past, but by promises and threats of the future. A decrepit 
 crone is suspected of witchcraft. She is stripped naked and thrown into 
 , the nearest pond : if she sinks, she is innocent ; if she swims, she is in 
 commerce with the Devil. In all such cases the intrinsic peculiarity of 
 the logic is obvious enough ; it shows a complete misconception of the 
 nature of evidence. Yet this ratiocination governed Europe for a thou- 
 sand years, giving birth to those marvelous and supernatural its adoption 
 explanations of physical phenomena and events on which we urausm. 
 now look back with unfeigned surprise, half disbelieving that it was pos- 
 sible for our ancestors to have credited such things. Against this pre- 
 posterous logic the Mohammedans and Jews struck the first blows. We 
 have already heard what Algazzali the Arabian says respect- The jem ana 
 ing the enchanter who would pi-ove that three is greater than ft'^^pfr." 
 ten by changing a stick into a serpent. The circumstances "»'°™'"!°- 
 under which the Jewish physicians acted we shall consider presently. 
 
408 stlPEBNATUEAL LOGIC. 
 
 It will not be useless to devote a little space to this belief in the su- 
 pernatural. It offers an opportunity of showing how false notions may 
 become universal, imbody themselves in law and practical life, and, won- 
 derful to be said, how they may, without any thing being done to de- 
 stroy them, vanish from sight of themselves, like night-spectres before 
 the day. At present we only encounter them among the lowest peasant 
 grades, or those who have purposely been kept in the most abject state 
 of ignorance. Less than a century ago the clergy of Spain wished to 
 have the Opera prohibited, because that ungodly entertainment had given 
 ri^e to a want of rain ; but now, in a country so intellectually backward 
 as that-ra witch was burned there so lately as A.D. 1781 — such an at- 
 tempt would call up sly wit, and make the rabble of Madrid suspect that 
 the archbishop was smarting under the rivalry of the prima donna, and 
 that he was furbishing up the rusty ecclesiastical- en^ery to sustain his 
 cause. 
 
 In the day of their power the ecclesiastical profession were the sup- 
 Keapectivc influ- portcrs of this delusiou. They found it suitable to their in- 
 |?!th/i'ai^^^' terests, and, by dint of at first persuading others to believe, 
 and physiciaBs.' ^j^gy a,t last, by habit, came to believe in it themselves. The 
 Mohammedans and Jews were the first to assail it philosophically and 
 by sarcasm, but its final ruin was brought about by the action of the 
 two other professions, the legal and the medical. The lawyers, whose 
 advent to power is seen in the history of Philip the Fair, and whose rise 
 from that time was very rapid, were obliged to introduce the true meth- 
 ods of evidence ; the physicians, from their pursuits, were perpetually 
 led to the material explanation of natural phenomena in contradistinc- 
 tion to the mystical. It is to the honor of both these professions that 
 they never sought for a perpetuation of power by schemes of vast organ- 
 ization, never attempted to delude mankind by stupendous impostures, 
 never compelled them to desist from the expression of their thoughts, 
 and even from thinking, by alliances with civil power. Far from being 
 the determined antagonists of human knowledge, they uniformly foster , 
 ed it, and, in its trials, defended it. The lawyers were hated because they 
 replaced supernatural logic by philosophical logic ; the physicians, be- 
 cause they broke down the profitable but mendacious system of miracle.' 
 cures by relics and at shrines. 
 
 Yet the Church is not, without excuse. In all her varied history it 
 Position of was impossible to -disentangle her from the principles which-at 
 the Church, ^j^g beginning had , entered into her political organization. For 
 good or evil, right or wrong, her necessity required that she should put 
 herself forth as the possessor of all knowledge within the reach of hu- 
 man intellect — the infallible arbitress of every question that could arise 
 among men. Doubtless it was a splendid imposture, capable for a time 
 of yielding great results, but sooner or, later certain to be unmasked; 
 
CONTINUOUS VARIATION OF SUPERNATURAL IDEAS. 409 
 
 Early discovering the antagonism of science, which could not fail, in due 
 season, to subject her pretensions to investigation, she lent herself to a 
 systematic delusion of the illiterate, and thereby tried to put off that fatal 
 day when creeds engendered in the darkness would have to be exam- 
 ined in the light, enforcing her attempt with aa unsparing, often with a 
 bloody hand. It was for^ this reason that, when the inevitable time of 
 trial came, no intellectual defense could be made in her behalf, ghe conid not 
 and hence there only remained a recourse to physical and po- sfiff^mhw 
 litical compulsion. But such a compulsion, under such cir- ^''oe p"""'""- 
 cumstances, is not only a testimony to the intrinsic weakness of that for 
 which it is invoked, it is also a token that they who resort to it have lost 
 all faith in any inherent power of the system they are supporting, and 
 that, in truth, it is fast coming to an end. 
 
 The reader will remark, from the incidents connected with supernat- 
 ural delusions now to be related, that thefy follow a law of succeaaive or- 
 
 1 .,..-,. T -, der in super- 
 
 contmuous variation, the particular imbodiment tney assumed natural ideas, 
 changing with the condition of the human mind at each epoch under ex- 
 amination. For ages they are implicitly believed in by all classes ; then 
 to a few, but the number perpetually increasing, they become an idle 
 story of barefaced imposture. At last humanity wakens from its delu- 
 sion — its dream. The final rejection of the whole, in spite of the won- 
 derful amount of testimony which for ages had accumulated, occurs 
 spontaneously, the moment that psychical development has reached a 
 certain point.' There can be no more striking illustration of the definite 
 advancement of the human mind. The boy who is terror-stricken in a 
 dark room insensibly dismisses his idle fears as he grows up to be a man. 
 Clemens Eomanus and Anastasius Sinaita, speaking of Simon Magus, 
 say that he could make himself invisible; that he formed oriental magicians 
 a man out of air ; that he could pass bodily through mount- -s™™ ""^eus. 
 ains without being obstructed thereby ; that he could fly and sit un- 
 harmed in flames ; that he constructed animated statues and self-moving 
 furniture, and- not only changed his countenance into the similitude of 
 many other men, but that his whole body could be transformed into the 
 shape of a goat, a sheep, a snake ; that, as he walked in the street, he cast 
 many shadows in different directions; that he could make trees sudden- 
 ly spring up in desert places ; and, on one occasion, compelled an en- 
 chanted sickle to go into a field and reap twice as much in one day as 
 if it had been used by a man. Of ApoUonius of Tyana we are told that, 
 after an unbroken silence of five years, he comprehended the Greek timu- 
 languages of all animals and all men; that, under circuinstan- ™«''"^'a- 
 ces very picturesquely related, he detected the genius of a plague at 
 Ephesus, and dragged him, self-convicted, before the people ; that, at the 
 wedding-dinner of Menippus,he caused all the dishes i and viands to van- 
 ish, thereby compelling the bride to acknowledge that she was a vam- 
 
410 ■ SORCElBY. — BRAZEN HEADS. 
 
 pire, intending to eat the flesh and lap the blood of her husband in the 
 night ; that Jie exhibited the prodigy of being in many places at the 
 same time ; raised a young woman from the dead ; and, finally, weary of 
 the world, ascended bodily into heaven. 
 
 As Arabian influence spread, ideas of an Oriental aspect appear, 
 introdudtion of There are peris who live on perfumes, and divs who are noi- 
 
 an Arabian el- i i i inn • 
 
 ement. soncd by them ; enchanted palaces ; movmg statues ; veiled 
 
 prophets, like Mokanna ; brazen flying horses ; charmed arrows ; der- 
 vises who can project their soul into the body of a dead animal, giving 
 it temporary life ; enchanted rings, to make the wearer invisible, dt give 
 him two different bodies at the same time ; ghouls who live in cemete- 
 ries, and at night eat the flesh of dead men. As the European counter- 
 part of these Perso-Arabic ideas, there are fairies, and their dancing by 
 moonlight, their tampering with children, and imposing changelings on 
 horror-stricken mothers. Every one believes that rain and wind may 
 Introduction of Eu- bc purchased of wizards, and that fair weather mav be ob- 
 
 ropean sorcery and , ^ ^ ^ ' _.^, '' , 
 
 witchcraft. taiucd and storms abated by prayer. W hoever attams to 
 
 wealth or eminence does so by a compact with Satan, signed with blood. 
 The head of the Church, Sylvester II., makes a brazen head, which 
 speaks to him prophetically. He finds underground treasures in a sub- 
 terraneous magic palace beneath a mountain. The protestator of the 
 Greek emperor is accused of a conspiracy against his master's life by 
 making invisible men. Eobert Grrostete, the Bishop of Lincoln, makes 
 another speaking head. Nay, more, Albertus Magnus constructs a com 
 plete brazen man so cunningly contrived as to serve him for a domes- 
 tic. This was at the time that Thomas Aquinas was living with him. 
 The household trouble arising from the excessive garrulity of this simu- 
 lacrum grew so intolerable — for he was incessantly making mischief 
 among the other inmates — that Thomas, unable to bear it any longer, 
 took a hammer and broke the troublesome android to pieces. This rev- 
 These ideas in- ercnd father, known among his contemporaries as the "se- 
 fect au classes, japhic doctor," was not without experience in the mysterious 
 craft. Annoyed by the frequent passing of horses near his dwelhng, he 
 constructed a magical horse of brass, and buried it in the road. Prom 
 that moment no animal could be niade to pass his door. Among brazen 
 heads of great celebrity is that of Pfiar Bacon and Friar Bungy. This 
 oracle antfounced, " Time is ; time was ; time is passed ;" but perhaps it 
 was some kind of clock. The alchemist Peter d'Apono had seven spir- 
 its in glass bottles. He had entrapped them by baiting wi^h distilled 
 dew, and imprisoned them safely by dexterously putting in the corks. 
 He is the same who possessed a secret which it is greatly to be regretted 
 that he did not divulge for the benefit of chemists who have come after 
 him, that, whatever money he paid, within the space of one hour's time 
 came back of itself again into his pocket. That was even better than 
 the philosopher's stone. 
 
■WITCHCRAFT. 411 
 
 These supernatural notions were at different times modified by two 
 intrusive elements, the first being the Perso- Arabic just al- Moaifioationa ot 
 luded to, the second derived from the north of Europe, This -pe-='turaiism. 
 element was witchcraft ; for, though long before, among Hebrews, Greeks, 
 and Eomans, decrepit women were known as witches — as the Thessalian 
 crone who raised a corpse from the dead for Sextus by lashing it with a 
 snake— it was not until a later period that this element was fairly devel- 
 oped. A bull of Pope Innocent VIIL, published A.D. 1484, says, " It 
 has come to our ears that numbers of both sexes do not avoid to have 
 intercourse with the infernal, fiends, and that by their sor- The peraecutioM 
 ceries they afflict both man and beast. They blight the mar- ^°'' ''"'=•'"«"■ 
 riage-bed ; destroy the births of women and the increase of cattle ; they 
 blasj the corn on the ground, the grapes in the vineyard, the fruits of the 
 trees, and the grass and herbs of the field." At this time, therefore, the 
 head of the Church had not relinquished a belief in these delusions. 
 The consequences of the punishment he ordained were very dreadful. 
 In the valleys of the Alps many hundred aged women were commit- 
 ted to the flames under an accusation of denying Christ, dishonoring the 
 crucifix, and solemnizing a devil's sabbath in company with the fiend. 
 Such persecutions, begun by papal authority, continued among illiterate 
 zealots till late times, and, as is well known, were practiced even in Amer- 
 ica. Very masculine min4s fell into these-, delusions. Thus Luther, in 
 his work on the abuses attendant on private masses, says that he had 
 conferences v,iih the Devil on that subject, passing many bitter nights 
 and much restless and wearisome repose ; that once, in particular, Satan 
 came to him in the dead of the night, when he was just awakened out of 
 sleep. "The Devil," says Luther, "knows well enough how to con- 
 struct his arguments, and to urge them with the skill of a mas- Experiences 
 ter. He delivers himsejf with a grave and yet with a shrill "f '^""'^'■• 
 voice. Not does he use circumlocutions and beat about the bush, but 
 excels in forcible statements and quick rejoinders. I no longer wonder 
 that the persons whom he assails in this way are occasionally found dead 
 in their beds. He is able to compress and throttle, and more than once 
 he has so assaulted me and driven my soul into a corner, that I felt as if 
 the next moment it must leave my body. I am of opinion that Gesner 
 and (Ecolampadius came in that manner to their deaths. The Devil's 
 manner of opening a debate is pleasant enough, but he soon urges things 
 so peremptorily that the respondent in a short time knows not how to 
 acquit himself." 
 
 Social eminence is no preservative from social delusion. When it 
 was affirmed that Agnes Sampson, with two hundred other English wizards 
 Scotch witches, had sailed in sieves from Leith to North Ber- ra.^™'* ""'*' 
 wick church to hold a banquet with the Devil, James I. had the torture 
 applied to the wretched woman, and took pleasure in putting appropri- 
 
412 EUROPE OUTGROWS THESE DELUSIONS. 
 
 ate questions to her after the racking had been duly prolonged. It 
 then came out that the two hundred crones had baptized and drowned 
 a black cat, thereby raising a' dreadful storm, in which the ship that car- 
 ried the king' narrowly escaped being wrecked. Upon thisvlgnes was 
 condemned to the flames. She died protesting her innocence, and pite- 
 ously calling on Jesus to have mercy on her, for Christian men would 
 not. On the accession of James to the English throne he procured 
 an act of Parliament against any one convicted of witchcraft, sorcery 
 or enchantment, or having ' commerce with the Devil. Under this 
 monstrous statute many persons suffered, At this time England was 
 intellectually very backward. The statute remained until 1736 unre- 
 ^enchana pealed. The French preceded the English in putting a stop 
 proceedings, to these atrocitics ; for Louis XIV., A.D. 1672, by an order in 
 council, forbade the tribunals from inflicting penalty in accusations of 
 sorcery. , 
 
 Can the reader of the preceding paragraphs here pause without de- 
 manding of himself the value of human testimony ? All these delusions, 
 which occupied the minds of our forefathers, and from which not even 
 The total die- the nowerful and learned were free, have totally passed away. 
 
 appearance of ,^, ■*■ tit o • • i i- ■■! ■ 
 
 these delusions. The moonlight has now no fairies ; the solitude nio geriiuS'; 
 the darkness no ghost, no goblin. There is no necromancer who can 
 raise the dead from their graves — no one who has sold his soul to the 
 Devil and signed the contract with his blood — no angry apparition to 
 rebuke- the crone wh'o has disquieted him. Divination, agromancy, py- 
 romancy, hydromancy, cheiromancy, augury, interpreting of dreams, ora- 
 cles,,sorcery, astrology, have all gone. It is 350 years since the last se- 
 pulchral lamp was found, and that was near Eome. There are no gor- 
 gons, hydras, chimseras ; no familiars ; no incubus or succubus. The 
 housewives of Holland no longer bring forth sooterkins by sitting over 
 lighted chauffers. No longer do captains buy of Lapland witches favor- 
 able winds ; no longer do our churches resound with prayers against 
 t'he haleful influences of comets, though there still linger in some of our 
 noble old rituals forms of supplication for dry weather and rain, useless 
 but not unpleasing reminiscences of the past. The apothecary no longer 
 says prayers over the mortar in which he is pounding to impart a divine 
 afflatus to his drugs. Who is there now that pays fees to a relic or goes 
 to a saint-shrine to be cured ? These delusions have vanished with the 
 night to which they appertained, yet they were the delusions of fifteen 
 hundred years. In their support might be produced a greater mass of 
 human testimony thali probably could be brought to bear on any other 
 matter of belief in the entire history of man; and yet, in the nineteenth 
 century, we have come to the conclusion that the whole, from the begin- 
 vaiue of human ning to the cud, was B. deception ! Let him, therefore, who is 
 testimony. disposcd' to balance the testimony of past ages against the 
 
INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE OF THE JEWS. 413 
 
 dictates of his own reason ponder on this strange history ; let him who 
 relies on the' authority of human evidence in the guidance of his opin- 
 ions now settle with himself what that evidence is worth. 
 
 But, though in one sense this history is humiliating to the philosopher, 
 in another it is full of interest. Supernaturalism,both in the individual 
 and in societv, appertains to a definite period of life. It snpematurauam 
 
 •^ ' ^^ , r. , _., appertains to a 
 
 is shaken off as men and nations approach maturity, 'ine period of life. 
 child and the youth people solitude and darkness with unrealities. The 
 adult doesinot so much convince himself of their fictitious nature by 
 reasoning on the results of his experience — ^he grows out of them, as we* 
 see that society has done. Nevertheless, hi9 emancipation is quickened 
 if he is among those who instruct his curiosity and deride his fears. It 
 was in this manner that the decline of supernaturalism in the West was 
 very much accelerated by Jewish physicians. They, more than ihe law- 
 yers, were concerned in the ending of these delusions. The apparitions, 
 as is the nature of their kind, vanished away as soon as the crowing of 
 the -^sculapian cock announced that the intellectual day of Europe was 
 on the point of breaking. The Jews held in their hands much influence of the 
 
 n ^ 1 n ^ Til • t '^^^^ °° super- 
 
 of the trade or the world; they were m perpetual movement naturaiiBm. 
 and commercial intercommunication. Locomotion — for such is always 
 its result — tended to make them intellectual. The persecutions under 
 which they had long suffered bound their distant communities together. 
 The Spanish Jews knew very well what was going on among their co- 
 religionists beyond the Euphrates. ■ As Cabanis says, " They were our 
 factors and bankers before we knew how to read; they were also our 
 first physicians." To this it may be added that they were, for centuries 
 together, the only men in Europe who saw the course of human affairs 
 from the most general point of view. 
 
 The Hellenizing Jewish physicians inoculated the Arabs with learn- 
 ing on their first meeting with them in Alexandria, obtaining a private 
 and personal influence with many of the khalifs, and from that central 
 point of power giving an intellectual character to the entire Saracenic 
 movement. "We have already seen that in this they were greatly fa- 
 vored by the approximation of their unitarianism to that of the Moham- 
 medans. The intellectual acjtivity of the Asiatic and African Jews soon 
 communicated an impulse to those of Europe. The Hebrew doctor was 
 viewed by the vulgar with wonder, and fear, and hatred ; no crime could 
 be imputed to him too incredible. Thus Zedekias, the physician to 
 Charles the Bald, was asserted to have devoured at one meal, in the pres- 
 ence of the court, a wagon -load of hay, together with its horses and 
 driver. The titles of some of the works that appeared among them de- 
 serve mention, as displaying a strong contrast with the mystical designa- 
 tions in vogue. Thus Isaac Ben Soleiman, an Egyptian, wrote wriungaofjew- 
 "On Fevers," "On Medicine," "On Food and Eemedies," S'TVaWana. ' 
 
414 JEWISH WEITINGS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 "On the Pulse," "On Philosophy," "On Melancholy," "An Introduc- 
 tion to Logic." The simplicity of these titles displays an intellectual 
 clearness and precision of thought which have ever been shown by the 
 Israelites. They are in themselves sufficient to convince us of the strong 
 common sense which these men were silently infusing into the literature 
 of Western Europe in ages of concealment and mystification. Eoger 
 Bacon, at a much later time, gave to one of his works the title of " The 
 Green Lion ;" to another, " The Treatise of Three Words." 
 
 Since it was by the power and patronage of the Saracens that the Jew- 
 • ish physicians were acting, it is not surprising that the language used in 
 many of their compositious was Arabic. Translations were, however, 
 commonly made into Hebrew, and, at a subsequent period, into Latin. 
 Through the ninth century the Asiatic colleges maintained their pre- 
 vious celebrity in certain branches of knowledge. Thus the Jew Shab- 
 tai Donolo was obliged to go to Bagdad to complete his studies in as- 
 tronomy. As, however, Arabian influence extended itself into Sicily 
 Foundation ^T^^ Italy, Jewish intelligence accompanied it, and schools were 
 of coueges. fomnjed at Tarentum, Salerno, Bari, and other places. Here 
 the Arab and Jew Orientalists first amalgamated with a truly European 
 element — the Greek — as is shown by the circumstance that in the college 
 at Salerno instruction was given through the medium of all three lan- 
 guages. At one time, Pontus taught in Greek, Abdallah in Arabic, and 
 Elisha in Hebrew. A similar influence of the Arab and Jew combined 
 founded the University of Montpellier. 
 
 After the foundation of medical colleges, the progress of medicine 
 McdM studies among the Jews was very rapid. Judged by our standard, 
 among the jewa. j^ g^j^g respects it was peculiar. Thus they looked upon 
 the practice of surgery as altogether mechanical, and therefore ignoble. 
 A long list of eminent names might be extracted from the tenth and 
 eleventh centuries. In it we should find Haroun of Cordova, Jehuda of 
 Fez, Amram of Toledo. Already it was apparent that the Saracenic 
 movement would aid in developing the intelligence of barbarian West- 
 ern Europe through Hebrew physicians, in spite of the opposition en- 
 countered from theological ideas imported from Constantinople and 
 Rome. Mohammedanism had all along be§n the patron of physical sci- 
 ence ; paganizing Christianity not o;ily repudiated it, but exhibited to- 
 ward it sentiments of contemptuous disdain and hatred. Hence physi- 
 cians were viewed by the Church with dislike, and regarded as atheists 
 by the people, who held firmly to the lessons they had been taught that 
 Imposture- curcs must be wrought by relics of martyrs and bones of saints, 
 medicine. Y}j praycrs and intercessions, and that each region of the body 
 was under some spiritual charge, the first joint of the right tlyimb be- 
 ing in the care of God the Father, the second under that of the blessed 
 Virgin, and so on of other parts. For each disease there was a saint 
 
THEIR PHYSICIANS AND RABBIS. 415 
 
 A man with sore eyes must invoke St. Clara, but if it was an inflamma- 
 tion elsewhere he must turn to St. Anthony. An ague would demand 
 the assistance of St. Pernel. For the propitiating of these celestial be- 
 ings it was necessary that fees should be paid, and thus the practice of 
 imposture-medicine became a great source of profit. 
 
 In all this there was no other intention than that of extracting money 
 from the illiterate. With men of education and position it was differ- 
 ent. Bishops, princes, kings, and popes had each in private his Hebrew 
 doctor, though all understood th^t he was a contraband luxury, in many 
 countries pointedly and absolutely prohibited by the law. In the elev- 
 enth century nearly all the physicians in Europe were Jews. This was 
 due to two different causes : the Church would tolerate no interference 
 with her spiritual methods of treating disease, which formed one of her 
 most productive sources of gain; and the study of medicine Therabwacni. 
 had been formally introduced into the rabbinical schools. «™t=™^d-« 
 The monk was prohibited a pursuit which gave to the rabbi an honora- 
 ble emolument. From the older institutions offshoots in quick succes- 
 sion appeared, particularly in France. Thus the school at Narbonne 
 was under the presidency of Doctor Eabbi Abou. There was also a 
 flourishing school at Aries. In these institutions instruction was given 
 through the medium of Hebrew^ and Arabic, the Greek element present 
 at Salerno being here wanting. In the French schools, to the former 
 languages Latin and Provengal were, in the course of time, added. The 
 versatility of acquirement among the physicians, who were taking the 
 lead in this intellectual movement, is illustrated both by the Spanish and 
 French Jews. Some, like Djanah, a native of Cordova, acquired reputa- 
 tion in grammar, criticism, astronomy ; others in poetry or theology. 
 
 If thus the social condition of the rabbis, who drew no income from 
 their religious duties, induced them to combine the practice of medicine 
 with their pursuits, great facilities had arisen for mental culture through 
 the establishment of so many schools. Henceforth the Jewish physician 
 is recognized as combining with his professional skill a profound and other 
 knowledge of theology, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, mu- °"™'^^- 
 sic, law. In a singular manner he stances aloof in the barbarian societies 
 among whom he lives, looking down like a philosopher upon their idol- 
 atries, permitting, or even excusing them, like a statesman. Of those 
 who thus adorned the eleventh century was Eabbi Solomon Ben Isaac, 
 better known under the abbreviation Easchi — called by his countrymen 
 the Prince of Commentators. He was equally at home in writing com- 
 mentaries on the Talmud, or in giving instructions for great surgical op- 
 erations, as the Csesarean section. He was the greatest French physician 
 of his a^e. Spain, during the same century, produced a worthy compet- 
 itor to him, Ebn Zohr, physician to the court of Seville. His writings of the 
 writings were in Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, and both in prose X^^t^^^ 
 
416 MAIMONIDES. 
 
 and verse. He composed a treatise on the cure of diseases, and two on 
 fevers. In singular contrast with the superstitious notions of the times 
 he possessed a correct view of the morbific nature of marsh miasm. He 
 was followed, by Ben Ezra, a Jew of Toledo, who was at once a physi- 
 cian, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, critic, poet.. He traveled 
 all over Europe and Asia, being held in captivity for some time in In- 
 dia. Among his medical writings was a work on theoretical and prac- 
 tical medicine, entitled " Book of Proofs." Through the wars arising in 
 Spain -between the Mohammedans and Christians, many learned Jews 
 were driven into France, imparting to that country, by their presence a 
 new intellectual impulse. Of such were Aben Tybbon, -vjirho gave to his 
 own profession a pharmaceutical tendency by insisting on the study of 
 botany and the art of preparing drugs. Ben Kimohi, a Narbonnese phy- 
 sician and grammarian, wrote commentaries on the Bible, sacred and 
 moral poems, a Hebrew grammar. Notwithstanding the opposition of ' 
 the ecclesiastics, William, the Lord of Montpellier, passed an edict au- 
 thorizing all persons, without exception, to profess medicine in the uni- 
 versity of his city; This was specially meant for the relief of the Jews, 
 though expressed in a general way. Spain, though she had thus lost 
 many of her learned men, still continued to produce others of which she 
 Maimonidea. had rcasou to be proud. Moussa Ben Maimon, known all over 
 Europe as Maimonides, was recognized by his countrymen as " the Doc- 
 tor, the Great Sage, the Glory of the West, the Light of the East, second 
 only to Moses." He is often designated by the four initials E. M. B. M., 
 that is, Eabbi Moses Ben Maimon, or brieiiy Eambam. His biography 
 presents some points of interest. He was bom at Cordova A.D. 1135, 
 and, while yet young, wrote commentaries on the Talmuds both of Bab- 
 ylon and Jerusalem, and also a work on the Calendar ; but, embracing 
 Mohammedanism, he emigrated to Egypt, and there became physician 
 to the celebrated Sultan Saladin. Among his works are medical apho- 
 risms, derived from former Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources ; 
 an abridgment of Galen ; and of his original treatises, which were very 
 numerous, may be mentioned those " On Hemorrhoids," " On Poisons 
 and Antidotes," " On Asthma,"' " On the Preservation of Health"— the 
 latter being written for the benefit of the son of Saladin—" On the Bites 
 of Venomous Animals" — written by order of the sultan — " On Natural 
 History." His " Moreh Nevochim," or " Teacher of the Perplexed," was 
 an attempt to reconcile the doctrines of the Old Testament with reason. 
 In addition to these, he had a book on Idolatry, and one on Christ.' Be- 
 sides Maimonides, the sultan had another physician, Ebn Djani, the au- 
 thor of a work on the medical topography of the city of Alexandria. 
 From the biographies of these learned men of the twelfth c^tury it 
 would seem that their religious creed hung lightly upon them. Not un- 
 frequently they became converted to Mohammedanism. 
 
JEWISH PHYSICIANS IN THE DAEK AGES. 417 
 
 It might be tedious if I should record the names and writings of the 
 learned European Jews of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Later Jewish 
 a period more prolific of these great men than even the pre- piiy™'™- 
 ceding ages. But I can not pass these later centuries without mention- 
 ing the Alphonsine Tables, calculated for Alphonso, the King of Castile, 
 by Masch'a, his Hebrew physician. The irreligious tendency of the times 
 is illustrated by the well-known sarcasm uttered by that Spanish mon- 
 arch respecting the imperfect construction of the heavens, according to 
 the Ptolemaic hypothesis. For long, however, the Jews had been dab- 
 bling in free-thinking speculations. Thus Aben Tybbon, above men- 
 tioned, anticipating that branch of science which has drawn upon itself, 
 in later years, so much opprobrium, wrote a work containing a discus- 
 sion of the causes which prevent the waters of the sea from encroaching 
 on the land. Abba Mari, a Marseillese Jew, translated the Almagest of 
 Ptolemy and the Commentary of Averrhoes upon it. The school of Sa- 
 lerno was still sending forth its doctors. In Eome, Jewish physicians 
 were very numerous, the popes themselves employing them. Boniface 
 VIII. had for his medical adviser Eabbi Isaac. At this period Spain 
 and France were full of learned Jews ; and perhaps partly by their ex- 
 erting upon the higher classes with whom they came in contact too much 
 influence, for .the physician of a Christian prince was very often the ri- 
 val of his confessor, and partly because the practice of medicine, as they 
 pursued it, interfered with the gains of the Church, the clergy took the 
 alarm, and caused to be re-enacted or enforced the ancient laws. The 
 Council of Beziers, A.D. 1246, and the Council of Alby, A.D. 1254, pro- 
 hibited all Christians from resorting to the services of an Israelitish phy- 
 sician. It would appear that these enactments had either fallen into 
 desuetude or had failed to be enforced. The faculty of Paris, awaken- 
 ing at last to the danger of the case, caused, A.D. 1301, a decree to be 
 published prohibiting either man or woman of the religion of Moses from 
 practicing medicine upon any person of the Catholic teligion. A simi- 
 lar course was also taken in Spain. At this time the Jews were confess- 
 edly at the head of French medicine. It was the appointment of one of 
 their persuasion, Profatius, as regent of the faculty of Montpellier, A.D. 
 1300, which drew down upon them the wrath of the faculty of Paris. 
 This learned man was a skillful astronomer; he composed tables of the 
 moon ; of the longitudes of many Asiatic and African towns ; he determ- 
 ined the obliquity of the ecliptic, his result being honorably alluded to 
 by Copernicus. The animosity of the French ecclesiastics against the 
 Jewish physicians at last led to the banishment of all the The university of 
 Jews from France, A.D. 1306. " It was," say the historians pSHItwewa 
 of this, event, "a most revolting spectacle to see so many »»» France, 
 learned men, who had adorned and benefited France,, proscribed, wan- 
 derers without a country or an asylum. Some of them expired of grief 
 
 Dd 
 
4:18 THE DOWNFALL OF SUPEENATURALISM. 
 
 upon 'the road. Abba Mari gives in his work heart-rending details of 
 the expulsion of the Jews from Montpellier, at the head of whom were 
 the professors and doctors of the faculty." 
 
 But, though thus driven into exile, these strangers had accomplish- 
 Resuit that ed their destiny. They had silently deposited in France their 
 compiished. ideas. They had sapped the credulity of the higher classes in 
 Europe, and taught them to turn away from the supernatural. A clear 
 recognition of their agency in this matter fastened upon them the watch- 
 ful eye of the Inquisition, and made them the victims of its tyranny. ■ 
 
 And so it might well be. Out of the Spanish peninsula there had 
 come across the Pyrenees an intellectual influence, which reached the 
 populace under the form of a fresh and pleasing literature, and the bet- 
 ter classes by novel but unorthodox ideas. To a very great extent the 
 Jews had been its carriers. The result was the overthrow of supernat- 
 uralism. We shall hardly accept the affirmation of good Catholics that 
 fairies disappeared on account of the Eeformation, unabl'e to bear the 
 morose sectarianism with which it was accompanied, or the still more 
 DeBtruetion material explanation of the rustics that it was through the in- 
 
 of fairies bv ' ^ 
 
 -toiacco. troduction of tobacco. However that may be, no longer is Eob- 
 in Goo(JfeUow the compeller of household duties — no longer do bad elves 
 sit by the dying embers on the hearth-stone at night, in the shape of 
 shriveled frogs, after the family have gone to bed. For a long 'time 
 there have been no miracles in Europe. Even Eome, the workshop of 
 those artifices, has ceased to be the seat of that trade. 
 
 From human institutions of any kind, a great principle, firmly in- 
 wrought and inwoven at the beginning, can never be removed. It will 
 show itself whenever occasion permits. The animosity between the By- 
 causesofthe zautine ecclesiastical system and all worldly wisdom was inex- 
 oppoBUiom* tinguishable, though it was utterly foreign to Christianity. It 
 was fastened by imperial violence on the nations, and made its appear- 
 ance, with unabated force, at intervals of ages. The same evil instinct 
 which tore Hypatia piecemeal in the church at Alexandria brought Ga- 
 lileo into the custody of the familiars of the holy office at Eome. The 
 necessary consequence of this upholding ignorance by force was the emer- 
 gence of ideas successively more and more depraved. Whoever will in- 
 genuously compare the religious state of Italy in the fourteenth century 
 with its state in the fourth — that is, the recent Italian with the old Ko- 
 Dcgraded man — will find that among the illiterate classes nothing what- 
 Btate of It. ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ accomplished. There were no elevated thoughts 
 of holy things. From practical devotion God had altogether disappear- 
 ed ; the Savior had been supplanted by the blessed Virgin ; and she 
 terself— such was the increasing degradation— had been abandoned for 
 the ignoble worship of apotheosized men, who, under the designation of 
 saints, had engrossed all the votaries. There had been a rapid descent 
 
LITERARY CONDITION OF THE AGE OF FAITH. 419 
 
 to the last degree of more than African abasement in bleeding statues 
 and -winking pictures. 
 
 In Europe there had been incorporated old forms of worship and old 
 festivals with Christian ones without any scruple ; the local gods and 
 goddesses had been replaced by saints ; for deification, canonization had 
 been substituted. There had been produced a civilization, the Eise of a new 
 character of which was its extraordinary intolerance. A man '"""^ °''"^"- 
 could not be suspected of doubting the popular belief without risk to 
 his goods, his body, or his life. Asa necessary consequence, there could 
 be no great lawgivers, no philosophers, no poets. Society was pervaded 
 by a systematic hypocrisy. This tyranny over others sometimes led to 
 strange results. It caused the Jews to discover the art of making wealth 
 invisible by bills of exchange and other such like means, so that money 
 might be imperceptibly but instantaneously moved. 
 
 Thus, after the dying out of Greek science, there followed, among the 
 new populations, an intellectual immobility, which soon became the cen- 
 tre of a vast number of growing interests quickly and firm- influence of that 
 ly crystallizing round it. For them it was essential that "^ "^°'™' 
 there should be no change — no advance. In the midst of jarrings and 
 conflicts between those interests, that condition was steadfastly maintain- 
 ed, as if through instinct, by them all. It mattered not how antiquated 
 were the forms insisted on, nor how far they outraged common sense. 
 New life was given to decaying illusions, and, in return, strength was 
 gathered from them. Isis, with the moon beneath her feet, ana degradation 
 was planted, under a new name, on the Bosphorus and the ^y African ideas. 
 Tiber. African theology, African ecclesiastical machinery, and African 
 monasticism were made objects of reverence to unsuspecting Europe. 
 Juvenal says that the Eoman painters of his day lived on the goddess 
 Isis. The Italian painters of a later day lived on her modernized form. 
 In such a condition of things the literary state could be no other than 
 barren. Political combinations had not only prescribed an n„ Hteratnre ia 
 intellectual terminus, but had even laid down a rail upon theAgeofraith. 
 which mental excursions were to be made, and from which there was no 
 departing ; or, if a turn-out was permitted, it was a tonsured man who 
 stood at the switch. Eor centuries together, if we exclude theological 
 writings, there was absolutely no literature worth the name. Life Seems 
 to have been spent in the pursuit of mere physical enjoyment, and that 
 enjoyment of a very low kind. When in the south of Prance and Sic- 
 ily literature began to dawn, it is not to be overlooked how much of it 
 was of an amatory kind ; and love is the strongest of the passions. The 
 first aspect of Western literature was animal, not intellectual. A taste 
 for learning excited, there reappeared in the schools the old treatises 
 written a thousand years before — the Elements of Euclid, the jts critical 
 Geography of Ptolemy. Long after the Eeformation there was ''■"«'=«"». 
 
420 DECLINE OF PATBISTICISM. 
 
 an intellectual imbecility whicli migtt well excite our mirth, if it were 
 not the index of a stage through which the human inind must pass. 
 Often enough we see it interestingly in the interweaving of the old with 
 the new ideas. If we take up a work on metallurgy, it commences with 
 Tubal Cain ; if on music, with Jubal. The history of each country is 
 traced back to the sons of Noah, or at least to the fugitives from the 
 siege of Troy. An admiration for classical authors may perhaps be ex- 
 cused. It exhibited itself amusingly in the eccentricity of interlarding 
 compositions of every kind with Greek and Latin quotations. It was 
 an age of literary innocence, when no legend was too stupendous for 
 credulity ; when there was no one who had ever suspected that Tully, 
 as they delighted to call him, was not a great philosopher, and Virgil 
 not a great poet. ' 
 
 Of those ponderous, those massive folios on ecclesiastical affairs, at 
 Disuse of patris- 0106 the product and representatives of the time, but little 
 tw works. needs here to be said. They boasted themselves as the su- 
 prenie effort of human intellect ; they laid claim to an enduring author' 
 ity ; to many they had a weight little less than the oracles of God. But 
 if their intrinsic value is to be measured by their pretensions, and their 
 pretensions judged of by their present use, what is it that m,ust be said? 
 Long ago their term was reached, long ago they became obsolete. They 
 have no reader. Such must be the issue of any literature springing 
 from an immovable, an unexpanding basis, the offspring of thought that 
 has been held in subjugation by political formulas, or of .intellectual en- 
 ergies that have been cramped. 
 
 The Eoman ecclesiastical system, like the Byzantine, had been irrev- 
 siircad of science ocably Committed in an opposition to intellectual develop- 
 in France. mcnt. It professed to cultivate the morals, but it crushed 
 
 the mind. Yet, in the course of events, this state of things was to come 
 to an end through the working of other principles equally enduring and 
 more powerful. They constitute what we may speak of under the title 
 of the Arabian element. On preceding pages it has been shown that, 
 on the transit of the Saracens through Egypt, they came under the in- 
 fluence of the Nestorians and Hellenizing Jews, acquiring from them a 
 love of philosophy, which soon manifested itself in full energy from the 
 banks of the Euphrates to those of the Guadalquivir. The hammer of 
 Qharles Martel might strike down the ranks of the Saracens on the field 
 of Tours, but there was something intangible, something indestructible 
 accompanying them, which the Frank chivalry could not confront. To 
 the Church there was an evil omen. It has been well remarked that in 
 the Provengal poetry there are noble bursts of crusading religious sen- 
 timent, but they are incorporated with a sovereign contempt for the 
 clergy. 
 
 The biography of any of the physicians or alchemists of the thirteenth 
 
ARNOLD DE VILLA NOVA. 421 
 
 century would serve the purpose of illustrating the watchfulness of the 
 Church, the unsflund condition of the universities, the indirect patronage 
 extended to heretics by eminent men, and the manner in which the rival 
 powers, ecclesiasticism and philosophy, were preparing for their final 
 conflict. As an example of the kind, I may present briefly that of Ar- 
 nold de Villa Nova, born about A.D. 1250. He enjoyed a great luustration 
 reputation for his knowledge of medicine and alchemy. For J'^aph^y of' 
 some years he was physician to the King of Arragon. Under ^™°'^ 
 an accusation of defective orthodoxy he lost his position at court, his 
 punishment being rendered more effective by excommunication. Hop- 
 ing to find, in Paris more liberality than he had met with in Spain, he 
 fled to that city, but was pursued by an adverse ecclesiastical influence 
 with a charge of having sold his soul to the Devil, and of having changed 
 a plate of copper into gold. In Montpellier, to which he was obliged to 
 retire, he found a more congenial intellectual atmosphere, and was for 
 long one of the regents of the faculty of medicine. In succession, he 
 subsequently resided in Florence, Naples, Palermo, patronized and hon- 
 ored by the Emperor Frederick II.— ^at that time engaged in the attempt 
 to unite Italy into one kingdom and give it a single language — on ac- 
 count of his extraordinary reputation as a physician. Even the pope, 
 Clement V., notwithstanding the unfortunate attitude in which Arnold 
 stood toward the Church, besought a visit from him in hopes of relief 
 from the stone. On his voyage for the purpose of performing the nee 
 essary operatipn, Arnold suffered shipwreck and was drowned. His 
 body was interred at Genoa. The pope issued an encyclic letter, en- 
 treating those who owed him obedience to reveal where Arnold's Trea- 
 tise on the Practice of Medicine might be found, it having been lost 
 or concealed. It appears that the chief offenses committed by Arnold 
 against the Church were that he had predicted that the world would 
 come to an end A.D. 1335 ; that he had said the bulls of the pope were 
 only the work of a man, and that the practice of charity is better than 
 prayer, or even than the mass. If he was the author of the celebrated 
 book " De Tribus Impostoribus," as was suspected by some, it is not re- 
 markable that he was so closely watched and disciplined. Like many 
 of his contemporaries, he mingled a great deal of mysticism with his 
 work, recommending, during his alchemical operations, the recitation of 
 psalms, to give force to the agents used. Among other such things, he 
 describes a seal, decorated with scriptural phrases, of excellent use in 
 preserving one from sudden death. It appears, however, to have failed 
 of its effect on the night when Arnold's ship was drifting on an Italian 
 lee-shore, and he had most need of it. 
 
 The two antagonistic principles— ecclesiastical and intellectual — were 
 thus brought in presence of each other. On other occa- two impuiseB-in- 
 sions they had been already in partial collision, as at the ii-ta°operauo°"' 
 
422 THE TWO IMPULSES AGAINST THE CHURCH. 
 
 iconoclastic dispute which originated in the accusations of the Moham- 
 medans, and ended in the tearing asunder of Christendtm. 
 
 Again there was a collision, a few centuries later, when the Spanish 
 struggle of eocie- Moors and Jews began to influence the higher European 
 tto inSueS'' classes. Among the bishops, sovereigns, and even popes 
 principle. ^.^^g afifectcd, there were many men of elevated views, who 
 
 saw distinctly the position of Europe, and understood thoroughly the dif- 
 ficulties of the Church. It had already become obvious to them that it 
 would be impossible to restrain the impulse arising from the vigorous 
 movements of the Saracens, and that it was absolutely necessary so to 
 order things that the actual condition of faith in Europe might be ac- 
 commodated to or even harmonized with these philosophical conceptions, 
 which it was quite clear would, soon or late, pervade the whole Conti- 
 nent. This, as we have seen, is the explanation of the introduction of 
 Scholasticism from the Arabian schools, -and its accommodation to the 
 Christian code, on which authority looked with so much favor at first. 
 But hardly had this attempt been entered upon before it became mani- 
 fest that the risks to be incurred through the remedy itself were as evil 
 as the anticipated dangers. There was then no other course than for 
 the Church to retrace her steps, ostensibly maintaining her consistency 
 by permitting scholastic literature, though declining scholastic theology. 
 She thus allured the active intellect, arising in all directions in the uni- 
 versities, to fruitless and visionary pursuits. This policy, therefore, threw 
 her back upon a system of repression ; it was the only course possible ; 
 yet there can be no doubt that it was entered upon with reluctance. We 
 do injusticeto the great men who guided ecclesiastical policy in those 
 times when we represent them as recklessly committing themselves to 
 measures at once violent and indefensible. They did make the attempt 
 The difficulty was to iustltute an oppositc policy ; it proved not only a fail- 
 in the men. ' urc, but mischievous. They were then driven to check the 
 spread of knowledge — driven by the necessities of their position. The 
 fault was none of theirs ; it dated back to the time of Constantine the 
 Great; and the impossibility of either correcting or neutralizing it is 
 only an example, as has been said, of the manner in which a general , 
 principle, once introduced, will overbear the best exertions of those at- 
 tempting to struggle against it. We can appreciate the false position 
 into which those statesmen were thrown when we compare their per- 
 sonal with their public relations. Often the most eminent persons lived 
 in intimacy and friendship with Jewish physicians, who, in the eye of 
 the law, were enemies of society ; often those who were foremost in the 
 cultivation of knowledge — who, indeed, suffered excommunication for its 
 sake — maintained amicable relations of a private kind with those who 
 in public were the leaders of their persecutors. The systems were in 
 antagonism, not the men. Arnold de Villa Nova, though excommuni-. 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL IMPULSE. 423 
 
 cated, was the physician of one pope ; Koger Bacon, though harshly im- 
 prisoned, was the friend and correspondent of another. These incidents 
 are not at all to be mistaken for that compassion which the truly great 
 are ever ready to show to erring genius. They are examples of what 
 we often see in our own day, when men engaged in the movements of a 
 great political party loyally carry out its declared principles to their con- 
 sequences, though individually they might find in those consequences 
 many things to which they could mentally object. Their private objec- 
 tion they thus yield for the sake of what appears to them, in a general 
 way, a practical good. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when the Arab element, having pervaded 
 France and Italy, made its formal intellectual attack. It might almost 
 have been foreseen in what manner that attack would be made, and the 
 shape it would be likely to assume. Of the sciences, astronomy was the 
 oldest and most advanced. Its beginning dates earlier than xhe intellectual 
 the historic period, and both in India and in Egypt it had L?S?C!?hi^ 
 long reached correctness, so far as its general principles *''°™™y> 
 were concerned. The Saracens had been assiduous cultivators of it in 
 both its branches, observation and mathematical investigation. Upon 
 one point, the figure and relations of the earth, it is evident that not the 
 slightest doubt existed among them. N"ay, it must be added that no 
 learned European ecclesiastic or statesman could deny the demonstrated 
 truths. Nevertheless, it so fell out that upon this very point the conflict 
 commenced. In India the Brahmans had passed through this same trial 
 — for different nations walk through similar paths — with a certain plau- 
 sible success, by satisfying the popular clamor that there was, in reality, 
 nothing inconsistent between the astronomical doctrine of the globular 
 form and movement of the earth, and the mythological dogma that it 
 rests upon a succession of animals, the lowest of which is a tortoise. 
 But the strong common sense of Western Europe was not to be deluded 
 in any such idle way. It is not difacult to see the point of contact, the 
 point of pressure with the Church. The abstract question gave her no 
 concern ; it was the consequences that might possibly follow. The mem- 
 orable battle was fought upon the question thus sharply defined : Is the 
 earth a moving globe, a small body in the midst of blazing suns and 
 countless myriads of worlds, or is it the central and greatest object in the 
 universe, flat, and canopied over with a blue dome, motionless while all 
 is in movement around it? The dispute thus definitely put, its issue 
 was such as must always attend upon a controversy in which he who is 
 defending is at once lukewarm and conscious of his own weakness. 
 Never can moral interests, however pure, stand against intel- anathechurd. 
 lect enforcing truth. On this ill-omened question the Church ^ '^sfea'^J- 
 ventured her battle and lost it. 
 Though this great conflict is imbodied in the history of Galileo, who 
 
424 THE MOBAL IMPULSE. ^ 
 
 has become its Hstorical representative, the prime moving cause must 
 The moral DOt be misuuderstood. From the Pyrenees had passed forth 
 impulse. ^^ influence which had infected all the learned men of West- 
 em Europe. Its tendency was altogether unfavorable to the Church. 
 Moreover, the illiterate classes had been touched, but in a different way. 
 To the first action Ihe designation of the intellectual impulse may be 
 given ; to. the latter, the moral. It is to be especially observed that in 
 their directions these impulses conspired. We have seen how, through 
 the Saracens and Jews conjointly, the intellectual impulse came into 
 oripn of play. Thc moral impulse originated in a different manner, being 
 impulse, duc partly to the Crusades and partly to the state of things in 
 Eome. On these causes it is therefore needful for us to reflect. 
 
 First, of the Crusades. There had been wrenched from. Christendom 
 its fairest and most glorious portions. Spain, the north of Africa, Egypt, 
 Syria, Asia Minor, were gone. The Mohammedans had been repeatedly 
 under the walls of Constantinople ; its fall was only a question of time. 
 They had been in the streets of Eome. They had marched across Italy 
 in every direction. But perhaps the geographical losses, appalling as 
 toBs of the they were, did not appear so painful as the capture of the holy 
 hofy places, places : the birth-place of pur Eedeemer ; the scene of his suf- 
 ferings ; the Mount of Olives ; the Sea of Galilee ; the Garden of Geth- 
 semane ; Calvary ; the Sepulchre. Too often in their day of strength, 
 while there were Eoman legions at their back, had the bishops taunted 
 Paganism with the weakness of its divinities, who could not defend them- 
 selves, their temples, or their sacred places. That logic was retaliated 
 now. To many a sincere heart must many an ominous reflection have 
 occurred. In Western Europe there was a strong common sense which 
 quickly caught the true position of things — a common sense neither to 
 be blinded nor hoodwinked. The astuteness of the Italian politicians 
 was insufScient to conceal altogether the great fact, though it might suc- 
 ceed in dissembling its real significance for a time. The Europe of that 
 day was very different from the Europe of ours. It was in its Age of 
 Faith. Eecently converted, as all recent converts do, it made its belief 
 a living rule of action. In our times there is not upon that continent a 
 nation which, in its practical relations with others, carries out to their 
 consequences its ostensible, its avowed articles of belief. Catholics, Prot- 
 estants, Mohammedans, they of the Greek communion, indiscriminately 
 consort together under the expediencies of the passing hour. States- 
 manship has long been dissevered from religion — a fact most portentous 
 for future times. But it was not so in the Middle Ages. Men then be- 
 lieved their form of faith with the same clearness, the same intensity 
 with which they believed their own existence or the actual presence of 
 things upon which they cast their eyes. The doctrines of the Church 
 were to them no mere inconsequential affair, but an absolute, an actual 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE CRUSADES. 425 
 
 reality, a living and a fearful thing. It would have passed their com- 
 prehension if they could have been assured that a day would come when 
 Christian Europe, by a breath, could remove from the holy places the 
 scandal of an infidel intruder, but, upon the whole, would consider it not 
 worth her whUe to do so. How differently they acted. When, by the 
 preaching of Peter the Hermit and his collaborators, who had received 
 a signal from Eome, a knowledge had come to their ears of the reproach 
 that had befallen Jerusalem and the sufferings of the pilgrims, their plain 
 but straightforward common sense taught them at once what was the 
 right remedy to apply, and forthwith they did apply it, and Christen- 
 dom, precipitated headlong upon the Holy Land, was brought Effect of the 
 face to face with Mohammedanism. But what a scene awaited crusadeB. 
 the zealous, the religious barbarians — for such they truly were — when 
 Constantinople, with its matchless splendors, came in view ! What a 
 scene when they had passed into Asia Minor, that garden of the world, 
 presenting city after city, with palaces and edifices, the pride of twenty 
 centuries ! How unexpected the character of those Saracens, whom they 
 had been taught, by those who had incited them to their enterprise, to 
 regard as no better than bloodthirsty fiends, but whom they change of opinion 
 found valiant, merciful, just! When Eichard the Lion- «" '"e crusaders, 
 hearted. King of England, lay in his tent consumed by a fever, there 
 came into the camp camels laden with snow, sent by his enemy, the Sul- 
 tan Saladin, to assuage his disease, the homage of one brave soldier to 
 another. But when Eichard was returning to England, it was by a 
 Christian prince ^that he was treacherously seized and secretly confined. 
 This was doubtless only one of many such incidents which had often 
 before occurred. Even down to the meanest camp-follower, every one 
 must have recognized the difference between what they had anticipated 
 and what they had found. They had seen undaunted courage, chival- 
 rous bearing, intellectual culture far. higher than their own. They had 
 been in lands filled with the prodigies of human skill. They did not 
 melt down into the populations to whom they returned without impart- 
 ing to them a profound impression destined to make itself felt in the 
 course of time. 
 
 But, secondly, as to the state of things in Eome. The movement into 
 which all Europe had been thrown by these wars brought to light the 
 true condition of things in Italy as respects morality. Loco- They discover 
 motion in a population is followed by intellectual develop- tiesSaiy. " 
 ment. The old stationary condition of things in Europe was closed by 
 the Crusades. National movement gave rise to better observation, bet- 
 ter information, and could not but be followed by national reflection. 
 And though we are obhged to speak of the European population as be- 
 ing in one sense in a barbarous state, it was a moral population, earnest- 
 ly believing the truth of every doctrine it had been taught, and sincerely 
 
426 EEVIEW OF MACHIAVELLI. 
 
 expecting that those doctrines would be carried to their practical appli- 
 cation, and that religious profession must, as a matter of course, be illus- 
 trated by religious life. The Eomans themselves were an exception to 
 this. They had lived too long behind the scenes. Indeed, it may be 
 said that all the Italian peninsula ha;d emancipated itself from that delu- 
 sion, as likewise certain classes in France, who had become familiar with 
 the state of things during the residence of the popes at Avignon. It 
 has been the destiny of Southern France to pass, on a small scale, under 
 the same influence, and to exhibit the same results as were appointed for 
 all Europe at last. 
 
 And now, what was it that awakening Europe found to be the state 
 of things in Italy? I avert my eyes from looking again at the biography 
 of the popes ; it would be only to renew a scene of sin and shame. Nor 
 can I, without injustice to truth, speak of the social condition of the in- 
 habitants of that peninsula without relating facts which would compel 
 my reader to turn over the page with a blush. I prefer to look at the 
 maxims of political life which had been followed for many centuries, and 
 which were first divulged by one of the greatest men that Italy has pro- 
 duced in a work — A.D. 1513 — truly characterized as a literary prodigy. 
 Certainly nothing can surpass in atrocity the maxims therein laid down., 
 
 Machiavelli, in that work, tells us that there are three degrees of ca- 
 The principles of pacitv among men. That one understands things by his 
 
 Italian statesman- ^ •^ <^ i-i 
 
 Bhip— Machiavelli. own natural powers ; another, when they are explained to 
 him ; a third, not at all. In dealing with these different classes ditferent 
 methods are to be used. The last class, which is by /ar the most nu- 
 ' merous, is so simple and weak that it is very easy to dupe those who he- 
 long to it. If they cease to believe of their own accord they ought to be 
 constrained by force, "in the application of which, though there may be 
 considerable difficulties at first, yet, these once overcome by a sufficient 
 unscrupulousness, veneration, security, tranquillity, and happiness will 
 follow. That, if a prince is constrained to make his choice, it is better 
 for him to be feared than loved ; he should remember that all men are 
 ungrateful, fickle, timid, dissembling, and self-interested ; that love de- 
 pends on them, but fear depends on him, and hence it is best to prefer 
 the latter, which is always in his own hands. That, as to governments, 
 their form is of very little moment, though half-educated people think 
 otherwise. The great aim of statesmanship should be permanence, which 
 is worth every thing else, being fer more valuable than freedom. That, 
 if a man wants to ruin a republic, his proper course is to set it on bold 
 undertakings, which it is sure to mismanage ; that men, being^ naturally 
 wicked, incline to good only when they are compelled ; they think a 
 great deal more of the present than the past, and never seek change so 
 long as they are made comfortable. 
 He recommends a ruler to bear in mind that, while the lower class of 
 
t EEVIEW OF MACHIAVELLI. 427 
 
 men may desert him, the superior will not only desert, but conspire. If 
 such can not with certainty be made reliable friends, it is very clearly 
 necessary to put it out of their power to be enemies. Thus it may be ob- 
 served that the frequent insurrections in Spain, Gaul, and Greece against 
 the Eomans were entirely due to the petty chiefs inhabiting those .coun- 
 tries ; but that, after they had once been put to death, every thing went 
 on very well. Up to a certain point, it should be the grand maxim of 
 a wise government to content the people and to manage the nobles ; but 
 that, since hatred is just as easily incurred by good actions as by bad ones, 
 there will occasionally arise the necessity of being wicked in order to 
 maintain power, and, in such a case, there should be no hesitation ; for, 
 though it is useful to persevere in the path of rectitude while there is no 
 inconvenience, we should deviate from it at once if circumstances indi- 
 cate. A prudent prince ought not to keep his word to his own injury; 
 he ought to bear in mind that one who .always endeavors to act as duty 
 dictates necessarily insures his owi^ destruction; that new obligations 
 never extinguish the memory of former injuries in the minds of the su- 
 perior order of men ; that liberality, in the end, generally insures more 
 enemies than friends ; that it is the nature of mankind to become as 
 much attached to one by the benefits tbey render as by the favors they 
 receive ; that, where the question is as to the taking of life or the confis- 
 cation of property, it is useful to recollect that men forget the death of 
 their relatives, but not the loss of their patrimony ; that, if cruelties 
 should become expedient, they should be committed thoroughly and but 
 once — it is very impolitic to resort to them a second time; that there 
 are three ways of deciding any contest — ^by fraud, by force, or by law, 
 and a wise man will, make the most suitable choice ; that there are also 
 three ways of maintaining control in newly-conquered states that have 
 once been free — by ruining them, by inhabiting them, or by permitting 
 them to keep their own laws and to pay tribute. Of these the first will 
 often be found the best, as we may see from the history of the Eomans, 
 who were experienced judges of such cases. That, as respects the fami- 
 ly of a rival but conquered sovereign, the greatest pains should be taken 
 to extinguish it completely ; for history proves, what many fabulous tra- 
 ditions relate, that dangerous political consequences have originated in 
 the escape of some obscure or insignificant member ; that men of the 
 highest order, who are, therefore, of sound judgment — who seek for ac- 
 tual social truths for their guidance rather than visionary models which 
 never existed — will conform to the decisions of reason, and never be in- 
 fluenced by feelings of sentiment, unless it is apparent that some collat- 
 eral advantage will arise from the temporary exhibition thereof; and 
 that they will put a just estimate on the delusions in which the vulgar 
 indulge, casting aside the so-called interventions of Divine Providence, 
 which are, in reality, nothing more than the concatenation of certain cir- 
 
428 EEVIEW OF MACHIAVELLI. 4 
 
 cumstances following lie ordinary law of cause and effect, but wMch, by 
 interfering with the action of each other, have assumed a direction which 
 the judgment of the wisest could 'not have foreseen. 
 
 Europe ha^ visited with its maledictions the great political writer by 
 whom these atrocious maxims have been recommended, forgetting that 
 his offense consists not in inventing, but in divulging them. His works 
 thus offer the purest example we possess of physical statesmanship. 
 They are altogether impassive. He views the management of a state 
 'precisely as he might do the construction of a machine, recommending 
 that such a wheel or such a lever should be introduced, his only inquiry 
 being whether it will accomplish his intention. As to any happiness or 
 misery it may work, he gives himself no concern, unless, indeed, they ev- 
 idently ought to enter into the calculation. ' He had suffered the rack 
 himself under a charge of conspiracy, and borne it without flinching. 
 But, before Machiavelli wrote, his principles had all been carried into 
 practice ; indeed, it would not be difficult to give abundant examples in 
 proof of the assertion that they had been for ages regarded in Italy as 
 rules of conduct. 
 
 Such was the morality which Europe detected as existing in Italy, 
 carried out with inconceivable wickedness in public and private life; 
 and thus the two causes we have been considering — contact with the 
 Saracens in Syria and a knowledge of the real state of things in Eome^- 
 conspired together to produce what may be designated as the moral im- 
 pulse, which, in its turn, conspired with the intellectual. Their associa- 
 conjoined effect tiou forcboded evil to ecclesiastical authority, thus taken at 
 fai'ani^moraf great disadvantage. Though, from its very birthday, that 
 impulses. authority had been in absolute opposition to the intellect' 
 ual movement, it might, doubtless, for a much longer time have success- 
 fully maintained its conflict therewith had the conditions remained un- 
 changed. Up to this time its chief strength reposed upon its moral -re- 
 lations. It could point, and did point the attention of those whose men- 
 tal culture enabled them to understand the true position of affairs, to 
 Europe, brought out of barbarism, and beginning a course of glorious 
 civilization. That achievement was claimed by the Church. If it was 
 true that she had thus brought it to pass, it had been altogether wrought 
 by the agency of her moral power, intellectual influence in no manner 
 aiding therein, but being uniformly, from the time of Constantine the 
 Great to that of the Eeformation, instinctively repulsed. When, now, the 
 moral power suffered so great a shocjc, and was not only ready to go 
 over to, but had actually allied itself with, the intellectual, there was great 
 danger to ecclesiastical authority. And hence we need not be surprised 
 that an impression began to prevail among the clear-thinking men of 
 the time that the real functions of that authority were completed in pro- 
 ducing the partially-civilized condition to which Europe had attained, 
 
SOCIAL CHANGES IN EUROPE. 429 
 
 the course of events tending evidently to an elimination of that author- 
 ity as an active element in the approaching European system. To such 
 the Church might emphatically address herself, pointing out the signal 
 and brilliant results to which she had given rise, and display- r^^ excuaea of 
 ing the manifest evils which must inevitably ensue if her re- «='=i«'i^"™-^ 
 lations, as then existing, should be touched. For it must have been 
 plain that- the first effect arising from the coalition of the intellectual 
 with the moral element would be an assertion of the right of private 
 judgment in the individual — a condition utterly inconsistent with the 
 dominating influence of authority. It was actually upon that very prin- 
 ciple that the battle of the Eeformation was eventually fought. She 
 might point out — for it needed no prophetic inspiration^-that, if once 
 this principle was yielded, there could be no other issue in Christendom 
 than a total decomposition ; that though, for a little while, the separation 
 might be limited to a few great confessions, these, under the very jje,. feeble 
 influence of the principle that had brought themselves into ex- '^"^t™™- 
 istence, must, in their turn, undergo disintegration, and the end of it be a 
 complete anarchy of sects. In one sense it may be said that it was in 
 wisdom that the Church took ,her stand upon this point, determining to 
 make it her base of resistance; unwisely in another, for it was evident 
 that she had already lost the initiative of action, and that her very resist- 
 ance would constitute the first stage in the process of decomposition. 
 
 Europe had made a vast step during its Age of Faith. Spontaneous- 
 ly it had grown. through its youth ; and the Italians, who had contcmponme- 
 furnished it with many of its ideas, had furnished it also many E™op&°^° ™ 
 of its forms of life. In that respect justice has still to be done them. 
 When Eome broke away from her connections with Constantinople, a 
 cloud of more than Cimmerian darkness overshadowed Europe. It was 
 occupied by wandering savages. Six hundred years organized it into 
 families, neighborhoods, cities. Those centuries found it full of bond- 
 men ; they left it without ^ slave. They found it a scene of violence, 
 rapine, lust; they left it the abode of God-fearing men. Where there 
 had been trackless forests, there were innumerable steeples glittering in 
 the sun ; where there had been bloody chieftains, drinking out of their 
 'enemies' skulls, there were grave ecclesiastics, fathoming the depths of 
 free-will, predestination, election. Investing the clergy with a mysteri- 
 ous superiority, the Church asserted the equality of the laity before God 
 from the king to the beggar. It disregarded wealth and birth, and open- 
 ed a career for all. Its influence over the family and domestic relations 
 was felt through all classes. It ascertained a father by a previous ceremo- 
 ny ; it enforced the rule that a wife passes into the family of her husband, 
 and hence it followed that legitimate children belong to the father, ille- 
 gitimate tp the mother. It compelled women to domestic life, shut them 
 out from the priesthood,- and tried to exclude them from government. 
 
430 ' DECLINE OF ECCLESIASTICAL POWEE. 
 
 In a worldly sense, the mistake that Eome committed was this : she at- 
 tempted to maintain an intellectual immobility in the midst of an ad- 
 vancing social state. She saw not that society could no more be stopped 
 in its career through her mere assertion that it could not and should not 
 move, than that the earth could be checked in its revolution merely be- 
 cause she protested that it was at rest. She tried, first by persuasion and 
 then by force, to arrest the onward movement, but she was overborne, 
 notwithstanding her frantic resistance, by the impetuous current. Very 
 different would it have been had the Italian statesmen boldly put them- 
 selves in the van of progress, and, instead of asserting an immutability 
 and infallibility, changed their dogmas and maxims as the progress of 
 events required. Europe need not to have waited for Arabs and Jews. 
 In describing these various facts, I have endeavored to point out im- 
 pressively how the Church, so full of vigor at first, contained within it- 
 self the seeds of inevitable decay. From the period when it came into, 
 collision with the intellectual and moral elements, the origin of which we 
 have traced, and which conspired together for its overthrow, it exhibited 
 Loss of power a gradual decline; first losing its influence upon nations, and 
 
 in Church or- ° . , . ' . °. . „ . .. ^ . ' . 
 
 ganizations. ccasmg to DO lu them a prmciple oi public action ; next, wit- 
 nessing the alienation of the higher and educated classes, the process de- 
 scending downward through the social scale, therein retracing the steps 
 of its advance. When ecclesiasticism became so weak as to be unable 
 to regulate international affairs, and was supplanted by diplomacy, in 
 the castle the physician was more thaii a rival for the confessor, in the 
 town the mayor was a greater man than the abbot. Tiiere remained a 
 lingering influence over individuals, who had not yet risen above a be- 
 lief that it could control their state after death. This decline of its an- 
 cient influence should be a cause of rejoicing to all intelligent men, for 
 an ecclesiastical organization allying itself to political power can never 
 now be a source of any good. In America we have seen the bond that 
 held the Church and State together abruptly snapped. It is therefore 
 well that, since the close of the Age of Faith, things have been coming 
 Eetum of things back, with an accelerated pace, to the state in which they 
 Christian times, wcrc in the early Christian times, before the founder of Con- 
 stantinople beguiled the devotional spirit to his personal and family ben- 
 efit — to the state in which they were before ambitious men sought po- 
 litical advancement and wealth by organizing hypocrisy — when maxiras 
 of morality, charity, benevolence, were rules of life for individual man — 
 when the monitions of conscience were obeyed without the suggestions 
 of an outward, often an interested and artful prompter — when the indi- 
 vidual lived not under the sleepless gaze, the crushing hand of a great 
 overwhelming hierarchical organization, surrounding him on all sides, 
 doing his thinking for him, directing him in his acts, making him a mere 
 automaton, but in simplicity, humility, and truthfulness guiding himself 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL CAUSES OF THAT DECLINE. 431 
 
 according to the light given him, and discharging the duties of this 
 troublesome and transitory life " as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." 
 
 For the progressive degradations exhibited by the Roman Church 
 during the Age of Faith, something may be offered as at once an ex- 
 planation and an excuse. Machiavelli relates, in his "History of Flor- 
 ence" — a work which, if inferior in philosophical penetration to his 
 " Prince," is of the most singular merit as a literary composition — that 
 Osporco, a Roman, having become pope, exchanged his unseemly name 
 for the more classical one Sergius, and that his successors connection of re- 
 have ever since observed the practice of assuming a new Iti^ywithusSh- 
 name. This incident profoundly illustrates the psychical °i'=='i ='=•'«■ 
 progress of that Church. During the fifteen centuries that we have had 
 under consideration — counting from a little before the Christian era — the 
 population of Italy had been constantly changing. The old Roman eth- 
 nical element had become eliminated partly through the republican and 
 imperial wars, and partly through the slave system. The degenerated 
 half-breeds, of whom the Peninsula was full through repeated northern 
 immigrations, degenerated, as time went on, still more and more. After 
 that blood admixture had for the most part ceased, it took a long time 
 for the base ethnical element which was its product to come into physi- 
 ological correspondence with the country, for the adaptation of man to a 
 new climate is a slow, a secular change; 
 
 But blood-degeneration implies thought-degeneration. It is nothing 
 more than might be expected that, in this mongrel race, customs, and 
 language, and even names should change — that rivers, and towns, and 
 men should receive new appellations. As the great statesman to whom 
 I have referred observes, Csesar and Pompey had disappeared ; John, 
 Matthew, and Peter had come in their stead. Barbarized names are the 
 outward and visible signs of barbarized ideas. Those early bishops of 
 Rome, whose dignified acts have commanded our respect, were men of 
 Roman blood, and animated with sentiments that were truly Latin ; but 
 the succeeding pontiffs, whose lives were so infamous and thoughts so 
 base, were engendered of half-breeds. Nor was it until the Italian pop- 
 ulation had re-established itself in a physiological relation with the coun- 
 try — not until it had passed through the earlier stages of national life — 
 that manly thoughts and true conceptions could be regained. 
 
 Ideas and dogmas that would not have been tolerated for an instant 
 in the old, pure, homogeneous Roman race, found acceptance in this adul- 
 terated, festering mass. This was the true cause of the increasing de- 
 basement of Latin Christianity. He who takes the trouble successive steps 
 to construct a chart of the religious conceptions as they sue- decline, 
 cessively struggled into light, will see how close was their connection 
 with the physiological state of the Italian ethnical element at the mo- 
 ment. It is a sad and humiliating succession. Mariolatry ; the invoca- 
 
432 BENEFITS CONFEREED BY THE CHUECH. 
 
 tion of saints ; the supreme value of virginity ; the working of miracles 
 by relics ; the satisfaction of moral crimes by gifts of money or goods to 
 the clergy ; the worship of images ; Purgatory ; the sale of benefices ; 
 transubstantiation, or the making of Grod by the priest ; the materializa- 
 tion of God — that he has eyes, feet, hands, toes ; the virtue of pilgrim- 
 ages ; vicarious religion, the sinner paying the priest to pray for him ; 
 the corporeality of spirits ; the forbidding of th,e Bible to the laity ; the 
 descent to shrine- worship and fetichism ; the doctrine that man can do 
 more than his duty, and hence have a claim upon God ; the sale by the 
 priest of indulgences in sin for money. 
 
 But there is another, a very different aspect under which we must re- 
 gard this Church. Enveloped as it was with the many evils of the times, 
 the truly Christian principle which was at its basis perpetually vindi- 
 cated its power, giving rise to numberless blessings in spite of the degra- 
 dation and wickedness of man. As I have elsewhere (Physiology, page 
 626) remarked, " The civil law exerted an exterior power in human re- 
 lations ; Christianity produced an interior and moral 'change. The idea 
 statement of what of an ultimate accountability for personal deeds, of which 
 
 the Church had ac- , _ ^ .^ , _ , *'-. . ■*■ . - i 
 
 tuaiiy done. the old Europeans had an mdistmct perception, became m- 
 tense and precise. The sentiment of universal charity was exemplified 
 not only in individual acts, the remembrance of which soon passes away, 
 but in the more permanent institution of establishments for the relief 
 of affliction, the spread of knowledge, the propagation of truth. Of the 
 great ecclesiastics, many had risen from the humblest ranks of society, 
 and these men, true to their democratic instincts, were often found to be 
 the inflexible supporters of right against might. Eventually coming to 
 be the depositaries of the knowledge that then existed, they opposed in- 
 tellect to brute force, in many instances successfully, and by the exam- 
 ple of the organization of the Church, which was essentially republican, 
 they showed how representative systems may be introduced into the 
 state. Nor was it over communities and nations that the Church dis- 
 played her chief power. Never in the world before was there such a 
 system. From her central seat at Eome, her all-seeing eye, like that of 
 Providence itself, could equally take in a hemisphere at a glance, or ex- 
 amine the private life of any individual. Her boundless influences en- 
 vejoped kings in their palaces, and relieved the beggar at the monastery 
 gate. In all Europe there was not a man too obscure, too insignificant, 
 or too desolate for her. Surrounded by her solemnities, every one re- 
 ceived his name at her altar ; her bells chimed at his marriage, her knell 
 tolled at his funeral. She extorted from him the secrets of his life at her 
 confessionals, and punished his faults by her penances. In his hour of 
 sickness and trouble her servants sought him out, teaching him, by her 
 exquisite litanies and prayers, to place his reliance on God, or strength- 
 ening him for the trials of life by the example of the holy and just. Her 
 
ANALYSIS OF THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. 433 
 
 prayers had an efficacy to give repose to the soul of his dead. When, 
 even to his friends, his lifeless body had become an offense, in the name 
 of God she received it into her consecrated ground, and under her shad- 
 ow he rested till the great reckoning-day. From little better than a 
 slave she raised his wife to be his equal, and, forbidding him to have 
 more than one, met her recompense for those noble deeds in a firm friend 
 at every fireside. Discountenancing all impure love, she put round that 
 fireside the children of one mother, and made that mother little less than 
 sacred in their eyes. In ages of lawlessness and rapine, among people 
 but a step above savages, she vindicated the inviolability of her pre- 
 cincts against the hand of power, and made her temples a refuge and 
 sanctuary for the despairing and oppressed. Truly she was the shadow 
 of a great rock in many a weary land !" 
 
 This being the point which I consider the end of the Italian system 
 as a living force in European progress, its subsequent operation being 
 directed to the senses and not to the understanding, it will not be amiss 
 if for a moment we extend our view to later times and to circumstances 
 beyond the strict compass of this book, endeavoring to ascer- Analysis of 
 
 . r ■• „ , T • n 1 ' /~ii 1 '11 the career of 
 
 tarn thereirom the condition oi the Church, especially as to thechm-ch. 
 many devout persons it may doubtless appear that she has lost none of 
 her power. 
 
 On four occasions there have been revolts against the Italian Church 
 system : 1st, in the thirteenth century, the Albigensian ; 2d, Fom revolts 
 in the fourteenth, the Wiclifite ; 3d, in the sixteenth, the Eef- Italian system, 
 ormation ; 4th, in the eighteenth, at the French Eevolution. On each 
 of these occasions ecclesiastical authority has exerted whatever offensive 
 or defensive power it possessed. Its action is a true indication of its 
 condition at the time. Astronomers can determine the orbit of a comet 
 or other celestial meteor by three observations of its position seen from 
 the earth, and taken at intervals apart. 
 
 1st. Of the Albigensian revolt. We have ascertained that the origin 
 of this is distinctly traceable to the Mohammedan influences of The Aiwgen- 
 Spain, through the schools of Cordova and Granada, pervading «'™'e™"- 
 Languedoc and Provence. Had these agencies produced only the gay 
 scenes of chivalry and courtesy as their material results, and, as their 
 intellectual, war-ballads, satires, and amorous songs, they had been ex- 
 cused ; but, along with such elegant frivolities, there was something of 
 a more serious kind. A popular proverb will often betray national be- 
 lief, and there was a proverb in Provence, " "Viler than a priest." The 
 offensive sectaries also quoted, for the edification of the monks, certain 
 texts, to the effect " that, if a man will not work, neither let him eat." 
 The event, in the hands of Simon de Montfort, taught them that there 
 is such a thing as wresting Scripture to one's own destruction. 
 
 Ee 
 
434 ANALYSIS OF THE DECLINE OF THE EOMAN CHUECH. 
 
 How did the CliurcTi deal with this Albigensian heresy ? As those 
 do who have an absolutely overwhelming power. She did not crush 
 it — that would have been too indulgent ; she absolutely annihilated it. 
 Awake to what must necessarily ensue from the imperceptible spread of 
 such opinions, she remorselessly consumed its birth-place with fire and 
 sword ; and, fearful that some fugitives might have escaped her vigilant 
 eye, or that heresy might go wherever a bale of goods might be con- 
 veyed, she organized the Inquisition, with its troops of familiars and 
 spies. Six hundred years have elapsed since these events, and the south 
 of France has never recovered from the blow. 
 
 That was a persecution worthy of a sovereign — a persecution conduct- 
 ed on sound Italian principles of policy — to consider clearly the end to 
 be attained, and adopt the means thereto without any kind of concern 
 as to their nature. But it was a persecution that implied the possession 
 of unlimited and irresponsible power. 
 
 2d. Of the revolt of Wiclif. "We have also considered the state of af- 
 The revolt f^-irs which arouscd the resistance of Wiclif. It is manifested by 
 ofwichf. iggai enactments early in the fourteenth century, such as that 
 ecclesiastics shall not go armed, nor join themselves with thieves, nor 
 frequent taverns, nor chambers of strumpets, nor visit nuns, nor play at 
 dice, nor keep concubines — by the Parliamentary bill of 1376, setting 
 forth that the tax paid in England to the pope for ecclesiastical dignities 
 is fourfold as much as that coming to the king from the whole realm ; 
 that alien clergy, who have never seen nor care to see their flocks, con- 
 vey away the treasure of the country — by the homely preaching of John 
 Ball, that all men are equal in the sight of God. Wiclif's opposition 
 was not only directed against corruptions of discipline in the Church, 
 but equally against doctrinal errors. His dogma that " God bindeth not 
 men to believe any thing they can not understand" is a distinct imbod- 
 iment of the rights of reason, and the noble purpose he carried into ex- 
 ecution of translating the Bible from the Yulgate shows in what direc- 
 tion he intended the application of that doctrine to be made. Through 
 the influence of the queen of Eichard the Second, who was a native of 
 that country, his doctrines found an echo in Bohemia — Huss not only 
 earnestly adopting his tjieological views, but also joining in his resist- 
 ance to the despotism of the court of Eome and his exposures of the cor- 
 ruptions of the clergy. The political point of this revolt in England oc- 
 curs in the refusal of Edward III., at the instigation of Wiclif, to do 
 homage to the pope ; the religious, in the translation of the Bible. 
 
 Though a bull was sent to London requiring the arch-heretic to be 
 seized and put in irons, yet Wiclif died in his bed, and his bones rested 
 quietly in the grave for forty-four years. Ecclesiastical vengeance burn- 
 ed them at last and scattered them to the winds. 
 
 There was no remissness in the ecclesiastical authority, but there 
 
ANALYSIS OF THE DECLINE OF THE EOMAN CHUEOH. 435 
 
 were victories won by the blind hero, John Zisca. After the death of 
 that great soldier — whose body was left by the load-side to the wolves 
 and crows, and his skin dried and made into a drum — in vain was all 
 that perfidy could suggest and all that brutality could execute resorted 
 to — in vain the sword and fire were passed over Bohemia, and the last 
 effort of impotent vengeance tried in England — the heretics could not be 
 exterminated nor the detested translation of the Bible destroyed. 
 
 3d. Of the revolt of Luther. As we shall have, in a subsequent chap- 
 ter, to consider the causes that led to the Eeformation, it is not The revolt 
 necessary to anticipate them in any detail here. The necessities °^^^^^- 
 of the Eoman treasury, which suggested the doctrine of supererogation 
 and the sale of indulgences as a ready means of relief, merely brought 
 on a crisis which otherwise could not have been long postponed, the real 
 point at issue being the right of interpretation of the Scriptures by pri- 
 vate judgment. 
 
 The Church did not restrict her resistance to the use of ecclesiastical 
 weapons — those of a carnal kind she also employed. Yet we look in 
 vain for the concentrated energy with which she annihilated the Albi- 
 genses, or the atrocious policy with which the Hussites were met. The 
 times no longer permitted those things. But the struggle was main- 
 tained with unflinching constancy through the disasters and successes of 
 one hundred and thirty years. Then came the peace of "Westphalia, and 
 the result of the contest was ascertained. The Church had lost the 
 whole of northern Europe. 
 
 4t'h. Of the revolt of the philosophers. Besides the actual loss of the 
 nations who openly fell away to Protestantism, a serious detri- The revolt 
 ment was soon found to have befallen those still remaining nom- loaople"' 
 inally faithful to the Church. The fact of secession or adherence, de- 
 pending, in a monarchy, on the personal caprice or policy of the sover- 
 eign, is by no means a true index of the opinions or relations of the sub- 
 jects ; and thus it happened that in several countries in which there was 
 an outward appearance of agreement with the Church because of the at- 
 titude of the government, there was, in reality, a total disruption, so far 
 as the educated and thinking classes were concerned. This was espe- 
 cially the case in Prance. 
 
 When the voyage of circumnavigation of the world by Magellan had 
 forever settled all such questions as those of the figure of the earth and 
 the existence of the antipodes, the principles upon which the contest was 
 coinposed between the conflicting parties are obvious from the most su- 
 perficial perusal of the history of physics. Free thought was extorted 
 for science, and, as its equivalent, an unmolested state for theology. It 
 was an armed truce. 
 
 It was not through either of the parties to that conflict that new 
 troubles arose, but through the action of a class fast rising into import-- 
 
436 THE AGE OF EEASOK IN EUEOPE, 
 
 ance — literary men. rrom the beginning to the middle of the last cen- 
 tury these philosophers became more and more audacious in their at^ 
 . tacks. Unlike the scientific, whose theological action was by impUca- 
 tion rather than in a direct way, these boldly assaulted the intellectual 
 basis of faith. The opportune occurrence of the American Eevolution, 
 by bringing forward, in a prominent manner, social evils and political 
 methods for their cure, gave a practical application to the movement in 
 Europe, and the; Church was found unable to offer any kind of resist- 
 ance. 
 
 From these observations of the state of the Church at four different 
 Movement of the cpochs of her Career, wc are able to determine her move 
 Italian system. ^^^^^ rp]^Qj.g jg ^ ^^^^ ^f abounding Strength, a time of fee 
 
 bleness, a time of ruinous loss, a time of utter exhaustion, ^hat a dif. 
 ference between the eleventh and the eighteenth centuries!. It is the 
 noontide and the evening of a day of empire. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 APPEOACH OP THE AGE OF REASON IN EUEOPE. 
 
 IT IS PBECEDED BY MAEITIMB DISCOVEKT. 
 
 Consideralion of the definite Epochs of Social Life. 
 
 Experimental Philosophy emerging in the Age of Faith. 
 
 The Age of Reason, ushered in by Maritime Discovery and the rise of European Criticism. ' 
 
 Maeitime Discovbet. — ITie three great Voyages. 
 
 CoLiiMBUs discovers America! — ^De Gama doubles the Cape and reaches India. — ^Magellas 
 cirmmnavigates the Earth. — The material and intellectual Results of each of these Voyages. 
 
 DlGKESSioN ON THE SooiAL CONDITION OF AMERICA. — In isolated human Societies the process 
 of Thought and of Givilization is always the same. — Man passes through a determinate suc- 
 cession of Ideas and imbodies themin determinate Institutions. — The state of Mexico andPeru 
 proves the influence of Law in the development of Man. 
 
 I HAVE arrived at the last division of my work, the period in national 
 life answering to maturity in individual. The objects to be considered 
 differ altogether from those which have hitherto occupied our attention, 
 pecniiaritiea Wc have now to find human authority promoting intellectual 
 Eeason.^^ ° advancement, and accepting as its maxim that the lot of man 
 will be ameliorated, and his power and dignity increased, in proportion 
 as he is able to comprehend the mechanism of the world, the action, of 
 natural laws, and to apply physical forces to his use. 
 
 The date at which this transition in European life was made will 
 doubtless be differently given according as the investigator changes his 
 point of view. In truth, there is not in national life any real epoch, be- 
 Natnrai periofla causc there is nothing in reality abrupt. Events, however 
 
 merge into one t, p i-i« «« 
 
 another. great or sudden; are consequences oi preparations long ago 
 
THE EPOCHS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 437 
 
 made. In this there is a perfect parity between the course of national 
 and that of individual life. In the individual, one state merges by im- 
 perceptible degrees into another, each in its beginning and end being al- 
 together indistinct. No one can tell at what moment he ceased to be a 
 child and became a boy — at what moment he ceased to be a youth* and 
 became a man. Bach condition, examined at a suitable interval, exhib- 
 its characteristics perfectly distinctive, but, at their common point of con- 
 tact, the two so overlap and blend that, like the intermingling of shadow 
 and light, the beginning of one and end of the other may be very vari- 
 ously estimated. 
 
 In individual life, since no precise natural epoch exists, society has 
 found it expedient to establish an artificial one, as, for example, Ai-tmciai 
 the twenty-first year. The exigencies of history may be satisfied "'*°*^' 
 by similar fictions. A classical critic would probably be justified in se- 
 lecting for his purpose the foundation of Constantinople as the epoch of 
 the commencement of the Age of Faith, and its capture by the Turks as 
 the close. It must be admitted that a very large number of historical 
 events stand in harmony with that arrangement. A political writer 
 would perhaps be disposed to postpone the date of the latter origin and end 
 epoch to that of the treaty of Westphalia, for from that time Faith, 
 theological elements ceased to have a recognized force, Protestant, Cath- 
 olic, Mohammedan consorting promiscuously together in alliance or at 
 war, according as temporary necessities might indicate. Besides these, 
 other artificial epochs might be assigned, each doubtless having advant- 
 ages to recommend it to our notice. But, after all, the chief peculiarity 
 is obvious enough. It is the gradual decline of a system that had been 
 in activity for many ages, and its gradual replacement by another. 
 
 As with the Age of Eeason in Greece, so with the Age of Eeason in 
 Europe, there is a prelude marked by the gradual emergence preiude to the 
 of a sound philosophy; a true logic displaces the supernatu- ^eeotne^eciu. 
 ral ; experiment supersedes speculation. It is very interesting to trace 
 the feeble beginnings of modern science in alchemy and natural magic 
 in countries where no one could understand the writings of Alhazen or 
 the Arabian philosophers. Out of many names that might be mention- 
 ed of those who took part in this movement, there are some that deserve 
 recollection. 
 
 Albertus Magnus was born A.D. 1193. It was said of him that " he 
 was great in magic, greater in philosophy, greatest in theol- Aibertus Magnu,, 
 ogy." By religious profession he was a Dominican. De- "^^ Dominican, 
 dining the temptations of ecclesiastical preferment, he voluntarily re- 
 signed his bishopric, that he might lead in privacy a purer life. As was 
 not uncommon in those days, he was accused of illicit commerce with 
 Satan, and many idle stories were told of the miracles he wrought. At 
 a great banquet on a winter's day, he produced all the beauties of spring 
 
438 ALBEETUS MAGNUS AND EOGER BACON. 
 
 — trees in full foliage, flowers in perfume, meadows covered witli grass ; 
 but, at a word, the phantom pageant was dissolved, and suQceeded by 
 appropriate wastes of snow. This was an exaggeration of an entertain- 
 ment he gave, January 6th, 1259, in the hot-house of the convent gar- 
 den. He interested himself in the functions of plants, was well acquaint- 
 ed with what is called the sleep of flowers, studied their opening and 
 closing. He understood that the sap is diminished in vedume by evap- 
 oration from the leaves. He was the first to use the word " af&nity'' 
 in its modern acceptation. His chemical studies present us with some 
 interesting details. He knew that the whitening of copper by arsenic is 
 not a transmutation, but only the production of an alloy, since the arsenic 
 can be expelled by heat. He speaks of potash as an alkali ; describes 
 several acetates ; and alludes to the blackening of the skin with nitrate 
 
 ■ of silver. 
 
 Contemporary with him was Eoger Bacon, born A.D. 1214. His na- 
 Eoger Bacon, tivo couutry has never yet done him justice, though his con- 
 diaooveries of. temporaries truly spoke of him as " the Admirable Doctor." 
 
 - The great friar of the thirteenth century has been eclipsed by an unwor- 
 thy namesake. His claims on posterity are enforced by his sufferings 
 and ten years' imprisonment for the cause of truth. 
 
 His history, so far as is known, may be briefly told. He was born 
 at Hchester, in Somersetshire, and studied at the University of Oxford. 
 From thence he went to the University of Paris, where he took the de- 
 gree of doctor of theology. He was familiar with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, 
 and Arabic. Of mathematics he truly says that " it is the first of all the 
 sciences ; indeed, it precedes all others, and disposes us to them." In ad- 
 vance of his age, he denied the authority of Aristotle, and tells us that 
 we must substitute that of experiment for it. Of his astronomical ac- 
 quirements we need no better proof than his recommendation to Pope 
 Clement IV. to rectify the Calendar in the manner actually done subse- 
 quently. If to him be rightly attributed the invention of spectaicles, the 
 human race is his debtor. He described the true theory of telescopes 
 and microscopes, saying that lenses may be ground and arranged in such 
 a way as to render it possible to read at incredible distances the smallest 
 letters, and to count grains of sand and dust, because of the magnitude 
 of the angle under which we may perceive such objects. He foresaw 
 the greatest of all inventions in practical astronomy — the application of 
 optical means to instruments for the measurement of angles. He pro- 
 posed the propulsion of ships through the water and of carriages upon 
 roads with great velocity, without any animal power, by merely mechan- 
 ical means, and speculated upon the possibility of making a flying ma- 
 chine. Admitting the truth of alchemy, he advised the experimenter to 
 find out the method by which Nature makes metals and then to imitate 
 it. He knew that there are different kinds of air, and tells us that there 
 
THE PEESEOUTIOK OF FBIAK BACON. 439 
 
 is one which will extinguish a flame. These are very clear views for an 
 age which, mistook the gases for leather-eared ghosts. He warned ns to 
 be cautious how we conclude that we have accomplished the transmuta- 
 tion of metals, quaintly observing that the distance between whitened 
 copper and pure silver is very great. He showed that air is necessary 
 for the support of fire, and was the author of the well-known experiment 
 illustrating that point by putting a lighted lamp under a bell-jar and 
 observing the extinction which takes place. 
 
 There is no little significance in the expression of Friar Bacon that 
 the ignorant mind can not sustain the truth. He was ac- j, persecuted and 
 cused of magical practices and of a commerce with Satan, ™p"''""=''- 
 though, during the life of Clement lY., who was his friend, he escaped 
 without public penalties. This pope had written to him a request that 
 he would furnish him an account of his various inventions. In com- • 
 pliance therewith, Bacon sent him the " Opus Majus" and other works, 
 together with several mathematical instruments which he had made, 
 as Newton did, with his own hands. But, under the pontificate of Nico- 
 las in., the accusation of magic, astrology, and selling himself to the 
 Devil was again pressed, one point being that he had proposed to con- 
 struct astronomical tables for the purpose of predicting future events. 
 Apprehending the worst, he tried to defend himself by his composition 
 "De Nullitate Magise." "Because these things are beyond your com- 
 prehension, you call them the works of the Devil ; your theologians and 
 canonists abhor them as the productions of magic, regarding them as 
 unworthy of a Christian." But it was in vain. His writings were con- 
 demned as containing dangerous and suspected novelties, and himself 
 committed to prison. There he remained for ten years, until, broken 
 in health, he was released from his punishment by the intercession of 
 some powerful and commiserating personages. He died at the age of 
 seventy-eight years. On his death-bed he^ uttered the melancholy com- 
 plaint, " I repent now that I have given myself so much trouble for the 
 love of science." If there be found in his works sentiments that are 
 more agreeable to the age in which he lived than to ours, let us recol- 
 lect what he says in his third letter to Pope Clement : " It is on account 
 of the ignorance of those with whom I have had to deal that I have 
 not been able to accomplish more." 
 
 A number of less conspicuous though not unknown names succeed 
 to Bacon. There is Eaymond Lully, who was said to Minor aichemista of 
 have been shut up in the Tower of London and com- andGCTmany™"' 
 pelled to make gold for Edward II. ; Guidon de Montanor, the inventor 
 of the philosopher's balm ; Clopinel, the author of the romance of the 
 Rose ; Eichard the Englishman, who makes the sensible remark that he 
 who does not join theory to practice is like an ass eating hay and not 
 refliecting on what he is doing ; Master Ortholan, who describes very 
 
440 MIKOE ALCHEMISTS. 
 
 prettily the making of nitric acid, and approaches to the preparation of 
 absolute alcohol under the title of the quintessence of wine ; Bernard 
 de Treves, who obtained much reputation for the love-philters he pre- 
 pared for Charles Y. of France, their ef&cacy having been ascertained 
 by experiments made on servant-girls ; Bartholomew, the Englishman 
 who first described the method of crystallizing and purifying sugar; 
 Eck de Sulzbach, who teaches how metallic crystallizations, such as the 
 tree of Diana, a beautiful silvery vegetation, may be produced. He 
 proved experimentally that metals, when they oxidize, increase in weight; 
 and says that in the month of November, A.D. 1489, he found that six 
 pounds of an amalgam of silver heated for eight days augmented in 
 weight three pounds. His number is, of course, erroneous, but his ex- 
 planation is very surprising. "This augmentation of weight comes 
 from this, that a spirit is united with the metal ; ' and what proves it is 
 that this artificial cinnabar, submitted to distillation, disengages that 
 spirit." He was within a hair's-breadth of anticipating Priestley and 
 Lavoisier by three hundred years. 
 
 The alchemists of the fifteenth century not only occupied themselves 
 Augureiii, the po- '^^^^ experiment ; some of them, as Augurelh, aspired to 
 eticai alchemist, poetry. Hc uudertook to describe in Latin verses the art 
 of making gold. His book, entitled " Chrysopoeia," was dedicated to Leo 
 X., a fact which shows the existence of a greater public liberality of 
 sentiment at the commencement of the sixteenth century than hereto- 
 fore. It is said that, the author expected the holy father to make him 
 a handsome recompense, but the good-natured pope merely sent him a 
 large empty sack, saying that he who knew how to make gold so admi-, 
 rably only needed a purse to put it in. 
 
 The celebrated work of Basil Valentine, entitled " Currus triumpha- 
 Easii Valentine in- lis Antimouii," uitroduced the metal antimony into the 
 troduoea antimony, practice of mcdicine. The attention of this author was 
 first directed to the therapeutical relations of the metal by observing 
 that some swine, to which a portion of it had been given, grew fat with 
 surprising rapidity. There were certain monks in his vicinity who, 
 during the season of Lent, had reduced themselves to the last degree of 
 attenuation by fasting and other corporeal mortifications. On these 
 Basil was induced to try the powers of the metal. To his surprise, in- 
 stead of recovering their flesh and fatness, they were all killed ; hence 
 the name popularly given to the metal, antimoine, because it does not 
 agree with the constitution of a monk. Up to this time it had passed 
 under the name of stibium. With a result not very different was the 
 application of antimony in the composition of printer's type-metal. 
 Administered internally or thus mechanically used, this metal proved 
 equally noxious to ecclesiastics. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to continue the relation of these scientific 
 
THE TRADE OF THE MEDITEEEANEAW. 441 
 
 trifles. Enougli has been said to illustrate the quickly-spreading taste 
 for experimental inquiry. I now hasten to the description The new epoch. 
 of more important things. 
 
 In the limited space of this book I must treat these subjects, not as 
 they should be dealt with philosophically, but in the manner Dmcuu^^of 
 that circumstances permit. Even with this imperfection, their scientifically, 
 description spontaneously assumes an almost dramatic form,' the facts 
 oflfering themselves to all reflecting men with an air of surpassing dig- 
 nity. On one hand it is connected with topics the most sublime, on the 
 other it descends to incidents the most familiar and useful ; on one hand 
 it elevates our minds to the relations of suns and myriads of worlds, on 
 the other it falls to the every-day acts of our domestic and individual 
 life ; on one hand it turns our thoughts to a vista of ages so infinite 
 that the vanishing point is in eternity, on the other it magnifies into 
 importance the transitory occupation of a passing hour. Knowing 
 how great are the requirements for the right treatment of such topics, 
 I might shrink from this portion of my book with a conviction of inca- 
 pacity. I enter upon it with hesitation, trusting rather to the consider- 
 ate indulgence of the reader than to any worthiness in the execution of 
 the work. 
 
 In the history of the philosophical life of Greece, we have seen (Chap- 
 ter II.) how important were the influences of maritime discovery and 
 the rise of criticism. Conjointly they closed the Greek Age of Faith. 
 In the life of Europe, at the point we have now reached, they came into 
 action again. As on this occasion the circumstances connected with 
 them are numerous and important, I shall consider them separately in 
 this and the following chapter. And, first, of maritime enter- Approach of the 
 prise, which was the harbinger of the Age of Eeason in Eu- AseofEeaaon. 
 rope. It gave rise to three great voyages — the discovery of America, 
 the doubling of the Cape, and the circumnavigation of the earth. 
 
 At the time of which we are speaking, the commerce of the Mediter- 
 ranean was chiefly in two directions. The ports of the state of Mediter. 
 Black Sea furnished suitable depots for produce brought ^'f^"" "■'">«• " 
 down the Tanai's and other rivers, and for a large portion of the India 
 trade that had come across the Caspian. The seat of this commerce was 
 Genoa. 
 
 The other direction was the southeast. The shortest course to India 
 was along the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, but the Eed and Arabian 
 seas offered a cheaper and safer route. In the ports of Syria and Egypt 
 were therefore found the larger part pf the commodities of India. This 
 trade centred in Venice. A vast development had been given to it 
 through the Crusades, the Venetians probably finding in the transport 
 service of the Holy Wars as great a source of profit as in the India trade. 
 
442 COLUMBUS. 
 
 Toward the latter part of the fourteenth century it became apparent 
 Rivalry of Genoa that the Commercial rivalry between Venice and Genoa 
 and Venice. -vyould terminate to the disadvantage of the latter. The ir- 
 ruption of the Tartars and invasion of the Turks had completely dislo- 
 cated her Asiatic lines of trade. In the wars between the two republics 
 Genoa had suffered severely. Partly for this reason, and partly through 
 the advantageous treaties that'tVenice had made ..with the sultans, giving 
 her the privilege of consulates at Alexandria and Damascus, this repub- 
 lic had at last attained a supremacy over all competitors. The Genoese 
 establishments on the Black Sea had become worthless. 
 
 With ruin before them, and unwilling to yield their Eastern connec- 
 tions, the merchants of Genoa had tried to retrieve their affairs by war; 
 her practical sailors saw that she might be re-established in another way. 
 Attempt to reach There wcrc among them some who were well acquainted 
 India by the west, ^j^j^ ^^^ globular form of the earth, and with what had 
 been done by the Mohammedan astronomers for determining its circum- 
 ference by the measurement of a degree on the shore of the Bed Sea. 
 These men originated the attempt to reach India by sailing to the west. 
 
 By two parties, the merchants and the clergy, their suggestions were 
 Opposition to received with little favor. The former gave no encourage- 
 thia Bcheme. j^cnt, perhaps becausc such schemes were unsuited to their 
 existing arrangements ; the latter disliked them because of their sus- 
 pected irreligious nature. The globular form had been condemned by 
 such fathers as Lactantius and Augustine. In the Patristic Geography 
 the earth is a flat surface bordered by the waters of the sea, on the yield- 
 ing support of which rests the crystalline dome of the sky. These doc- 
 trines were for the most part supported by passages from the Holy 
 Scriptures, perversely wrested from their proper meaning. Thus Cos- 
 mas Indicopleustes, whose Patristic Geography had been an authority 
 for nearly eight hundred years, unanswerably disposed of the sphericity 
 of the earth by demanding of its advocates how, in the day of judgment, 
 men on the other side of a globe could see the Lord descending through 
 the air! 
 
 Among the Genoese sailors seeking the welfare of their city was one 
 destined for immortality — Christopher Columbus. 
 
 His father was a wool-comber, yet not a man of the common sort, for 
 coinmbns ^^ procurcd for his son a knowledge of arithmetic, drawing, 
 early life of. painting ; and Columbus is said to have written a singularly 
 beautiful hand. For a short time he was at the University of Pavia, 
 but he went to sea at fourteen. After being engaged in the Syrian 
 trade for many years, he had made several voyages to Guinea, occupy- 
 ing his time when not at sea in the construction of charts for sale, there- 
 by supporting not only himself, but also his aged father, and finding 
 means for the education of his brothprs. Under these circumstances he 
 
HIS GEOGEAPHICAL IDEAS. 443 
 
 had obtained a competent knowledge of geography, and, though the 
 state of public opinion at the time did not permit such doctrines to be 
 openly avowed, he believed that the sea is every where navigable, that 
 the earth is round and not flat, that there are antipodes, that the torrid 
 zone is habitable, and that there is a proportionable distribution of land 
 m the northern and southern hemispheres. Adopting the Patristic logic 
 when it suited his purpose, he reasoned that since the earth Hi^ argument for 
 is made for man, it is not likely that its surface is too large- ^"^ '° '''^ ^^*- 
 ly covered with water, and that, if there are lands, they must be inhab- 
 ited, since the command was renewed at the flood that man should re- 
 plenish the earth. He asked, "Is it likely that the sun shines upon 
 nothing, and that the nightly watches of the stars are' wasted on track- 
 less seas and desert lands ?" But to this reasoning he added facts that 
 were more substantial. One Martin Vincent, who had sailed many 
 miles to the west of the Azores, related to him that he had found, float- 
 ing on the sea, a piece of timber carved evidently without iron. An- 
 other sailor, Pedro Correa, his brother-in-law, had met with enormous 
 canes. On the coast of Flores the sea had cast up two dead men with 
 large faces, of a strange aspect. Columbus appears to have formed his 
 theory that the East Indies could be reached by sailing to the west 
 about A.D. 1474. He was at that time in correspondency with Tosca- 
 nelli, the Florentine astronomer, who held the same doctrine, and who 
 sent him a map or chart constructed on the travels of Marco Polo. He 
 offered his services first to his native city, then to Portugal, then to 
 Spain, and, through' his brother, to England ; his chief inducement in 
 each instance being that the riches of India might be thus secured. In 
 Lisbon he had married. While he lay sick near Belem an unknown 
 voice whispered to him in a dream, " God will cause thy name to be 
 wonderfully resounded through the earth, and will give thee the keys 
 of the gates of the ocean, which are closed with strong chains." The 
 death of his wife appears to have broken the last link which held him 
 to Portugal, where he had been since 1470. One evening, in the au- 
 tumn of 1485, a man of majestic presence, pale, care-worn, and, though 
 in the meridian of life, with silver hair, leading a little boy by the hand, 
 asked alms at the gate of the Franciscan convent near Palos — not ftjj- 
 himself, but only a little bread and water for his child. This was that 
 Columbus destined to give to Europe a new world. 
 
 In extreme poverty, he was making his way to the Spanish court. 
 Afi,er many wearisome delays his suit was referred to a coun- is confateaty 
 cil at Salamanca, before whom, however, his doctrines were saiamanca. 
 confuted from the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Prophecies, the Gospels, 
 the Epistles, and the writings of the fathers — St. Chrysostom, St." Au- 
 gustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. Basil, St. Ambrose. Moreover, they 
 were demonstrably inconsistent with reason ; since, if even he should 
 
444 VOYAGE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC. 
 
 depart from Spain, "the rotundity of tie earth -would present a kind 
 of mountain up which it was impossible for him to sail, even with the 
 fairest wind;" and so he could never get back. The Grand Cardinal 
 of Spain had also indicated their irreligious nature, and Columbus be- 
 gan to fear that, instead of receiving aid as a discoverer, he should fall 
 Queen leaw- into trouble as a heretic. HoweVer, after manv vears of 
 
 la adopts his • o ■ n •■it ■■, ■, 
 
 views. mortification and procrastination, he at length prevailed with 
 
 Queen Isabella; and on April 17, 1492, in the' field before Granada, 
 then just wrenched from the Mohammedans by the arms of Ferdinand 
 and Isabella, he received his commission. With a nobleness of pur- 
 pose, he desired no reward unless he should succeed ; but, in that case, 
 stipulated that he should have the title of Admiral and Viceroy, and 
 that his perquisite should be one tenth of all he should discover — con- 
 ditions which show what manner of man this great sailor was. He 
 had bound himself to contribute one eighth to the expenses of the ex- 
 pedition : this he accomplished through the Pinzons of Palos, an- old 
 The expedition ^^^ Wealthy Seafaring family. These arrangements once rat- 
 prepared. i^Q^^ hc lost not a moment in completing the preparations 
 for his expedition. The royal authority enabled him to take — forcibly, 
 if necessary — ^both ships and men. But even with that advantage he 
 would hardly have succeeded if the Pinzons had not joined heartily 
 with him, personally sharing in the dangers of the voyage. i 
 
 The sun, by journeying to the west, rises on India at last. On Fri- 
 The voyage across day, August 3, 1492, the wcary Struggles and heart-sick- 
 the Atlantic. j^ggg q£ eighteen years of supplication were over, and, as 
 the day was breaking, Columbus sailed with three little ships from Pa- 
 los, carrying with him charts constructed on the basis of that which 
 Toscanelli had formerly sent, and also a letter to the Grand Khan of 
 Tartary. On the 9th he saw the Canaries, being detained among them 
 three weeks by the provisioning and repairing of his ships. He left 
 them September 6th, escaping the pursuit of some caravels sent out by 
 the Portuguese government to intercept him. He now steered due 
 west. Nothing of interest occurred until nightfall on September 13th, 
 when he remarked with surprise that the needle, which the day before 
 luid pointed due north, was varying half a point to the west, the effect 
 becoming more and more marked as the expedition advanced. He was 
 now beyond the track of any former navigator, and with no sure guide 
 but the stars ; the heaven was every where, and every where the sea. 
 On Sunday, 16th, he encountered many floating weeds, and picked up 
 what was mistaken for a live grasshopper. For some days the weeds 
 increased in quantity, and retarded the sailing of the ships. On the 
 19th two pelicans flew on board. Thus far he had had an easterly 
 wind ; but on September 20th it changed to southwest, and many' little 
 birds, such as those that sing in orchards, were seen. His men now -be- 
 
DISCOYEEY OF AMEEICA. 445 
 
 came mutinous, and reproaclied the king and queen for trusting to " this 
 bold Italian, who wanted to make a great lord of himself at the price 
 of their lives." 
 
 On September 25th Pinzon reported to him that he thought he Saw- 
 land ; but it proved to be only clouds. With great difficulty he kept 
 down his mutinous crew. On October 2d he observed the sea-weeds 
 drifting from east to west. Pinzon having seen in the Pinta a flight of 
 parrots going to the southwest, the course was altered on October 7th, 
 and he steered after them west-southwest ; he had hitherto been on the 
 parallel 26° K On the evening of October 11th the signs of land had 
 become so unmistakable that, after vesper hymn to the Virgin, he made 
 an address of congratulation to his crew, and commended watchfulness 
 to them. His course was now due west. A little before mid- Discovery of 
 night, Columbus, on the forecastle of his ship, saw a moving ■^™™'=»- 
 light at a distance ; and two hours after a signal-gun was fired from the 
 Pinta. A sailor, Eodrigo de Triana, had descried land. The ships were 
 laid to. As soon as day dawned they made it out to be a verdant isl- 
 and. There were naked Indians upon the beach watching their move- 
 ments. At sunrise, October 12, 1492, the boats were manned and arm- 
 ed, and Columbus was the first European to set foot on the new trop- 
 ical world. 
 
 The chief events of the voyage of Columbus were, 1st. The discovery 
 of the line of no magnetic variation, which, as we shall see, Events of the 
 eventually led to the circumnavigation of the earth. 2d. The '"'^^ee- 
 navigability 6f the sea to the remote west, the weeds not offering any 
 insuperable obstruction. When the ships left Palos it was universally 
 believed that the final border or verge of the earth is where the western 
 sky rests upon the sea, and the air and clouds, fogs and water are com- 
 mingled. Indeed, that boundary could not actually be attained ; for, 
 long before it was pgssible to reach it, the sea was confused with inex- 
 tricable weeds, through which a ship could not pass. This legend was 
 perhaps derived from the stories of adventurous sailors, who had been 
 driven by stress of weather toward the Sargasso Sea, and seen an island 
 of weeds many hundreds of square miles in extent — green meadows 
 floating in the ocean. 3d. As to the new continent, Columbus never 
 knew the nature of his own discovery. He died in the behef that it 
 was actually some part of Asia, and Americus Vespucius entertained the 
 same misconception. Their immediate successors supposed that Mex- 
 ico was the Quinsay, in China, of Marco Polo. For this reason I do not 
 think that the severe remark that the "name of America is a monu- 
 ment of human injustice" is altogether merited. Had the true state of 
 things been known, doubtless the event would have been different. 
 The name of America first occurs in an edition of Ptolemy's Geogra- 
 phy, on a map by Hylacomylus. 
 
446 CONSEQUENCES OF THE VOYAGE. 
 
 Two other incidents gf no little interest followed this successM voy- 
 EndofPatratic age: the first was the destruction of Patristic Geography ; 
 Geography. ^j^g ggcond was the consequence of the flight of Pinzon's par- 
 rots. Though, as we now know, the conclusion that India' had been 
 reached was not warranted by the facts, it was on all sides admitted 
 that the old doctrine was overthrown, and that the admiral had reached 
 Asia by sailing to the west. This necessarily implied the globular 
 form of the earth. As to the second, never was an augury more mo- 
 mentous than that flight of parrots. It has been well said that this 
 event determined the distribution of Latin and German Christianity in 
 the New World. 
 
 The discovery of America by Leif, the son of Eric the Eed, A.D. 
 previoiiB scandi- 1000, Can not diminish .the claims of Columbus. The wan- 
 navian discovery, (jenng Scandinavians had reached the shores of America 
 first in the vicinity of Nantucket, and had given the name of Vinland 
 to the region extending from beyond Boston to the south of New York. 
 But the memory of these voyages seems totally to have passed away, or 
 the lands were confounded with Greenland, to which Nicolas Y. had 
 appointed a bishop A.D. 1448. Had these traditions been known to or 
 respected by Columbus, he would undoubtedly have steered his ships 
 more to the north. 
 
 Immediately on the return of Columbus, March 15, 1493, the King 
 The papal grant and Quccn of Spain dispatched an embassador to Pope Al- 
 to Spain. exander YI. for the purpose of insuring their rights to the 
 new territories, on the same principle that Martin' Y. had already given 
 to the King of Portugal possession of all lands he might discover be- 
 tween Cape Bojador and the East Indies, with plenary indulgence for 
 the souls of those who perished in the conquest. The pontifical action 
 was essentially based on the principle that pagans and infidels have no 
 lawful property in their lands and goods, but that the children of God 
 may rightfully take them away. The bull that was issued bears date 
 May, 1493. Its principle is, that all countries under the sun are sub- 
 ject of right to papal disposal. It gives to Spain, in the fullness of 
 apostolic power, all lands west and south of a line drawn from the Arc- 
 tic to the Antarctic pole, one hundred leagues west of the Azores. The 
 donation includes, by the authority of Almighty God, whatever there 
 is toward India, but saves the existing rights of any Christian princes. 
 It forbids, under pain of excommunication, any one trading in that di- 
 rection, threatening the indignation of Almighty God and his holy apos- 
 tles Peter. and Paul. It directs the barbarous nations to be subdued, 
 and no pains to be spared for reducing the Indians to Christianity. 
 
 This suggestion of the line of no magnetic variation was due to Co- 
 The magnetic lumbus, who fell iuto the error of supposing it to be immova- 
 
 11116 of no va- i. 1. a 
 
 riation. blc. The infallibility of the pontiff not extending to matters 
 
AWFUL RESULTS OF PATRISTIC ETHNOLOGY. 447 
 
 of science, he committed the same mistake. In a few years it was dis- 
 covered that the line of no variation was slowly moving to the east. It 
 coincided with the meridian of London in 1662. 
 
 The obstacles that Patristic Geography had thrown in the way of 
 maritime adventure were thus finally removed, but Patristic Ethnology 
 led to a fearful tragedy. With a critical innocence that seems patristic eth- 
 to have overlooked physical impossibilities and social difficul- '''<^«i"«''- 
 ties, it had been the practice to refer the peopling of nations to legend- 
 ary heroes or to the patriarchs of Scripture. The French were descend- 
 ed from Francus, the son of Hector ; the Britons from Brutus, the son 
 of JEneas ; the genealogy of the Saxon kings could be given up to 
 Adam ; but it may excite our mirthful surprise that the conscientious 
 Spanish chronicles could rise no higher than to Tubal, the grandson of 
 Noah. The divisions of the Old World, Asia, Africa, and Europe, were 
 assigned to the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth ; and the 
 parentage of those continents was given to those patriarchs respective- 
 ly. In this manner all mankind were brought into a family relation- 
 ship, all equally the descendants of Adam, equally participators in his 
 sin and fall. As long as it was supposed that the lands of Columbus 
 were a part of Asia there was no difficulty ; but when the true position 
 and relations of the American continent were discovered, that it was 
 separated from Asia by an impassable waste of waters of many thou- 
 sand miles, how did the matter stand with the new-comers DenM that the 
 thus suddenly obtruded on the scene? The voice of the Indians are men. 
 fathers was altogether against the possibility of their Adamic descent. 
 St. Augustine had denied the globular form and the existence of An- 
 tipodes ; for it was impossible that there should be people on what was 
 thus vainly asserted to be the other side of the earth, since none such 
 are mentioned in the Scriptures. The lust of gold was only too ready 
 to find its justification in the obvious conclusion ; and the Spaniards, 
 with an appalling atrocity, proceeded to act toward these unfortunates 
 as though they did not belong to the human race. Already their lands 
 and goods had been taken from them by apostolic authority. Their 
 persons were nest seized, under the text that the heathen are given as 
 an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. 
 It was one unspeakable outrage, one unutterable ruin, with- ^i^^ American 
 out discrirhination of age or sex. They who died not uadex ^'^seiy- 
 the lash in a tropical sun died in the darkness of the mine. From se- 
 questered sand-banks, where the red flamingo fishes in the gray of the 
 morning ; from fever-stricken mangrove thickets, and the gloom of im- 
 penetrable forests ; from hiding-places in the clefts of rocks, and the sol- 
 itude of invisible caves ; from the eternal snows of the Andes, where 
 there was no witness but the all-seeing sun, there went up to God a cry 
 of human despair. By millions upon millions, whole races and na- 
 
448 VASCO DE GAMA. 
 
 tions were remorselessly cut off. The Bishop of Chiapa affirms that 
 more than fifteen millions were exterminated in his time ! From Mex- 
 ico and Peru a civilization that might have instructed Europe was 
 The crime crushed out. Isit for nothing that Spain has been made a hid- 
 of Spam. gQ^g skeleton among living nations, a warning spectacle to the 
 world ? Had not her punishment overtaken her, men would have sure- 
 ly said, "There is no retribution, there is no God!" It' has been her 
 evil destiny to ruin two civilizations. Oriental and Occidental, and to be 
 ruined thereby herself. With circumstances of dreadful barbarity she 
 expelled the Moors, who had become children of her soil by as long a 
 residence as the Normans have had in England from "William the Con- 
 queror to our time. In America she destroyed races more civilized 
 than herself Expulsion and emigration have deprived her of her best 
 blood, her great cities have sunk into insignificance, and towns that once 
 had more than a million of inhabitants can now only show a few scan- 
 ty thousands. 
 
 The discovery of America agitated Europe to its deepest foundations. 
 All classes of men were affected. The populace went wild at once with 
 a lust of gold and a love of adventure. Well might Pomponius'Laetus, 
 under process for his philosophical opinions in Eome, shed tears of joy 
 when tidings of the great event reached him ; well might Leo X., a few 
 years later, sit up till far in the night reading to his sister and his cardi- 
 nals the " Oceanica" of Anghiera. 
 
 If Columbus failed in his attempt to reach India by sailing to the 
 vaaeo de Gama. wcst, Yasco dc Gama succecdcd by sailing to the south. He 
 voyages. doublcd the Cape of Good Hope, and retraced the track of 
 
 the ships of Pharaoh Necho, which had accomplished the same under- 
 taking two thousand years previously. The Portuguese had been for 
 long engaged in an examination of the coast of Africa under the bull of 
 Martin Y., which recognized the possibility of reaching India by passing 
 round that continent. It is an amusing instance of making scientific 
 discoveries by contract, that King Alphonso made a bargain with Fer- 
 dinand Gomez, of Lisbon, for the exploration of the African coast, the 
 stipulation being that he should discover not less than three hundred 
 miles every year, and that the starting-point should be Sierra Leone. 
 
 We have seen that a belief in the immobility of the line of no mag- 
 rapai confines nctic Variation had led Pope Alexander YI. to establish a 
 pSgai.™* perpetual boundary between the Spanish and Portuguese pos- 
 sessions and fields of adventure. That line he considered to be the nat- 
 ural boundary between the eastern and western hemispheres. An ac- 
 curate determination of longitude was therefore a national as well as a 
 nautical question. Columbus had relied on astronomical methods ; Gil- 
 bert at a subsequent period proposed to determine it by magnetical ob- 
 
DOUBLING OF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 449 
 
 servations. The variation itself could not be accounted for on the doc- 
 trine vulgarly received, that magnetism is an efSuvium issuing forth 
 from the root of the tail of the Little Bear, but was scientifically, though 
 erroneously, explained by Gilbert's hypothesis that earthy substance is 
 attractive— that a needle approaching a continent will incline toward it; 
 and hence that in the midst of the Atlaptic, being equally disturbed by 
 Europe and America, it will point evenly between both. 
 
 Pedro de Covilho had sent word to King John II., from Cairo, by two 
 Jews, Eabbi Abraham and Eabbi Joseph, that there was a ^^^^f^^^^ 
 south cape of Africa which could be doubled. They brought aouwea. 
 with them an Arabic map of the African coast. This was about the 
 time that Bartholomew Diaz had reached the Cape in two little pinnaces 
 of fifty tons apiece. He sailed August, 1486, and returned December, 
 1487, with an account of his discovery. Covilho had learned from the 
 Arabian mariners, who were perfectly familiar with the east coast, that 
 they had frequently been at the south of Africa, and that there was no 
 difficulty in passing round the continent that way. 
 
 A voyage to the south is even more full of portents than one to the 
 west. The accustomed heavens seem to sink away, and new De oama's anc- 
 stars are nightly approached. Yasco de Gama set sail July <=e8«M™yage. 
 9, 1497, with three ships and 160 men, having with him the Arab map. 
 King John had employed his Jewish physicians, Eoderigo and Joseph, 
 to devise what help they could from the stars. They applied the astro- 
 labe to marine use, and constructed tables. These were the same doc- 
 tors who had told him that Columbus would certainly succeed in reach- 
 ing India, and advised him to send out a secret expedition in anticipa- 
 tion, which was actually done, though it failed through want of resolu- 
 tion in its captain. Encountering the usual difficulties, tempestuous 
 weather and a mutinous crew, who conspired to put him to death, De 
 Gama succeeded, November 20, in doubling the Cape. On March 1 he 
 met seven small Arab vessels, and was surprised to find that they used 
 the compass, quadrants, sea-charts, and " had divers maritime mysteries 
 not short of the Portugals." With joy he soon after recovered sight of 
 the northern stars, for so long unseen. He now bore away to the north- 
 east, and on May 19, 1498, reached Calicut, on the Malabar He reaches india. 
 coast. 
 
 The consequences of this voyage were to the last degree important. 
 The comtoercial arrangements of Europe were completely dis- a commercial 
 located ; Venice was deprived of her mercantile supremacy ; result, 
 the hatred of Genoa was gratified ; prosperity left the Italian towns ; 
 Egypt, hitherto supposed to possess a pre-eminent advantage as offering 
 the best avenue to India, suddenly lost her position ; the commercial 
 monopolies so long in the hands of the European Jews were broken 
 down. The discovery of America and passage of the Cape were the 
 
 Ff 
 
4:50 FEEDINAND MAGELLAN. 
 
 first steps of that prodigious maritime development soon exhibited by 
 Western Europe. And since commercial prosperity is forthwith fol- 
 lowed by the production of men and concentration of wealth, and, more- 
 over, implies an energetic intellectual condition, it appeared before long 
 that the three centres of population, of wealth, of intellect, were shifting 
 westwardly. The front of Europe was suddenly changed ; the British 
 islands, hitherto in a sequestered and eccentric position, were all at once 
 put in the van of the new movement. 
 
 Commercial rivalry had thus passed from Venice and Genoa to Spain 
 and Portugal. The circumnavigation of the earth originated in a dis- 
 pute between these kingdoms respecting^ the Molucca Islands, from 
 Ferdinand fiagei- which nutmegs, clovcs, and mace were obtained. Ferdi- 
 
 lajiAinters the Turniin-i • n 
 
 Spanish service, naud Magellan had been m the service of the King of Por- 
 tugal ; but an application he had made for an increase of half a ducat 
 a month in his stipend having been refused, he passed into the service 
 of the King of Spdn along with one Buy Falero, a friend of his, who, 
 among the vulgar, bore the reputation of a conjurer or- magician, but 
 who really possessed considerable astronomical attainments, devoting 
 himself to the discovery of improved means for finding the place of a 
 ship at sea. Magellan persuaded the Spanish government that the 
 Spice Islands could be reached by sailing to the west, the Portuguese 
 having previously reached them by sailing to the east, and, if this were 
 accomplished, Spain would have as good a title to them, under the bull 
 His great voyage of Alexander VI., as Portugal. Five ships, carrying 237 
 commenced. jj^g^^ weie accordingly equipped, and on August 10, 1519, 
 Magellan sailed from Seville. The Trinitie was the admiral's ship, but 
 the San Vittoria was destined for immortality. He struck boldly for 
 the southwest, not crossing the trough of the Atlantic as Columbus had 
 done, but passing down the length of it, his aim being to find some cleft 
 or passage in the American continent through which he might sail into 
 the Great South Sea. For seventy days he was becalmed under the line. 
 He then lost sight of the north star, but courageously. held on toward 
 the " pole antartike." He nearly foundered in a storm, " which did not 
 abate till the three fires called St. Helen, St. Nicholas, and St. Clare ap- 
 peared playing in the rigging of the ships." In a new land, to which 
 he gave the name of Patagoni, he found giants "of good corporature" 
 clad in skins; one of them, a very pleasant and tractable giant, was ter- 
 rified at his own visage in a looking-glass. Among the sailors, alarmed 
 at the distance they had come, mutiny broke out, requiring the most 
 unflinching resolution in the commander for its suppression. In spite 
 of his watchfulness, one ship deserted him and stole back to Spam. 
 He penetrates His persevcrancc and resolution were at last rewarded by the 
 Mnttamfc'°°" discovery of the strait named by him San Vittoria inaffec- 
 
VOYAGE ACBOSS THE PACIFIC. 451 
 
 tionate honor of his ship, but which, with a worthy sentiment, other 
 sailors soon changed to " the Strait of Magellan." On November 28, 
 1520, after a year and a quarter of struggling, he issued forth Beaches the Pa- 
 from its western portals and entered the Great South Sea, ° °°^°- 
 shedding tears of joy, as Pigafetti, an eye-witness, relates, when he rec- 
 ognized its infinite expanse— tears of stern joy that it had pleased God 
 to bring him at length where he might grapple with its unknown dan- 
 gers. Admiring its illimitable but placid surface, and exulting in the 
 meditation of its secret perils soon to be tried, he courteously imposed 
 on it the name it is forever to bear, "the Pacific Ocean." While baf- 
 fling for an entry into it, he observed with surprise that in the month 
 of October the nights are only four hours long, and "considered, in this 
 his navigation, that the pole antartike hath no notable star like the pole 
 artike, but that there be two clouds of little stars somewhat dark in the 
 middest, also a cross of fine clear stars, but that here the needle becomes 
 so sluggish that it needs must be moved with a bit of loadstone before 
 it will rightly point." 
 
 And now the great -sailor, having burst through the barrier of the 
 American continent, steered for the northwest, attempting to xhe Padfio 
 regain the equator. For three months and twenty days he <>'^'"='">^^^^ 
 sailed on the Pacific, and never saw inhabited land. He was compelled 
 by famine to strip off the pieces of skin and leather wherewith his rig- 
 ring was here and there bound, to soak them in the sea and then soften 
 them with warm water, so as to make a wretched food ; to eat the sweep- 
 ings of the ship and other loathsome matter ; to drink water gone pu- 
 trid by keeping ; and yet he resolutely held on his course, though his 
 men were dying daily. As is quaintly observed, their gums grew over 
 their teeth, and so they could not eat. He estimated that he sailed 
 over this unfathomable sea not less than 12,000 miles. 
 
 In the whole history of human undertakings there is nothing that ex- 
 ceeds, if indeed there is any thing that equals, this voyage of Magel- 
 lan. That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison. It is a dis- 
 play of superhuman courage, superhuman perseverance — a display of 
 resolution not to be diverted from its purpose by any motive or any 
 suffering, but inflexibly persisting to its end. Well might his despair- 
 ing sailors come to the conclusion that they had entered on a trackless 
 waste of waters, endless before them and hopeless in a return. "But, 
 though the Church hath evermore from Holy Writ af&rmed that the 
 earth should be a wide-spread plain bordered by the waters, yet he com- 
 forted himself when he considered that in the eclipses of the moon the 
 shadow cast of the earth is round ; and as is the shadow, such, in like 
 manner, is the substance." It was a stout heart — a heart of triple brass 
 - — which could thus, against such authority, extract unyielding faith 
 from a shadow. 
 
452 THE CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE EARTH. 
 
 This unparalleled resolution met its reward at last. Magellan reach- 
 ed a group of islands north of the equator — the Ladrones. In a few 
 Succeeds in davs more he became aware that his labors had been success- 
 
 hia attempt '' 
 
 and dies, ful ; he met with adventurers from Sumatra. But, though he 
 had thus grandly accomplished his object, it was not given to him to 
 complete the circumnavigation of the globe. At an island called Zebu, 
 or Mutan, he was killed, either, as has been variously related, in a mu- 
 tiny of his men, or — as they declared- — in a conflict with the savages, or 
 insidiously by poison. " The general," they said, " was a very brave 
 man, and received his death-wound in his front ; nor would the savages 
 yield up his body for any ransom." Through treason and revenge it is 
 not unlikely that- he fell, for he was a stern man ; none but a very stern 
 man could have accomplished so daring a deed. Hardly was he gone 
 when his crew learned that they were actually in the vicinity of the 
 Moluccas, and that the object of their voyage was fulfilled. On the 
 morning of November 8, 1521, having been at sea two years and three 
 months, as the sun was rising they entered Tidore, the chief port of the 
 Spice Islands. The King of Tidore swore upon the Koran alliance to 
 the King of Spain, 
 
 I need not allude to the wonderful objects — destined soon to become 
 common to voyagers in the Indian Archipelago — that greeted their 
 eyes : elephants in trappings ; vases, and vessels of porcelain ; birds of 
 Paradise, " that fly not, but be blown by the wind ;" exhaustless stores 
 of the coveted spices, nutmegs, mace, cloves. And now they prepared 
 to bring the news of their success back to Spain. Magellan's lieutenant, 
 Sebastian de Elcano, directed his course for the Cape of Good Hope, 
 again encountering the most fearful hardships. Out of his slender crew 
 circumnavi- hc lost twcuty-one men. He doubled the Cape at last; and 
 Mrt™ " "on September 7, 1522, in the port of St. Lucar, near Seville, 
 under his orders, the good ship San Vittoria came safely to an anchor. 
 She had accomplished the greatest achievement in the history of the 
 human race. She had circumnavigated the earth. 
 
 Magellan thus lost his life in his enterprise, and yet he made an en- 
 viable exchange. Doubly immortal, and thrice happy ! for he impress- 
 ed his name indelibly on the earth and the sky, on the strait that con- 
 nects the two great oceans, and on those clouds of starry worlds seen in 
 the southern heavens. He also imposed a designation on the largest 
 Eieano, the lieu- portiou of the surfacc of the globe. His lieutenant, Sebas- 
 tenant of Magei- ^.^^ ^^ Elcauo, reccivcd such honors as kings can give. Of 
 all armorial bearings ever granted for the accomplishment of a great 
 and daring deed, his were the proudest and noblest — the globe of the 
 world belted with the inscription, " Primus circumdedisti me !" 
 
 If the circumnavigation of the earth by Magellan did not lead to such 
 splendid material results as the discovery of America and the doubhng 
 
OTfiEB VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 453 
 
 of the Cape, its moral effects were far more important. Co- Eesnita of the 
 lumbus had been opposed in obtammg means for his expedi- tion. 
 tion because it was suspected to be of an irreligious nature. , Unfor- 
 tunately, the Church, satisfying instincts impressed upon her as far 
 back as the time of Constantine, had asserted herself to be the final ar- 
 bitress in all philosophical questions, and especially in this of the figure 
 of the earth had committed herself against its being globular. Infalli- 
 bility can never correct itself— indeed, it can never be wrong. Rome 
 never retracts any thing ; and, no matter what the consequences, never 
 recedes. It was thus that a theological dogma — infallibility — came to 
 be mixed up with a geographical problem, and that problem liable at 
 any moment to receive a decisive solution. So long as it rested in a 
 speculative position, or could be hedged round with mystification, the 
 real state of the case might be concealed from all except the more intel- 
 ligent class of men ; but after the circumnavigation had actually been 
 accomplished, and was known to every one, there was, of course, noth- 
 ing more to be said. It had now become altogether useless to bring 
 forward the authority of Lactantius, of St. Augustine, or of other fa- 
 thers, that the globular form is impious and heretical. Henceforth the 
 fact was strong enough to overpower all authority, an exercise of which 
 could have no pther result than to injure itself. It remained only to 
 permit the dispute to pass into oblivion ; but even this could not occur 
 without those who were observant being impressed with the fact that 
 physical science was beginning to display a fearful advantage over Pa- 
 tristicism, and presenting unmistakable tokens that ere long she would 
 destroy her ancient antagonist. 
 
 In the midst of these immortal works it is hardly worth speaking of 
 minor things. Two centuries had wrought a mighty change in- the ge- 
 ographical ideas of Western Europe. The travels of Marco Minorvoyagcs 
 Polo, about A.D. 1295, had first given some glimmering of "•""^ tTuvAa. 
 the remote East, the interest in which was doubtless enhanced by the ir- 
 ruption of the Moguls. Sir John Mandeville had spent many years in 
 the interior of Asia before the middle of the next century. Conti had 
 traveled in Persia and India between 1419 and 1444. Cadamosto, a 
 Venetian, in 1455 had explored the west coast of Africa. Sebastian 
 Cabot had rediscovered Newfoundland, and, persisting in the attempt to 
 find a northwest passage to China, had forced his way into the ice to 
 67° 30' ]Sr. By 1525 the American coast-line had been determined from 
 Terra del Fuego to Labrador. New Guinea and part of Australia had 
 been discovered. The fleet of Cabral, attempting to double the Cape 
 of Good Hope in 1500, was driven to Brazil. A ship was sent back to 
 Portugal with the news. Hence, had not Columbus sailed when he did, 
 the discovery of America could not have been long postponed. Balboa 
 saw the Great South Sea September 25th, 1513. Wading up to his 
 
454 
 
 SOCIAL CONDITION OF MEXICO. 
 
 knees in the -water, with his sword in one hand and the Spanish flag in 
 the other, he claimed, that vast ocean for Caistile. Nothing could now 
 prevent the geography of the world from being completed. 
 
 I can not close these descriptions of maritime adventure without ob- 
 serving that they are given from the European point of view. The 
 Participation of Wcsteru nations have complacently supposed that what- 
 
 (^her nations In ■■- i f t i 
 
 tKeae events. evcr was unknown to them was therefore altogether un- 
 known. We have seen that the Arabs were practically and perfectly 
 familiar with the fact that Africa might be circumnavigated ; the East 
 Indian geography was thoroughly understood by the Buddhist priest- 
 hood, who had, on an extensive scale, carried forward their propagan- 
 dism for twenty-five hundred years in those regions. But doubtless 
 the most perfect geographical knowledge existed among the Jews, tho§e 
 cosmopolite traders who conducted mercantile transactions from the 
 Azdres to the interior of China, from the Baltic to the coast of Mozam- 
 bique. It was actually through them that the existence of the Cape of 
 Good Hope was first made known' in Europe. Five hundred years be- 
 fore Columbus, the Scandinavian adventurers had discovered America, 
 but so low was the state of intelligence in Europe that the very mem- 
 ory of these voyages had been altogether lost. The circumnavigation 
 of the earth is, however, strictly the achievement of the "West. I have 
 been led to make the remarks in this paragraph, since they apply again 
 on another occasion — the introduction of what is called the Baconian 
 philosophy, the principles of which were not only understood, but car- 
 ried into practice in the East eighteen hundred years before Bacon was 
 born. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary that I should offer any excuse for devoting a 
 few pages to a digression on the state of affairs in Mexico and Peru. 
 Few things illustrate more strikingly the doctrine which it is the object 
 of this book to teach. 
 
 The social condition of America at its discovery demonstrates that 
 Progress of man similar idcas and similar usages make their appearance 
 the6amelsta°the Spontaneously in the progress of civilization of different 
 ow; countries, showing iow little they depend on accident, how 
 
 closely they are connected with the orga-nization, and, therefore, with the 
 necessities of man. From important ideas and great institutions down 
 to the most trifling incidents of domestic life, so striking is the parallel 
 ' between the American aborigines and Europeans that with dif&culty do 
 we divest ourselves of the impression that there must have been some 
 intercomniunication. Each was, however, pursuing an isolated and 
 spontaneous progress ; and yet how closely does the picture of life in 
 Mexico- its po- tlie N®'"' World answer to that in the Old. The monarch 
 uticai system. q£ Mcxico lived in barbaric pomp, wore a golden crown re- 
 
MEXICAN LAWS, INSTITUTIONS, RELIGION. 455 
 
 splendent witli gems; was aided in His .'duties by a privy council; the 
 great lords held their lands of him by the obligation of militaryiservice. 
 In him resided the legislative power, yet he was subject to the laws of 
 the realm. The judges held their ofBce independently of him, and were • 
 not liable to removal by him.- The laws were reduced to writing, 
 which, though only a system of hieroglyphics, served its purpose so 
 well that the Spaniards were obliged to admit its validity in their 
 courts, and to found a professorship for perpetuating a knowledge of it. 
 Marriage was regarded as an important social engagement. Divorces 
 were granted with difliculty. Slavery was recognized in the case of 
 prisoners of war, debtors, and criminals, but no man could be born a 
 slave in Mexico. No distinction of castes was permitted. The govern- 
 ment mandates and public intelligence were transmitted by a well-or- 
 ganized postal service of couriers able to make two hundred miles a 
 day. The profession of arms was the recognized avocation of the no- 
 bility, the military establishments, whether in active service in the field, 
 or as garrisons in large towns, being supported by taxation on produce 
 or manufactures. The armies were divided into corps of 10,000, and 
 these again into regiments of 400. Standards and banners were used ; 
 the troops executed their evolutions to military music, and were pro- 
 vided with hospitals, army surgeons, and a medical staff. In the hu- 
 man hives of Europe, Asia, and America, the bees were marshaled in 
 the same way, and were instinctively building their combs alike. 
 
 The religious state is a reflection of that of Europe and Asia. Their 
 worship was an imposing ceremonial. The common peo- itsreiipon,pricst- 
 ple had a mythology of many gods, but the higher classes niea.' *" 
 were strictly Unitarian, acknowledging one almighty, invisible Creator. 
 Of the popular deities, the god of war was the chief. He was born of a 
 virgin, and conceived by immaculate conception of a ball of bright-col- 
 ored feathers floating on the air. The priests administered a rite of 
 baptism to infants for the purpose of washing away their sins, and 
 taught that there are rewards and punishments in a life to come — a par- 
 adise for the good, a hell of darkness for the wicked. The hierarchy 
 descended by due degrees from the chief priests, who were almost equal 
 to the sovereign in authority, down to the humble ecclesiastical servi- 
 tors. Marriage was permitted to the clergy. . They had monastic insti- 
 tutions, the inmates 'praying thrice a day and once at night. They prac- 
 ticed ablutions, vigils, penance by flagellation or pricking with aloe 
 thorns. They compelled the people to auricular confession, required of 
 them penance, gave absolution. Their ecclesiastical system had reached 
 a strength which was never attained in Europe, since absolution by the 
 priest for civil offenses was an acquittal in the eye of the law. It was 
 the received doctrine that men do not sin of their own free will, but be- 
 cause they are impelled thereto by planetary influences. With sedu- 
 
456 
 
 lous zeal, the clergy engrossed the duty of public education, thereby 
 Its literary keeping society in their grasp. Their writing was on cotton 
 condition. qIq^]^ qj. g]jiug^ qj. on papyrus made of the aloe. At the con- 
 quest immense collections of this kind of literature were in existence, 
 but the first Archbishop of Mexico burnt, as was affirmed, a mountain 
 of such manuscripts in the market-place, stigmatizing them as magic 
 scrolls. About the same time, and under similar circumstances. Cardi- 
 nal Ximenes burnt a vast number of Arabic manuscripts in Granada. 
 
 The condition of astronomy in Mexico is illustrated as it is in Egypt 
 Divisions of time: bv the Calendar. The year was of eighteen months, each 
 
 the week, month, ■, „ -, n n i ■ -, ■, 
 
 year. month of twenty days, five complementary ones bemg add- 
 
 ed to make up the three hundred and sixty-five. The month had four 
 weeks, the wdek five days ; the last day, instead of being for religious 
 purposes, was market-day. To provide for the six additional hours of 
 the year, they intercalated twelve and a half days every fifty-two years. 
 At the conquest the Mexican calendar was in a better condition than 
 the Spanish. As in some other countries, the clergy had for ecclesias- 
 tical purposes a lunar division of time. The day had sixteen hours, 
 commencing at sunrise. They had sun-dials for determining the hour, 
 and also instruments for the solstices and equinoxes. They had ascer- 
 tained the globular form of the earth and the obliquity of the ecliptic. 
 The close of the fifty -second year was celebrated with grand religious 
 ceremonials ; all the fires were suffered to go out, and new ones kindled 
 Privateiife, by the frictiou of sticks. Their agriculture was superior to 
 arts, trade, that of Europc ; there was nothing in the Old "World to com- 
 pare with the menageries and botanical gardens of Huaxtepec, Chapul- 
 tepec, Istapalapan, and Tezcuco. They practiced with no inconsidera- 
 ble skill the more delicate mechanical arts, such as those of the jeweler 
 and enameler. From the aloe they obtained pins and needles, thread, 
 cord, paper, food, and an intoxicating drink. They made earthen-ware, 
 knew how to lacquer wood, employed cochineal as a scarlet dye. They 
 were skillful weavers of fine cloth, and excelled in the production of 
 feather-work, their gorgeous humming-birds furnishing material for that 
 purpose. In metallurgy they were behind the Old "World, not having 
 the use of iron ; but, as the Old "World had formerly done, they em- 
 ployed bronze in its stead. They knew how to -move immense mass- 
 es of rock ; their great calendar stone, of porphyry, weighed more than 
 fifty tons, and was brought a distance of many miles. Their trade was 
 carried on, not in shops, but by markets or fairs held on the fifth day. 
 They employed a currency of gold dust, pieces of tin, and bags of cacao. 
 In their domestic economy, though polygamy was permitted, it was in 
 practice confined to the wealthy. The women did not work abroad, 
 but occupied themselves in spinning, embroidering, feather- work, music. 
 Ablution was resorted to both before and after meals ; perfumes were 
 
SOCIAL CONDITION OF PERU. 457 
 
 used at the toilet. The Mexicans gave to Europe tobacco, snufp, the 
 turkey, chocolate, cochineal. Like us, they had in their en- Luxury of the 
 tertainments solid dishes, with suitable condiments, gravies, i^gi^er classes, 
 sauces, and desserts of pastries, confections, fruits, both fresh and pre- 
 served. They had chafing-dishes of silver or gold. Like us, they knew 
 the use of intoxicating drinks ; like us, they not unfrequently took them 
 to excess; like us, they heightened their festivities with dancing and 
 music. They had theatrical and pantomimic shows. At Tezcuco there 
 was a council of .music, which, moreover, exercised a censorship on phil- 
 osophical works, as those of astronomy and history. In that city North 
 American civilization reached its height. The king's palace was a won- 
 derful work of art. It was said that 200,000 men were employed in its 
 construction. Its harem was adorned with magnificent tapestries of 
 feather- work ; in its garden were fountains, cascades,"baths, statues, ala- 
 basters, cedar groves, forests, and a wilderness of flowers. In conspicu- 
 ous retirement in one part of the city was a temple, with a dome of pol- 
 ished black marble, studded with stars of gold, in imitation of the sky. 
 It was dedicated to the omnipotent, invisible God. In this no sacrifices 
 were offered, but only sweet-scented flowers and gums. The Their monoihe- 
 prevailing religious feeling is expressed by the sentiments of b'„p],£^i l^^°{. 
 one of the kings, many of whom had prided themselves in ™™'^ 
 their poetical skill : " Let us," he says, " aspire to that heaven where all 
 is eternal, and where corruption never comes." He taught his children 
 not to confide in idols, but pnly to conform to the outward worship of 
 them in deference to public opinion. 
 
 To the preceding description of the social condition of Mexico I shall 
 add a similar brief account of that of Peru, for the conclu- Pem-unknown 
 sions to be drawn from a comparison of the spontaneous '° Mexico, 
 process of civilization in these two countries with the process in Eu- 
 rope is of importance to the attainment of a just idea of the develop- 
 ment of mankind. The most competent authorities declare that the 
 Mexicans and Peruvians were ignorant of each other's existence. 
 
 In one particular especially is the position of Peru interesting. It 
 presents an analogy to Upper Egypt, that cradle of the civ- its geographical 
 ilization of the Old World, in this, that its sandy coast is a P'=™i«>ri«es. 
 rainless district. This sandy-coast region is about sixty miles in width, 
 hemmed in on the east by grand mountain ranges, which diminish in 
 size on approaching the Isthmus of Panama, the entire length of the Pe- 
 ruvian empire having been nearly 2400 miles, it reached from the north 
 of the equator to what is now known as Chili. In breadth it varied at 
 different points. The east wind, which has crossed the Atlantic, and is 
 therefore charged with humidity, being forced by the elevation of the 
 South American continent,- and especially by the range of the Andes 
 upward, is compelled to surrender most of its moisture, which finds its 
 
458 CIVILIZATION IN BAINLESS COUNTRIES. 
 
 way back to the Atlantic in those prodigious rivers that make the conn- 
 try east of the Andes the best watered region of the world ; but as soon 
 A rainless coun- ^s that wuid has crossed the mountain ridge and descends 
 to- like Egypt ^^ ^-j^^ wcstcm slopc, it bccomes a dry and rainless wind 
 and hence the district intervening to the Pacific has but few insignifi. 
 cant streams. The sides of this great mountain range might seem alto- 
 its system of gsthcr unadapted to the pursuit of agriculture, but the state 
 agriculture, of Peruviau civilizatiou is at once demonstrated when it is said 
 that these mountain slopes had become a garden, immense terraces havr 
 ing been constructed wherever required, and irrigation on a grander 
 scale than that of Egypt carried on by gigantic canals and aqueducts. 
 Advantage was taken of the different mean annual temperatures at dif- 
 ferent altitudes to pursue the cultivation of various products, for differ- 
 ence in height topographically answers to difference in latitude geo- 
 graphically, and thus, in a narrow space, the Peruvians had every va- 
 riety of temperature, from that corresponding to the hottest portions 
 of Southern Europe to that of Lapland. In the mountains of Peril, 
 as has been graphically said, man sees " all the stars of the heavens and 
 all the families of plants." On plateaus at a great elevation above the 
 sea there were villages and even cities. Thus the plain upon which 
 Quito stands, under the equator, is nearly ten thousand feet high. So 
 great was their industry that the Peruvians had gardens and orchards 
 above the clouds, and on ranges still higher flocks of lamas, in regions 
 bordering on the limit of perpetual snow. 
 
 Through the entire length of the empire two great military roads 
 Its great roads were built. One on the plateau, the other on the shore. The 
 ing, ' former, for nearly 2000 miles, crossed sierras covered with 
 
 snow, was thrown over ravines, or went through tunnels in the rocks ; 
 it scaled the more difficult precipices by means of stairways. Where 
 it was possible, it was carried over the mountain clefts by filling them 
 with masonry, or, where that could not be done, suspension bridges 
 were used, the cables being made of osiers or maguey fibres; Some of 
 these- cables are said to have been as thick as a man, and two hundred 
 feet long. Where such bridges could not be thrown across, and a stream 
 flowed in the bottom of the mountain valley, the passage was made by 
 ferry-boats or rafts. As to the road itself, it was about twenty: feet in 
 breadth, faced with flags covered with bitumen, and had mile-stones. 
 Our aidmiration at this splendid engineering is enhanced when we re- 
 member that it was accomplished without iron and gunpowder. The 
 shore road was built on an embankment, with a clay parapet on each 
 side, and shade-trees. Where circumstances called for it, piles were 
 and expresses ^^cd. Bvcry fivc milcs there was a post-house. The public 
 by couriers, couricrs, as in Mexico, could make, if necessary, two hundred 
 miles a day. Of these roads, Humboldt says that they were among the 
 
PERUVIAN CIVIL AND KELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 459 
 
 most useful and most stupendous ever executed by the hand of man. 
 The reade;? need scarcely be told that there were no such triumphs of 
 skill in Spain. From the circumstance that there were no swift animals 
 as the horse or dromedary, the width of these roads was sufficient, since 
 they were necessarily used for foot passage alone. 
 
 In Cuzco, the metropolis, was the imperial residence of the Inca and 
 the Temple of the Sun. It. contained edifices which ex- cuzco-the mii- 
 cited the amazement of the Spanish filibusters themselves i'»'7'=™t"^- 
 —streets, squares, bridges, fortresses surrounded by turreted walls, sub- 
 terranean galleries by which the garrison could reach important parts 
 of the town. Indeed, the great roads we have spoken of might be re- 
 garded as portions of an immense system of military works spread all 
 over the country, and having their centre at Cuzco. 
 
 The imperial dignity was hereditary, descending from father to son. 
 As in Egypt, the monarch not unfrequently had his sisters ^^^1™^-^*! 
 for wives. His diadem consisted of a scarlet tasseled fringe w^- 
 round his brow, adorned with two feathers. He wore ear-rings of great 
 weight. His dress of lama-wool was dyed scarlet, inwoven with gold 
 and studded with gems. Whoever approached him bore a, light bur- 
 den on the shoulder as a badge of servitude, and was barefoot. The 
 Inca was not oiily the representative of the temporal, but also of the 
 spiritual power. He was more than supreme pontiff, for he was a de- 
 scendant of the Sun, the god of the nation. He made laws, imposed 
 taxes, raised armies, appointed or removed judges at his pleasure. He 
 traveled in a sedan ornamented with gold and emeralds ; the roads were 
 swept before him, strewn with flowers, and perfumed. His Thenatiott- 
 palace at Yucay was described by the Spaniards as a fairy »' !"'•*'»• 
 scene. It was filled with works of Indian art ; images of animals and 
 plants decorated the niches of its walls ; it had an endless labyrinth of 
 gorgeous chambers, and heire and there shady crypts for quiet retire- 
 ment. Its baths were great golden bowls. It was imbosomed in arti- 
 ficial forests. The imperial ladies and concubines spent their time in 
 beautifully furnished chambers, or in gardens, with cascades and fount- 
 ains, grottoes and bowers. It was in what few countries can boast of, 
 a temperate region in the torrid zone. 
 
 The Peruvian religion ostensibly consisted of a worship of the Sun, 
 but the higher classes had already become emancipated from Eeugion of Pem, 
 such a material association, aiid recognized the existence of ana oeremomaL 
 one almighty, invisible God. They expected the resurrection of the 
 body and the continuance of the soul in a future life. It was their be- 
 lief that in the world to come our occupations will resemble those we 
 have followed here. Like the Egyptians, who had arrived at similar 
 ideas, the Peruvians practiced embalming, the mummies of their Incas 
 being placed in the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, the kings on the right. 
 
460 
 
 THE SOCIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 the queens on the left, clad in their robes of state, and with their hands 
 crossed on their bosoms, seated in golden chairs, waiting for the day 
 when the soul will return to reanimate the body. The mummies of 
 distinguished personages were buried in a sitting posture under tumuli 
 of earth. To the Supreme Being but one temple was dedicated. It was 
 in a sacred valley to which pilgrimages were made. In the Peruvian 
 mythology, heaven was above the sky^ell in the interior of the earth — 
 it was the realm of an evil spirit called Cupay. The general resem- 
 blance of these to Egyptian doctrines may forcibly impress upon us that 
 they are ideas with which the human, mind necessarily occupies itself in 
 its process of intellectual development. As in all other countries, the 
 educated classes were greatly in advance of the common people, who 
 were only just emerging from fetichism, and engrossed in the follies of 
 idolatry and man-worship. Nevertheless, the government found it ex- 
 pedient to countenance the vulgar delusion ; indeed, the political system 
 was actually founded upon it. But the Peruvians were in advance of 
 the Europeans in this respect, that they practiced no persecutions upon 
 those who had become mentally emancipated. Besides the sun, the vis- 
 ible god, other celestial bodies were worshiped in a subordinate way. 
 It was supposed that there were spirits in the wind, lightning, thunder ; 
 genii in the mountains, rivers, springs, and grottoes. In the great Tem- 
 ple of the Sun at Cuzco an image of that deity was placed so as to re- 
 ceive the rays of the luminary at his rising ; a like artifice had been 
 practiced in the Serapion at Alexandria. There was also a sanctuary 
 dedicated to the Sun in the island of Titicaca, and, it is said, between 
 three and four hundred temples of a subordinate kind in Cuzco." To the 
 great temple were attached not fewer than four thousand priests and fif- 
 teen hundred vestal virgins, the latter being intrusted with the care of 
 the sacred fire, and from them the most bsautiful were chosen to pass 
 into the Inca's seraglio. The popular faith had a ritual and a splendid 
 ceremonial, the great national festival being at the summer solstice. 
 The rays of the sun were then collected by a concave mirror, and fire 
 rekindled thereby, or by the friction of wood. 
 
 As to their social system, polygamy was permitted, but practically it 
 Social system— was coufiued to the higher classes. Social subordination 
 peopu. "''' ° was thoroughly understood. The Inca Tupac Yupanqui 
 says, " Knowledge was never intended for the people, but only for those 
 of generous blood." The nobility were of two orders, the polygamic de- 
 scendants of the Incas, who were the main support of the state, and the 
 adopted nobles of nations that had been conquered. As to the people, 
 nowhere else in the whole world was such an extraordinary policy of 
 supervision practiced. They were divided into groups of ten, fifty, one 
 hundred, five hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, and over the last an 
 Inca noble was placed. Through this system a rigid centralization was 
 
THE MILITARY SYSTEM. 461 
 
 insured, the Inca being the pivot upon whicli all the national affairs 
 turned. It was an absolutism worthy of the admiration of many exist- 
 ing European nations. The entire territory was divided into organizatioa 
 three parts; one belonged to the Sun, one to the Inca, one to °^^^'^- 
 the people. As a matter of form, the subdivision was annually made ; 
 in practice, however, as perhaps ^must always be the result of such agra- 
 rianism, the allotments were continually renewed. All the land was 
 cultivated by the people, and in the following order : first, that of the 
 Sun, then that of the destitute and infirm, then that of the people, and, 
 lastly, that of the Inca. The Sun and the Inca owned all the sheep, 
 which were sheared, and their wool distributed to the people, or cotton 
 furnished in its stead. The Inca's ofiicers saw that it was all woven, 
 and that no one was idle. An annual survey of the country, its farm- 
 ing and mineral products, was made, the inventory being transmitted to 
 the government. A register was kept of births and deaths ; periodical- 
 ly a general census was taken. The Inca, at once emperor and pope, 
 was enabled, in that double capacity, to exert a rigorous patriarchal rule 
 over his people, who were treated like mere children — not suffered to be 
 oppressed, but compelled to be occupied ; for, with a worldly wisdom 
 which no other nation presents, labor was here acknowledged not only 
 as a means, but also as an end. In Peru a man could not improve his 
 social state ; by these refinements of legislation he was brought into an 
 absolutely stationary condition. He could become neither richer nor 
 poorer ; but it was the boast of the system that every one lived exempt 
 from social suffering — that all enjoyed competence. 
 
 The army consisted of 200,000 men. Their weapons were bows, 
 lances, slings, battle-axes, swords; their means of defense, Mmtair system; 
 shields, bucklers, helmets, and coats of quilted cotton. Each ^^"^^^ reaourcek 
 regiment had its own banner, but the imperial standard, the national 
 emblem, was a rainbow, the offspring of the Sun. The swords and many 
 of the domestic implements were of bronze ; the arrows were tipped 
 with quartz or bone, or points of gold and silver. A strict discipline 
 was maintained on marching, granaries and depots being established at 
 suitable distances on the roads. With a policy inflexibly persisted in, 
 the gods of conquered countries were transported to Cuzco, and the 
 vanquished compelled to worship the Sun ; their children were obliged 
 to learn the Peruvian language, the government providing them teach- 
 ers for that purpose. As an incitement, this knowledge was absolutely 
 required as a condition for public office. To amalgamate the conquered 
 districts thoroughly, their inhabitants were taken away by ten thousand, 
 transported to distant parts of the empire, not, as in the Old "World, to 
 be worked to death as slaves, but to be made into Peruvians; an equal 
 number of natives were sent in their stead, to whom, as a recompense 
 for their removal, extraordinary privilages were given. It was the 
 
462 LITERATURE, AGRICULTURE, AND ENGINEERING. 
 
 immemorial policy of the empire to maintain a profound tranquillity in 
 the interior and perpetual war on the frontiers. 
 
 The philosophical advancement of the Peruvians was much retarded 
 tSi^b^^'id ^^ *^®^^ imperfect method of writing — a method greatly in- 
 puB. , ■ ferior to that of Egypt. A cord of colored threads, called 
 
 quipus, was only indifferently suited to the purposes of enumeration, 
 and by no means equal to hieroglyphics as a method of expressing gen- 
 eral facts. But it was their only system. Notwithstanding this draw- 
 back, they had a literature consisting of poetry, dramatic compositions, 
 and the like. Their scientific attainments were inferior to the Mexican. 
 Their year was divided into months, their months into weeks. They 
 had gnomons to indicate the solstices. One, in the form' of an obelisk, 
 in the center of a circle, on which was marked an east and west line, in- 
 dicated the equinox. These gnomons were destroyed by the Spaniards 
 in the belief that they were for idolatrous purposes, for on the national 
 festivals it was customary to decorate them with leaves and flowers. As 
 the national religion consisted in the worship of the Sun, it was not with- 
 out reason that Quito was regarded as a holy place, from its position 
 upon the equator. 
 
 In their extraordinary provisions for agriculture, the national pursuit. 
 Agriculture the skiU of the Peruvians is well seen. A rapid elevation from 
 perfection, the sea-lcvcl to the heights of the mountains gave them, in a 
 small compass, every variety of climate, and they availed themselves of 
 it. They terraced the mountain sides, filling the terraces with rich earth. 
 They excavated pits in the sand, surrounded them with adobe walls, 
 and filled them with manured soil. On the low level they cultivated 
 bananas and cassava ; on the terraces above, maize and quinoa ; still 
 higher, tobacco ; and above that, the potato. From a comparatively 
 limited surface, they raised great crops by judiciously using manures, 
 employing for that purpose fish, and especially .guano. Their example 
 has led to the use of the latter substance for a like purpose in our own 
 times in Europe. The whole civilized world has followed them in the 
 cultivation of the potato. The Peruvian bark is one of the most inval- 
 uable remedies. Large tracts of North America would be almost unin- 
 habitable without the use of its active alkaloid quinine, which actually, 
 in no insignificant manner, reduces the percentage mortality throughout 
 the United States. 
 
 Indispensably necessary to their agricultural system were their great 
 water-works. In Spain there was nothing worthy of being compared 
 The great aque- with them. The aqucduct of Condesuya was nearly 500 
 ductofconde- ^.^^^ ^^^^^ j^^ engineers had overcome difficulties in a 
 manner that might well strike modern times with admiration. Its wa- 
 ter was distributed as prescribed by law ; there were officers to see to 
 its proper use. From these great water-works and from their roads it 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF ALL CIVILIZATION BY LAW. 463 
 
 may be judged that the architectural skill of the Peruvians was far from 
 insignificant. They constructed edifices of porphyry, granite, brick ; 
 but their buildings were for the most part low, and suitable J.o an earth- 
 quake country. 
 
 I have dwelt' at some length on the domestic history of Mexico and 
 Peru because it is intimately connected with one of the' philosophical 
 principles which it is the obiect of this book to teach, viz., The stages of tn- 
 
 r c 111 • 1 ™*" development 
 
 that human progress takes place under an unvarymg law, always the same, 
 and therefore in a definite way. The trivial incidents mentioned in the 
 preceding paragraphs may perhaps have seemed insignificant or weari- 
 some, but it is their very commonness, their very familiarity, that gives 
 them, when rightly considered, a surprising interest. There is nothing 
 in these minute details but what we find to be perfectly natural from 
 • the European point of view. They might be, for that matter, instead of 
 reminiscences of the spontaneous evolution of a people shut out from 
 the rest of. the world by impassable oceans, a relation of the progress of 
 some European or Asiatic nation. The man of America proceeded for- 
 ward in his course of civilization as did the man of the Old World, de- 
 vising the same institutions, guided by the same intentions, constrained 
 by the same desires. From the great features of his social system down 
 to the little details of his domestic life, there is a sameness with what 
 was done in Asia, Africa, Europe. But similar results imply a similar 
 cause. "What, then, is there possessed in common by the Chinese, the 
 Hindoo, the Egyptian, the European, the* American? Surely not cli- 
 mate, nor equal necessities, nor equal opportunity. Simply nothing but 
 this — corporeal organization ! As automatons constructed in the same 
 way will do the same things, so, in organic forms, sameness of structure 
 will give rise to identity of function and similarity of acts. The same 
 common sense guides men all over the world. Common sense is a func- 
 tion of common organization. All natural history is full of illustrations. 
 It may be offensive to our pride, but it is none the less true, that in his 
 social progress, the free-will of which man so boasts himself in his indi- 
 vidual capacity disappears as an active influence, and the domination of 
 general and inflexible laws becomes manifest. The free-will of the in- 
 dividual is supplanted by instinct and automatism in the Analogy between 
 race. To each individual bee the career is open ; he may |X'S£™ 
 taste of this flower and avoid that ; he may be industrious '"'™^- 
 in the garden, or idle away his time in the air; but the history of one 
 hive is the history of another hive ; there will be a predestined organi- 
 zation—the queen, the drones, the workers. In the midst of a thousand 
 unforeseen, uncalculated, variable acts, a definite result, with unerring 
 certainty, emerges : the combs are built in a preordained way, and filled 
 with honey at last. From bees, and wasps, and ants, and birds— from 
 all that low animal life on which he looks with such supercilious con- 
 tempt, man is destined one day to learn what in truth he really is. 
 
464 HUMAN SACEIFICE IN EUEOPE AND AMERICA. 
 
 For a second reason, also, I have dwelt on these details. The enor- 
 s^^n toA "' Dious crime of Spain in destroying this civilization has never 
 i«>- yet been appreciated in Europe. After an attentive consid- 
 
 eration of the facts of the case, I agree in the conclusion of Carli that at 
 the time of the conquest the moral man in Peru was superior to the Eu- 
 ropean, and I will add, the intellectual man also. In Spain, or even in 
 all Europe, was there to be found a political system carried out into the 
 practical details of actual life, and expressed in great public works as its 
 outward visible and enduring sign, which could at all compare with that 
 of Peru ? Its only competitor was the Italian system, but that for long 
 had been actively used to repress the intellectual advancement of man. 
 The Spaniard In vain the Spaniards excuse their atrocities on the plea that 
 ican. a nation like the Mexican, which permitted cannibalism, 
 
 should not be regarded as having emerged from the barbarous state, and 
 that one which, like Peru, sacrificed human hecatombs at the funeral so- 
 lemnities of great men, must have been savage. Let it be remembered 
 that there is no civilized nation whose popular practices do not lag be- 
 hind its intelligence ; let it be remembered that in this respect Spain 
 herself also was guilty. In America, human sacrifice was part of a re- 
 ligious solemnity, unstained by passion. The auto da f^ of Europe was 
 a dreadful cruelty ; not an offering to heaven, but a gratification of spite, 
 hatred, fear, vengeance — the most malignant passions of earth. There 
 was no spectacle on the American continent at which a just man might 
 so deeply blush for his race as that presented in Western Europe when 
 the heretic from whom confession had been wrung by torture passed to • 
 his stake in a sleeveless garment, with flames of fire and effigies of an 
 abominable import depicted upon it. Let it be remembered that by the 
 European and Inquisition, from 1481 to 1808, 340,000 persons had been pun- 
 man sacrifices, ished, and of these nearly 32,000 burnt. Let what was done 
 in the south of France be remembered. Let it'be also remembered that, 
 considering the worthlessness of the'body of man, and that, at the best, 
 it is at last food for the worm — considering the infinite value of his im- 
 mortal soul, for the redemption of which the agony and death of the Son 
 of God were not too great a price to pay — indignities offered to the body 
 are less wicked than" indignities offered to the soul. It would be well 
 for him who comes forward as an accuser of Mexico and Peru in their 
 sin to dispose of the fact that at that period the entire authority of Eu- 
 rope was directed to the perversion, and even total repression of thought 
 — to an enslaving of the mind, and making that noblest creation of 
 Heaven a worthless machine. To taste of human flesh is less criminal 
 in the eye of God than to stifle human thought. 
 
 Lastly, there is another point to which I will with brevity allude. It 
 Antiquity of Amer- ^^^ ^^cu widely asserted that Mexican and Peruvian civ- 
 ican civilization, nization was altogether a recent affair, dating at most only 
 
THE AGE OP BEASON IN EUROPE. 465 
 
 two or three centuries before the conquest. It -would be just as well to 
 say that there was no civilization in India before the time of the Mace- 
 donian invasion because there exist no historic documents in that coun- 
 try anterior to that event. The Mexicans and Peruvians were not he- 
 roes of a romance to whom wonderfiil events were of common occur- 
 rence, whose lives were regulated by laws not applyipg to the rest of 
 the human race, who could produce results in a day for which elsewhere 
 a thousand years are required. They were men and women like our- 
 selves, slowly and painfully, and with many failures, working out their 
 civilization. The summary manner in which they have been disposed 
 of reminds us of the amusing way in which the popular chronology 
 deals with the hoary annals of Egypt and China. Putting aside the im- 
 perfect methods of recording events practiced by the autochthons of 
 the Western world, he who estimates rightly the slowness with which 
 man passes forward in his process of civilization, and collates therewith 
 the prodigious works of art left by those two nations — an enduring evi- 
 dence of the point to which they had attained — will find himself con- 
 strained to cast aside such idle assertions as altogether unworthy of con- 
 futation, or even of attention. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 APPROACH OP THE AGE OF EEASON IN EUEOPE. 
 
 IT IS PKECEDED BT THE EISE OF CKITIOISM. 
 
 Bettoration of Greek Literature and Philosophy in Italy. — Development of Modern Languages 
 
 and Rise of Criticism. — Imminent Danger to Latin Ideas. 
 Invention of Printing.— It revolutionizes the Communication of Knowledge, espedatty acts on 
 
 Public Worship, and renders the Pulpit secondary. 
 The 'RTS.vo^Ti.vnas.— Theory of Supererogation and Use of Indulgences.— The Right of Indi. 
 
 vidrnl Judgment asserted.— Political History of the Origin, Culmination, and Check of the 
 
 Reformation. — Its Effects in Italy. 
 Causes of the Arrest of the Reformation.— Internal Causes in Protestantism.- External in the 
 
 Policy of Rome.— The Counter-Reformation.— Inquisition.— Jesuits.— Secession of the great 
 
 Critics.— Culmination of the Reformation in America.— Emergence of Individual Liberty of 
 
 Thought. " ■' 
 
 In estimating the influences of literature on the approach of the Age 
 of Eeason in Europe, the chief incidents to be considered are The rise of 
 the disuse of Latin as a learned language, the formation of mod- ™"»^"° 
 em tongues from the vulgar dialects, the invention of printing, the de- 
 cline of the power of the pulpit, and its displacement by that of the 
 press. These, joined to the moral and intellectual influences at that 
 time predominating, led to the great movement known as the Eefor- 
 mation. 
 
 Gg 
 
466 EISE OF MODEKN LAJfGUAGES. 
 
 As if to mark out to the world the real cause of its intellectual deg- 
 Epoch of the radatioD, the regeneration of Italy commenced with the exile 
 Sove'ment! of the popcs to Avignon. During their absence, so rapid was 
 the progress that it had become altogether impossible to make any suc- 
 cessful resistance, or to restore the old condition of things on their re- 
 turn to Eome. The moment that the leaden cloud which they had kept 
 suspended over the country was withdrawn, the light from heaven shot 
 in, and the ready peninsula became instinct with life. 
 
 The unity of the Church, and, therefore, its power, required the use 
 Use of Latin of Latin as a sacred language. Through this Eome had stood 
 Tanguage. in au attitude strictly European, and was enabled to maintain 
 a general international relation. It gave her far more power than her 
 asserted celestial authority, and, much as she claims to have done, she 
 is open to condemnation that, with such a signal advantage in her hands, 
 never again to be enjoyed by any successor, she did not accomplish 
 much more. Had not the sovereign po;ntiffs been so completely occu- 
 pied with maintaining their temporalities in Italy, they might have made 
 the whole Continent advance like one man. Their officials could pass 
 without difficulty into evera-nation, and communicate without embar- 
 rassment with each other, from Ireland to Bohemia, from Italy to Scot- 
 land. The possession of a common tongue gave them the administra- 
 tion of international affairs, with intelligent allies speaking the same 
 language in all directions. 
 
 Not, therefore, without cause was the hatred manifested by Eome to 
 Causes of the the restoration of Greek and introduction of Hebrew, and the 
 
 dielike of Kome ^ .,^.-, ._- ^ ^ „ 
 
 to the Greek, alarm With which she perceived the modern languages form- 
 ing out of the aboriginal and vulgar dialects. The prevalence of Latin 
 • was the condition of her power, its deterioration the measure of her de- 
 cay, its disuse the signal of her limitation to a little principality in Italy. 
 In fact, the development of European languages was the instrument of 
 her overthrow. Besides their forming an effectual communication be- 
 tween the low, dissatisfied ecclesiastics and the illiterate populace, there 
 was not one of them that did not display in its earliest productions a 
 sovereign contempt for her. "Wo have seen how it was with the poetry 
 of Languedoc. 
 
 The rise of the many-tongued European literature was therefore co- 
 and danger incident with the decline of papal Christianitv. European lit- 
 
 from modem . ., , ii/-^it , -i i 
 
 languages, craturc was impossible under the Catholic rule. A grand, and 
 solemn, and imposing religious unity enforced the literary unity which 
 is implied in the use of a single language. No more can a living thought 
 be embodied in a dead language than activity be imparted to a corpse. 
 ta"e8°of a^sM^d '^^^^ principle of stability which Italy hoped to give to Eu- 
 tongue. rope essentially rested on the compulsory use of a dead 
 
 tongue. The first token of intellectual emancipation was the movement 
 
Missing Page 
 
OPPOSITION ,T0 THE RESTORATION OF LITERATURE. 469 
 
 Turks to seize Constantinople became more obvious, the emigration of 
 learned Greeks into Italy became more frequent. And yet, with the 
 exception of Petrarch, and he was scarcely an exception, not one of the 
 Italian scholars was an ecclesiastic. 
 
 Lorenzo de' Medici, the grandson of Cosmo, used every exertion to in- 
 crease the rising taste, generously permitting his manuscripts Lorenzo de- , 
 to be copied. Nor was it alone to literature that he extend- J^f '^rtoe'''' 
 ed his patronage. In his beautiful villa at Fiesole the phi- -^pMoBophy. 
 losophy of the old times was revived ; his botanic garden at Careggi 
 was filled with Oriental exotics. From, 1470 to 1492, the year of his 
 death, his happy influence continued. He lived to witness the ancient 
 Platonism overcoming the Platonism of Alexandria, and the pure doc- 
 trine of Aristotle expelHng the base Aristotelian doctrine of the schools. 
 
 The last half of the fifteenth century revealed to Western Europe two 
 worlds, a new one and an old ; the former by the voyage of Effects instantly 
 
 _ ' ,, ,,' n /-I • T produced by the 
 
 Columbus, the latter by the capture oi Constantmople ; one Greek language, 
 destined to revolutionize the industrial, the other the religious condi- 
 tion. Greek literature, forced into Italy by the Turkish arms, worked 
 wonders; for Latin Europe found with amazement that the ancient 
 half of Christendom knew nothing whatever of the doctrine or of the 
 saints of the "West. Wow was divulged the secret reason of that bitter 
 hatred displayed by the Catholic clergy to Grecian learning. It had 
 sometimes been supposed that the ill-concealed dislike they had so often 
 shown to the writings of Aristotle was because of the Arab dress in 
 which his Saracen commentators had presented him ; now it appeared 
 that there was something more important, more profound. It causes of the 
 was a terror of the Greek itself Very soon the direction to- uie™ Greet" 
 ward which things must inevitably tend became manifest ; the modem 
 languages, fast developing, were making Latin an obsolete tongue, and, 
 political events were giving it a rival— Greek — capable of asserting over 
 it a supremacy ; and not a solitary rival, for to Greek it was clear that 
 Hebrew would soon be added, bringing with .it the charms of a hoary 
 antiquity and the sinister learning of the Jew. With a quick, a jealous 
 suspicion, the ecclesiastic soon learned to detect a heretic from his knowl- 
 edge of Greek and Hebrew, just as is done in our day from a knowledge 
 of physical science. TJie authority of the Vulgate, that corner-stone of 
 the Italian system, was, in the expectation of Eome, inevitably certain to 
 be depreciated ; and, in truth, judging from the honors of which that 
 great translation was soon despoiled by the incoming of Greek and He- 
 brew, it was declared, not with more emphasis than truth, yet not, per- 
 haps, without irreverence, that there was a second crucifixion between 
 two thieves. Long after the times of which we are speaking, the Uni- 
 versity of Paris resisted the introduction of Greek into its course of 
 studies, not because of any dislike to letters, but because of its antici- 
 pated obnoxious bearing on Latin theology. 
 
470 CAUSES OF THE ACTION OF THE CHUECH. 
 
 We can scarcely look in any direction -without observing instances 
 Tendency of "The of the wonderful change taking place in the opinions of 
 Imitation of Christ." ^^^^ rp^ ^^^^ disposition to lean on a privileged media- 
 ting order, once the striking characteristic of all classes of the laity in Eu- 
 rope, there had succeeded a sentiment of self-reliance. Of this perhaps 
 no better proof can be furnished than the popularity of the work reputed 
 to have been written by Thomas a Kempis, and entitled "The Imita- 
 tion of Christ." It is said to have had probably more readers than any 
 other book except the Bible. Its quick celebrity is a proof how pro- 
 foundly ecclesiastical influence had been affected, for its essential inten- 
 tion was to enable the pious to cultivate their devotional feeling with- 
 out the intervention of the clergy. Such a work, if written in the pres- 
 ent day, would have found an apt and popular title in " Every Man his 
 own Priest." There is no reason for supposing that the condition to 
 which men had at that time been brought, as the general result of Ital- 
 ian Christianity, was one of intense selfishness, as has been asserted ; the 
 celebrity of this book was rather dependent on a profound distrust every 
 where felt in the clergy, both as regards morals and intellect. And why 
 should we be surprised that such should be the case with the laity, when 
 in all directions the clergy themselves were giving proof that they could 
 not trust their own strength? They could not conceal their dread at 
 the incoming of the Greek ; they could not speak without horror of the 
 influence of the Hebrew ; they were loud in their protestations against 
 the study of pagan philosophy, and held up to the derision and con- 
 demnation of the world science denounced by them as profane. They 
 Danger to the forcsaw that that fictitious unitv of which thev had boasted 
 
 unity of the - . - , ■^ , , , •' . , 
 
 Church. was drawmg to an end ; that men would become acquainted 
 with the existence and history of churches more ancient, and, therefore, 
 more venerable than the Eoman, and, like it, asserting an authenticity 
 upon unimpeachable proofs. But once let sects with such an impressive 
 prestige be introduced to the knowledge of the West, once let the ap- 
 pearance of inviolate unity be taken from the Latin Church, and noth- 
 ing could prevent a spontaneous decomposition forthwith occurring in 
 it. It must break up into sects, which, in their turn, must break up, in 
 process of time, into smaller and smaller divisions, and, through this 
 means, the European must emerge at last into individual liberty of 
 thought. The compelling hand of ecclesiastical tyranny must be re- 
 moved, and universal toleration ensue. Nor were such anticipations 
 mere idle suspicions, for such was the course that events actually took. 
 Scarcely had the Eeformation occurred when sectarian subdivisions 
 made their appearance, and in modern times we see that an anarchy of 
 sects is the inevitable harbinger of individual liberty of thought. 
 
 As we have just said, it was impossible to look in any direction on 
 the latter half of the fifteenth century without recognizing the wonder- 
 
INVENTION OF PRINTING. 471 
 
 ful change. It had become obviously useless any longer to mghor require- 
 
 o " ^ . menta in evi- 
 
 assert an immobility of humanity when men were standing dence. 
 face' to face with the new forms into which it had been transposed. 
 New ideas had driven out old ones. Natural phenomena could not 
 again be likened to human acts, nor the necessities of man regarded as 
 determining the movements of the universe. A better appreciation of 
 the nature of evidence was arising, perhaps in part through the influ- 
 ence of the lawyers, but in part through a commencing taste for criti- 
 cism. We see it in such facts as the denial that a miracle can be taken 
 as the proof of any thing else than the special circumstances with which 
 it is connected ; we see it in the assertion that the martyrdom of men 
 in support of a dogma, so far from proving its truth, proves rather its 
 doubtfulness, no geometer having ever thought it worth his while to die 
 in order to establish any mathematical proposition, truth needing no 
 such sacrifices, which are actually unserviceable and useless to it, since 
 it is able spontaneously to force its own way. In Italy, where msteiief set^ 
 
 , , . . ,.•',.-.■'... tiDg in in It- 
 
 tne popular pecuniary interests were obviously identical with aiy. 
 those of the -Church, a dismal disbelief was silently engendering. 
 
 And now occurred an event the results of which it is impossible to 
 exaggerate. 
 
 About A.D. 1440 the art of printing seems to have been invented in 
 Europe. It is not material to our purpose to inquire into the inTention of 
 particulars of its history, whether we should attribute it to eaSy'i&tory. 
 Coster of Haarlaem or Gutemberg of Mentz, or whether, in reality, it 
 was introduced by the Yenetians from China, where it had been prac- 
 ticed for nearly two thousand years. In Venice a decree was issued in 
 1441 in relation to printing, which would seem to imply that it had been 
 known there for some years. Coster is supposed to have printed the 
 " Speculum Humanas Salvationis" about 1440, and Gutemberg and Faust 
 the Mentz Bible without ^date, 1455. The art reached perfection 'at 
 once ; their Bible is still admired for its beautiful typography. Among 
 the earliest specimens of printing extant is an exhortation to take up 
 arms against the Turks, 1454 ; there are also two letters of indulgence 
 of Nicolas V. of the same date. ' In the beginning each page was en- 
 graved on a block of wood, but soon movable types were introduced. 
 Impressions of the former kind pass under the name of block books ; at 
 first they were sold as manuscripts. Two of Faust's workmen com- 
 menced printing in Italy, but not tmtil 1465 ; they there published an 
 edition of " Lactantius," one of "Cicero de Ofaciis," and one of "Au- 
 gustine de Civitate Dei." The art was carried to France 1469, and in a 
 few years was generally practiced in all the large European towns. The 
 printers were their own booksellers; the number of copies in Eariyboota 
 each edition usually about three hundred. Folios were sue- e^**""^""' 
 ceeded by quartos, and in- 1501 duodecimos were introduced. Very 
 
472 PBOaEESS OF PEINTIKG in EUROPE. 
 
 soon the price of books was reduced by four fifths, and existing inter- 
 ests required regulations not only respecting the cost, but also respect- 
 ing the contents. Thus the University of Paris established a tariff for 
 their sale, and also exercised a supervision in behalf of the Church and 
 the State. From the outset it was clear that printing would inevitably 
 influence the intellectual movement synchronously occurring. 
 
 Some authors have endeavored to estimate the intellectual condition 
 Measure of the o^ different countrics in Europe at the close of the fifteenth 
 SenStat^f"^ ccntury by the literary activity they displayed in the prep- 
 naHone. aratiou and printing of editions of books. Though it is 
 
 plain that such estimates can hardly be rigorously correct, since to print 
 a book not only implies literary capacity, but also the connections of 
 business and trade, and hence works are more likely to be issued in 
 places where there is a mercantile activity, yet such estimates are per- 
 haps the most exact that we can now obtain ; they also lead us to some 
 very interesting and unexpected results of singular value in their con- 
 nection with that important epoch. Thus it appears that in all Europe, 
 between 1470 and 1500, more than ten thousand editions of books and 
 pamphlets were printed, and of them a majority in Italy, demonstrating 
 that Italy was in the van of the intellectual movement. Out of this 
 large number, in Venice there had been printed 2835 ; Milan, 625 ; Bo- 
 logna, 298 ; Eome, 925 ; fifty other Italian cities had presses ; Paris, 
 751 ; Cologne, 530 ; Nuremberg, 382 ; Leipsic, 351 ; Bale, 320 ; Stras- 
 burg, 526; Augsburg, 256 ; Louvain, 116; Mentz, 134; Deventer, 169 ; 
 London, 130 ; Oxford, 7 ; St. Alban's, 4. 
 
 Venice, therefore, took the lead. England was in a very backward 
 Italy compared state. TMs conclusiou is Confirmed by manv other circum- 
 
 with the rest of ,.-,..-- "^ 
 
 Europe. stances, which justify the statement that Italy was as far ad- 
 
 vanced intellectually in 1400 as England in 1500. Paris exhibits a 
 superiority sixfold over London, and in the next ten years the dispro- 
 portion becomes even more remarkable, for in Paris four hundred and 
 thirty editions were printed, in London only twenty-six. , The light of 
 learning became enfeebled by distance from its Italian focus. As late 
 as 1550, a complete century after the establishment of the art, but seven 
 works had been printed in Scotland, and among them not a single classic. 
 It is an amusing proof how local tastes were consulted in the character 
 of the books thus put forth, that the first work issued in Spain, 1474, 
 was on the " Conception of the Virgin." 
 
 The invention of printing operated in two modes altogether distinct: 
 
 Effect of printing first, in the multiplying and cheapenins: of books, and, see- 
 on literature and -'. 1 .-. .• J- n T ., .° . ' ' 
 the Church. oud, lu Substituting reading tor pulpit instruction. 
 
 First, as to the multiplication and cheapening of books, there is no 
 
 Cheapening Tcason to supposc that the supply had ever been inadequate. 
 
 of hooks. _^g^ under the Ptolemies, book jpanufacture was carried forward 
 
CONSEQUENCES OP FEINTING. 473 
 
 in the Museum at Alexandria to an extent which fully satisfied de- 
 mands, so in all the great abbeys there was an apartment^the Scripto- 
 rium—for the copying and making of books. Such a sedentary occupa- 
 tion could not but be agreeable to persons of a contemplative or quiet 
 habit of life. But Greece, Eome, Egypt— indeed, all the ancient govern- 
 ments except that of China, were founded upon elements among which 
 did not appear that all-important one of modern times, a reading class. 
 Information passed from mouth to mouth, not from eye to eye. With 
 a limited demand, the compensation to the copier was sufficient, and the 
 cost to the purchaser moderate. It is altogether a mistake to suppose 
 that the methods and advantages of printing were unknown. Modifica- 
 tions of that art were used wherever occasion called for them. We do 
 not need the Eoman stamps to satisfy us of that fact ; every Babylonian 
 brick and sigaet ring is an illustration. Printing processes of various 
 kinds were well enough known. The real difficultv was the The want of pa- 
 
 ml 1 n T • T-i 1 l'^^' Damascus 
 
 want of paper. That substance was first made in liurope by paper, 
 the Spanish Moors, from the fine flax of Valentia and Mercia. Cotton 
 paper, sold as charta Damascena, had been previously made at Damas- 
 cus, and several different varieties had long been manufactured in China. 
 
 Had there been more readers, paper would have been more abundant- 
 ly produced, and there would have been more copiers — nay, even there 
 would have been printers. An increased demand would have been an- 
 swered by an increased supply. As soon as such a demand arose in 
 Europe the press was introduced, as it had been thousands of years be- 
 fore in China. 
 
 So far as the public is concerned, printing has been an unmixed ad- 
 vantage ; not so, however, in its bearing on authors. The Ion- Longevity of 
 
 .. «ii. .1. . -, 111 1 . books curtail- 
 
 gevity 01 books is greatly impaired, a melancholy conclusion ed. 
 to an ambitious intellect. The duration of many ancient books which 
 have escaped the chances of time is to be hoped for no more. In this 
 shortening of their term the excessive multiplication of works greatly 
 assists. A rapid succession soon makes those of distinction obsolete, 
 and then consigns them to oblivion. No author can now expect im- 
 mortality. His utmost hope is only this, that his book may live a little 
 longer than himself 
 
 But it was with printing as with other affairs of the market — an in- 
 creased demand gave origin to an increased supply, which, in MnitipUcation 
 its turn reacting, increased the demand. Cheap books bred 0'^°°^ 
 readers. When the monks, abandoning their useless and lazy life of 
 saying their prayers a dozen times a day, turned to the copying and il- 
 lustrating of manuscripts, a mental elevation of the whole order was the 
 result ; there were more monks who could read. And so, on the great- 
 er scale, as books through the press became more abundant, there were 
 more to whom they became a necessity. 
 
474 EFFECT UPON THE CHUECH. 
 
 But, secondly, as to tlie change whicli ensued in the mode of commu- 
 The mode of nicating information — a change felt instantly in the ecclesias- 
 ttn"^ kn"^-' tical, and, at a later period, in the political world. The whole 
 edge changes, gygtem of public worship was founded on the condition of a 
 non-reading people ; hence the reading of prayers and the sermon. Who- 
 ever will attentively compare the thirteenth with the nineteenth century 
 can not fail to see how essential oral instruction was to the former, how 
 Injury to pui- Subordinate to the latter. The invention of the printing-press 
 pitinatniction. gg^^g g^^ instant, 3, formidable rival to the pulpit. It made 
 possible that which had been impossible before in Christian Burope-- 
 direct communication between the government and the people without 
 any religious intermedium, and was the first step in that important 
 change subsequently carried out in America, the separation of Church 
 and State. Though in this particular the effect was desirable, in an- 
 other its advantages are doubtful, for the Church adhered to her ancient 
 method when it had lost very much of its real force, and this even at 
 the risk of falling into a lifeless and impassive condition. * 
 
 And yet we must not undervalue the power once exercised on a non- 
 Influence of reading community by oral and scenic teachings. What could 
 i?e"ra°^th6 hetter instruct it than a formal congregating of neighborhoods 
 people. together each Sabbath-day to listen in silence and without 
 questioning? In those great churches, the architectural grandeur of 
 which is still the admiration of our material age, nothing was wanting 
 to impress the worshiper. The vast pile, with its turrets or spire point- 
 ing to heaven ; its steep inclining roof; its walls, with niches and statues; 
 its echoing belfry ; its windows of exquisite hues and of every form, lan- 
 cet, or wheel, or rose, through which stole in the many-colored light; 
 its chapels, with .their pictured walls ; its rows of slender, clustering col- 
 umns, and arches tier upon tier ; its many tapering pendants ; the priest 
 emerging from his scenic retreat ; his chalice and forbidden wine ; the 
 covering paten, the cibory, and the pix. Amid clouds of incense from 
 smoking censers, the blaze of lamps, and tapers, and branching candle- 
 sticks; the tinkling of silver bells, the play of jeweled vessels and gor- 
 geous dresses of violet, green, and gold, banners and crosses were borne 
 aloft through lines of kneeling worshipers in processional services along 
 the aisles. The chanting of litanies and psalms gave a foretaste of the 
 '- melodies of heaven, and the voices of the choristers and sounds of the. 
 organ now thundered forth glory to God in the highest, now whispered 
 to the broken in spirit peace. 
 
 If such were the influences in the cathedral, not less were those that 
 Influence of vn- gathered round the little village church. To the peasant it 
 lage churches. ^^^ endeared by the most touching incidents of his life. 
 At its font his parents had given him his name ; at its altar he had 
 plighted his matrimonial vows ; beneath the little grass mounds in its 
 
THE PULPIT AND THE PEESS. 475 
 
 yard there awaited the resurrection those who had been untimely taken 
 away. Connected thus with the profoundest and holiest sentiments of 
 humanity, the pulpit was for instruction a sole and sufficient means. 
 .Nothing like it had existed in paganism. The irregular, ill-timed, oc- 
 casional eloquence of the Greek republican orators can not for an in- 
 stant be set in comparison with such a steady and enduring systematic 
 institutioij. In a temporal as well as in a spiritual sense, the public au- 
 thorities appreciated its power. Queen Elizabeth was not the only sov- 
 ereign who knew how to thunder through a thousand pulpits. 
 
 For a length of time, as might have been expected, considering its 
 power and favoring adventitious circumstances, the pulpit Thepuipityieua 
 maintained itself successfully against the press. Neverthe- *° *" ''"''°- 
 less, its eventual subordination was none the less sure. If there are dis- 
 advantages in the method of acquiring knowledge by reading, there are 
 also signal advantages ; for, though upon the printed page the silent 
 letters are mute and unsustained by any scenic help, yet often — a won- 
 derful contradiction — they pour forth emphatic eloquence, that can make 
 the heart leap with emotion, or kindle on the cheek the blush of shame. 
 The might of persuasiveness does not always lie in articulate speech. 
 The strong are often the silent. God never speaks. 
 
 There is another condition which gives to reading a great advantage 
 over listening. In the affairs of life, how wide is the differ- Listening 
 ence between having a thing done for us and doing it ourselves ! *"'* reading. 
 In the latter case, how great is the interest awakened, how much more 
 thorough the examination, how' much more perfect the acquaintance. 
 To listen implies merely a passive frame of mind ; to read, an active. 
 But the latter is more noble. 
 
 From these and other such considerations, it might have been fore- 
 seen that the printing-press would at last deprive the pulpit Decline of pui- 
 of its supremacy, making it become ineffective, or reducing it ^" ^^fli^'^e. 
 to an ancillary aid. It must have been clear that the time would ar- 
 rive when, though adorned by the eloquence of great and good men, 
 the sermon would lose its power for moving popular masses or direct- 
 ing public thought. 
 
 Upon temporal as weU as ecclesiastical authority, the influence of 
 this great change was also felt. During the Turkish war of Newspapers; 
 1563 newspapers first made their appearance in Venice. They *'^^" ""s*"-' 
 were in manuscript. The " Gazette de France" commenced in 1631. 
 There seems to be doubt as to the authenticity of the early English pa- 
 pers reputed to have been published during the excitement of the Span- 
 ish Armada, and of which copies remain in the British Museum. It 
 was not untn the civil wars that, under the names of Mercuries, Intelli- 
 gences, etc., newspapers fairly established themselves in England. 
 
 What I have said respecting the influence of the press upon relig- 
 
476 APPEOACH OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 Decline of power ious life applies Substantially to civil life also. Oratory has 
 Soquen™™'*'^ sunk into a secondary position, being every day more arid 
 more thoroughly supplanted by j ournalism. No matter how excellent it 
 may be in its sphere of action, it is essentially limited, and altogethea? in- 
 competent to the influeacing of masses of men in the manner which our 
 modern social system requires. Without a newspaper, what would be 
 the worth of the most eloquent parliamentary attempts ? It is that 
 which really makes them instruments of power, and gives to them po- 
 litical force, which takes them out of a little circle of cultivated auditors, 
 and throws them broadcast over nations. 
 
 Such was the literary condition of Western Europe, such the new 
 Dawn of the powcr that had been found in the press. These were but ini- • 
 Eefonnation. ^iatory .to the great drama now commencing. We have al- 
 ready seen that synchronously with this intellectual there was a moral 
 impulse coming into play. The two were in harmony. At the time 
 now occupying our attention there was a possibility for the moral im- 
 pulse to act under several different forms. The special mode in which 
 it came into effect was determined by the pecuniary necessities of Italy. 
 It very soon, however, assumed larger proportions, and became what is 
 known to us as the Eeformation. The movement against Eome that 
 had been abandoned for a century was now recommenced. 
 
 The variation of human thought proceeds in a continuous manner, 
 Variation of hu- ii^w idcas Springing out of old ones either as corrections or 
 man thought, dcvelopmcuts, but never spontaneously originating. With 
 them as with organic forms, each requires a germ, a seed. The intel- 
 lectual phase of humanity observed at any moment is therefore an em- 
 bodiment of many different things. It is connected with the past, is in 
 unison with the present, and contains the embryo of'the future. 
 
 Human opinions must hence, of absolute necessity, undergo transform- 
 ation. What has been received by one generation as undoubted, to a 
 subsequent one becomes so conspicuously fallacious as to excite the won- 
 der of those who do not distinctly appreciate the law of psychical ad- 
 vance that it could ever have been received as true. These phases of 
 transformation are not only related in a chronological way, so as to be 
 obvious when we examine the ideas of society at epochs of a few years 
 or of centuries apart — they exist also contemporaneously in different na- 
 tions or in different social grades of the same nation, according as the 
 class of persons considered has made a greater or less intellectual prog- 
 ress. 
 
 Notwithstanding the assertion of Eome, the essential ideas of the Ital- 
 Variations in i^u systcm had undergone unavoidable modifications. An il- 
 itaiian ideas, ijterate pcoplc, casily imposed upon, had accepted as true the 
 asseveration that there had been no change even from the apOstolio times." 
 But the time had now come when that fiction could no longer be main- 
 
CONTEMPOKAJTEOUS STATE OF EUROPE. 477 
 
 tained, the divergence no longer concealed. In the new state of things, 
 it was inipossible that dogmas in absolute opposition to reason, such as 
 that of transubstantiation, could any longer hold their ground. The 
 scholastic theology and scholastic philosophy, though supported by the 
 universities, had become obsolete. With the revival of pure Latinity 
 and the introduction of Greek, the foundations of a more correct criti- 
 cism were laid. An age of erudition was unavoidable, in which what- 
 ever could not establish its claims against a searching examination must 
 necessarily be overthrown. 
 
 We are thus brought to the great movement known as the Eeforma- 
 tion. The term is usually applied in reference to the Protest- The Refo™»- 
 ant nations, and therefore is not sufaciently comprehensive, tory. 
 for all Europe was in truth involved. A clear understanding of its ori- 
 gin, its process, its effects, is perha!ps best obtained by an examination of 
 the condition of the northern and southern nations, and the issue of the 
 event in each respectively. 
 
 Germany had always been sincere, and therefore always devout. Of 
 her disposition she had given many proofe from the time The preparatory 
 when the Emperor Otho descended into Italy, his expedition '^^"^^^t 
 having been, as was said, an armed procession of ecclesias- ^'^^ 
 tics resolved to abate the scandals of the Church. The Councils of Con- 
 stance and Basle may be looked upon as an embodiment of the same 
 sentiment. The resolution to limit the papal authority and to put a su- 
 perior over the pope arose from a profound conviction of the necessity 
 of such a measure. Those councUs were precursors of the coming Eef- 
 ormation. In other countries events had long been tending in the same 
 direction : in Sicily and Italy by the acts of Frederick II. ; in France 
 through those of Philip the Fair. The educated had been estranged Ly 
 the Saracens and Jews ; the enthusiastic by such works' as the Everlast- 
 ing Gospel ; the devout had been shocked by the tale of the Templars 
 and the detected immoraUties in Eome ; the patriotic had been alienated 
 by the assumptions of the papal court and its incessant intermeddling in 
 political affairs; the inferior, unreflecting orders were in all directions 
 exasperated by its importunate, unceasing exactions of money. In En- 
 gland, for instance, though less advanced intellectually than the southern 
 nations, the commencement of the Eeformation is perhaps justly referred 
 as far back as the reign of Edward IIL, who, under the suggestion of 
 Wiclif, refused to do homage to the pope, but a series of weaker princes 
 succeeding, it was not until Henry YII. that the movement could be con- 
 tinued. In that country the immediately exciting causes were no doubt 
 of a material kind, such as the alleged avarice and impurity of the cler- 
 gy, the immense amount of money taken from the realm, the intrusion 
 of foreign ecclesiastics. In the South of France and in Italy, where the 
 intellectual condition was much more advanced, the movement was cor- 
 
478 SUPEREEOGATION AND INDULGENCES. 
 
 respondingly of a more intellectual kind. To this difference between 
 the north and the south must be referred not only the striking geograph- 
 • ical distribution of belief which was soon apparent, but also the speedy 
 and abrupt limitation of the Eeformation, restrictedly so called. 
 
 In recent ages, under her financial pressure, Eome had asserted that 
 The theory of su- tl^® infinite merits of our Savior, together with the good 
 pererogation, -vyorks of supcrerogation of many holy men, constituted, as 
 it were, a fund from which might be discharged penalties of sins of ev- 
 ery kind, for the dead as well as the living, and therefore available for 
 those who had passed into Purgatory, as well as for us who remain. 
 This fund, committed to the care of St. Peter and his successors, may be 
 and nature of disburscd, uuder the form of indulgences, by sale for money. 
 induigenoeE. ^ traffic iu iudulgeuces was thus carried on to a great extent 
 through the medium of the monks, who received a commission upon 
 the profits. Of course, it is plain that the religious conception of such 
 a transaction is liable to adverse criticism — ^the bartering for money so 
 holy a thing as the merit of our Eedeemer. This was, however, only 
 the ostensible explanation, which it was judged necessary to present to 
 sincerely pious communities ; behind it there lay the real reason, which 
 was essentially of a political kind. It was absolutely necessary that pa- 
 pal Eome should control a revenue far beyond that arising in a strictly 
 legitimate way. As all the world had been drained of money by the 
 senate and Caesars for the support of republican or imperial power, so 
 too there was a need of a like supply for the use of the pontiffs. The 
 collection of funds had often given rise to contentions between the ec- 
 clesiastical and temporal authorities, and in some of the more sturdy 
 countries had been resolutely resisted. To collect a direct tax is often 
 a troublesome affair ; but such is human nature — a man from whom it 
 might be difficult to extort the payment of an impost lawfully laid, will 
 often cheerfully find means to purchase for himself indulgence for sin. 
 In such a semi-barbarian but yet religious population as that with which 
 the Church was dealing, it was quite clear that this manner of present- 
 ing things possessed singular advantages, an obvious equivalent being 
 given for the money received. The indulgence implied not only a re- 
 lease from celestial, but also, in many cases, from civil penalties. It was 
 an absolute guarantee from hell. 
 
 It is said that the attention of Martin Luther, formerly an Augustini- 
 MartinLn- ^^ Hjouk, was first attracted to this subject by the traffic having 
 "'^' been conferred on the Dominicans instead of upon his own or- 
 der at the time when Leo X: was raising funds by this means for build- 
 ing St. Peter's at Eome, A.D. 1517. That was probably only an insinu- 
 ation of Luther's adversaries, and is very far from being borne out by 
 his subsequent conduct. His first public movement was the putting 
 forth of ninety-five theses against the practice. He posted them on the 
 
MABTIN LUTHEE. — EEFOBMATIOK IN GERMANY. 479 
 
 door of the cathedral of Wittenberg, and enforced them in his sermons, 
 though at this time he professed obedience to the papal authority. With 
 a rapidity probably unexpected by him, his acts excited public attention 
 so strongly, that, though the pope was at first disposed to regard the 
 whole affair as a mere monkish squabble for gains, it soon became ob- 
 vious, from the manner in which the commotion was spreading, that 
 something piust be done to check it. The pope therefore summoned 
 Luther to Rome to answer for himself; but, through the influence of 
 certain great personages, and receiving a submissive letter from the ac- 
 cused, he, on reconsideration, referred the matter to Cardinal Cajetan, his 
 legate in Germany. The cardinal, on looking into the affair, ordered 
 Luther-to retract ; and now came into prominence the mental qualities 
 of this great man. Luther, with respectful firmness, refused ; but re- 
 membering John Huss, and fearing that the imperial safe-conduct which 
 had been given to him would be insufiicient for his protection, he secret- 
 ly returned to Wittenberg, having first, however, solemnly appealed 
 from the pope, ill informed at the time, to the pope when he should have 
 been better instructed. Thereupon he was condemned as a heretic. Un- 
 dismayed, he continued to defend his opinions ; but, finding himself in 
 imminent danger, he fell upon the suggestion which, since the days of 
 Philip the Fair, had been recognized as the true method of dealing with 
 the papacy, and appealed to a general council as the true representative 
 of the Churchy and therefore superior to the pope, who is not infallible 
 any more than St. Peter himself had been. To this denial of papal au- 
 thority he soon added a dissent from the doctrines of purgatory, auricu- 
 lar confession, absolution. It was now that the grand idea which had 
 hitherto silently lain at the bottom of the whole movement Therighbofindi- 
 emerged into prominence — the right of individual judgment SsSei"*^™' 
 — ^under the dogma that it is not papal authority which should be the 
 guide of life, but the Bible, and that the Bible is to be interpreted by 
 private judgment. Thus far it had been received that the Bible derives 
 its authenticity and authority from the Church ; now it was asserted that 
 the Church derives her authenticity and authority from the Bible. At 
 this moment there was but one course for the Italian court to take with 
 the audacious offender, for this new doctrine of the right of exercising 
 private judgment in matters of faith was dangerous to the last extreme 
 and not to be tolerated for a moment. Luther was therefore ordered to 
 recant, and to burn his own works, under penalty, if disobe- „ 
 dient, ot being excommunicated, and delivered over unto Sa- «™ofLather. 
 tan. The bull thus issued directed all secular princes to seize his per- 
 son and punish his crimes. 
 
 But Luther was not to be intimidated; nay, more, he retaliated. He 
 denounced the pope, as Frederick and the Fratricelli had for- HeresktB, ^a 
 merly done, as the Man of Sin, the Anti-Christ. He called ttobulf '""' 
 
480 EEFOEMATION IN SWITZERLAND. 
 
 upon all Christian princes to shake off his tyranny. In the presence of 
 a great , concourse of a,pplauding spectators, he committed the volumes 
 of the canon law and the bull of excommunication to the flames. The 
 pope now issued another bull expelling him from the Church. This 
 was in January, 1521. This separation opened to Luther an unrestrain- 
 ed career. He forthwith proceeded to an examination of the Italian 
 system of theology and policy, in which he was joined by many talent- 
 ed .men who participated in his views. The Emperor Charles V. found 
 it necessary to use all his influence to check the spreading Reformation. 
 But it was already too late, for Luther had obtained the firm support 
 of many personages of influence, and his doctrines were finding defend- 
 ers among some of the ablest men in Europe; . 
 
 An imperial diet was therefore held at Worms, before which Luther, 
 being summoned, appeared. But nothing could induce him to retract 
 his opinions. An edict was published putting him under the ban of the 
 empire ; but the Elector of Saxony concealed him in the castle of Wart- 
 ana the revolt burg. While he was in this retirement his doctrines were 
 spreads. rapidly extending, the Augustinians of Wittenberg not hesi- 
 tating to change the usages of the Church, abolishing private masses, 
 and giving the cup as well as the bread to the laity. 
 
 While Germany was agitated to her centre, a like revolt against Ital- 
 The Swiss Eef- iau suprcmacy broke out in Switzerland. It too commenced 
 inguus. ' on the question of indulgences, and found a leader in Zuin- 
 glius. 
 
 Even at this early period the inevitable course of events was begin- 
 ning to be plainly displayed in sectarian decomposition; for, while the 
 German and Swiss Reformers agreed in their relation toward the papal 
 authority, they differed widely from each other on some important doc- 
 trinal points, more especially as to the nature of the Eucharist. The 
 Germans supposed that, the body and blood of Christ are actually pres- 
 ent in the bread and wine in some mysterious way ; the Swiss believed 
 that those substances are only emblems or symbols. Both totally re- 
 jected the Italian doctrine of transubstantiation. The old ideas of Be- 
 rengar were therefore again fermenting among men. An attempt was 
 made, under the auspices of the Landgrave of Hesse, to compose the dis- 
 sension in a conference at Marburg ; but it was found, after a long dis- 
 putation, that neither party would give up its views, and they therefore 
 separated, as it was said, in Christian charity, but not in brotherhood. 
 
 At the first Diet of Spires, held in 1526, it was tried to procure the 
 execution of the sentence passed upon Luther, but the party of the Ref- 
 ormation proved to be too strong for the Catholics. At a second diet, 
 held at the same place three yeairs subsequently, it was resolved that no 
 change should be made in the established religion before the action of 
 a general council, which had been recommended by both diets, should 
 
PROGRESS AND EXTENT OF THE REFORMATION. 481 
 
 be known. On ttis occasion the Catholic interest preponderated suffi- 
 ciently to procure a revocation of the power which had been conceded 
 to the princes of the empire of managing for a time the ecclesiastical 
 matters of their own dominions. Against this action several The Protesir 
 
 ., ,T.,. , .. „- ants ; origin 
 
 of the prmces and cities protested, this being the ongm oi the ot the name, 
 designation Protestants subsequently given to the Eeformers. At a diet 
 held the following year at Augsburg, a statement, composed by Luther 
 and Melancthon, of the doctrines of the Eeformers was presented ; it also 
 treated to some extent of the errors and superstitions of the Catholics. 
 This is what is known as the Confession of Augsburg. But the diet not 
 only rejected it, but condemned most of its doctrines. The organization of 
 Protestants, therefore, in an assembly at Smalcalde, contract- "^K^'f"™*'*™- 
 ed a treaty for their common defense, and this may be looked upon as 
 the epoch of organization of the Eeformation. This league did not, 
 however, include the Eeformers of Switzerland, who could not conscien- 
 tiously adopt the Confession of Augsburg, which was its essential basis. 
 The Sacramentarians, as they were called, became thus poHtically di- 
 vided from the Lutherans. Moreover, in Switzerland the process of de- 
 composition went on, Calvin establishing a new sect, characterized by 
 the manner in which it insisted on the Augustinian doctrines of predes- 
 tination and election, by the abolition of all festivals, and the discontin- 
 uance of Church ceremonies. At a later period the followers of Zuin- 
 glius and Calvin^coalesced. 
 
 The political combinations which had thus occurred as Protestantism 
 rapidly acquired temporal power gave rise, as might have its culmination, 
 been anticipated, to wars. The peace of Augsburg, 1555, pSl°^ ^^*" 
 furnished the Eeformers the substantial advantages they sought — free- 
 dom from Italian ecclesiastical authority, the right of all Germans to 
 judge for themselves in matters of religion, equality in civil privileges 
 for them and the Catholics. A second time, sixty-four years subse- 
 quently, war broke out— the Thirty Years' War— and finally the dispute 
 was composed by the treaty of Westphalia. This may be regarded as 
 the culmination of the Eeformation. Peace was made in spite of all the 
 intrigues and opposition of Eome. 
 
 The doctrines of the Eeformation were adopted with singular avidity 
 throughout the north of Europe, and established themselves Extent of the 
 for a time in Prance and in Italy. Even as early as 1558 ™™™™«- 
 a report of the Yenetian embassador estimates the Catholics of the Ger- 
 man empire at only one tenth of the population. Por twenty years not 
 a student of the University of Vienna had become a priest. 
 ^ Such was the Eeformation among the German nations. It is not pos- 
 sible, however, to comprehend correctly that great movement The remit in 
 without, understanding the course of events in Italy, for that ^^'^^^ " 
 peninsula was involved, though in a very different way. In its intel- 
 
 Hh 
 
482 , CONTEMPOEAJSTEOUS STATE OF ITALY. 
 
 lectual condition it was far in advance of the rest of Europe, as is proved 
 by such facts as those to which we have alluded respecting the printing 
 of books. Between it and the nations of which we have been speaking 
 there was also a wide difference in material interests. What was ex- 
 torted from them was enjoyed by it. The mental and material condi- 
 tion of Italy soon set a limit to the progress of the Eeformation. . 
 
 The Italians had long looked upon the transalpine nations with con- 
 Positionofthe tempt. Ou the principle that the intellectually strong may 
 Italians. lawfully prey on the intellectually weak, they had systemat- 
 ically drained them of their wealth. As we exchange' with savages 
 beads, and looking-glasses, and nails, for gold, they had driven a profit- 
 able barter with the valiant but illiterate barbarians, exchanging pos- 
 sessions in heaven for the wealth of the earth, and selling for money 
 immunities or indulgences for sin. But in another respect they had 
 looked upon them with dread — they had felt the edge of the Frencli 
 and German sword. The educated classes, though seeking the widest 
 liberty of thought for themselves, were not disposed to more than a very 
 select propagandism of opinions, which plainly could only be detrimen- 
 tal to the pecuniary interests of their country. Their faith had long ago 
 ceased to be that of conviction ; it had become a mere outward patriotic 
 acquiescence. Even those who were willing enough to indulge them- 
 selves in the utmost latitude of personal free-thinking never made an 
 objection when some indiscreet zealot' of their own kind was compelled 
 by ecclesiastical pressure to flee beyond the Alps. No part of Europe 
 was so full of irreligion as Italy. It amounted to a philosophical infi- 
 delity among the higher classes ; to Arianism among the middle and less 
 instructed ; to an utter carelessness, not even giving itself the trouble of 
 state of their disbelief, among the low. The universities and learned acad- 
 uniTCraitiea. gmics wcrc hot-bcds of hcrcsy ; thus the University of Padua 
 was accused of having been for long a focus of atheism, and again and , 
 again learned academies, as those of Modena and Venice, had been sup- 
 state of the pressed for heresy. The device of the Academy of the Lyn- 
 emiea. cci indicated only too plainly the spirit of these institutions; 
 
 it was a lynx, with its eyes turned upward to heaven, tearing the triple- 
 headed Cerberus with its claws. Nor was this alarming condition re- 
 stricted to Italy ; France had long participated in it. From the Uni- 
 versity of Paris, that watch-tower of the Church, the alarm had often 
 been sounded ; now it was against men, now against books. Once, un- 
 der its suggestions, the reading of the physics and metaphysics of Aris- 
 totle had been prohibited, and works of philosophy interdicted until 
 they should have been corrected by the theologians of the Church. 
 The physical heresies of Galileo, the pantheism of CsesalpinuSj'had friend- 
 ly counterparts in France. Even the head of the Church, Leo X,at the 
 begining of the Eeformation, could not escape obloquy, and stories were 
 
AEREST OF THE EEFORMATION. 483 
 
 circulated touching Ms elevation to the pontificate at once prejudicial 
 to his morals and to his belief. 
 
 In such an ominous condition, the necessity of carrying out the pol- 
 icy to which Italy had so long been committed perpetually F^ise poauion 
 forced the papal government to acts against which the in- <>fti'«p^p»'=y- 
 structed judgment of its own officials revolted. It was a continual 
 struggle between their duty and their disposition. Why should they 
 have thought it expedient to suppress the Koran when it was printed 
 in Venice, 1530 ? why, when Paul lY., 1559, promulgated the Index 
 Expurgatorius of prohibited books, was it found necessary that not less 
 than forty-eight editions of the Bible should be included in it, sixty-one 
 printers put under the ban, and all their publications forbidden, at first 
 the interdict being against aU prohibited books, and, on this being found 
 insufficient, even those that had not been permitted being prohibited? 
 Why was it that GalUeo was dealt with so considerately and yet so ma- 
 lignantly ? It was plain that toleration, either of nien or books, was al- 
 together irreconcilable with the principles of the Holy See, and that un- 
 der its stern exigencies the former must be disposed of, and the latter 
 suppressed or burnt, no matter what personal inclinations or favoring 
 sentiments might be in the way. If any faltering took place in the car- 
 rying out of this determination, the control of Eome over the human 
 mind would be put into the most imminent jeopardy. 
 
 So stood affairs in Italy at the beginning and during the active pe- 
 riod of the Eeformation, the ancient system inexorably press- cheek of tie 
 ing upon the leading men, and impelling them to acts against m itaiy. 
 which their better judgment revolted. They were bound down to the 
 interests of their country, those interests being interwoven with condi- 
 tions which they could no longer intellectually accept. For men of 
 this class the German and Swiss reformations did not go far enough. 
 They affirmed that things were left just as inconsistent with reason, just 
 as indefensible as before. Doubtless they considered that the paring 
 away of the worship of saints, of absolution for money, penances, in- 
 dulgences, freedom from papal taxation, the repudiation of intrusive for- 
 eign ecclesiastics, was all to the detriment of the pecuniary interests of 
 Italy. They affirmed that the doctrines put forth by the Eeformers 
 made good their ground, not through the force of reason, but through 
 appeals to the ignorant, and even to women ; not through an improved 
 and sounder criticism, but, as it was declared, through the inward light 
 of the Spirit ; that nothing had been done to alleviate the ancient intol- 
 erant dogmatism, the forcible suppression of freedom of thought. Leo 
 X., it is well known, at first altogether mistook the nature of Leo x • us 
 the Reformation. He was a man of refined tastes and pleas- <*""'!'«. 
 ure, delighting in sumptuous feasts, and too often scandalizing the de- 
 vout by his indecent conversation and licentious conduct. He gloried 
 
484 ABBEST OF THE EEFOEMATION. 
 
 in being the patron of the learned, devoting all his attention to the prog- 
 ress of literature and the fine arts, a connoisseur in antiques. The amen- 
 ities of the life of an accomplished gentleman were not to be disturbed. 
 He little dreamt that in the coarse German monk there was an antago- 
 nist worthy of the papacy. The gay Italians looked upon Luther with 
 ineffable contempt, as introducing ideas even more absurd than those 
 he was trying to displace, and, what was perhaps' a stUl greater offense, 
 upholding his bad doctrines in worse Latin. They affected to believe 
 that they discerned a taint of rasanity in the Eeformer's account of his 
 conflicts with the Devil, yet were willing to concede that there was a 
 method in his madness, since he was bent on having a wife. In their 
 opinion, the result of the German movement must be exceedingly detri- 
 mental to learning, and necessarily lead to the production of very vul- 
 gar results, exciting among the common people a revolutionary and de- 
 structive spirit. ISTor was this personal distaste for Luther altogether 
 undeserved. The caricatures, which-that great man permitted himself 
 to put forth were too indelicate to be described to a modern reader. 
 They would be worthy of our disgust and indignation did we not find 
 some palliation in the coarseness of the communities and times in which 
 he lived. Leo awoke to his blunder when it was too late, and found 
 that he had been superciliously sneering at what he should have com- 
 bated with all his might. 
 
 It is now more than three centuries since the Eeformation commenced, 
 cheokTjf the and we are able, with some degree of accuracv, to ascertain ita 
 
 Reformation ._ ' . '-' ». 
 
 in Europe, mtluence. i ounded as it was on the right of private mterpret- 
 ation of the Scriptures, it introduced a better rule of life, and made a 
 great advance toward intellectual liberty. It compelled men to be more 
 moral, and permitted them to be more learned. For the traditions of 
 superstition it substituted the dictates of common sense ; it put an end 
 to the disgraceful miracles that for so many ages had been the scandal 
 of Europe. The assertion of the Italians that it was a great injury to 
 letters is untrue. Though not to be regarded in any respect as a learn- 
 ed man, Luther approved of the study of Greek and Hebrew, recognized 
 by all parties to be dangerous to the Latin system. And even if the 
 accusation be admitted that he approved of their cultivation, not from 
 any love to them, but from hatred to it, the world was equally a gainer. 
 Toward the close of his life it seemed as if there was no other prospect 
 for papal power than total ruin ; yet at this day, out of three hundred 
 millions of Christians, more than half owe allegiance to Eome. Almost 
 as if by enchantment the Eeformation suddenly ceased to advance. 
 Eome was not only able to check its spread, but even to gain back a 
 noVBn°^° ''ere portiou of what she had lost. The cause of this, which may 
 'ai- seem at first an extraordinary result, is not to be attributed 
 
 to any supernatural influence, as some have supposed. When natural 
 causes suffice, it is needless to look for supernatural. 
 
CAUSES OF THAT AEEEST. 485 
 
 Though, there might be sovereigns who, like Henry YIII-, had per- 
 sonal reasons for discontent with the Italian court; though there were 
 some who sought to usurp the power and prerogatives of the popes ; 
 though there might be nobles who, as the Princ6 of Wales' tutor wrote 
 to Sir W. Paget, were " importunate wolves, as are able to devour chan- 
 tries, cathedral churches, universities, and a thousand times as much ;" 
 some who desired the plunder of establishments endowed by the piety. 
 of ages, and who therefore lent all their influence in behalf of this great 
 revolution ; there was among such and above such that small influence of 
 but all-important body of men who see human aftairs from phaosophera. 
 the most general point of view. To these, whatever might be the na- 
 tion to which they happened to belong, it was perfectly evident that 
 the decomposition of faith which had set in, if permitted to go on un- 
 checked, could not possibly end in any other way than in producing an 
 anarchy of sects. In their opinion the German Eeformation did not go 
 far enough. It still practically left untouched the dependency of the 
 Church upon the State. In the southern nations of the Continent it had 
 merely irritated the great European ulcer, whereas what was required 
 was the complete amputation of the rotten mass. In their judgment it 
 was better to leave things as they were until a thorough eradication 
 could be accomphshed, and this, at the time, was obviously impossible. 
 Not understanding, perhaps, how much human affairs are developed ac- 
 cording to law, and how little by the volition of individuals, they lib- 
 erally conceded that Catholicism had been, the civilizing agency of Eu- 
 rope, and had become inwoven with the social fabric for good or for 
 evU. It could not now be withdrawn without pulling the whole tex- 
 ture to pieces. Moreover, the curtain of papal authority, which at one 
 time enveloped all Europe in its ample folds, had, in the course of these 
 late events, been contracted and stretched across the Continent, dividing 
 the northern and southern nations from each other. The people of the 
 south saw on its embroidered surface nothing but forms of usefulness 
 and beauty, they on the north a confusion of meaningless threads. But 
 the few who considered it as a whole, and understood the relations of 
 both sides, knew well enough that the one is the necessary incident of 
 the other, and that it is quite as useless to seek for explanations as to 
 justify appearances. To them it was perfectly clear that the tranquil, 
 lity and happiness of Christendom were best subserved by giving no 
 encouragement to opinions which had already occasioned so much 
 trouble, and which seemed to contain in their very constitution princi- 
 ples of social disorganization. 
 
 A second reason for the sudden loss of expansive force in the Eefor- 
 mation is found in its own intrinsic nature. The principle influence of the 
 of decomposition which it represented, and with which it was Eeformation! 
 inextricably entangled, necessarily implied oppugnancy. Eor a short 
 
486 CAUSES OF THAT AEEEST. 
 
 season the attention of Protestantism was altogether directed to the pa- 
 pal authority from which it had so recently separated itself; but, with 
 its growing strength and ascertained independence, that object ceased to 
 occupy it, becoibing, as it were, more distant and niore obscure. Upon 
 the subordinate divisions which were springing from it, or which were 
 of collateral descent from the original Catholic stock, the whole view of 
 each denomination was concentrated. The bitterness once directed 
 against the papacy lost none of its intensity when pointed at rivals or 
 enemies nearer home. Nor was it alone dissensions among the greater 
 sects, oppositions such as those between the Church of England and the 
 Church of Scotland, whose discords were founded on points admitted by 
 all to be great an,d essential; the same principle ran down through all 
 the modes of sectarian combination as they emerged into life, producing 
 among those of equal power struggles, and in the strong toward the 
 Effect of Becta- wcak persccutiou. Yery soon the process of decomposition 
 rian dieputea. j^g^^ advanccd to such an extent that minor sects came into 
 existence on very unessential points. Yet even among these little bod- 
 ies there was just as much acrimony, just as much hatred as among the 
 great. These differences were carried into the affairs of civil life, each 
 sect forming a society within itself, and abstaining, as far as might be, 
 from associations with its rivals. Of such a state of things the necessary 
 result was weakness, and, had there been no other reason, this in itself 
 would have been quite suf&cient in the end to deprive Protestantism, 
 of its aggressive power. An army divided against itself is in no condi- 
 tion to make warfare against a watchful and vigorous enemy. 
 
 But this was not all. It was in the nature of Protestantism from its 
 wantofconcea- outsct that it was uot constructivc.. Unlike its great an- 
 trated power, tagouist, it Contained no fundamental principle that could 
 combine distant communities and foreign countries together. It origi- 
 nated in dissent, and was embodied by separation. It could not possess 
 a concentrated power, nor recognize one apostolic man who might com- 
 press its disputes, harmonize its pdwers, wield it as a mass. For the at- 
 tainment of his aims the Protestant had only wishes, the Catholic had a 
 will. The Church of England, of Scotland, or of any other Protestant 
 nation, undoubtedly did discharge its duty excellently well for the com- 
 munity in which it was placed, bu4, at the most, it. was only a purely 
 local institution, altogether insignificant in comparison with that great 
 old Church; hoary and venerable with age, which had seen every gov- 
 ' ernment and every institution in Europe come into existence, many of 
 them at its bidding, which had extirpated paganism from the Eoman 
 empire, compelled the Caesars to obey its mandates, precipitated the 
 whole white race upon the Holy Land ; that great old Church, once the 
 more than imperial sovereign of Christendom, and of which the most 
 respectable national Church was only a fragment of a fragment. 
 
THE COUNTER-EEFOEMATION AND THE INQUISITION. 487 
 
 Very different was it with Catholicism. It possessed an organization 
 which concentrated in the hand of one man irresistible pow- condition of 
 er, and included all. the southern countries of Europe not Mo- ''»'««'"<''«"'' 
 hammedan. It could enforce its policy by the armies and fleets of obe- 
 dient, kings. It is not surprising, when this state of things is consider- 
 ed, that the spread of the Reformation was limited to its first fervor-^ 
 that the men who saw its origin saw also its culmination. It is not to 
 be wondered at that, with the political weakening arising from a tend- 
 ency to subdivision and disintegration on one side, and the preparing 
 of a complete and effective organization against the danger that was 
 threatening on the other, the issue should have turned out as it did. 
 
 Eome, awaking at last to her danger, met the, Eeformation with four 
 weapons — a counter-reformation, an increased vigor in the The means of re- 
 Inquisition, the institution of the Jesuits, and a greater em- to ty nome. 
 bellishment of worship. The disposition of the northern nations was 
 to a simplification of worship, that of the south to adorn it with what- 
 ever could captivate the, senses. Eanke asserts that the composition 
 of the mass of Marcellus by Palestrina, 1560, had a wonderful effect in 
 the revival of religion ; there can be no doubt that it constituted an 
 epoch in devotion. But of all these, the first and best was '^ counter-mf. 
 a moral change which she instantly imposed upon herself, o™**'""- 
 Henceforth it was her intention that in the chair of St. Peter should 
 never again be seen atheists, poisoners, thieves, murderers, blasphemers, 
 adulterers, but men, who, if they were sometimes found, as must be the 
 case, considering the infirmities of humanity, incompetent to deal with 
 the great trials which often befell them, were, yet of such personal pu- 
 rity, holiness of life, and uprightness of intention as to command pro- 
 found respect. Those scandals that hitherto had every where disgraced 
 her began to disappear, a true reformation, but not a schism, occurring 
 through all ecclesiastical grades. Had Protestantism produced no other 
 result than this, it would have been an unspeakable blessing to the world. 
 
 By another very different means the Italian power sought to insure 
 its domination — by an increased activity of the Inquisition. The inqmsition 
 It is difiicult to understand how men of capacity could have tw?|.''"'"°^°' 
 justified this iniquitous institution. Certainly it could not have been 
 upon any principles of Christian morality, nor even upon those of high 
 statesmanship. For the Inquisition to accomplish its purpose, it must 
 needs be as all-seeing as Providence, as inexorable as the grave ; not in- 
 flicting punishments which the sufferer could remember, but remorse- 
 lessly killing outright; not troubling' itself to ascertain the merits of a 
 case and giving the accused the benefits of a doubt, but regarding sus- 
 picion and certainty as the same thing. If worked with the unscrupu- 
 lous, impassive resolution of Machiavellianism, this great engine for the 
 coercion of the human mind could be made to acconiplish its purpose. 
 
488 THE JESUITS. 
 
 It thoroughly extinguished Protestantism in Spain and Italy, and in 
 those countries maintained a barrier against the progressive reason of 
 man. 
 
 But the most effective weapon to which the papacy resorted was the 
 The Jesuits are Institution of the order of the Jesuits. It was established by 
 established. ^ ^^^i ^f p^^j m.^ 1540, the rules being that the general 
 chosen for life should be obeyed as Grod ; that they should vow pover- 
 ty, chastity, obedience, and go wherever they were commanded; their 
 obedience was to the pope, not to the Church — a most politic distinction, 
 for thereby an unmistakable responsibility was secured. They had no 
 regular hours of prayer ; their duties were preaching, the direction of 
 consciences, education. By the Jesuits Eome penetrated into the re- 
 motest corners of the earth, established links of communication with 
 her children who remained true to her in the heart of Protestant coun- 
 tries, and, with a far-seeing policy for the future, silently engrossed the 
 education, of the young. At the confessional she extorted from women 
 the hidden secrets of their lives and those of their families, took the lead 
 in devotion wherever there were pious men, and was equally foremost 
 Their influence au ^ ^^^ world of fashion and dissipation. There was no 
 over the world, gyige under which the Jesuit might not be found-ra. bare- 
 foot beggar, clothed in rags ; a learned professor, lecturing gratuitously 
 to scientific audiences ; a man of the world, living in profusion and 
 princely extravagance ; there have been Jesuits the wearers of crowns. 
 There were no places into which they did not find their way : a visitor 
 to one of the loyal old families of England could never be sure but that 
 there was a Jesuit hidden in the garret or secreted behind the wainscot 
 of the bedroom. They were the advisers of the leading men of the 
 age, sat in the cabinets of kings, and were their confessors. They boast- 
 ed that they were the link between religious opinion and literature. 
 With implicit and unquestioning obedience to his superior, like a good 
 soldier, it was the paramount duty of the Jesuit to obey his orders, what- 
 ever those orders might be. It was for him to go, at the summons of a 
 moment, with his life in his hand, to the very centre of pagan or of re- 
 formed and revolted countries, where his presence was death by law, 
 and execute the mission intrusted to him. If he succeeded, it was well; 
 if he should fall, it was also well. To him all things were proper for 
 the sake of the Church. It was his business to consider how the affair 
 he had in hand was to be most surely accomplished — ^to resort to justi- 
 fiable means if they should appear sufficient, if not, to unjustifiable ; to 
 the spiritual weapon, but also to be prepared with the carnal ; , to sacri- 
 fice candor if the occasion should require, if necessary even truth, re- 
 membering that the end justifies the means, if that end is the good of 
 the Church. 
 
 While some religious orders were founded on retirement, and aimed 
 
THEIR SUPPEESSION. 489 
 
 at personal improvement by solitude, the Jesuits were instructed to mix 
 in the affairs of men, and gather experience in the ways of worldly 
 wisdom. And since it is the infirmity of humanity, whatever may be 
 the vigor of its first intentions, too often to weary in well-doing, provi- 
 sion was made to re-enforce ihe zeal of those becoming lukewarm, to 
 admonish the delinquent, by making each a spy on all the others, under 
 oath to reveal every thing to his superior. In that manner a control 
 was exercised over the brotherhood in all parts of the world. In Eu- 
 rope they had, in a very short time, stealthily but largely engrossed pub- 
 lic education ; had mixed themselves up with every public affair ; were 
 at the bottom of every intrigue, making their power felt through the 
 control they exerted over sovereigns, ministers of state, and great court 
 ladies, influencing the last through the spiritual means of the confes- 
 ' sional, or by the more natural but equally effectual entanglements of re- 
 quited love. Already they had recognized the agency of commerce in 
 promoting and diffusing religious belief, and hence simultaneously be- 
 came great missionaries and great merchants. With the Indies, East 
 and "West, they carried forward extensive commercial undertakings, and 
 had depots in various parts of Europe. In these operations they were 
 necessarily absolved from their vows of poverty and became immensely 
 rich. In South America they obtained a footing in Paraguay, and com- 
 menced their noble attempt at the civilization ot the Indians, bringing 
 them into communities, teaching them social usages, agricultural arts, 
 and the benefits arising to themselves and the community from labor. 
 They gave them a military organization, subdivided, according to the 
 European system, into the customary arms — infantry, cavalry, artillery ; 
 they supplied them with munitions of war. It was their hope that 
 from this basis they should be able to spread the rule of the Church 
 over America, as had been done in preceding ages over Europe. 
 
 An intolerable apprehension of their invisible presence and unscrupu- 
 lous agency made all Europe put them down at last. The causesof thdr 
 amenities of exquisite courteousness, the artifices of infinite ™ppieasioii. 
 dissimulation, can not forever deceive. Men found, by bitter experience, 
 that under the silken glove there was an iron hand. From their gen- 
 eral in Eome, who was absolute commander of their persons and un- 
 challengeable administrator of their prodigious wealth, down to the hum- 
 blest missionary who was wearing away his life among the Andes, or 
 on the banks of the Hoang-ho, or in the soHtary prairies of Missouri, or 
 under the blazing sun of Abyssinia; whether he was confessing the but- 
 terfly ladies of Paris, whispering devilish suggestions into the ear of the 
 King of Spain, consoling the dying peasant in an Irish cabin, arguing 
 with mandarins in the palace of the Emperor of China, stealing away 
 the hearts of the rising generation in the lower schools and academies 
 extorting the admiration of learned societies by the profundity of his 
 
490 EFFECTS OF CEITICISM. 
 
 philosophy and the brilliancy of his scientific discoveries ; whether he 
 was to be seen in. the exchanges and. marts of the great capitals, super- 
 vising commercial operations on a scale which tip to that time had been 
 attempted.by none but the Jews ; whether he was held in an English jail 
 as a suspected vagabond, or sitting on the throne of France; whether 
 he appeared -as a great landed proprietor, the owner of countless leagues- 
 in the remote parts of India or South America ; whether he was mix- 
 ing with crowds in the streets of London, and insinuating in Protestant 
 ears the rights of subjects to oppose amd.even depose their monarchs 
 or in the villages of Castile and Leon, preaching before Catholic peas- 
 ants the paramount duty of a good Christian iniplicitly to obey the man- 
 dates of his king ; wherever the Jesuit was, or whatever he was doing, 
 men universally felt that the thing he had in hand was only auxiliary to 
 some higher, some hidden design. The stealth, and silence, and power 
 became at last so intolerable that they were ' banished from Prance, 
 Spain, Portugial, and other Catholic countries. But such was their vi- 
 tality that, though the order was abolished by a papal bull in 1773, they 
 have been again restored. 
 
 Though it is sometimes said that Eome in this manner, by her admi- 
 Eflects of change Table combiuatious and irresistible movement, succeeded at 
 the learned. last in checMhg the Eeformation, a full consideration of the 
 state of affairs would lead us to receive that assertion with very consid- 
 erable restriction. She came out of the conflict much less powerful than 
 she had entered it. If we attribute to her policy all that it can justly 
 claim, we must, also attribute to causes over which she had no kind of 
 control their rightful influence. The Eeformation hdd been, to no small 
 extent, due to the rise of criticism, which still continued its develop- 
 ment, and was still fruitful of results. Latin had fallen from its high 
 estate ; the modern languages were in all directions expanding and im- 
 proving ; the printing-press was not only giving Greek learning to the 
 world, but countless translations and commentaries. The doctrine suc- 
 cessfully established by Luther and his colleagues, the right of private 
 interpretation and judgment, was the practical carrying out of the or- 
 ganic law of criticism to the highest affairs with which man can be con- 
 cerned — affairs of religion. The Eeformation itself, philosophically con- 
 sidered, really meant the, casting off of authority, the installation of indi- 
 vidual inquiry and personal opinion. If criticism, thus standing upon 
 the basis of the Holy Scriptures, had not hesitated to apply itself to an 
 examination of public faith, and, as the consequence thereof, had laid 
 Effects of criti- dowu ncw rulcs for morality and the guidance of hfe, it was 
 anrmeratiSe." not to be cxpccted that it would hesitate to deal with minor 
 thin^ — that it would spare the philosophy, the policy,' the literature of 
 antiquity. And so, indeed, it went on, comparing classical authors with 
 classical authors, the fathers with the fathers, often the same writer with 
 
SECESSION OF THE GREAT CEITICS. 491 
 
 himself. Contradictions were pointed out, errors exposed, weakness de- 
 tected, and new views offered of almost every thing within the range of 
 literature. 
 
 From this burning ordeal one book alone came out unscathed. It 
 was the Bible. It spontaneously vindicated for itself what Wic- The Bitic. 
 lif in the former times, and' Luther more lately, had claimed for it. And 
 not only did it hold its ground, but it truly became incalculably more 
 powerful than ever it had been before. The press multiplied it in ev- 
 ery language without end, until there was scarcely a cottage in reform- 
 ed Europe that did not possess a copy. 
 
 But if criticism was thus the. stimulating principle that had given life 
 to the Eeformation, it had no little to do with its pause ; and this is the 
 influence over which Eome had no kind of control, and to which I have 
 made . allusion. The phases through which the Eeformation passed 
 were dependent on the coincident advances of learning. First it relied 
 on the Scriptures, which were to the last its surest support ; then it in- 
 cluded the fathers. But, from a more intimate study of the Decime of the 
 latter, many er.udite Protestants were gradually brought back tor^nung.™' 
 to the ancient fold. Among such may be mentioned Erasmus, who by 
 degrees became alienated from the Eeformers, and subsequently Grotius, 
 the publication of whose treatise, "De jure belli et pacis," 1625, really 
 constituted an epoch in the political system of Europe. This great man 
 had gradually become averse to the Eeformation, believing that, all 
 things considered, it had done more harm than good ; he had concluded 
 that it was better to throw differences into oblivion for the sake of 
 peace, and to enforce silence on one's own opinions, rather than to ex- 
 pect that the Church should be conipelled to accommodate herself to 
 them. If such men as Erasmus, Casaubon, and Grotius had been 
 brought to this dilemma by their profound philosophical meditations, 
 their conclusion was confirmed among the less reflecting by the unhap- 
 py intolerance of the new as well as the old Church. Men asked what 
 was the difference between the vindictiveness with which Momi effects of 
 Eome dealt with Antonio de Dominis, at once an ecclesiastic psraecutiona. 
 and a natural philosopher, who, having gone over to Protestantism and 
 then seceded, imprudently visited Eome, was there arrested, and, dying, 
 his body was dug up and burnt, and the rigor of Calvin, who seized 
 Servetus, the author of the " Christianismi Eestitutio," and in part the 
 discoverer of the circulation of the blood, when he happened to pass 
 through Geneva, and committed him to the flames. 
 
 Criticism had thus, in its, earlier stage, produced well-marked results. 
 As it developed it lost none of its power. It had enthroned ^^ ^^^^^^ 
 patristic theology ; now it wrenched from its hand the seep- *'™'°- " ™' 
 tre. In the works of Daill^ it showed that the fathers are of no kind 
 of use— they are too contradictory of one another; even Jeremy Tay- 
 
492 CONTISrUATIOH' OF THE EEFOEMATION IN AMERICA, 
 
 lor speaks of their authority and reputation as clean gone fgrever. In 
 a few years they had sunk into desuetude, a neglect shared by many 
 classical authors, whose opinions were now only quoted with a respect- 
 ful smile. The admiration for antiquity was diminishing under the ef- 
 fect of searching examination. Books were beginning to appear, turn- 
 ing the old historians into ridicule for their 'credulity. The death of 
 The burning Scrvetus was uot without advantage to the world. There 
 bycawn? was not a pious or thoughtful man in all reformed Europe 
 who was not shocked when the circumstances under which that unhap- 
 py physician had been brought to the stake at Geneva by John Calvin 
 were made known. For two hours he was roasted in the flames of a 
 slow fire, begging for the love of God that they would put on more 
 wood, or do something to end his torture. Men asked, with amazement 
 and indignation, if the atrocities of the Inquisition were again to be re- 
 vived. On all sides they began to inquire how far it is lawful to inflict 
 the punishment of death for difference of opinion. It opened their eyes 
 to the fact that, after all they had done, the state of civilization in wMch 
 they .were living was still characterized by its intolerance. In 1546 the 
 Venetian embassador at the court of Charles Y. reported to his govern- 
 ment that in Holland and Friesland more than thirty thousand persons 
 had suffered death at the hands of justice for Anabaptist errors. From 
 such an unpromising state of things toleration could only emerge with 
 difficulty. It was the offspring, not of a philosophical charity, but of 
 the checked animosities of ever-multiplying sects, and' their detected 
 impossibility of coercing one another. 
 
 The history of the Eeformation does not close, where many European 
 The Eefonna- authors havc imagined, in a balanced and final distribution 
 in America, of the uorth and south between the Protestant and the Cath- 
 olic. The predestined issue of sectarian differences and dissensions is 
 individual liberty of thought. So long as there was one vast overshad- 
 owing, intolerant corporation, every man must bring his understanding 
 to iis measure, and think only as it instructed him to do. As soon as 
 dissenting confessions gathered sufficient military power to maintain 
 their right of existence — as soon as from them, in turn, incessant off- 
 shoots were put forth, toleration became not only possible, but inevita- 
 ble, and that is perhaps as far as the movement has at this time advanced 
 in Europe. But Macaulay and others who have treated of the Eeforma- 
 tion have taken too limited a view of it, supposing that this was its point 
 of arrest. It made another enormous stride when, at the American Eev- 
 separation olutiou, the State and the Church were solemnly and openly 
 and state, dissevcrcd from one another. Now might the vaticinations of 
 the prophets of evil expect to find credit ; a great people had irrevoca- 
 bly broken off its politics from its theology, and it might surely have 
 been expected that the unbridled interests, and instincts, and passions of 
 
SEPAEATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 493 
 
 men would have dragged every thing into the abyss of anarchy. Yet 
 what do we, who are living nearly a century after that time, find the 
 event to be? Sectarian decomposition, passing forward to its last ex- 
 treme, is the process by which individual mental liberty is engendered 
 and maintained. A grand and imposing religious unity implies tyranny 
 to the individual ; the increasing emergence of sects gives him increas- 
 ing latitude of thought— with their utmost multiplication he gains his 
 utmost liberty. In this respect, unity and liberty are in opposition ; as 
 the one diminishes, the other increases. The Eeformation broke down 
 unity ; it gave liberty to masses of men grouped together in Emwgenra 
 sufficient numbers to insure their position ; it is now invisibly, thought 
 but irresistibly making steps, never to be stayed until there is an abso- 
 lute mental emancipation for man. 
 
 Great revolutions are not often accomplished without much suffering 
 and many crimes. It might have been supposed before the event, per- 
 haps it is supposed by many who are not privileged to live among the 
 last results, that this decomposition of religious faith must be to the det- 
 riment of personal and practical piety. Yet America, in which, TheAmeii. 
 of all countries, the Eeformation at the present moment has far- "™ °^'^- 
 thest advanced, should offer to thoughtful men much encouragement. 
 Its cities are filled with churches built by voluntary gifts ; its clergy are 
 voluntarily sustained, and are, in all directions, engaged in enterprises 
 of piety, education, mercy. What a difference between their private life 
 and that of ecclesiastics before the Eeformation ! Not, as in the old 
 times, does the layman look upon them as the cormorants and curse of 
 society ; they are his faithful advisers, his honored friends, under whose 
 suggestion and supervision are instituted educational establishments, 
 colleges, hospitals, whatever can be of benefit to men in this life, or se- 
 cjire for them happiness in the life to come. 
 
494 SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTBE XXI. 
 
 DIGEESSION ON THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND AT THE END OF THE 
 
 AGE OF FAITH. 
 
 EESULTS PEODUCED BT THE AGE OP FAITH. 
 
 Condition of England at the Suppression of the Monasteries. 
 
 Condition of England at the Close of the seventeenth Century. — Locomotion, Literature, Libra- 
 
 ries. — Social and private Life of the Laity and Clergy. ^Brutality in the Administration of 
 
 Law. — Profligacy of Literature. — ITie Theatre, its three Phases. — JrCracfe, Moral, and Seal 
 
 Plays. 
 Estimate of the Advance made in the Age of Faith, — Comparison with that already made in the 
 
 Age of Season. 
 
 Arrived at the commencement of the Age of Eeason, we might prof- 
 itably examine the social condition of those countries destined to become 
 conspicuous in the new order of things. I have not space to present 
 EeanitBoftiie such an examination as extensively as it deserves, and must 
 Age of Faith. jj]^^|. j^y remarks to that nation which, of all others, is most 
 interesting to the American reader — that England, which we picture to 
 ourselves as foremost in civilization, her universities dating back for 
 many centuries ; her charters and laws, on which individual, and there- 
 fore social liberty rests, spoken of as the ancient privileges of the realm; 
 her people a clear-headed race, lovers and stout defenders of freedom. 
 During by far the greater part of the past period she had been Catholic, 
 The social condi- but she had also been reformed — ever, as she will always be; 
 
 hon produced in ^. . . , ■: ^i . t n • t- • t 
 
 England. rcligious. A corrcct estimate of her national and individu- ' 
 
 al life will point out to us all that had been done in the Age of Faith. , 
 Prom her condition we may gather what is the progress made by man 
 when guided by such theological ideas as those which had been her rule 
 of life. 
 
 The following paragraphs convey an instructive lesson. They dissi- 
 pate some romantic errors ; they are a verdict on a political system from 
 its practical results. "What a contrast with the prodigious advancement 
 within a few years when the Age of Eeason had set in ! How striking- 
 ly are we reminded of the inconsequential, the fruitless actions of youth, 
 and the deliberate, the durable undertakings of manhood ! 
 
 For many of the facts I have now to mention the reader will find au- 
 thorities in the works of Lord Macaulay and Mr. Froude on English his- 
 tory. My own reading in other directions satisfies me that the picture 
 here offered represents the actual condition of things. 
 
 At the time of the suppression of the monasteries in England the in- 
 
MONASTEEIES, CASTLES, CABINS. 495 
 
 fluences which had been in operatipn for so many centuries condition at the 
 had come to an end. Had they endured lor a thousand monasteries, 
 years longer they could have accomplished nothing more. The condi- 
 tion of human life shows what their uses and what their failures had 
 been. There were forests extending over great districts ; fens forty or 
 fifty miles in length, reeking with miasm and fever, though round the 
 walls of the abbeys there might be beautiful gardens, green lawns, shady 
 walks, and many murmuring streams. In trackless woods where men 
 should have been, herds of deer were straying ; the sandy hills were 
 alive with conies, the downs with flocks of bustard. The peasant's cab- 
 in was made of reeds or sticks plastered over with mud. His fire was 
 chimneyless — often it was made of peat. In the objects and manner of 
 his existence he was but a step above the industrious beaver who was 
 building his dam in the adjacent stream. There were highwaymen on 
 the roads, pirates on the rivers, vermin in abundance in the clothing and 
 beds. The common food was peas, vetches, fern roots, and even the bark 
 of trees. There was no commerce to put off famine. Man was alto- 
 gether at the mercy of the seasons. The population, sparse as it was, 
 was perpetually thinned by pestilence and want. Nor was the state of 
 the townsman better than that of the rustic ; his bed was a bag of straw, 
 with a fair round log for his pillow. If he was in easy circumstances, 
 his clothing was of leather ; if poor, a wisp of straw wrapped round his 
 limbs kept off the cold. It was a melancholy social condition when 
 nothing intervened between reed cabins in the fen, the miserable wig- 
 wams of villages, and the conspicuous walls of the castle and monastery. 
 Well might they who lived in those times bewail the lot of the ague- 
 stricken peasant, and point, not without indignation, to the troops of pil- 
 grims, mendicants, pardoners, and ecclesiastics of every grade who hung 
 round the Church, to the nightly wassail and rioting drunkenness in the 
 castle-hall, secure in its moats, its battlements, and its warders. The lo- 
 cal pivots round which society revolved were the red-handed baron, fa- 
 miliar with scenes of outrage and deeds of blood, and the abbot, indulg- 
 ing in the extreme of luxury, magnificent in dress, exulting in his am- 
 bling palfrey, his hawk, his hounds. Eural life had but little improved 
 since the time of Csesar ; in its physical aspect it was altogether neglect- 
 ed. As to the mechanic, how was it possible that he could exist where 
 there were no windows made of glass, no, not of oiled paper, no work- 
 shop warmed by a fire. For the poor there was no physician, for the 
 dying the monk and his crucifix. The aim was to smooth the sufferer's 
 passage to the next world, not to save him for this. Sanitary provis- 
 ioT-ii there were none except the paternoster and the ave. In the cities 
 the pestilence walked unstayed, its triumphs numb'ered by the sounds 
 of the death-crier ia the streets or the knell for the soul that was pass- 
 ing away. 
 
496 STATE OF MORALS. 
 
 Our estimate of the influence of the system under which men were 
 thus living as a regulator of their passions may at this point derive much 
 exactness from incidents such as those offered by the history of syphilis 
 and the usages of war. For this purpose we may for a moment glance 
 at the Continent. 
 
 The attention of all Europe was suddenly arrested by a disease which 
 Moral state indica- broks out soou aftcr the discovcry of America. It raged 
 ofsyphiiist "^^"'^ with particular violence in the French army commanded 
 by Charles VIII. at the siege of Naples, A.D. 1495, and spread almost 
 like an epidemic. It was syphilis. Though there have been medical 
 authors who supposed that it was only an exacerbation of a malady 
 known from antiquity, that opinion can not be maintained after the 
 learned researches of Astruc. That it was something recognized at the 
 time as altogether new seems to be demonstrated by the accusations of 
 different nations against each other of having given origin to it. Very 
 soon, however, the truth appeared. It had been brought by the sailors 
 of Columbus from the West Indies. Its true character, and the condi- 
 tions of its propagation, were fully established by Femel. 
 
 Now, giving full weight to the fact that the virulence of a disease 
 may be greatest at its first invasion, but remembering that there is noth- 
 ing in the history of syphilis that would lead us to suppose it ever was, 
 or indeed could be infectious, but only contagious, or communicated 
 by direct contact from person to person; remembering also the special 
 circumstances under which, in this disease, that contagion is imparted, 
 the rapidity of its spread all over Europe is a significant illustration of 
 the fearful immorality of the times. If contemporary authors are to be 
 trusted, there was not a class, married or unmarried, clergy or kily, 
 from the holy father, Leo X., to the beggar by the vyayside, free from it 
 It swept over Europe, not as Asiatic cholera did, running along the 
 great lines of trade, and leaving extensive tracts untouched, settling 
 upon and devastating great cities here and there, while others had an 
 immunity. The march of syphilis was equable, unbroken, universal, 
 making good its ground from its point of appearance in the southwest, 
 steadily and swiftly taking possession of the entire Continent, and of- 
 fering an open manifestation and measure of the secret wickedness of 
 society. 
 
 If thus the sins man practices in privacy became suddenly and acci- 
 dentally exposed, that exposure showing how weak is the control that 
 any system can exercise over human passions, we are brought to the 
 same melancholy conclusion when we turn to those crimes that may be 
 ana by the usages perpetrated in the face of day. The usages of war in the 
 of war. pJyU Contests of the fifteenth century, or in the religious 
 
 conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth, are perfectly appalling; the 
 annals of those evil days are full of wanton and objectless barbarities, 
 
CONDITION OF THE LOWER ORDEES. 497 
 
 refusal of quarter, murder in cold blood, killing of peasants. Invading 
 -armies burnt and destroyed every thing in their way ; the taking of plun- 
 der and ransom of prisoners were recognized sources of wealth. Pros- 
 perous countries were made " a sea of fire ;" the horrible atrocities of the 
 Spaniards in America were rivaled by those practiced in Europe ; de- 
 liberate directions were given to make whole tracts "a desert." At- 
 tempts had been made to introduce some amelioration into warfare again 
 and again, either by forbidding hostilities at certain times, as was the 
 object of the "truces of God," repeatedly enforced by ecclesiastical au- 
 thority, or by establishing between the combatants themselves those 
 courtesies which are at once the chief grace and glory of chivalry ; but, 
 to judge by the result as offered, even so late as the eighteenth cent]jry, 
 those attempts must be regarded as having proved altogether abortive. 
 England, at the close of the Age of Faith, had for long been a chief 
 pecuniary tributary to Italy, the source from which large Backward condi- 
 revenues had been drawn, the fruitful field in which herds """of England, 
 of Italian ecclesiastics had been pastured. A wonderful change was im- 
 pending. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the island was far 
 more backward intellectually and politically than is commonly supposed. 
 Its population hardly reached five millions, and was stationary at that 
 point, not so much because of the effects of civil and foreign war as 
 merely through the operation of ordinary economical causes. There 
 was no reason to call more men into existence. It was regarded as good 
 statesmanship to maintain the population at a constant standard. The 
 municipal policy corresponded to the national ; it was not so much ad- 
 vanced as that contemporaneously existing in Peru. Swarms of idle 
 ecclesiastics had set such a pernicious example that the indisposition 
 among common people to work had become quite a formidable difii- 
 culty. In every village there were stocks for the punish- Apparent aedine 
 ment of "valiant beggars," as they were termed. By the »'''« prosperity. 
 act of 1531, vagrants " whole and mighty in body" caught begging for 
 the first time, might be whipped at the cart-tail ; the second time their 
 ears were to be slit; by the act of 1536, if caught the third time, they 
 were to be put to death. In all directions large towns were falling into 
 decay, a misfortune popularly attributed to the laziness of the lower 
 orders, but in reality due to causes of a very different kind. Hitherto 
 land had been the representative of authority and the source of power. 
 Society had been organized upon that imperfect basis ; a descending 
 scale of landed proprietors had been established, and in that system 
 every man had a place assigned to- him, just as in Peru, though less 
 perfectly. It was a system of organized labor, the possession of land 
 being a trust, nOt a property. But now commerce' was beginning to 
 disturb the foundations on which all these arrangements had beeh sus- 
 tained, and to compel a new distribution of population ; trading compa- 
 
 II 
 
498 CONDITION OF THE CLERGY, 
 
 nies were being established ; men were unsettled by the rumors or real- 
 ities of immense fortunes rapidly gained in foreign adventure. Mari- 
 time enterprise was thus not only dislocating society, but even destroy- 
 ing its spirit, substituting self-interest for loyalty. A nation so iUitferate 
 that many of its peers in Parliament could neither read nor write, was 
 hardly able to trace the troubles befalling it to their proper source; 
 It is imputed "w^itli one voice it imputed them to the bad example and short- 
 to the clergy, comiugs of the clergy. Long before Henry YIII., England 
 was ready for the suppression of the monasteries. She regarded them 
 as the very hot-beds of her cArils. There were incessant complaints 
 against the clergy for their scandalous lusts, for personal impurities 
 sucji as in modern times we do not allude to, for their holding of livings 
 in plurality, for their extortion of exorbitant profits, and neglect in the 
 Causes of irritation dlschargc of their dutv. In the public opinion, to so great 
 
 of tSe laity against . . i j ,i ■ vx- fl. j. -J i 
 
 the clergy. an cxtcut had these immoralities gone that it was opemy 
 
 asserted that there were one hundred thousand women in England made 
 dissolute by the clergy. It was well known that brothels were kept in 
 London for their use. It was affirmed that the confessional was shame- 
 fully abused, and, through it, advantage taken of females ; that the vilest 
 crime in an ecclesiastic might be commuted for money, six shillings 
 and eightpence being sufficient in the case of mortal sin. Besides these 
 general causes of complaint, there were some which, though of a minor, 
 were not of a less irritating kind ; such, for instance, as the mortuaiy, 
 soul-shot, or corpse present, a claim' for the last dress worn by persons 
 brought to a priest for burial, or some exaggerated commutation thereof. 
 That such was the demoralized condition of the English Church, and 
 such its iniquitous relations to the people, we have the most unimpeach- 
 able evidence, under circumstances of an imposing and solemn charac- 
 Accusation against tcr. The House of Commous brought an accusation 
 
 the clergy by the . _ _ in i i • ,., . -n t 
 
 House of Commons, agaiust the clcrgy before the king. When Parliament 
 met A.D. 1529, that House, as its very first act, declared to the sovereign 
 that sedition and heresy were pervading the land, and that it had be- 
 come absolutely necessary to apply a corrective. It affirmed that the 
 troubles into which the realm had fallen were attributable to the clergy; 
 that the chief foundation, occasion, and cause thereof was the parallel 
 jurisdiction of the Church and State; that the incompatible legislative 
 authority of convocation lay at the bottom of the mischief Among 
 other specific points it alleged the following ; That the houses of convo- 
 cation made laws without the royal assent, and without the consent or 
 even the knowledge of the people; that such laws were never published 
 in the English language, and that, nevertheless, men were daily punish- 
 ed under them without ever having had an opportunity to eschew the - 
 penalties; that the demoralisation extended from the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury down to the lowest priest, that dignitary having tampered 
 
ACCUSATION OF PAELIAMBNT AGAINST THEM. 499 
 
 » 
 
 with the dispatch of justice in his<3ourt of Arches; that parsons, vicars, 
 priests, and curates were in the habit of denying the administration of 
 the sacraments save upon the payment of money ; that poor men were 
 harassed without any legal cause in the spiritual courts for the mere 
 purpose of extortion, and exorbitant fees were exacted from them with- 
 out cause ; that the probate of wills was denied except on the gratifica- 
 tion of the appetite of prelates and ordinaries for money; that the high 
 ecclesiastics extorted large sums for the induction of persons into bene- 
 fices, and that they did daily confer benefices on " young folk," their 
 nephews and relatives, being minors, for the purpose of detaining the 
 fruits and profits in their own hands ; that the bishops illegally impris* 
 oned, sometimes for a year or more, persons in their jails, without in- 
 forming them of the caiase of their imprisonment or the name of their 
 accuser; that simple, unlearned men, and even " well-witted" ones, were 
 entrapped by subtle questions into heresy in the ecclesiastical courts, 
 and punishment procured against them. 
 
 These are serious charges ; they imply that the Church had degen- 
 erated into a contrivance for the extortion of money. The House of 
 Commons petitioned the king to make such laws as should furnish a 
 remedy. The king submitted the petition to the bishops, and required 
 of them an answer. 
 
 In that answer the ecclesiastical manner of thought is very striking. 
 The bishops insist that the laws of the realm shall give way EepiyoftheMBh. 
 to the canon law, or, if incompatible, shall be altered so as sation. 
 to suit it ; they identify attacks on themselves with those on the doc- 
 trine of the Church, a time-honored and well-tried device ; they affirm 
 that they have no kind of enmity against the laymen, " their ghostly 
 children," but only against the pestilent poison of heresy ; that their au- 
 thority for making laws is grounded on the Scriptures, to which the laws 
 of the realm must be made to conform ; that they can not conscientious, 
 ly permit the king's consent to the laws, since that would be to put him 
 in the stead of God, under whose inspiration they 'are made ; that, as to 
 troubling poor men, it is the Holy Ghost who inspireth them to acts 
 tending to the wealth of his elect folk, that, if any ecclesiastic hath of- 
 fended in this respect, though " in multis offendimus omnes," as St. 
 James hath it, let him bear his own fault, and let not the whole Church 
 be blamed ; that the Protestants, their antagonists, are lewd, idle fel- 
 lows, who have embraced the abominable opinions recently sprung up 
 in Germany ; that there are many advantages in commuting Church 
 penances and censures for money ; that tithes are a divine institution, 
 and that debts of money owing to God may be recovered after one hund- 
 red or seven hundred years of non-payment, since God can never lose 
 his rights thereto ; that, however, it is not well to collect a tithe twice 
 over; that priests may lawfully engage in secular occupations of a cer- 
 
500 COMPULSOBY SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 tain kind ; that the punishments inflicted on the laymen have been for 
 the health of their souls, and that, generally, the saints may claim pow- 
 ers to which common men are not entitled. 
 
 A fierce struggle between the Commons and the bishops ensued ;'but 
 The House paaaca' the House was firm, and passed several bills, and among 
 punelcF ""' them the Clergy Discipline Act. The eifect was to cut 
 down ecclesiastical incomes, probate and legacy duties were defined, 
 mortuaries were curtailed, extortionate fees for burial terminated, cler- 
 gymen were forbidden to engage in farming, tanning, brewing, or to 
 buy: merchandise for the purpose of selling it again. It was made un- 
 lawful any longer to hold eight or nine benefices, or to purchase dis- 
 pensations for not doing duty ; they were compelled to reside in the 
 parishes for the care of which they were paid, under penalty of £10 a 
 month ; and it was made a high penal offense to obtain dispensations 
 from any of the provisions of this act from Rome. 
 
 Nothing could be more significant of the position of the parties than 
 the high-toned, the conservative moderation of these acts. The bishops 
 The Church did not yield, however, without a struggle. In all directions 
 to submit, from the pulpits arose a cry of "atheism," "lack of faith," 
 " heresy." But the House resolutely stood to its ground. Still more, 
 it sent its speaker to the king with a complaint against the Bishop of 
 Eochester, who had dared to stigmatize it as "infidel." The bishop 
 was compelled to equivocate and apologize. 
 
 The English nation and their king were thus together in the suppres- 
 TOstatolb ^^°^ of the monasteries; they were together in the enforcing 
 his people, of ecclcsiastical reforms. It was nothing but this harmony 
 which so quickly brought the clergy to reason, and induced them, in 
 1532, to anticipate both Parliament and the people in actually offering 
 to separate themselves from Eome. In the next year the king had de- 
 stroyed the vast power which in so many centuries had gathered round 
 ecclesiastical institutions, and had forced the clergy into a fitting subor- 
 dination. Henceforth there was no prospect that they would monopo- 
 lize all the influential and lucrative places in the realm ; henceforth, 
 year by year, with many vicissitudes and changes, their power contm- 
 ued to decline. Their special pursuit, theology, was separated more and 
 more perfectly from politics. In the House of Lords, of which they had 
 once constituted one half, they became a mere shadow. 
 
 Henry VIII. can not, therefore, be properly considered as the author 
 of the downfall of ecclesiasticism in England^ though he was the instru- 
 ment by which it was ostensibly accomplished. The derisive insinua- 
 tion that the Gospel light had flashed upon liim from Anna Boleyn's 
 eyes was far from expressing all the truth. The nullity of papal disoi- 
 i^g'?f°tti°e'na'. P^^"^^^' excommunicatious, interdicts, penances, proved that 
 tion changed, the old touc of thought was utterly decayed. This oblivion 
 
THE EOADS, LOCOMOTIOK, AND MAILS. 601 
 
 of old emotions, this obsoleteness of old things, was by no means con- 
 fined to England. On the Continent the attacks of Erasmus on the 
 monks were every where received with applause. In 1527 one printer 
 issued an edition of 24,000 copies of the Colloquies of Erasmus, and 
 actually sold them all. He understood the signs of the times. 
 
 From this digression on parties and policy in England, let us again 
 return to special details, descending for that purpose to the close of the 
 seventeenth century. For a long time London had been sute of England 
 the most populous capital in Europe ; yet it was dirty, ill teveoSh Un! 
 built, without sanitary provisions. The deaths were one in ^"■^■ 
 twenty-three each year ; now, in a much more crowded population, they 
 are not one in forty. Much of the country was still heath, swamp, war- 
 ren. Almost within sight of the city was a tract twenty-five miles 
 round nearly in a state of nature ; there were but three houses ^a^ ^4^4^ „( 
 in it. Wild animals roamed here and there, very much as "" "oiitry. 
 they do in our "Western territories. It is incidentally mentioned that 
 Queen Anne, on a journey to Portsmouth, saw a herd of five hundred 
 red deer. With such small animals as the marten and badger, found 
 every where, there was still seen occasionally the wild bull. 
 
 Nothing more strikingly shows the social condition than the provis- 
 ions for locomotion. In the rainy seasons the roads were all Locomotion: 
 but impassable, justifying the epithet often applied to them of carriages. 
 being in a horrible state. Through such gullies, half filled with mud, 
 carriages were dragged, often by oxen, or, when horses were used, it 
 was as much a matter of necessity as in the city a matter of display to 
 drive half a dozen of them. If the country was open the track of the 
 road was easily mistaken. It was no uncommon thing for persons to 
 lose their way, and have to spend the night out in the air. Between 
 places of considerable importance the roads were sometimes very little 
 known, and such was the difficulty for wheeled carriages that a princi- 
 pal mode of transport was by pack-horses, of which passengers took ad- 
 vantage, stowing themselves away between the packs. We shall prob- 
 ably not dissent from their complaint that this method of traveling was 
 hot in summer and cold in winter. The usual charge for freight was 
 thirty cents per ton per mUe. Toward the close of the century what 
 were termed " flying coaches" were established ; they could move at the 
 rate of from thirty to fifty miles in a day. Many persons thought the 
 risk so great that it was a tempting of Providence to go in them. The 
 mail-bag was carried on horseback at about five miles an Tie mails- 
 hour. A penny-post had been established in the city, but °5'-P"st aMiked. 
 with much difficulty, for many long-headed men, who knew very well 
 what they were saying, had denounced it as an insidious " popish con- 
 trivance." 
 
 Only a few years before the period under consideration Parliament 
 
502 LIBRABIES, PEINTIITG-PBESSES, SOCIAL DISCIPLINE. 
 
 had regolvfid that " all pictures in the royail collection which contained 
 representations of Jesus or the Virgin Mother should be burnt; Greek 
 statues were delivered over to Puritan stone-masons to be made decent." 
 Lewfa Maggieton; A little earlier, Lewis Muggleton had given himself out as 
 hia dootrinea. ' ^-j^q 2ast and greatest of the prophets, having power to save 
 or damn whom he pleased. It had been revealed to him that God is 
 only six feet high, and the sun only four miles off._ The country be- 
 yond the Trent was still in a state of barbarism, and near the sources of 
 the Tyne there were people scarcely less savage than American Indians, 
 their " half-naked women chanting a wild measure, while the men, with 
 brandished dirks, danced a war-dance." 
 
 At the beginning of, the eighteenth century there were thirty-four 
 printing-presBea countics without a printer. The only press in England 
 
 and private li- i ^ i m -^-r ^ a • ti . 
 
 braries. , north 01 the Trent was at York. As to private Jibranes, 
 there were none deserving the name. "An esquire passed for a great 
 scholar if Hudibras, Baker's Chronicle, Tarleton's Jests, and the Seven 
 Champions of Christendom lay in his hall-window." It might be ex- 
 pected that the women were ignorant enough when very few men knew 
 how to write correctly or even intelligibly, and it had become unneces- 
 sary for clergymen to read the Scriptures in the original tongues. 
 
 Social discipline was very far from being of that kind which we call 
 Social diacipune; moral. The master whipped his apprentice, the pedagogue 
 ita barbarity. j^jg goj^olar, the husbaud his wife. Public punishments 
 partook of the general brutality. It was a day for the rabble when 
 some culprit was set in the pillory to be pelted with brickbats, rotten 
 eggs, and dead cats ; when women were fastened by the legs in the stocks 
 at the market-place, or a pilferer flogged through the town at the cart- 
 tail, a clampr not unfrequently arising unless the lash were laid on hard 
 enough " to make him howl." In punishments of higher offenders these 
 whippings were perfectly horrible; thus Titus Gates, after standing 
 twice in the pillory, was whipped, and, after an interval of two days, 
 whipped again. A virtuoso in these matters gives us the incredible in- 
 formation that he counted as many as seventeen hundred stripes admin- 
 istered. So far from the community being shocked at such an exhibi- 
 tion, they appeared to agree in the sentiment that, "since his face could 
 not be made to blush, it was well enough to try what could be done 
 with his back." Such a hardening of heart was in no little degree pro- 
 moted by the atrocious punishments of state offenders : thus, after the 
 decapitation of Montrose and Argyle, their heads decorated the top of 
 the Tolbooth ; and gentlemen, after the rising of Monmouth, were ad- 
 monished to be careful of their ways, by hanging in chains to their park 
 gate the corpse of a rebel to rot in the air. 
 
 To a debased public life private life corresponded. The houses of 
 the rural population were huts covered with straw-thatch ; their in-' 
 
PUBLIC MOEALITY. • 503 
 
 mates, if able to procure fresli meat once a week, were ijon- fnvate life in 
 
 ' ■*- i~il,li?i?'L different cmss- 
 
 sidered to be in prosperous circumstances. One halt ot tne es of society. 
 families in England could hardly do that. Children of six years old 
 were not unfrequently set to labor. The lord of the manor spent his 
 time in rustic pursuits; was not an unwilling associate of peddlers and 
 drovers ; knew how to ring a pig or shoe a horse ; his wife and daugh- 
 ters " stitched and spun, brewed gooseberry wine, cured marigolds, and 
 made the crust for the venison pasty." Hospitality was displayed in 
 immoderate eating, and drinking of beer, the guest not being considered 
 as having done justice to the occasion unless he had gone under the ta- 
 bl?. The dining-room was uncarpeted ; but then it was tinted with a 
 decoction of " soot and small beer.'' The chairs were rush-bottomed. 
 In London the houses were mostly of wood and plaster, the streets filthy 
 beyond expression. After nightfall a passenger went at his peril, for 
 chamber windows were opened and slop-pails unceremoniously emptied 
 down. There were no lamps in the streets until Master Heming estab- 
 lished his pubhc lanterns. As a necessary consequence, there were 
 plenty of shoplifters, highwaymen, and burglars. 
 
 As to the moral condition, it is fearfully expressed in the statement 
 that men not unfrequently were willing to sacrifice their country for 
 their religion. Hardly any personage died who was not General immorai- 
 popularly suspected to have been made away with by poi- "^ ^^ brutauty. 
 son, an indication of the morality generally supposed to prevail among 
 the higher classes. If such was the state of society in its serious aspect, 
 it was no better in its lighter. We can scarcely credit the impurity and 
 immodesty of the theatrical exhibitions. What is said about them 
 would be beyond belief if we did not remember that they were the 
 amusements of a community whose ideas of female modesty and female 
 sentiment were altogether different from ours. Indecent jests were put 
 into the mouths of lively actresses, and the dancing was not altogether 
 of a kind to meet our approval. The rural clergy could do but little 
 to withstand this flood of immorality. Their social position for the last 
 hundred years had been rapidly declining ; for, though the Church pos- 
 sessed among her dignitaries great writers and great preachers, her low- 
 er orders, partly through the political troubles that had be- Degraded condi- 
 fallen the state, but chiefly in consequence of sectarian bit- ci™^.' "^"^^ 
 temess, had been reduced to a truly menial condition. It was the busi- 
 ness of the rich man's chaplain to add dignity to the dinner-table by 
 saying grace " in full canonicals," but he was also intended to be a butt 
 for the mirth of the company. ' ' The young Levite, " such was the phrase 
 then in use, "might fill himself with the corned beef and the carrots, but 
 as soon as the tarts and cheese-cakes made their appearance he quitted 
 his seat, and stood aloof tOLhe was summoned to return thanks for the 
 repast," the daintiest part of which he had not tasted. If need arose he 
 
504 ADMINISTRATION OF LAW. 
 
 could curry a horse, " carry a parcel ten miles," or " oast up the farrier's 
 bill." The " wages" of a parish priest were at starvation-point. The 
 social degradation of the ecclesiastic is well illustrated by an order of 
 Queen Elizabeth, that no clergyman should presume to marry a servant- 
 girl without the consent of her master or mistress. 
 
 The clergy, however, had not fallen into this condition without in a 
 measure deserving it. Their time had been too much occupied in per- 
 secuting Puritans and other sectaries, with whom they would have glad- 
 ly dealt in the same manner as they had dealt with the Jews, who, from 
 the thirteenth century till Cromwell, were altogether interdicted, from 
 public worship. The University of Oxford had ordered the political 
 Burning of books works of Buchauan, Milton, and Baxter to be publicly burnt 
 
 and persecution , , zt i i -i mi ■ -i i t t-» 
 
 of preachers. m the court 01 the schools. The immortal vagabond. Ban- 
 yan, had been committed to jail for preaching out of his head the way 
 of salvation to the common people, and had remained there twelve 
 years, the stout old man refusing to give his promise not to offend in 
 that manner again. The great doctrine inculcated from the pulpit was 
 submission to temporal power. Men were taught that rebellion is a sin 
 not less deadly than witchcraft. On a community thirsting after the 
 waters of life were still inflicted wearisome sermons respecting "the 
 wearing of surplices, position at the Eucharist, or the sign of the cross at 
 The Puritan's baptism," things that were a stench in the nostrils of the lank- 
 thodoxy. haired Puritan, who, with his hands clasped on his bosom, his 
 face corrugated with religious astringency, the whites of his eyes turned 
 upward to heaven, rocking himself alternately on his heels and the tips 
 of his toes, delivered, in a savory prayer uttered through his nose, all 
 such abominations of the Babylonish harlot to the Devil, whose affairs 
 they were. 
 
 In administering the law, whether in relation to political or relig- 
 Brutai admin- ious offcuses, there was an incredible atrocitv. In London, 
 
 istrationof the , ,- , .- _ y , ' 
 
 lair. the crazy old bridge over the Thames was decorated with 
 
 grinning and mouldering heads of criminals,' under an idea that these 
 ghastly spectacles would fortify the common people in their resolves to 
 act according to law. The toleration of the times may be understood 
 from a law enacted by the Scotch Parliament, May 8, 1685, that who- 
 ever preached or heard in a conventicle should be punished with death 
 and the confiscation of his goods. That such an infamous spirit did not 
 content itself with mere dead-letter laws there is too much practical ev- 
 idence to permit any one to doubt. A silly laboring man, who had 
 taken it into his head that he could not conscientiously attend the Epis- 
 copal worship, was seized by a troop of soldiers, "rapidly examined, 
 convicted of non-conformity, and sentenced to death in the presence of 
 his wife, who led one little child by the hand, and it was easy to see was 
 about to give birth to another. He was shot before her face, the wid- 
 
PUBLIC PUKISHMENTS. 505 
 
 ow crying out in her agony, 'Well, sir, well, the day of reckoning will 
 come.' " Shrieking Scotch Covenanters were submitted to torture by 
 crushing their knees flat in the boot ; women were tied to stakes on the 
 sea-sands and drowned by the slowly advancing tide because they would 
 not attend Episcopal worship, or branded on their cheeks and then ship- 
 ped to America; gallant but wounded soldiers were hung in Scotland 
 for fear they should die before they could be got to England. In the 
 troubles connected with Monmouth's rising, in one county alone, Somer- 
 setshire, two hundred and thirty-three persons were hanged, drawn, and 
 quartered, to say nothing of military executions, for the soldiers amused 
 themselves by hanging a culprit for each toast they drank, and making 
 the drums and fifes play, as they said, to his dancing. It is needless to 
 recall such incidents as the ferocity of Kirk's lambs, for such was the 
 name popularly given to the soldiers of that colonel, in allusion to the 
 Paschal lamb they bore on their flag ; or the story of Tom Boilman, 
 so nicknamed from having been compelled by those veterans to seethe 
 the remains of his quartered friends in melted pitch. Women, for such 
 idle words as women are always using, were sentenced to be whipped at 
 the cart's-tail through every market town in Dorset; a lad named Tutch- 
 ing condemned to be flogged once a fortnight for seven years. Eight 
 hundred and forty-one human beings judicially condemned to transport- 
 ation to the West India islands, and suffering all the horrible pains of a 
 slave-ship in the middle passage, " were never suffered to go on deck ;" 
 in the holds below, " all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease, and 
 death." One fifth of them were thrown overboard to the sharks be- 
 fore they reached their destination, and the rest obliged to be fattened 
 before they could be offered in the market to the Jamaica planters. 
 The court ladies, and even the Queen of England herself, were so utter- 
 ly forgetful of womanly mercy and common humanity as to join in this 
 infernal traffic. That princess requested that a hundred of the convicts 
 should be given to her. " The profit which she cleared on the cargo, 
 after jnaking a large allowance for those who died of hunger and fever 
 during the passage, can not be estimated at less*than a thousand guin- 
 eas." 
 
 It remains to add a few words respecting the state of literature. This, 
 at the end of the seventeenth century, had become indescrib- Profugate con- 
 ably profligate, and, since the art of reading was by no means atu™ °' ""*'' 
 generally cultivated, the. most ready method of literary communication 
 was through theatrical representation. It was for that reason that play- 
 writing was the best means of literary remuneration, if we except the 
 profit derived from the practice which, to some extent, survives, though 
 its disgraceful motive has ceased, of dedicating books to rich men for 
 the sake of the fee they would give. It is said that books have actual- 
 ly been printed in consideration of the profits of the dedication. Espe- 
 
506 THE THEATRE. 
 
 cially in the composition of plays was it judged expedient to minister to 
 the depraved public taste by indecent expressions, or aillusions broad 
 and sly. The playwright was at the mercy of an audience who were 
 critical on that point, and in a position, if he should not come up to the 
 required standard, to damn him and his work in an instant. FroHj 
 these remarks must be excepted the writings of Milton, which are no- 
 where stained by such a blemish. And yet posterity will perhaps with 
 Muton's Para- t^uth asscrt that Paradise Lost has wrought more intellectual 
 diae Lost. g^H than even its base contemporaries, since it has familiarized 
 educated minds with images which, though in one sense sublime, in an- 
 other are most unworthy, and has taught the public a dreadful materi- 
 alization of the great and invisible God. A Manichean composition in 
 reality, it was mistaken for a Christian poem. 
 
 The progress of English literature not only offers striking proofe of 
 The Engush ^^^ manner in which it was affected by theatrical representa- 
 theatre. tious, but also fumishcs an interesting illustration of that nec- 
 essary course through which intellectual development must pass. It is 
 dif&cult for us, who live in a reading community, to comprehend the in- 
 fluence once exercised by the pulpit and the stage in the instruction of 
 a non-reading people. As late as the sixteenth century they were the 
 only means of mental access to the public, and we should find, if we 
 were to enter on a detailed examination of either one or the other, that 
 they furnish a vivid reflection of the popular intellectual condition. 
 Leaving to others such interesting researches into the comparative anat- 
 omy of the English pulpit, I may, for a moment, direct attention to the- 
 atrical exhibitions. 
 
 There are three obvious phases through which the drama has passed, 
 Ka succeaaive Corresponding to as many phases in the process of intellec- 
 phaaea. ^^^ development. These are respectively the miracle play, 
 corresponding to the stage of childhood; the moral, correspondiflgi to 
 that of youth ; the real, corresponding to that of manhood. In them re- 
 spectively the supernatural, the theological, the positive predominates. 
 The first went out of feshion soon after the middle of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, the second continued for about one hundred and fifty years, the 
 third still remains. By the miracle play is understood a representation 
 of Scripture incidents, enacted, however, without any regard to the prob- 
 abilities of time, place, or action; such subjects as the Creation, the fall 
 of man, the Deluge, being considered as suitable, and in these scenes, 
 without any concern for chronology, other personages, as the pope or 
 Mohammed, being introduced, or the Virgin Mary wearing a French 
 hood, or Yirgil worshiping the Savior. Our forefathers were not at all 
 critical historians; they indulged without stint in a highly pleasing 
 credulity. They found no difficulty in admitting that Mohammed was 
 originally a cardinal, who turned heretic out of spite because he was not 
 
MIRACLE PLATS. 507 
 
 elected pope ; that, since the taking of the true cross by the Turks, all 
 Christian children have twenty-two. instead of thirty-two teeth, as was 
 the case before that event; and that men have one rib less than women, 
 answering to that taken from Adam. The moral play personifies vir- 
 tues, vices, passions, goodness, courage, honesty, love. The real play in- 
 troduces human actors, with a plot free from the supernatural, and prob- 
 ability is outraged as little as possible. Its excellency consists in the 
 perfect manner in which it delineates human character and action. 
 
 The miracle play was originally introduced by the Church, the first 
 dramas of the kind, it is said, having been composed by Greg- Miracie piays, 
 ory Nazianzen. They were brought from Constantinople by ""^ °°'""f • 
 the Crusaders; the Byzantines were always infatuated with theatrical 
 shows. The parts of these plays were often enacted by ecclesiastics, 
 and not unfrequently the representations took place at the abbey gate. 
 So highly did the Italian authorities prize the influence of these exhi- 
 bitions on the vulgar, that the pope granted a thousand days of pardon 
 to any person who should submit to the pleasant penance of attending 
 them. All the arguments that had been used in behalf of picture-wor- 
 ship were appUcable to these plays ; even the Passion, Eesurrection, and 
 Ascension were represented. Over illiterate minds a coarse but conge- 
 nial influence was obtained ; a recollection, though not an understanding 
 of sacred things. In the play of "the Fall of Lucifer," that personage 
 was introduced, according to the vulgar acceptation, with horns, and tail, 
 and cloven hoof; his beard, however, was red, our forefathers having 
 apparently indulged in a singular antipathy against hair of that color. 
 There still remain accounts of the expenses incurred on some of these 
 occasions, the coarse quaintness of which is not only amusing, but also 
 shows the debased ideas of the times. For instance, in " Mysteries," 
 enacted at Coventry, are such entries as "paid for a pair of gloves for 
 God ;" " paid for gilding God's coat ;" " dyvers necessaries for the trim- 
 mynge of the Father of Heaven." In the play of the " Shepherds" 
 there is provision for green cheese and Halton ale, a suitable recruit- 
 ment after their long journey to the birthplace of our Savior. "Payd 
 to the players .for rehearsal: imprimis, to God, iis. viiic?./ to Pilate his 
 wife, iis.; item, for keeping fyer at hell's mouth, iiid" A'strict attention 
 to chronology is not exacted ; Herod swears by Mohammed, and prom- 
 ises one of his councilors to make him pope. Noah's wife, who, it ap- 
 pears, was a termagant, swears by the Virgin Mary that she will not go 
 into the ark, and, indeed, is only constrained so to do by a sound cud- 
 geling administered by the patriarch, the rustic justice of the audience 
 being particularly directed to the point that such a flogging should not 
 be given with a stick thicker than her husband's thumb. The senti- 
 ment of modesty seems not to have been very exacting, since in the 
 play of " the Fall of Man" Adam and Eve appear entirely naked ; one 
 
508 MIRACLE PLAYS AND EEAL PLAYS. 
 
 of the chief incidents is the adjustment of the fig-leaves. Many such 
 circumstances might be related, impressing us perhaps with an idea of 
 the obscenity and profanity of the times. But this would scarcely be a 
 just conclusion. As the social state improved, we begin to find objec- 
 tions raised by the more thoughtful ecclesiastics, who refused to lend 
 the holy vestments for such purposes, and at last succeeded in exclud- 
 ing these exhibitions from consecrated places. After dwindling dowm 
 by degrees, these plays lingered in the booths at fairs or on market-daySj 
 the Church having resigned them to the guilds of different trades, and 
 these, in the end, giving them up to the mountebank. And so they 
 died. Their history is the outward and visible sign of a popular inteL 
 lectual condition in process of passing away. 
 
 The mystery and miracle plays were succeeded by the moral play. 
 Moral plays; ^^ ^^^ been thought by some, who have studied the history 
 their nature! ^f ^]^g English theatre, that these plays were the result of the 
 Eeformation, with the activity of which movement their popularity 
 was coincident. But perhaps the reader who is impressed with the 
 principle of that definite order of social advancement so frequently refer- 
 red to in this book will agree with me that this relation of cause and ef- 
 fect can hardly be sustained, and that devotional exercises and popular 
 recreations are in common affected by antecedent conditions. Of the 
 moral play, a very characteristic example still remains under the title of 
 " Everyman." It often delineates personification and allegory with very 
 considerable power. This short phase of our theatrical career deserves 
 a far closer attention than it has hitherto obtained, for it has left an in- 
 delible impression on our literature. I think that it is to this, in its de- 
 clining days, that we are indebted for much of the machinery of Bun- 
 yan's Pilgrim's Progress. Whoever will compare that work with such 
 plays as "Everyman" and "Lusty Juventus," can not fail to be struck 
 with their resemblances. Such personages as " Good Counsel," "Abom- 
 inable Living," " Hypocrasie," in the play, are of the same family as 
 those in the Progress. The stout Protestantism of both is at once edi- 
 fying and amusing. An utter contempt for "holy stocks and holy 
 stones, holy clouts and holy bones," as the play has it, animates them 
 all. And it can hardly be doubted that the immortal tinker, in the car- 
 nal days when he played at tipcat and romped with the girls on the vil- 
 lage green at Elstow, indulged himself in the edification of witnessing 
 these dramatic representations. 
 
 As to the passage from this dramatic phase to the real, in which the 
 Seal plays, charactcr and actions of man are portrayed, to the exclusion 
 shakspeare. ^f ^^^ Supernatural, it is only necessary to allude with brevity 
 — indeed, it is only necessary to recall one name, and that one name is 
 Shakspeare. He stands, in his relations to English literature, in the 
 same position that the great Greek sculptors stood with respect to an- 
 
DISSEMINATION OF INTELLIOENCE. — NEWSPAPERS. 509 
 
 cient art, embodying conceptions of humanity in its various attributes 
 •witb indescribable skill, and with an exquisite agreement to nature. 
 
 Not without significance is it that we iind mystery in the pulpit and 
 mystery on the stage. They appertain to social infancy. Thcpuipuana 
 Such dramas as those I have alluded to, and many others "'^ "'"^c 
 that, if space had permitted, might have been quoted, were in unison 
 with the times. The abbeys were boasting of such treasures as the 
 French hood of the Virgin, " her smocke or shifte," the manger in which 
 Christ was laid, the spear which pierced his side, the crown of thorns. 
 The transition from this to the following stage is not without its polit- 
 ical attendants, the prohibition of interludes containing any thing against 
 the Church of Eome, the royal proclamation against preaching out of 
 one's own brain, the appearance of the Puritan upon the national stage, 
 an increasing, acerbity of habit and sanctimoniousness of demeanor. 
 
 With peculiar facility we may therefore, through an examination of 
 the state of the drama, determine national mental condition. The same 
 may be done by a like examination of the state of the pulpit. Who- 
 ever will take the trouble to compare the results together can not fail 
 to observe how remarkably they correspond. 
 
 Such was the state of the literature of amusement ; as to political lit- 
 erature, even at the close of the period we are considering, it could not 
 be expected to flourish after the judges had declared that no man could 
 publish political news except he had been duly authorized by the crown. 
 Newspapers were, however, beginning to be periodically is- Newspapers and 
 sued, and, if occasion called for it, broadsides, as they were ^ff'^-houses. 
 termed, were added. In addition, newsletters were written by enter- 
 prising individuals in the metropolis, and sent to rich persons who sub- 
 scribed for them ; they then circulated from family to family, and doubt- 
 less enjoyed a privilege which has not descended to their printed con- 
 temporary, the newspaper, of never becoming stale. Their authors com- 
 piled them from materials picked up in the gossip of the coffee-houses. 
 The coffee-houses, in a non-reading community, were quite an important 
 political as well as social institution. They were of every kind, pre- 
 latical, popish, Puritan, scientific, literary. Whig, Tory. Whatever a 
 man's notions might be, he could find in London, in a double sense, a 
 coffee-house to his taste. In towns of considerable importance the lit- 
 erary demand was insignificant; thus it is said that the father of Dr. 
 Johnson, the lexicographer, peddled books from town to town, and was 
 accustomed to open a stall in Birmingham on market-days, and it is 
 added that this supply of literature was equal to the demand. 
 
 The liberty of the press has been of slow growth. Scarcely had 
 printing been invented when it was found necessary every Liberty of the 
 where to place it under some restraint, as was, for instance, sSed?'''^ 
 done by Eome in her Index Expurgatorius of prohibited books, and the 
 
510 LIBERTY OF THE PRESS. 
 
 putting of printers who had offended under the ban ; the action of the 
 University of Paris, alluded to (p. 472), was essentially of the same kind. 
 In England, at first, the press was subjected to the common law ; the 
 crown judges themselves determined the offense, and could punish the 
 offender with fine, imprisonment, or even death. Within the last cen» 
 tury this power of determination has been taken from them, and a jury- 
 must decide, not only on the fact, but also on the character of the pub- 
 Its present lication, whether libelous, seditious, or otherwise offensive. The 
 fltate. pj,ggg ^]^yg (>a,me to be a reflector of public opinion, casting Ught 
 back upon the public ; yet, as with other reflectors, a portion of the illu- 
 minating power is lost. The restraints under which it is laid are due, 
 not so much to the fear that liberty would degenerate into license, for 
 public opinion would soon correct that; they are rather connected with 
 the necessities of the social state. 
 
 Whoever will examine the condition of England at successive periods 
 Contrast between duriug hcr passage through the Age of Faith will see how 
 SgS^of piith'Sia slow was her progress, and will, perhaps, be surprised to 
 Reason. g^^ a,t its closc how Small was her advance. The ideas that 
 
 had served her for so many centuries as a guide had rather obstructed 
 than facilitated her way. But whoever will consider what she has done 
 since she fairly entered on her Age of Eeason will remark a wonderful 
 contrast. There has not been a progress in physical conditions only — 
 a securing of better food, better clothing, better shelter, swifter locomo- 
 tion, the procurement of individual happiness, an extension of the term 
 of life. There has been a great moral advancement. Such atrocities as 
 those mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs are now impossible, and 
 so unlike our own manners that doubtless we read of them at first with 
 incredulity, and with dif&culty are brought to believe that these are the 
 things our ancestors did. What a difference, between the dilatoriness 
 of the past, its objectless exertions, its unsatisfactory end, and the en- 
 ergy, the well-directed intentions of the present age, which have already 
 yielded results like the prodigies of romance. 
 
THE AGE OF EEASON IN EUEOPE. 511 
 
 CHAPTEE XXn. 
 
 THE EUEOPEAN AGE OF REASON. 
 
 REJECTION or AOTHOEITT AND TRADITION, AND ADOPTION OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH.— DISCOT- 
 EET OF THE TKITE POSITION OF THE EARTH IN THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 Eccleiiastical Attempt to enforce the Geocentric Doctrine that the Earth is the Centre of 
 the Universe, and the most important Body in it. 
 
 The Heliocentric Doctrine that the Sun is the Centre of the Solar Sy stein, and the Earth a 
 small Planet, comes gradually into Prominence. 
 
 Struggle between- the Ecclesiastical and Astronomical Parties. — Activity of the Inquisition. — 
 Burning of Bruno. — Imprisonment of Galileo. 
 
 Invention of the Telescope. — Complete Overthrow of the Ecclesiastical Idea. — Mse of 
 Physical Astronomy. — ^Newton. — Rapidand resistless Bevehpmeni of all Branches of Nat- 
 ural Philosophy. 
 
 Final Establishment of the Doctrine that the Universe is under the Dominion of riailmmatical, 
 and, therefore, necessary Laws, 
 
 Progress of Man from Anthropocentric Ideas to the Discovery of his true Portion and Insignif- 
 icance in the Universe. 
 
 The Age of Eeason in Europe was ushered in by an astronomical 
 controversy. 
 
 Is tlie earth the greatest and most nohle body in the universe, round 
 which, as an immovable centre, the sun, and the various plan- ^n astronom- 
 ets, and stars revolve, ministering by their light and other '"^ prowem. 
 qualities to the wants and pleasures of man, or is it an insignificant orb 
 — a mere point — submissively revolving, among a crowd of compeers 
 and superiors, around a central sun ? The former of these views was 
 authoritatively asserted by the Church ; the latter, timidly suggested by 
 a few thoughtful and religious men at first, in the end gathered strength 
 and carried the day. 
 
 Behind this physical question — a mere scientific problem — ^lay some- 
 thing of the utmost importance — ^the position of man in the n^ important 
 universe. The conflict broke 6ut upon an ostensible issue, <=™seiiuences. 
 but every one saw what was the real point in the dispute. 
 
 In the history of the Age of Eeason in Europe, which is to fill the re- 
 maining pages of this book, I am constrained to commence with Treatment 
 this astronomical controversy, and have therefore been led by of selsoa 
 that circumstance to complete the survey of the entire period from the 
 same, that is, the scientific point of view. Many different modes of 
 treating it spontaneously present themselves; but so vast are the sub- 
 jects to be brought under consideration, so numerous their connections, 
 and so limited the space at my disposal, that I must give the preference 
 
512 THE ASTRONOMICAL CONTROVEBSY. 
 
 to one which, with sufficient copiousness, offers also precision. Who- 
 ever will examine the progress of European intellectual advancement 
 thus far manifested will find that it has concern^ itself with three great 
 questions : 1. The ascertainment of the position of the earth in the uni- 
 verse ; 2. The history of the earth in time ; 3. The position of man among 
 living beings. Under this last is ranged all that he has done in scien- 
 tific discovery, and all those inventions which are the characteristics of 
 the present industrial age. 
 
 Where am I ? What am I ? we may imagine to have been the first ex- 
 clamations of the first man awakening to conscious existence. Here, in 
 our Age of Eeason, we have been dealing with the same thoughts. They 
 are the same which, as we have seen, occupied Greek intellectual life. 
 
 When Halley's comet appeared in 1456, it was described by those 
 Roman astro- ^ho saw it as an object of " unheard-of magnitude ;" its tail, 
 nomicai Ideas, ^jiicj^ shook down "diseascs, pestilence, and war" upon earth, 
 reached over a third part of the heavens. It was considered as connect- 
 ed with the progress of Mohammed II., who had just then taken Con- 
 stantinople. It struck terror into all people. From his seat, invisible 
 to it, in Italy, the sovereign pontiff, Calixtus III., issued his ecclesiasti- 
 cal fulminations ; but the comet in the heavens, like the sultan on the 
 earth, pursued' its course undeterred. In vain were all the bells in Eu. 
 rope ordered to be rung to scare it away ; in vain was it anathematized ; 
 in vain were prayers put up in all directions to stop it. True to its 
 time, it punctually returns from the abysses of space, uninfluenced by 
 any thing save agencies of a material kind. A signal lesson for the 
 meditations of every religious man. 
 
 Among the clergy there w;ere, however, some who had more correct 
 More correct cosmic ideas than those of Calixtus. A century before Coper- 
 iome' o?tto nicus. Cardinal de Cusa had partially adopted the heliocentric 
 "^e'sy- theory, as taught in the old times by Philolaus, Pythagoras, 
 and Archimedes. He ascribed to the earth a globular form, rotation on 
 its axis, and a movement in space ; he believed that it moves round the 
 sun, and both together round the pole of the universe. 
 
 By geocentric theory is meant that doctrine which asserts the earth 
 The geocentric to be the immovable centre of the universe; by. heliocentric 
 trie theories, theory that which demonstrates the sun to be the centre of 
 our planetary system, implying, as a necessary inference, that the earth 
 is a very small and subordinate body revolving round the sun. 
 
 I have already, in sufficient detail, described how the Eoman Church 
 had been constrained by her position to uphold the geocentric doctrine. 
 The geocentric She had come to regard it as absolutely essential to her sys- 
 rf°b?°thf""" tem, the intellectual basis of which she held would be sapped 
 Church. if ^jjig doctrine should be undermined. Hence it was that 
 such an alarm was shown at. the assertion of the globular form of the 
 
GEOOENTEIO XSV HELIOCENTEIC DOCTRINES. 513 
 
 earth, and hence the surpassing importance of the successful voyage of 
 Magellan's ship. That indisputable demonstration of the globular figure 
 was ever a solid support to the scientific party in the portentous ap- 
 proaching conflict. 
 
 Preparations had been silently making for a scientific revolution in 
 various directions. The five memoirs of Cardinal Alliacus Preparations for 
 
 . . _., . It 1 the heliocentric 
 
 "On the Concordance of Astronomy with Theology, show doctrine, 
 the turn that thought was taking. His Imago mundi was published in 
 1460, and is said to have been a favorite work with Columbus. In the 
 very Cathedral of Florence, Toscanelli had constructed his celebrated 
 gnomon, 1468, a sun-ray, auspicious omen ! being admitted through a 
 plate of brass in the lantern of the cupola. John Muller, better known 
 as Eegiomontanus, had published an abridgment of Ptolemy's Almagest, 
 1520. Euclid had been printed with diagrams on copper as long be- 
 fore as 1482, and again in Venice twenty-three years subsequently. The 
 Optics of Vitello had been published 1533. Fernel, physician to Henry 
 II. of Prance, had eveji ventured so far, supported by'Magellan's voy- 
 age, as to measure, 1527, the size of the earth, his method being to ob- 
 serve the height of the pole at Paris, then to proceed northward until its 
 elevation was increased exactly one degree, and to ascertain the distance 
 between the stations by the number of revolutions of his carriage wheel. 
 He concluded that it is 24,480 Italian miles round the globe. The last 
 attempt of the kind had been that of the Khalif Almaimon seven hund- 
 red years previously on the shore of the Eed Sea, and with nearly the 
 same result. The mathematical sciences were undergoing rapid ad- 
 vancement. Eheeticus had published his trigonometrical tables ; Car- 
 dan, Tartaglia, Scipio Ferreo, and Stefel were greatly improving algebra. 
 
 The first formal assertion of the heliocentric theory was made in a 
 timid manner, strikingly illustrative of the expected opposition. It was 
 by Copernicus, a Prussian, speaking of the revolutions of the copemicus, the 
 heavenly bodies ; the year was about 1586. In his preface, ^°'^ °^- 
 addressed to Pope Paul III., whether written by himself, or, as some have 
 affirmed, for him by Andreas Osiander, he complains of the imperfec- 
 tions of the existing system, states that he has sought among ancient 
 writers for a better way, and so had learned the heliocentric doctrine. 
 " Then I too began to meditate on the motion of the earth, and, though 
 it appeared an absurd opinion, yet, since I knew that in previous times 
 others had been allowed the privilege of feigning what circles they chose 
 in order to explain the phenomena, I conceived that I might take the 
 hberty of trying whether, on the supposition of the earth's motion, it 
 was possible to find better explanations than the ancient ones of the 
 revolutions of the celestial orbs." 
 
 '■' Having, then, assumed the motions of the earth, which are hereafter 
 explained, by laborious and long observation I at length found that, if 
 
 Kk 
 
514 coPERNicrs. 
 
 tlie motions of the other planets be compared with the revolution of the 
 earth, not only their phenomena follow from the suppositions, but also 
 that the several orbs and the whole system are so connected in order 
 and magnitude that no one point can be transposed without disturbing 
 the rest, and introducing confusion into the whole universe." 
 
 The apologetic air with which he thus introduces his doctrine is again 
 Introduction of remarked in his statement that he had kept his book for 
 his system. thirty-six years, and only now published it at the entreaty 
 of Cardinal Schomberg. The cardinal had begged of him a manuscript 
 copy. " Though I know that the thoughts of a philosopher do not de- 
 pend on the judgment of the many, his study being to seek out truth in 
 all things as far as is- permitted by God to human reason, yet, when I 
 considered how absurd my doctrine would appear, I long hesitated 
 whether I should publish my book, or whether it were not better to fol- 
 low the example of the Pythagoreans and others, who delivered their 
 doctrine only by tradition and to friends." He concludes : " If there be 
 He feara being valu babblcrs, who, kuowing nothing of mathematics, yet as- 
 esy^^ ° ' sume the right of judging on account of some place of Scrip- 
 ture perversely wrested to their purpose, and who blame and attack my 
 undertaking, I heed them not, and look upon their judgments as rash 
 and contemptible." 
 
 Copernicus clearly recognized not only the relative position of the 
 earth, but also her relative magnitude. He says the magnitude of the 
 world is so great that, the distance of the earth from the sun has no ap- 
 parent magnitude when compared with the sphere of the fixed stars; - 
 
 To the earth Copernicus attributed a triple motion — a daily rotation 
 Early correction on her axis, an annual motion round the sun, a motion of 
 can theory. declination of the axis. The latter seemed to be necessary 
 to account for the constant direction of the pole ; but as this was soon 
 found to be a misconception, the theory was relieved of it. With this 
 correction, the doctrine of Copernicus presents a clear and great advance, 
 though in the state in which he offered it he was obliged tO' retain the 
 mechanism of epicycles and eccentrics, because he considered the plan- 
 etary motions to be circular. It was the notion that, since the 'circle is 
 the most simple of all geometrical forms, it must therefore be the most 
 natural, which led -to this imperfection. His work was published in 
 1543. He died a few days after he had seen a copy. 
 
 Against the opposition it had to encounter, the heliocentric theory 
 made its way slowly at first. Among those who did adopt it were some 
 whose connection served rather to retard its progress, because of the ul- 
 traism of their views or the doubtfulness of their social position. Such 
 Giordano Bruno "was Bruuo, who Contributed largely to its introduction into 
 of Noia. England, and who was the author of a work on the PluraKty 
 
 of Worlds, and of the conception that every star is a sun, having opaque 
 
THE MARTYRDOM OF BRUNO. 515 
 
 planets revolving round it— a conception to which the Copemican sys- 
 tem suggestively leads. Bruno was born seven years after the death of 
 Gopemicus. He became a Dominican, but, like so many other thought- 
 ful men of the times, was led into heresy on the doctrine of transub- 
 stantiation. Not concealing his opinions, he was persecuted, fled, and 
 led a vagabond life in foreign countries, testifying that wherever he went 
 he found skepticism under the polish of hypocrisy, and that he fought 
 not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief For 
 teaching the rotation of the earth he had to flee to Switzerland, hc teaches 
 and thence to England, where, at Oxford, he gave lectures on tnc theory, 
 cosmology. Driven from England, France, and Germany in succession, 
 he ventured in his extremity to return to Italy, and was arrested in Yen- 
 ice, where he was kept in prison in the Piombi for six years without 
 books; or paper, or friends. Meantime the Inquisition demanded him 
 as having written heretical works. He was therefore surrendered to 
 Eome, and, afl;er a farther imprisonment of two years, tried, excommu- 
 nicated, anddehvered over to the secular authorities, to be punished 
 "as mercifully as possible, and without the shedding of his blood," the 
 abominable formula for burning a man alive. He had collected all the 
 observations that had been made respecting the new star in Cassiopeia, 
 1572 ; he had taught that space is infinite, and that it is filled with 
 self-luminous and opaque worlds, many of them inhabited — this being 
 his capital offense. He believed that the world is animated by an intel- 
 ligent soul, the cause of forms but not of matter ; that it lives in all 
 things, even such as seem not to live ; that every thing is ready to be- 
 come organized ; that matter is the mother of forms and then their 
 grave ; that matter and the soul of the world together constitute God. 
 His ideas were therefore pantheistic, "Est Deus in nobis." In his 
 " Gena de le Genere" he insists that the Scripture was not intended to 
 teach science, but morals only. The severity with which he was treated 
 was provoked by his asseverations that he was struggling with an or- 
 thodoxy that had neither molality nor belief. This was the aim of his 
 work entitled " The triumphant Beast." He was burnt at and is humt 
 Eome, Februaryie, 1600. With both a present and prophetic SF''^*'"'" 
 truth, he nobly responded, when the atrocious sentence was passed upon 
 him, " Perhaps it is with greater fear that ye pass this sentence upon me 
 than I receive it." His tormentors jocosely observed, as the flames 
 shut him out forever from view, that he had gone to the imaginary 
 worlds he had so wickedly feigned. 
 
 This vigorous but spasmodic determination of the Church to defend 
 herself was not without effect. < It enabled her to hold fast the timid, 
 the time-servers', the superficial. Among such may be mentioned Lord 
 Bacon, who never received the Copernican system. With the Lord Bacon, 
 audacity of ignorance, he presumed to criticise what he did not under- 
 
516 LORD BACON. 
 
 Stand, and, with a superb conceit, disparaged the great Copernicus. He 
 Kejects the says, " In the system of Copernicus there are many and grave 
 doSi?" difficulties ; for the threefold motion with which he encumbers 
 the earth is a serious inconvenience, and the separation of the suli from 
 the planets, with which he has so many affections in common, is hke- 
 wise a harsh step ; and the introduction of so many immovable bodies 
 in nature, as when he makes the sun and stars immovable, the bodies 
 which are peculiarly lucid and, radiant, and his making the moon adhere 
 to the earth in a sort of epicycle, and some other things which he as- 
 sumes, are proceedings which mark a man who thinks nothing of intro- 
 ducing fictions of any kind into nature, provided his calculations turn 
 out well." The more closely we examine the writings of Lord Bacon, 
 the more unworthy does he seem to have been of the great reputation 
 which has been awarded to him. The popular delusion to which he 
 owes so much originated at, a time when the history of science was un- 
 known. They who first brought him into notice knew nothing of the 
 old school of Alexandria. This boasted founder of a new philosophy 
 could not comprehend, and would not accept, the greatest of all scientific 
 doctrines when it was plainly set before his eyes. * 
 
 It has been represented that the invention of the true methbd of 
 physical science was an amusement of Bacon's hours of relaxation from 
 the more laborious studies of law and duties of a court. His chief ad- 
 mirers have been persons of a literary turn, who have an idea that sci- 
 entific discoveries are accomplished by a mechanico-mental operation. 
 The practical use- Bacou ncvcr produccd auv great practical result himself, 
 
 Igsbucsb of his uhi— ^^ 
 
 loBophy. no great physicist has ever made any use of his method. 
 
 He has had the same to do with the development of modem sciehce 
 that the inventor of the orrery has had to do with the discovery of the 
 mechanism of the world. Of all the important physical discoveries, there 
 is not one which shows that its author made, it by the Baconian instru- 
 ment. Newton never seems to have been aware that he was under any 
 obligation to Bacon. Archimedes, and the Alexandrians, and the Ara- 
 bians, and Leonardo da Vinci did very well before he was bom ; the 
 discovery of America by Columbus and the circumnavigation by Ma- 
 gellan can hardly be attributed to him, yet they were the consequences 
 of a truly philosophical reasoning. But the investigation of nature is 
 an affair of genius, not of rules. No man can invent an organon for 
 writing tragedies and Epic poems. Bacon's system is, in its own terms, 
 an idol of the theatre. It would scarcely guide a man to a solution of 
 the riddle of Mlia. Laelia Crispig, or to that of the charade of Sir Hilary. 
 Few scientific pretenders have made more mistakes than Lord Bacon.. 
 Hia scientific H© rejected the Copernican system, and spoke insolently of its 
 errors. gj.^^^^ author ; he undertook to criticise adversely Gilbert's 
 treatise "De Magnete;" he was occupied in the condemnation of any 
 
THE COPEKNICAN SYSTEM. 
 
 Bl7 
 
 investigation of final causes, while Harvey was deducing the circula- 
 tion of the blood from Aquapendente's discovery of the valves in the 
 veins ; he was doubtful whether instruments were of any advantage, 
 while Galileo was investigating the heavens with the telescope. Igno- 
 rant himself of every branch of mathematics, he presumed that they 
 were useless in science, but a few years before Newton achieved by their 
 aid his immortal discoveries. It is time that the sacred name of philos- 
 ophy should be severed from its long connection with that of one who 
 was a pretender in science, a time-serving politician, an insidious law- 
 yer, a corrupt judge, a treacherous friend, a bad man. 
 
 But others were not so obtuse as Bacon. Gilbert, one of the best of 
 the earlv English experimentalists, an excellent writer on Adoption of the 
 
 ."' T , 1 . n /~i ■ -m-'i • Copemioan doc- 
 
 magnetism, adopted the views oi Copernicus. Milton, in time. 
 Paradise Lost, se't forth in language such as he only could use the objec- 
 tions to the Ptolemaic, and the probabilities of the Copemican system. 
 Some of the more liberal ecclesiastics gave their adhesion. Bishop 
 WUkins not only presented it in a very popular way, but also made 
 some sensible suggestions explanatory of the supposed contradictions of 
 the new theory to the Holy Scriptures. It was, however, among geo- 
 metricians, as Napier, Briggs, Horrox, that it met with its best support. 
 On the Continent the doctrine was daily making converts, and nightly 
 gathering strength from the accordance of the tables of the motions of 
 the heavenly bodies calculated upon its principles with actual obser- 
 vation. 
 
 It is by no means uninteresting to notice the different classes of men 
 among whom this great theory was steadily winning its way. Experi- 
 mental philosophers, Eepublican poets. Episcopal clergymen, Scotch 
 lords, west of England schoolmasters, Italian physicists, Polish pedants, 
 painstaking Germans, each from his own special point of view, was 
 gradually receiving the light, and doubtless, from such varied influence, 
 the doctrine would have vindicated its supremacy at last, though it 
 might have taken a long time. On a sudden, however, there occurred 
 a fortunate event, which led forthwith to that result by a new invention of 
 train of evidence, bringing the matter, under the most bril- "■* wescope. 
 liant circumstances, clearly to the apprehension of every one. This 
 great and fortunate event was the invention of the telescope. 
 
 It is needless for us to enter on any examination of the authorship 
 of this invention. It is enough for our purpose to know that Lipper- 
 shey, a Dutchman, had made one toward the close of 1608, and that 
 Galileo, hearing of the circumstance, but without knowing the r- ,-, 
 
 , ■ 1 n , 1 , , » ^ trainee con- 
 
 particulars oi the construction, m April or May of the follow- "'™°'' ™^ 
 ing year invented a form of it for himself Not content with admiring 
 how close and large it made terrestrial objects, he employed it for ex- 
 amining the heavens. On turning it to the moon, he found that she has 
 
518 INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE. 
 
 mountains, casting shadows, and valleys like those of the earth. The 
 Terescopic astro- dlscovcry of innumerable fixed stars — not fewer tha,n, forty 
 nomica cov- ^^^^ couuted by him in the well-known group of the Pleia- 
 des — up to that time unseen by man, was felt at once to offer an insup- 
 erable argument against the opinion that these bodies were created only 
 to illuminate the night; indeed, it may be said that this was a death- 
 blow to the time-honored doptrine of the human destiny of the uni- 
 verse. Already Galileo began to encounter vulgar indignation, which 
 accused him loudly of impiety. On January: 7th, 1610, he discovered 
 three of Jupiter's satellites, and a few days latej the fourth. To these 
 he gave the designation of the Medicean, stars, and in his "Sidereal 
 Messenger" published an account of the facts he had thus far observed. 
 As it was perceived at once that this planet offered a miniature repre- 
 sentation of the ideas of Copernicus respecting the solar system, this dis- 
 covery was received by the astronomical party with the liveliest pleas- 
 ure, by the ecclesiastical with the most bitter opposition, some declaring 
 that it was a mere optical deception, some a purposed fraud, some that 
 it was sheer blasphemy, and some, fairly carrying out to its consequences 
 the absurd philosophy of the day, asserted that, since the pretended sat- 
 ellites were invisible to the naked eye, they must be useless, and, being 
 useless, they could not exist. Continuing his observations, Galileo found 
 that Saturn diffefs in an extraordina,ry manner from Other planets; but 
 the telescope he used not being sufficient to demonstrate the riiig,iie 
 fell into the mistake that the body of the planet is triple. This was soon 
 followed by ihe discovery of the phases of Venus, which indisputably 
 established for her a motipn round the sun, and actually converted what 
 had»hitherto, on all hands, been regarded as one of the weightiest objec- 
 tions against the Copernican theory, into a most solid support. "If the 
 doctrine of Copernicus be true, the planet Venus ought to show phases 
 like the moon, which is not the case;" so said the objectors. Coperni- 
 cus himself saw the difficulty, and tried to remove it by suggesting that 
 the planet might be transparent. The telescope of Galileo forever set- 
 tled the question by showing that the expected phases do actually 
 exist. 
 
 In the garden of Cardinal Bandini at Eome, A.D. 1611, Galileo pub: 
 licly exhibited the spots upon the sun. He had observed them the pre- 
 Commencing ceding year. Goaded on bv the opposition his astronomical 
 
 opposition to'-. '-J. ./_ - . . •' _ ^^ 
 
 Gauieo. discovenes were brmgmg upon mm, he addressed a letter m 
 • 1613 to the Abbe Castelli, for the purpose of showing that, the Scrip- 
 tures were not intended as a scientific authority. This was repeating 
 Bruno's offense. Hereupon the Dominicans, taking the alarm, com- 
 menced to attack him from their pulpits. It shows how reluctantly, 
 and with what misgivings the higher ecclesiastics entered upon the 
 quarrel, that Maraffi, the general of the Dominicans, apologized to Gali- 
 
GALILEO. 519 
 
 leo for what had taken place. The astronomer now published another 
 letter reiterating his former opinions, asserting that the Scriptures were 
 only intended. for our salvation, and otherwise defending himself, and 
 recalling the fact that Copernicus had dedicated his book to Pope 
 Paul III. 
 
 Through the suggestion of the Dominicans, Galileo was now summon- 
 ed to Edme to account for his conduct and opinions before Heisaummon- 
 the Inquisition. He was accused of having taught that the ** *" ^°™' 
 earth moves ; that the sun is stationary ; and of having attempted to 
 reconcile these doctrines with the Scriptures. The sentence was that 
 he must renounce these heretical opinions, and pledge himself that he 
 would neither publish nor defend them for the future. In the is condemned 
 event of his refusal he was to be imprisoned. With the^ fate siHon, 
 of Bruno in his recollection, he assented to the required recantation, and 
 gave the promise demanded. The Inquisition then proceeded to deal 
 with the Oopemican system, condemning it as heretical ; the letters of 
 Galileo, which had given rise to the trouble, were prohibited ; also Kep- 
 ler's epitome of the Copernican theory, and also the work of Copernicus. 
 In their decree prohibiting this work " de Eevolutionibus," the Congre- 
 gation of the Index, March 5, 1616, denounced the new sys- which condemna 
 tem of the universe as "that false Pythagorean doctrine ut- syBtem. 
 terly contrary to the Holy Scriptures." 
 
 Again it appears how reluctant the Eoman authorities were to inter- 
 fere, and how they were impelled rather by the necessity of their posi- 
 tion than by their personal belief in the course they had been obliged 
 to take. After all that had passed, the pope, Paul V., admitted Galileo 
 to an audience, at which he professed to him personally the kindest sen- 
 timents, and assured him of safety. When Urban VIII. sue- The personal 
 oeeded to the pontifical chair, Galileo received the distinction the''r°:^' "* 
 of not less than six audiences; the pope conferred on him several pres- 
 ents, and added the promise of a pension for his son. In a letter to the 
 Duke of Florence his holiness used the most liberal language, stated 
 how dear to him Galileo was, that he had very lovingly embraced him 
 and requested the duke to show him every favor. 
 
 Whether it was that, under these auspicious circumstances, Galileo be- 
 lieved he could with impunity break through the engagement he had 
 made, or whether an instinctive hatred of that intellectual despotism and 
 hypocrisy which was weighing upon Europe became irrepressible in his 
 breast, in 1632 he ventured on the pubhcation of his work, Gaiueo pubiishea 
 entitled " The System of the World," its object being to es- ^^T^X"^ °' 
 tabUsh the truth of the Copernican doctrine. It is composed in the dia- 
 logue form, three speakers being introduced, two of them true philoso- 
 phers, the third an objector. Whatever may have been the personal 
 opinion of the pope, there can be no doubt that his duty rendered it 
 
520 THE TRIAL OF GALILEO. 
 
 necessary for him to act. Galileo was therefore again summoned be- 
 fore the Inquisition, the Tuscan embassador expostulating against the 
 inhumanity of thus dealing with an old man in ill health. But no such 
 considerations were listened to, and Galileo was compelled to appear at 
 Eome, February, 1633, and surrender himself to the Holy Office. The 
 pope's nephew did all in his power to meet the necessity of the Church 
 and yet to spare the dignity of science. He paid every attention to the 
 personal comfort of the accused. When the time came for Galileo to 
 be put into solitary confinement, he endeavored to render the imprison- 
 ment as light as possible ; but, finding it to prey upon the spirits of the 
 aged philosopher, he, on his own responsibility, liberated him, permitting 
 him to reside in the house of the Tuscan embassador. The trial being 
 Is again con- Completed, Galileo was directed to appear, on June 22, to hear 
 thriuquM- ^is sentence. Clothed in the penitential garment, he received 
 tion. judgment. His heretical offenses were specified, the pledges 
 
 he had violated recited ; he was declared to have brought upon himself 
 strong suspicions of heresy, and to be liable to the penalties thereof; 
 but from these he might be absolved if, with a sincere heart, he would 
 abjure and curse his heresies. However, that his offenses might not al- 
 together go unpunished, -and that he might be a warning to others, he 
 was condemned to imprisonment during the pleasure of the Inquisition, 
 his dialogues were prohibited by public edict, and for three years he 
 was directed to recite, once a week, the seven penitential psalms. • 
 
 In his garment of disgrace the aged' philosopher was now made to fall 
 His degrada- upou his kuces bcforc the assembled cardinals, and; with his 
 jshment. hand ou the Gospels, to make the required abjuration of the 
 heliocentric doctrine, and to give the pledges demanded. He was then 
 committed to the prison of the Inquisition ; the persons who had been 
 concerned in the printing of his book were punished ; and the sentence 
 and abjuration were formally promulgated, and ordered to be publicly 
 read in the universities. In Florence, the adherents of Galileo were 
 ordered to attend in the Church of Santa Croce to witness his disgrace. 
 After a short imprisonment in the jail of the Inquisition, he was order- 
 ed to Arcetri, and confined in his own house. Here severe misfor- 
 tunes awaited him ; his favorite daughter died ; he fell into a state of 
 melancholy ; an application that he might go to Florence for the sake 
 of medical advice was refused. It became evident that there was an in- 
 tention to treat him with inexorable severity. After five years of con- 
 finement, permission Was reluctantly accorded to him to remove to Flor- 
 ence for his health ; but still he was forbidden to leave his house, or re- 
 ceive his friends, or even to attend mass during Passion Week without 
 a special order. The grand-duke tried to abate this excessive severity, 
 directing his embassador at, the court of Eome to plead the venerable 
 age and ill health of the immortal convict, and that it was desirable to 
 
HIS FEESECUTION AND DEATH. 521 
 
 permit Mm to communicate certain scientific discoveries he had made to 
 some other person, such as Father Oastelli. Not even that was accord- 
 ed unless the interview took place in the presence of an ofEicial of the 
 Inquisition. Soon after Galileo was remanded to Arcetri. He spent 
 the weary hours in composing his work on Local Motion, his friends 
 causing it to be surreptitiously published in Holland. . His infirmities 
 and misfortunes now increased. In 1637 he became totally ^he caiamuiea 
 blind. In a letter he plaintively says, referring to this calam- °* ^ "''' "^e. 
 ity, " So it pleases God, it shall therefore please me also." The exqui- 
 site refinement of ecclesiastical vengeance pursued him remorselessly, 
 and now gave him permission to see his friends when sight was no lon- 
 ger possible. It ^as at this period that an illustrious stranger, the au- 
 thor of Paradise Lost, visited him. Shortly after he became totally 
 deaf; but to the last he occupied himself with investigations respecting 
 the force of percussion. He died, January, 1642, in the sev- His death; is 
 enty-eighth year of his age, the prisoner of the Inquisition. "^efuscdbunaL 
 True to its instincts, that infernal institution followed him beyond the 
 grave, disputing his right to make a will, and denying him burial in 
 consecrated ground. The pope also prohibited his frieiids from raising 
 to him a monument in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence. It was 
 reserved for the nineteenth century to erect a suitable memorial in his 
 honor. 
 
 The result of the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo was thus to 
 bring the earth to her real position of subordination and to steady advance 
 give sublimer views of the universe. Moestlin expresses cor- can system.^™' 
 rectly the state of the case when he says, " What is the earth and the 
 ambient air with respect to the immensity of space? It is a point, a 
 punctule, or something, if there be any thing, less." It had been brought 
 down to the condition of one of the members of a family — the solar sys- 
 tem. And since it could be no longer regarded as holding all other 
 bodies in submissive attendance upon it, dominating over their move- 
 ments, there was reason to suppose that it would be found to maintain 
 interconnections with them in the attitude of an equal or subordinate ; 
 in other words, that general relations would be discovered expressive 
 of the manner in which all the planetary members of the solar system 
 sustain their movements round the sun. 
 
 Among those whose minds were thoroughly occupied with this idea, 
 Kepler stands pre-eminently conspicuous. It is not at all Kepier, ws mode 
 surprising, considering the mode of thought of those times, °f"9'^- 
 that he regarded his subject with a certain mysticism. They who con- 
 demn his manner of thus viewing things do not duly appreciate the 
 mental condition of the generation in which he lived. Whatever may 
 be said on that point,^no one can deny hifn a marvelous patience, an al- 
 most superhuman painstaking disposition. Guess after guess, hypoth- 
 
522 KEPLEB. 
 
 esis after hypothesis, ke submitted to computations of infinite labor, and 
 doubtless he speaks the melancholy truth when he says, "I considered 
 and reflected till I was almost mad." Yet, in the midst of repeated dis- 
 appointment, he held, with a truly philosophical determination, firnily to 
 the belief that there must be some physical interconnection among tHe 
 parts of the solar' system, and that it would certainly be displayed by 
 the discovery of laws presiding over the distances, times, and velocitiea 
 of the planets. In these speculations he was immersed before the pub- 
 lications of Galileo. In his "Mysterium.Cosmogtaphicum" he says, " In 
 the year 1595 J was brooding with the whole energy of my mind on 
 the subject of the Copernican system." 
 
 In 16.09 he_ published his work entitled "On the Motion of Mars." 
 Discovery of This was thc rcsult of an attempt, upon which he had been en- 
 Kepler's laws, gaged since the beginning of the century, to reconcile the mo- 
 tions of that planet to the hypothesis of eccentrics and epicycles. It 
 ended in the abandonment of that hypothesis, and in the discovery of 
 the two great laws now known as the first and second laws of Kepler. 
 They are respectively that the orbits of the planets are elliptical, and 
 ■that the areas described by a line drawn fi-om the planet to the sun are 
 proportional to the times. 
 
 In 1617 he was again rewarded by the discovery which passes under 
 the designation of Kepler's third law : it expresses the relation of the 
 mean distances of the planets from the sun with the times of their rev- 
 olutions — " the squares of the periodic times are in the same proportion 
 as the cubes of the distances." In his "Epitome of the Copernican As- 
 tronomy," published 1622, he showed that this law likewise holds good 
 for the satellites of Jupiter as regards their primary. 
 
 Humboldt, referring to the movement of Jupiter!s satellites, remarks: 
 His remonstrance "I* was this which led Kcplcr, in his 'Harmonices Mundi,' 
 with the Church, ^.q g^^^^^ ^^j^ ^j^g Q^^^ confidence and security of a German 
 
 spirit of philosophical independence, to those whose opinions bore sway 
 beyond the Alps, ' Eighty years have elapsed during which the doctrines 
 of Qopernicus regarding the movement of the earth and the immobility 
 of the sun have been promulgated without hinderance, because it was 
 deemed allowable to dispute concerning natural things and to elucidate 
 the works of God, and, now that new testimony is discovered, in proof 
 of the truth of those doctrines — testimony which was not known to the 
 spiritual judges, ye would prohibit the promulgation of the true system 
 of the structure of the universe.' " 
 
 Thus we see that the heliocentric theory, as proposed by Copernicus, 
 rfth^c"*'™ ^^® undergoing rectification. The circular movements admit- 
 nican theory, tcd iuto it, and wHoh had burdened it with infinite perplexity, 
 though they had hitherto been recommended by an illusive simplicity, 
 were demonstrated to be incorrect. They were replaced by the real 
 
LEONABDO DA VINCI. 523 
 
 ones, tlie elliptical. Kepler, as was his custpm, ingenuously related his 
 trials and disappointments. Alluding on one occasion to this, he says : 
 " My first error was that the path of a planet is a perfect circle — an opin- 
 ion which was a more mischievous thief of my time, in proportion as it 
 was supported by the authority of all philosophers, and apparently 
 agreeable to metaphysics." 
 
 The philosophical significance of Kepler's' discoveries was not recog- 
 nized by the ecclesiastical party at first. It is chiefly this, -^f ^™°p^- 
 that they constitute a most important step to the establish- these i»ws. 
 ment of the doctrine of the government of the world by law. But it 
 was impossible to receive these laws without seeking for their cause. 
 The result to which that search eventually conducted not only explain- 
 ed their origin, but also showed that, as laws, they must, in the necessity 
 of nature, exist. It may be truly said that the mathematical exposition 
 of their origin constitutes the most splendid monument existing of the 
 intellectual power of man. 
 
 Before the heliocentric theory could be developed and made to fur- 
 nish a clear exposition of the solar system, which is obviously the first 
 step to just views of the universe, it was necessary that the science of 
 mechanics should be greatly improved — indeed, it might be Necessity for 
 said, created ; for during those dreary ages following the es- science. 
 tablishment of Byzantine power, nothing had been done toward the ac- 
 quisition of correct views either in statics or dynamics. It was impos- 
 sible that Europe, in her lower states of life, could produce men capable 
 ■of commencing where Archimedes had left off. She had to wait for the 
 approach of her Age of Keason for that. 
 
 The man of capacity at last came. Leonardo da Vinci was bom A.D. 
 1452. The historian HaUam, enumerating some of his works, Leo„„ao a,^ 
 observes, " His knowledge was almost preternatural." Many '^""='- 
 of his writings still remain unpublished. Long before Bacon, he laid 
 down the maxim that experience and observation must be the founda- 
 tion of all reasoning in science ; that experiment is the only interpreter 
 of nature, and is essential to the ascertainment of laws. . Unlike Bacon, 
 who was ignorant pf mathematics, and even disparaged them, he points 
 out their supreme advantage. Seven years after the voyage of Colum- 
 bus, this great man — great at once as an artist, mathematician, and engi- 
 neer — gave a clear exposition of the theory of forces obKquely applied 
 on a lever ; a few years later he was well acquainted with the earth's 
 annual motion. He knew the laws of faction, subsequently demonstra- 
 ted by Amontons, and t^ie principle of virtual velocities; he described 
 the camera obscura before Baptista Porta, understood aerial perspective, 
 the nature of colored shadows, the use of the iris, and the effects of the 
 duration of visible impressions on the eye. He wrote well on fortifica- 
 tion, anticipated Castelli on hydraulics, occupied himself with the fall of 
 
524 PROGRESS OF KATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 bodies on the hypothesis of the earth's rotation, treated of the times of 
 descent along inclined planes and circular arcs, and of the nature of ma- 
 chines. He considered, with singular clearness, respiration and com- 
 bustion, and foreshadowed one of the great hypotheses of geology, the 
 elevation of continents. 
 
 This was the commencement of the movement in Natural Philosophy; 
 stevinns con- it was followcd Up by the publication of a work on the prin- 
 moTCmeiu in clplcs of equilibrium by Stevinus, 1586. In this the author 
 iSaopi^. ^'"' established the fundaimental property of the inclined plane, 
 and solved, in a general manner, the cases of forces acting obliquely. 
 Six years later Galileo's treatise on Mechanics appeared, a fitting com- 
 mencement of that career which, even had it not been adorned with 
 such brilliant astronomical discoveries, would alone have conferred the 
 most illustrious distinction upon him. 
 
 The dynamical branch of Mechanics is that which is under most obli- 
 Discoveryofthe gatiou to Galilco. To him is due the establishment of the 
 laws of motion, tj^-ee laws of motiou. They are to the following effect, as 
 given by Newton : 
 
 (1.) Every body perseveres in its state of rest or of uniform motion 
 in a right line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces im- 
 pressed thereon. 
 
 (2.) The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force 
 impressed, and is made in the direction of the right line in which that 
 force is impressed. 
 
 (3.) To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction, or the' 
 mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and di- 
 rected to contrary parts. 
 
 Up to this time it was the general idea that motion -can only be main- 
 tained by a perpetual application, impression, or expenditure of force. 
 Galileo himself for many years entertained that error, but in 1638 he 
 plainly states in his "Dialogues on Mechanics" the true law of the uni- 
 formity and perpetuity of motion. Such a view necessarily implies a 
 correct and clear appreciation of the nature of resistances. No experi- 
 mental motion that man can establish is unrestrained. But a perception 
 of the uniformity and perpetuity of motion lies at the very basis of 
 physical astronomy. With difficulty the true idea was attained. The 
 same maybe said as respects rectilinear direction, for many supposed 
 that uniform motion can only take place in a circle. 
 
 The establishment of the first law of motion was essential to the dis- 
 EatflWishment covcry of the laws of falling bodies, in which the descent is 
 of motion, made under the influence of a continually acting force, the 
 velocity increasing in consequence thereof. Galileo saw clearly that, 
 whether a body is moving slowly or swiftly, it wiU be equally affected 
 by gravity. This principle was with difficulty admitted by some, who 
 
THE LAWS OF MOTION. 525 
 
 were disposed to believe that a swiftly moving body would not be as 
 much affected by a constant force like gravity as one the motion of 
 which is slower. With difficulty, also, was the old Aristotelian error 
 eradicated that a heavy body falls more swiftly than a light one; 
 
 The second law of motion was also established and illustrated by Gal- 
 ileo. In his "Dialogues" he shows that a body projected hor- „„a „, the sec- 
 izontally must have, from what has been said, a uniform hor- '"'*' 
 izontal motion, but that it will also have compounded therewith an ac- 
 celerated motion downward. Here again we perceive it is necessary to 
 retain a steady conception of this intermingling of forces without dete- 
 rioration, and, though it may seem simple enough to us, there were some 
 eminent men of those times who did not receive it as true. The special 
 case offered by Galileo is theoretically connected with the paths of mil- 
 itary projectiles, though in practice, since they move in a resisting me- 
 dium, the air, their path is essentially different from the parabola. 
 Curvilinear motions, which necessarily arise from the constant action 
 of a central force, making a body depart from the rectilinear path it 
 must otherwise take, are chiefly of interest, as we shall presently find, 
 in the movements of the celestial bodies. 
 
 A thorough exposition of the third law of motion was left by Galileo 
 to his successors, who had directed their attention especially a„a of the 
 to the determination of the laws of impact. Indeed, the whole *'"''''■ 
 subject was illustrated and the truth of the three laws verified in many 
 different cases by an examination of the phenomena of freely falling 
 bodies, pendulums, projectiles, and the like. Among those who occu- 
 pied themselves with such labors may be mentioned Torricelli, Castelli, 
 Viviani, Borelli, Gassendi. Through the investigations of these, and 
 other Italian, French, and English natural philosophers, the principles 
 of Mechanics were solidly established, and a necessary preparation made 
 for their application in astronomy. By this time every one had become 
 ready to admit that the motion of the planetary bodies would find an 
 explanation on these principles. 
 
 The steps thus far taken for an explanation of the movements of the 
 pknets in curvilinear paths therefore consisted in the re- Application of 
 moval of the old misconception that for a body to continue torcSid 
 its motion forward in a straight line a continued application ™"™»- 
 of force is necessary, the first law of motion disposing of that error. In 
 the next place, it was necessary that clear and distinct ideas should be 
 held of the combination or composition of forces, each continuing to ex- 
 ercise its influence without deterioration or diminution by the other. 
 The time had now come for it to be shown that the perpetual move- 
 ment of the planets is a consequence of the first law of motion ; their el- 
 liptic paths, such as had been determined by Kepler, a consequence of 
 the second. Several persons almost simultaneously had been brought 
 
526 NEWTON. 
 
 nearly to this conclusion without being able to solve the problem com- 
 pletely. Thus Borelli, A.D. 1666, in treating of the motions of Jupi- 
 ter's satellites, distinctly shows how a circular motion may arise under 
 the influence of a central force ; he even uses the illustration so fre- 
 quently introduced of a stone whitled round in a sling. In the same 
 year a paper was presented to the Eoyal Society by Mr. Hooke " ex- 
 plicating the inflection of a direct motion into a circular by a superven- 
 ing attractive principle." Huygens also, in his "Horologium Oscillato- 
 rium,'' had published some theorems on circular motions, but no one as 
 yet had been able to show how elliptical orbits could, upon these prin- 
 ciples, be accounted for, though very many had become satisfied' that 
 the solution of this problem would before long be given. 
 
 In April, 1686, the Principia of Newton was presented to the Eoyal 
 Newton; pub- Sooicty. This immortal work not only laid the foundation 
 Principia. of Physical Astrononiy, it also carried the structure thereof 
 very far toward its completion. It unfolded the mechanical theory of 
 universal gravitation upon the principle that all bodies tend to approach 
 each other with forces directly as their, masses, and inversely as the 
 squares of their distances. 
 
 To the force producing this tendency of bodies to approach each oth- 
 er the designation of attraction of gravitation, or gravity, is given. ^1 
 heavy bodies fall to the earth in such a way that the direction of their 
 Propounds the nlovcment is toward its centre. Newton proved that this is 
 toS^to^- tlie direction in which they must necessarily move under the 
 tion. influence of an attraction of every one of the particles of which 
 
 the earth is composed, the attraction of a sphere taking effect as if all 
 its particles were concentrated in its centre. 
 
 Galileo had already examined the manner in which gravity acts upon 
 Preparation bodies as an accelerating force, and had determined the conrieo- 
 for Newton, ^jqj^ betwcai the spaccs of descent and the times. He illus- 
 trated such facts experimentally by the use- of inclined planes, by the aid 
 of which the velocity may be conveniently diminished without other- 
 wise changing the nature of the result. He had also demonstrated that 
 the earth's attraction acts equally on all bodies. This he proved by in- 
 closing various substances in hollow spheres, and showing that, when 
 they were suspended by strings of equal length and made to vibrate, 
 the time of oscillation was the same for all. Upon the invention of the 
 air-pump, a more popular demonstration of the same fact was given by 
 the experiment proving that a gold coin and a feather fall equally swift- 
 ly in an exhausted receiver. Galileo had also proved, by experiments 
 on the" leaning tower of Pisa, that the velocity of falling bodies is inde- 
 pendent of their weight. It was for these experiments that he waa ex- 
 pelled froni that city. '■ 
 
 Up to the time of Newton there were only very vague ideas that the 
 
THEORY OF UNIVEESAL GRAVITATION. 527 
 
 earth's attraction extended to any considerable distance. Newton was 
 led to his discovery by reflecting that at all altitudes accessi- ExtcmioDof 
 ble to man gravity appears to be undiminished, and that, there- gravity, 
 fore, it may possibly extend as far as the moon, and actually be the force 
 which deflects her from a rectilinear path, and makes her revolve in an 
 orbit round the earth. Admitting the truth of the law of the inverse 
 squares, it is easy to compute whether the moon falls from the tangent 
 she would describe if the earth ceased to act upon her by a quantity 
 proportional to that observed in the case of bodies falling near Ihe sur- 
 face. In the first calculations made by Newton, he found that the moon 
 is deflected from the tangent thirteen feet every minute ; but, if the hy- 
 pothesis of gravitation was true, her deflection should be fifteen feet. It 
 is no trifling evidence of the scrupulous science of this great philosopher 
 that here^jpon he put aside the subject for several years, without, how- 
 ever, abandoning it. At length, in 1682, learning the result of the meas- 
 ures of a degree which Picardhad executed in France, and which affect- 
 ed the estimate of the magnitude of the earth which he had used, and 
 therefore the distance of the moon, he repeated the calculations with 
 these improved data. It is related that "he went home, took out his 
 old papers, and resumed his calculations. As they drew to a close, he 
 became so much agitated that he was obliged to desire a friend to finish 
 them." The expected coincidence was verified. And thus it appeared 
 that, the moon is retained in her orbit and made to revolve round the 
 earth by the force of terrestrial gravity. 
 
 These calculations were founded upon the hypothesis that the moon 
 moves in a circular orbit with a uniform velocity. But in the Prin- 
 cipia it was demonstrated that when a body moves under the influence 
 of an attractive force, varying as the inverse squares of the distances, it 
 must describe .a conic section, with a focus at the centre of force, and 
 under the circumstances designated by Kepler's laws. New- Ti,e cause of 
 ton, therefore, did far more than furnish the expected solution Kepier-siawa. 
 of the problem of elliptical motion, and it was now apparent that the 
 existence of those laws might have been foreseen, since they arise in the 
 very necessities of the case. 
 
 This point gained, it is obvious that the evidence was becoming un- 
 questionable, that as the moon is made to revolve round neBuaesB spread 
 the earth through the influence of an attractive force exer- trfotheo^!""™' 
 cised by the earth, so likewise each of the planets is compelled to move 
 in an elliptical orbit round the sun by his attractive force. The helio- 
 centric theory, at this stage, was presenting physical evidence of its truth. 
 It was also becoming plain that theforce we call gravitation must be im- 
 puted to the sun, and to all the planetary bodies as well as to the earth. 
 Accordingly, this was what Newton asserted in respect to all material 
 substance. 
 
528 THE PKINCIPIA. 
 
 But it is a necessary consequence of this theory that many apparent 
 Perturbations irregularities and perturbations of the bodies of the solar sys- 
 aceountedfor. ^^ j^^gj. ^^^^ p-jg^^g f^j j-eason of the attraction of each upon 
 
 all the others. If there were but one planet revolving round the sun, its 
 orbit might be a mathematically perfect ellipse ; but the moment a sec- 
 ond is introduced, perturbation takes place in a variable manner as the 
 bodies change their positions or distances. An excessive complication 
 must therefore be the consequence when the number of bodies is great. 
 Indeed,' so insurmountable would these difficulties be, that the mathe- 
 matical solution of the general problem of the solar system would be 
 hopeless were it not for the fact that the planetary bodies are at very 
 great distances from one another, and their masses, compared with the 
 mass of the sun, very small. 
 
 Taking the theory of gravitation in its universal acceptation, Newton, 
 Results of the in a manner that looks as if he were divinely inspired, suc- 
 itaS° ^'" ceeded in demonstrating the chief inequalities of the moon 
 and planetary bodies ; in determining the figure of the earth — that it is 
 not a perfect sphere, but an oblate spheroid ; in explaining the preces- 
 sion of the equinoxes and the tides of the ocean. To such perfection 
 have succeeding mathematicians brought the doctrine, that the most 
 complicated movements and irregularities of the solar system have been 
 satisfactorily accounted for and reduced to computation. Trusting to 
 these principles, not only has it been found possible, knowing .the mass 
 of a given planet, to determine the perturbations it may produce in ad- 
 jacent ones, but even the inverse problem has been successfully at- 
 tacked, and from the perturbations the place and mass of a hitherto 
 unknown planet determined. It was thus that, from the deviations of 
 Uranus from his theoretical place, the necessary existence of an exterior 
 disturbing planet was foreseen, and our times have witnessed the intel- 
 lectual triumph of geometers directing where the telescope should point 
 in order to find a new planet. The discovery of Neptune was thus ac- 
 complished. 
 
 It adds to our admiration of the wonderful intellectual powers of 
 Newton to know that the mathematical instrument he used was the an- 
 cient geometry. Not until subsequently was the analytical method re- 
 sorted to and cultivated. This method possesses the inappreciable ad- 
 vantage of relieving us from the mental strain which would otherwise 
 oppress us. It has been truly said that the symbols think for us. Mr. 
 Whewell, looking at the thing from this point of view, observes: "No 
 The Principia ; one for-sixty vcars after the publication of the Principia, and. 
 
 Its incompora- ..--'' ~ ^ . '^ il 
 
 Me merit. With Ncwtou's methods, no one up to the present day, has 
 added any thing of value to his deductions. We know that he calcu- 
 lated all the principal lunar inequalities; in many of the cases he has 
 given us his processes, in others only his results. But who has present 
 
CONSEQUENCES OF NEWTON'S DISCOVEEIES. 529 
 
 ed in bis beautiful geometry or deduced from his simple principles any 
 of the inequalities which he left -untouched ? The ponderous instrument 
 of synthesis, so effective in his hands, has never since been grasped by 
 any one who could use it for such purposes ; and we gaze at it with ad- 
 miring curiosity, as on some gigantic, implement of war which stands 
 idle among the memorials of ancient days, and makes us wonder what 
 manner of man he was who could wield as a weapon what we can 
 hardly lift as a burden." 
 
 Such was the physical meaning of Newton's discoveries ; their philo- 
 sophical meaning was of even greater importance. The par- phnoaopMcai 
 amount truth was resistlessly coming into prominence— that i^^^dScoT."" 
 the government of the solar system is under necessity, and "''*'■ 
 that it is mathematically impossible for the laws presiding over it to be 
 other than they are. 
 
 Thus it appears that the law of gravitation holds good throughout our 
 solar system. But the heliocentric theory, in its most general accepta- 
 tion, considers every fixed star as being, like the sun, a planetary centre. 
 Hence, before it can be asserted thiatthe theory of gravita- unity of idea in 
 tion is truly universal, it must be shown that it holds good in S the nntTere™ 
 the case pf all such other systems. The evidence offered in proof of this 
 is altogether based upon the observations of the two Herschels on the mo- 
 tions of the double stars. Among the stars there are some in such close 
 proximity to each other that SirW. Herschel was led to suppose that it 
 would be possible, from observations upon them, to ascertain the stellar 
 parallax. While engaged in these inquiries, which occupied him for 
 many years, he discovered that many of these stars are not merely op- 
 tically in proximity, as being accidentally in the same line of view, but 
 are actually connected physically, revolving round each other m regular 
 orbits. The motion of these double suns is, however, in many instances 
 so slow as to require many years for a satisfactory determination. Sir 
 J. Herschel therefore continued the observations, of his father, and, with 
 other mathematicians, investigated the eharaotcTistics, of these Gravitation of 
 motions. The first instance in which the true elliptic ele- dofWest*™- 
 ments of the orbit of a binary star were determined was given by M. 
 Savary in the case of 5 Ursse Majoris, indicating an elliptic orbit of 68J 
 years. But the period of otheiB, since determined, is very much longer ; 
 thus, in (7 Coronae, it is, according "to Mr. Hind, more than 736 years'. 
 From the fact that the orbits in which these stars move round each 
 other are elliptical, it necessarily follows that the law of gravitation, ac- 
 cording to the inverse square, holds good in them. Considering the pro- 
 digious distances of these bodies, and the departure, as regards structure 
 of the systems to which they belong, from the conditions obtaining in 
 our unisolar sjstem, we may perhaps assert the prevalence of the law 
 of gravitation throughout the universe. 
 
 Ll 
 
530 DOUBLE STAES.^^SECULAE INEQUALITIES. 
 
 If, in association With these double suns^-sometimes, indeed, they are 
 triple; and occasionally, as in the case of e Lyrse, quadruple— there are 
 opaqLue planetaty globes, such solar systems differ from ours not only 
 in having seVefal siins instead of a single one, but, since the light emit- 
 coiored light of ^^^ ^ often of different tints, one star shining with a crimson 
 donwe stars, g^^ another with a blue light, the colors not always comple- 
 mentary to one another, a wonderful variety of phenomena must be the 
 result, especially in their organic creations; for organic forms, both veg- 
 etable and animal, primarily depend on the relations of colored light. 
 How varied the effects where there are double, triple, or even quadruple 
 sunrisesj and sunsets, and noons, and the hours marked off by red, or 
 purple, or blue tints ! ^ 
 
 It is impossible to look back on thfe history of the theory of gravita- 
 Grandeur of tiou without scntimeuts of admiration, and, indeed, of pride, 
 coveriea. How fclicitous has been the manner in which have been ex- 
 plained the inequalities of a satellite like the moon under the disturbing 
 influence of the sun ; the correspondence between the calculated and ob- 
 served quantities of those inequalities ; the extensioa of the doctrine to 
 satellites of other planets, as those of Jupiter; the determination of the 
 earth's figure ; the causes of the tides ; the different force of gravity in 
 different latitudes, and a multitude of other phenomena. The theory 
 asserted for itself that authority which belongs to intrinsic truth' It en- 
 abled mathematicians to point out facts not yet observed, and to foretell 
 future events. 
 
 And yet how hard it is for truth to force its way when bigotry resists. 
 In 1771, the University of Salamanca, being urged to teach physical sci- 
 ence, refused, and this was its answer : ^' Newton teaches nothing that 
 would rnake a good logician or metaphysician; and Gassendi and Des- 
 cartes do not agree so well with revealed truth as Aristotle does." 
 
 Among the interesting results of Newton's theory may be mentioned 
 its application to secular inequalities, such as the acceleration of the 
 The earth in moon's mean motion, that satellite moving somewhat quicker 
 time. jiQ^ ^^^^ g^Q ^j^ jjggg ^gg_ Laplace detected the cause of this 
 
 phenomenon in the influence of the sun upon the moon, combined with 
 the secular variation of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit. Moreover, 
 he showed that this secular inequality of the motion of the moon is peri- 
 odical, that it requires millions of years to re-establish itself, and that, 
 after an almost inconceivable time, the acceleration becomes a retarda- 
 tion. In like manner, the same mathematician explained the observed 
 acceleration in the mean motion of Jupiter, and retardation of that of 
 Saturn, as arising from the mutual attraction of the two planets, and 
 showed that this secular inequality has a period of 929f years. With 
 such slow movements may be mentioned the diminution of the obliquity 
 of the ecliptic, which has been proceeding for ages, but which will reach 
 
AGE OF THE WORLD. 531 
 
 a limit and then commence to increase. These secular motions ought 
 not to he without interest to those who suffer themselves to adopt the 
 patristic chronology of the world, who suppose that the earth is only 
 six thousand years old, and that it will come to an end in about one 
 thousand years more. They must accept, along with that preposterous 
 delusion, its necessary consequences, that the universe has been so badly 
 constructed, and is such a rickety machine, that it can not hold together 
 long enough for some of its-wheels to begin to revolve. Astronomy 
 offers us many Ulustrations of the scale upon which the world is con- 
 structed as to time, as well as that upon which it is constructed as to 
 space. 
 
 From what has been said, the conclusion forces itself upon us that the 
 general laws obtaininar as Tespects the earth, hold good like- Dominion of 
 
 . „ ,, , ni 1 • 1 • . T law in the 
 
 Wise for all other parts of the universe j a conclusion sustained nniwrsa 
 not only by the mechanism of such motions as we have been consider- 
 ing, but also by all evidence of a physical kind accessible to us. The 
 circumstances under which our sim emits light and heat, and thereby 
 vivifies his attendant planets, are indisputably the same as those obtain- 
 ing in the case of every fixed star, each of ~which is a self-luminous sun. 
 There is thus an aspect of homogeneousness in the structure of all sys- 
 tems in the universe, which, though some have spoken of it as if it were 
 the indication of a uniformity of plan, and therefore the evidence of a 
 primordial idea, is rather to be looked upon as the proof of unchangeable 
 and resistless law. 
 
 What, therefore, now becomes of the doctrine authoritatively put forth, 
 and made to hold its sway for so many centuries, that the Euinofanthro- 
 earth is not only the central body of the universe, but, in re- p°''™«™ we^- 
 ality, the most noble body in it ; that the sun and other stars are mere 
 ministers or attendants for human use ? In the place of these utterly 
 erroneous and unworthy views, far different conceptions must be substi- 
 tuted. Man, when he looks upon the countless multitude of stars — when 
 he reflects that all he sees is .only a Httle portion of those which exist, 
 yet that each is a light and life-giving sun to multitudes of opaque, and, 
 therefore, invisible worlds — when he considers the enormous size of 
 these various bodies and their immeasurable distance from one another, 
 may form an estimate of the scale of magnitude on which the world is 
 constructed, and learn therefrom his own unspeakable insignificance. 
 
 In one beat of a pendulum a ray of light would pass eight times 
 round the circumference of the earth. Thus we may take Aids for measm-e- 
 the sunbeam as a carpenter does his measuring-rule; it °^a "'*''°^'"" 
 serves as a gauge in our measurements of the universe. A sunbeam 
 would require more than three years to reach us from a Centauri; nine 
 and a quarter years from 61 Cygni ; from a Lyrse twelve years. These 
 are stars whose parallax has been determined, and which are liherefore 
 nearest to us. 
 
532 THE NEBULAB HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 . Of suns visible to the naked eye there are about 8000, but the tele- 
 scope can discern in the. Milky Way more. than eighteen millions, the 
 number visible increasing as more powerful instruments are used. , Our 
 Clusters of cltistcr of starsis a disk divided into two branches at about one 
 """• third of its length. In the midst of innumerable compeers and 
 superiors, the sun is not far from the place of bifurcation,;and at about 
 the middle of the thickness. Outside the plane of the Milky Way the 
 appearance would be like a riiig, and, still farther off, a pebulous disk., 
 From the contemplation of isolated suns and congregated clusters we 
 Distribution of arc led to the stupendous, problem of the distribution of 
 
 miLtter and force -„ .- -i , ,i • i_ ,-,• n ^ 
 
 in space. matter and force in space, and to the mterpretation ot those 
 
 apparent phantoms of self-luminous vapor, circular and elliptic disks, 
 spiral wreaths, rings, and fans whose edges fade doubtfully away, twins 
 and triplets of phosphorescent haze connected, together by thresids of 
 light and grotesque forms of indescribable complexity. Perhaps in 
 some of these gleaming apparitions we see the genesis,, in some the melt- 
 ing away of universes. The^eis nothing motionless in the sky. In 
 every direction vast transformations ; are occurring, yet all things pro- 
 claim the eternity of matter and the undiminished perpetuity of force. 
 
 The theory of gravitation, as delivered by: Newton, thus leads us to 
 Limit of the the- a knowledge of the mathematicaL construction of the solai 
 cry of gravitation, gygtem, and infcrentially likcwise to that of other systems; 
 but it leaves without explanation a large number of singular facts. I{ 
 explains the existing conditions of equilibrium of the heavenly bodies, 
 but it tells us nothing of their genesis ; or, at the best, in that particu- 
 lar it falls back on the simple fiat of God. 
 
 The facts here referred to conduct us, however, to another and far 
 Phenomena of higher poiut of vicw. Some of them, as enumerated by La- 
 
 trip BOlAl* SVfl" ^^^ ■ ' 
 
 tem. place, are the following : 1. All the planets and their satellites 
 
 move in ellipses of such small eccentricity that they are nearly circles ; 
 2. The movements of the planets are in the same direction and nearly 
 in the same plane; 3. The movements of the satellites are in the same 
 direction as those of the planets ; 4. The movements of rotation of these 
 various bodies and of the sun are in the same direction as their orbitual 
 motions, and in planes little different. 
 
 The nebular hypothesis requires us to admit that all the ponderable 
 The nehuiar material uow Constituting the various bodies of the solar sys- 
 hypothesia. ^^^ q^^q extended, in a rarefied or nebulous and rotating con- 
 dition, beyond the confines of the most distant planet. That postulate 
 granted, the structure and present condition of the system may be math- 
 ematically deduced. 
 
 For, as the vast rotating spheroid lost its heat by radiation, it con- 
 tracted, and its velocity of rotation was necessarily increased ; and thus 
 were left behind from its equatorial zone, by reason of the centrifugal 
 
THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 533 
 
 force, rotating rings, the same result occurring periodically again and 
 again. These rings must lie all in one plane. They might break, col- 
 lapsing into one rotating spheroid, a planet ; or into many, asteroids ; or 
 maintain the ring-like form. From the larger of these secondary rota- 
 ting spheroids other rings might be thrown off, as from the parent 
 mass ; these, in their turn breaking and becoming spheroids, constitute 
 satellites, whose movements correspond to those of their primaries. 
 
 We might, indeed, advance a step farther, and show how, by the ra- 
 diation of heat from a motionless nebula, a movement of rotation in a 
 determinate direction could be engendered, and that upon these princi- 
 ples, the existence of a nebulous matter admitted, and the present laws 
 and forces of nature regarded as having been unchanged, the manner of 
 origin of the solar system might be deduced, and all those singular facts 
 previously alluded to' explained ; and not only so, but there are sponta- 
 neously suggested the cause of many minor peculiarities not yet men- 
 tioned. 
 
 For it follows from the nebular hypothesis that the large planets should 
 rotate rapidly, and the small ones more slowly; that the Facts account- 
 outer planets and satellites should be larger than the inner ^''"'^•'y"- 
 ones. Of the satellites of Saturn, the largest is the outermost ; of those 
 of Jupiter, the largest is the outermost save one. Of the planets them- 
 selves, Jupiter is the largest, and outermost save three. These can not 
 be coincidences, but must be due to law. The number of satellites of 
 each planet, with the doubtful exception of Venus, might be foreseen, 
 the presence of satellites and their number being determined by the cen- 
 trifugal force of their primary. The hypothesis also points out the time 
 of revolution of the planets in their orbits, and of the satellites in theirs • 
 it furnishes a reason for the genesis and existence of Saturn's rings, 
 which are indeed its remaining witnesses — their position and movements 
 answering to its requirements. It accounts for the physical state of the 
 sun, and also for the physical state of the earth and moon as indicated 
 by their geology. It is also not without furnishing reasons for the ex- 
 istence of comets as integrant members of our system ; for their singular 
 physical state; for the eccentric, almost parabolic orbits of so many of 
 them ; for the fact that there are as many of them with a retrograde as 
 with a direct motion ; for their more frequent occurrence about the axis 
 of the solar system than in its plane ; and for their general antithetical 
 relations to planets. 
 
 If these and very many other apparently disconnected facts follow as 
 the mechanical necessities of the admission of a gravitating whether nebu- 
 nebula— a very simple postulate— it becomes important to i\l*°'"»"y"- 
 ascertain whether, by actual' observation, the existence of such material 
 forms may be demonstrated in any part of the universe. It was the ac- 
 tual telescopic observation of such objects that led Herschel to the' neb- 
 
534 THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 ular hypothesis. He concluded that there are two distinct kinds of neb- 
 ul£e, one consisting of clusters of stars so remote that they could not be 
 discerned individually, but that these may be discerned by sufiacient tel- 
 escopic power;, the other being of a hazy nature, and incapable of res- 
 olution. Nebulae do not occur at random in the heavens : the regions 
 poorest in ^tars are richest, in them; they are few in^the plane of our 
 sidereal system,, but numerous about its poles, in that respect answering 
 to the occurrence of comets in the solar system. The resolution^ of 
 many of these hazy patches of light into stars by no means disproves 
 the truly nebulous condition of many others. 
 
 Notwithstanding the great authority of the astronomers who intro- 
 Opposition to duced it, the nebular hypothesis has encountered much ad- 
 hypothesia. vcrse .criticism ; not so much, however, from its obvious sci- 
 entific defects, such as its inability to deal with the case of Uranus, as 
 from moral and extraneous considerations. There is a line in Aristoph- 
 anes which points out precisely the difficulty : 
 
 'O Zci£ din iiv, ciSX avr avTov Atvog irvvi pdmKevaiv. 
 
 A reluctance to acknowledge the presidency of law in the existing 
 constitution and movements of the solar system has been yielded only 
 to be succeeded by a reluctance to acknowledge' the presidency of law 
 in its, genesis, And yet whoever will reflect on the subject will be 
 drawn to the conclusion that the principle involved was really settled 
 by Newtpn in his Principia— that is to say, when itbecame" geometrical- 
 ly certain that Kepler's laws originate in a mathematical necessity. 
 
 As matters now stand, the nebular hypothesis may be regarded as the 
 first superficial, and therefore imperfect, glimpse of a series of the grand- 
 est problems soon to present themselves for solution — the matheruatical 
 distribution of matter and force in space, and the variations of that dis- 
 tribution in time. 
 
 Such is the histojy of the dispute respecting the position of the earth 
 in the universe. , ,Not without reason, therefore, have I assigned the pon- 
 TheiBteiiectnaa tificatc of Nicolas V. as the true close of the intellectual do- 
 
 ruinofeccleaiaa- ., n t j^-i i -r~, -, .-.i ii 
 
 ticiBm. mmion of the Church. From that period the sceptre had 
 
 passed into another hand. In all directions Nature was investigated, in 
 all directions new methods of examination were yielding unexpected 
 and beautiful results. On the ruins of its ivy-grown cathedrals, Ecelesi" 
 asticism, surprised and blinded by the breaking day, sat solemnly blink- 
 - ing at the light and life about it, absorbed in the recoUectioii' of the night 
 that had passed, dreaming of new phantoms and delusions in its wished- 
 for return, and vindictively striking its talons at any derisive assailant 
 who incautiously approached too near. I have not space to describe 
 the scientific activity displayed in all directions; to do it justice Would- 
 demand volumes. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, anatoiHy, medicine, 
 
SCiiamFio activity of the age of reason. 535 
 
 and all the many branches of human Jinowledge received an impulse. 
 
 , Simultaneously with the great event? I have been relating, every one of 
 
 these branches was advancing. Vieta made the capital im- wonderful devei- 
 
 . ° , ii-i-i opment of scien- 
 
 provement of usmg letters as general symbols m algebra, tmo activity. 
 and applied that science to geoinetiy. "^ycho, emulating Hipparchus of 
 old, made a new catalogue of the stars ; he determined that comets are 
 beyond the moon, and that they cut the crystalline firmament of theolo- 
 gy in all directions. Gilbert wrote his admirable book on the magnet ; 
 Gesner led the way to zoology, taking it up at the point to which the 
 Saracens had continued Aristotle, by the, publication of his work on 
 the history of animals; Belon at the same time, 1540, was occupied with 
 fishes and birds, i Fallopius and EustacMus, Arantius and Varolius, were 
 immortalizing themselves by their dissections : the former reminding us 
 of the times of Ptolemy Philadelphus, when he naively confesses "the 
 Duke of Tuscany was obliging enough to send living criminals to us, 
 whom we killed and then .dissected." Piccolomini laid the foundations 
 of general, anatomy :by his description of cellular tissue. Goiter created 
 pathological, anatomy. Prosper Alpinus diagnosis, Plater the classifica- 
 tion of disease, and Ambrose Pare modem surgery. Such were the oc- 
 cupations andprospect of science at the close of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Scarcely had the seventeenth opened when it became obvious that 
 the movement^ far from slackening, was only gathering force. The movement 
 It was the age of Galileo. Descartes introduced the theory mor^'^gorous. 
 of an ether and vortices ; but, hearing of the troubles that had befallen 
 Galileo, was on the point of burning his papers.. Several years later, he 
 was restrained from publishing his Cosmos "from a pious desire not to 
 treat irreverently the decrees of the holy chair against the planetary 
 movement of the earth." This was in 1633, when the report of the sen- 
 tence of the Inquisition was made known. He also developed Vieta's 
 idea of the application of algebra to geometry, and brought into promi- 
 nence thg mechanical fact,, destined to an important application in phys- 
 ical astronomy, that every curvilinear deflection is due to a controlling 
 force.. To him, among Europeans, also is to be attributed the true expla- 
 nation x>f the rise of water in an exhausted space — " the weight of the 
 water counterbalances that of the air." Napier perfected his great and 
 useful invention of logarithms. Hydraulics was created by Castelli, 
 hydrostatics- by Torricelli, who also discovered barometric variations: 
 both were pupils of Galileo. Fabricius ab Aquapendente discovered the 
 valves in the veins, Servetus almost detected the course of the circula- 
 tion. Harvey completed what SeHretus had left unfinished, and de- 
 scribed the entire course of the -blood; Asellius discovered the lacteals- 
 Van Helmont introduced the theory of vitality into medicine, and made 
 the practice or art thereof consist- in regulating by diet the ^rcheus 
 whose seat h.e affirmed to be in the stomach. In strong contrast with 
 
536 SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY OF THE AGE OF EEASON. 
 
 this phantasy, Sanctorio laid the foundation of modern physiology by 
 introducing the balance into its inquiries. Pascal, by a decisive expeii- 
 ment, established the doctrines of the weight and pressure of the air, 
 and published some of the most philosophical treatises of the age: "his 
 Provincial Letters did more th^ any thing to ruin the name of the Jes- 
 uits." The contagion spread to the lawyers : in 1672 appeared Puffea- 
 dorf 's work on the Law of Nature and Nations. The phlogistic theory, 
 introduced by.Beccher and perfected by Stahl, created chemistry, in con- 
 tradistinction to the Arabia,n alchemy. ■ Otto Guericke invented the air- 
 pump, Boyle improved it ; Hooke, among many other discoveries, de- 
 termined the essential conditions of combustion. Far above all contem' 
 poraries in mathematical learning and experimental skill, Newton was 
 already. turning his attention to the "reflections, refractions, inflectionsj 
 and colors of light," and introducing the idea of attractions into physics, 
 Eay led the way to comparative anatomy in his synopsis of quadrupeds; 
 Swammerdam improved the art of dissection, applying it to the general 
 history of insects ; Lister published his synopsis of shells ; Tournefort 
 and Malpighi devoted themselves to botany ; Grew discovered the sexes 
 of plants, Brown the quinary arrangement of flowers. Geology began 
 to shake loose from the trammels of theology, and Burnet's Sacred 
 theory of the Earth could not maintain its ground against more critical 
 investigations. The Arabian doctrine of the movement of the crust of 
 the earth began to find supporters. Lister ascertained the continuity 
 of strata over great distances; Woodward improved mineralogy; the 
 great mathernatician, Leibnitz, the rival of Newton, propounded the doc- 
 trine of the gradual cooling of the globe, the descent of its strata by frac- 
 ture, the deposit of sedimentary rocks, and their induration. Among 
 physicians, Willis devoted himself to the study of the brain, traced the 
 course of the nerves and classified them, and introduced the doctrine of 
 the localization of functions in the brain. Malpighi and Lewenhoeck 
 applied the microscope as an aid to anatomy'; the latter discovered sper- 
 matozoa. . Graaf studied the function of the generative organs ; Borelli 
 attempted the application of mathematics to muscular movement; Du- 
 verney. wrote on the sense of hearing, Mayow on respiration; Euysch 
 perfected the art of injection, and improved minute anatomy— 
 , . But it is in vain to go on. The rest of these pages would be con- 
 sumed in an attempt to record the names of the cultivators of science, 
 every year increasing in number, and to do justice to their works. 
 From the darkness that had for so many ages enveloped it, the human 
 mind at last emerged into light. Ihe intellectual motes were dancing 
 in the sunbeam, and making it visible in every direction. 
 
 Despairing: thus to do justice to individual philosophers and individ- 
 Sm"°a°od. ^^^ discoveries, there is, however, one most important event 
 eties. to which I must prominently allude. It is the foundation of 
 
PEIMITIVE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS. 537 
 
 learned societies. Imitating the examples of the Academia Secretorum 
 Naturae, instituted at Naples, 1560, by Baptista Porta, and of the Lyn- 
 cean Academy, founded 1603 by Prince Frederick Cesi at Eome for the 
 promotion of natural philosophy, the Accademia del Cimento was estab- 
 lished at Florence, 1637 ; the Eoyal Society of London, 1645 ; and the 
 Eoyal Academy of Sciences in Paris, 1666. 
 
 Arrived at the close of the description of this first great victory of 
 scientific truth over authority and tradition, it is weU for us Review of anttoo- 
 
 r ■ „ ■ » -, pocentnc philoBO- 
 
 to pause and look back on the progress of man from the er- phy. 
 roneous inferences of his social infancy to the true conclusions of his 
 maturity — from anthropocentric ideas, 'which in all nations and parts of 
 the. world have ever been the same, to the discovery of his true posi- 
 tion and insignificance in the universe. , 
 
 We are placed in a world surrounded with illusions. The 'daily 
 events of our life and the objects before us tend equally to deceive us. 
 If we cast our eyes on the earth, it seems to be made only to minister 
 to our pleasures or our wants. If we direct our attention to The sky, appa- 
 the sky, that blue and crystalline dome, the edges of which ^'^^^^■^^'^ 
 rest on the flat land or the sea — a glacial vault, which Empedocles 
 thought was frozen air, and the fathers of the Church the lowest of the 
 seven concentric strata of heavens — we find a thousand reasons for be- 
 lieving that whatever it covers was intended by some Good Being for 
 our use. Of the various living things placed with us beneath it, all are 
 of an inferior grade when compared with ourselves, and all seem in- 
 tended for us. The conclusions at which we thus arrive are strength- 
 ened by a principle of vanity implanted in our hearts, unceasingly sug- 
 gesting to us that this pleasant abode must have been prepared for our 
 reception, and fiirnished and ornamented expressly for our use. 
 
 But reflection teaches us that we came not hither of ourselves, and 
 that doubtless- the same Good Being who prepared this de- Anthropocentric 
 lightful abode brought us as tenants into it. From the fact '*'"'" °***''*- 
 of our own existence, we are insensibly and inevitably led to infer the 
 existence of God; from the favorable circuinstances in which our lot is 
 cast, we gather evidences of his goodness ; and in the energy which nat- 
 ural phenomena often display, we see the tokens of his power. What 
 other explanation can we give of tempests in the sea or lightning in the 
 heavens ? Moreover, it is only during a part of our time — our waking 
 hours — that we are brought in relation with these material things; for 
 the rest, when we are asleep, a state in which we spend more than a 
 third part of our life, we are introduced to other scenery, other beings, 
 another world. From these we gather that there are agents oftheworu 
 of an intangible and more ethereal mould, perhaps of the na- "id heaven, 
 ture of Him who brought us here, perhaps his subordinates and messen- 
 
538 PRIMITIVE ;JTATUEAL TffEOLOGY. 
 
 gers. Whence do they issue and whither do they go? Is there not 
 beycmd the sky above: us a^ region to which our imperfect vision can 
 not penetrate, but which may be accessible to them from, the peaks of 
 elevated mountains, or to be reached only with; wings? '.And thus we 
 picture to ourselves. a heaven shut off from earth, with all its sins and 
 cares, by. the untroubled and impenetrable sky^-a place of light and 
 repose, its pavement illuminated by the sun and countless other shin- 
 ing bodies — a place of peace, but also a place of power. 
 • StiU more, a thoTisand facts of our life' teach us -that we are ezposed 
 Of evu beings to influences of an evil nature as well as to. those that are 
 anahen. good. How often,- in' our dreams, does it happen that we are 
 terror-stricken, by the approach of hideous forms, faces of fearful appear- 
 ance, from which we .vainly struggle to escape. Is it not natural for us 
 to attribute the evil we see in the world to these as the good to. those? 
 and, since we can not conceive of the existence of beings without as- 
 signing them a place, where shall we find for these malignant spirits a 
 habitation? Is at not in the dark region beneath the ground,^^ far away 
 from the realms of light^a region from whioh,i through the volcano, 
 smoke and burning sulphur are cast into this- upper world — a place of 
 everlasting ;fire and darkness, 'whose -portals are in caves and solitudes 
 of unutterable gloom ? 
 
 - Placed thus: on' the boundary between, such- opposing, powers, man is 
 Of man, theen- the sport of circumstances,, sustained by beings who seek his 
 Bematurai. tappiness, and tempted by those who desire his destruetion. 
 Is it at all surprising that,, guided by sucL obvious thoughts and simple 
 reasonings, he becomes superstitious? that he sees in every shadow a 
 spirit, and peoples every .solitary place with invisibles? that he casts a 
 longing look to the good beings who can protect him, seeking to invoke 
 their aid.by entreaties, and to propitiate their help by free-will, sacrifices 
 of things that are pleasant and valuable? Open to such influences him- 
 self, why should he, not believe in the. efficacy of prayer? ■• His conscious , 
 superiority lends force to his suspicion that he is a worthy object for 
 the opposing powers to contend for, a conclusion verified by the in- 
 ward strifes; he feels, as well as by the trials of lifeito which he- is ex- 
 posed. 
 
 But dreams at night, and sometimes visions by day, serve to enforce 
 His immortauty the i conclusiou that life is, not limited to our transitory con- 
 ana,futur6 life., tii^iance here, but endures hereafter. How often at -night 
 do we see -the well-known forms of those who have been dead-a long 
 time appearing before us with surprising vividness, and hear their al- 
 most forgotten voices ? These are admonitions full of the most solemn 
 suggestions, profoundly indicating to us that. the dead still continue to 
 exist, and that what has happened to them must also happen to us, and 
 we too are'destined for immortality. Perhaps involuntarily we asso- 
 
ITS GKBADUAIi COEEECTION. 539 
 
 ciate these conclusions 'witli others, expecting that in a future life good 
 men -will enjoy the society of good beings like themselves, the evil be- 
 ing dismissed to the realms of darkness and despair. And, as human 
 experience teaches us that a final allotment can only be made by some 
 superior power; we expect that He who was our Creator shall also be 
 our Judge ; that there is an appointed time and a bar at which the final 
 destination of all who have lived shall be ascertained, and eternal jus- 
 tice measure out its punishments and rewards. 
 
 From these considerations there arises an inducement for us to lead a 
 virtuous life, abstaining from wickedness and wrong; to set indnccments 
 apart a body of men who may mediate for us, and teach us by *'""»™"'''- 
 precept and example the course it is best for us to pursue ; to consecrate 
 places, such as groves or temples, to which we may resort, as the more 
 immediate habitations of the Deity. 
 
 Such are the leading doctrines of Natural Theology of primitive man 
 both in the old and new continent. They arise from the operations of. 
 the human mind considering the fitness of things. 
 
 Just as we have in Comparative Anatomy the structure of different 
 animals examined, and their identities and differences set forth, thereby 
 establishing their true relations ; just as we have in Comparative Physi. 
 olpgy the functions of one organic being compared with those of another, 
 to the end that we may therefrom deduce their proper connections, so, 
 fi:om the mythologies of various races of men, a Comparative course of com- 
 Theology is to be constructed. Alone through such a sci- oiogy. 
 ence can correct conclusions be arrived at respecting this, the most im- 
 portant of the intellectual operations of man — the definite process of his 
 religious opinions. But it must be borne in mind that Comparative The- 
 ology illustrates the result or effect of the phase of- life, and is not its 
 cause. 
 
 As man advances in knowledge he discovers that of his primitive 
 conclusions some are doubtless erroneous, and many require correcuona of 
 better evidence to establish their truth incontestably. A more wc weM?""' 
 prolonged and attentive examination gives him reason, in some of the 
 most important particulars, to change his mind. He finds that the earth 
 on which he lives is not a fioor covered over with a starry dome, as he 
 once supposed,' but a globe self-balanced in space. The crystalline 
 vault, or sky, is recognized as an optical deception. It rests upon the 
 earth nowhere, and is no boundary at all; thero is no kingdom of hap- 
 piness above it, but a limitless space, adorned with planets and suns. 
 Instead of a realm of darkness and woe in the depths on the other side 
 of the earth, men like ourselves are found there, pursuing, in Australia 
 and New Zealand, the innocent pleasures and encountering the ordinary 
 labors of life. By the aid of such lights as knowledge gradually sup- 
 plies, he comes at last to- discover that this, our terrestrial habitation, in- 
 
540 THE PLUEALITT OF WOELDS. 
 
 stead of being a chosen, a sacred spot, is only one of similar myriads, 
 more numerous than the sands of the sea, and prodigally scattered 
 through space. 
 
 Never, perhlaps, was a more important truth discovered. All the vis- 
 conscquenco il^lc evideucc was in direct opposition to it. The earth, which 
 the"fo™o°^ had hitherto seemed to be the very emblem of immobility, 
 the earth. ^gg (jemohstratcd to be carried with a double motion, with 
 prodigious velocity, through the heavens; the rising and setting of the 
 Detection of Its stars wcrc provcd to be an illusion; and, as respbcts the. size 
 insignificance. ; q£ ^^q globc, it was showu to be altogether insignificant when 
 compared with multitudes of other neighboring ones — insignificant 
 doubly by reason of its actual dimensions, and by the countless numbers 
 of others like it in form, and doubtless, like it, the abodes of many or- 
 ders of life. , . , . , 
 
 And so it turns out that our earth is a globe of about twenty-five 
 thousand miles in circumference. The voyager who circumnavigates it 
 spends no inconsiderable portion of his life in accomplishing his task. 
 It moves round the sun in a year, but at so great a distance from that 
 luminary that, if seen from him, it would look like a little spark trav- 
 ersing the sky. It is thus recognized as one of the members of the so- 
 other solar 1^^ system. Other similar bodies, some of which are of larger, 
 ^atems. gome of Smaller dimensions, perform similar revolutions round 
 the sun in appropriate periods of time. 
 
 If the magnitude of the earth be too great for us to attach to it any 
 Magnitude of definite conception, what shall we say of the compass of the 
 the universe. gQi[a,r systcm? There is a defect in the human intellect' which 
 incapacitates us for comprehending distances and periods that are ei- 
 ther too colossal or too minute. We gain no clearer insight into, the 
 matter when we are told that a comet which does not pass beyond the 
 bounds of the system may perhaps be absent on its journey for more 
 than a thousand years. Distances and periods such as these are beyond 
 our grasp. They prove to us how far human reason excels imagination, 
 the one measuring and comparing things of which the other can form 
 no conception, but in the attempt is utterly bewildered and lost. 
 
 But as there are other globes like our earth, so too there are other 
 The infinity worlds like our solar system. There are self-luminous suns 
 of worlds, exceeding in number all computation. The dimensions of this 
 earth pass into nothingness in comparison with the dimensions of the 
 solar system, and that system, in its turn, is only an invisible point if 
 placed in relation with the countless hosts of other systems' which form, 
 with it, clusters of stars. Our solar system, far from being alone in the 
 universe, is only one of an extensive brotherhood, bound by common 
 laws and subject to like influences. Even on the very verge of crea- 
 tion, where imagination might lay the beginnitfg of the realms of chaos, 
 
THE POSITIOlSr OF MAN. 541 
 
 we see unbounded proofs of order, a regularity in the arrangement of 
 inanimate things, suggesting to us that there are other intellectual crea- 
 tures like us, the tenants of those islands in the abysses of space. 
 
 Though it may take a beam of light a million of years to bring to 
 our view those distant worlds, the end is not yet. Far away in the 
 depths of space we catch the faint gleams of other groups of stars like 
 our own. The finger of a man can hide them in their remoteness. 
 Their vast distances from one another have dwindled into nothing. 
 They and their movements have lost all individuality ; the innumerable 
 suns of which they are composed blend all their collected light into one 
 pale mUky glow. 
 
 Thus extending our view from the earth to the solar system, from 
 the solar system to the expanse of the group of stars to which insignificance 
 we belong, we behold a series of gigantic nebular creations "^ "^°- 
 rising up one after another, and forming greater and greater colonies of 
 worlds. 'No numbers can express them, for they make the firmament a 
 haze of stars. Uniformity, even though it be the uniformity of magnif- 
 icence, tires at last, and we abandon the survey, for our eyes can only 
 behold a boundless prospect, and conscience tells us our own unspeak- 
 able insignificance. 
 
 But what has become, of the time-honored doctrine of the human des- 
 tiny of the universe ? that doctrine for the sake of which the Tnumph of oci- 
 controversy I have described in this chapter was raised. It ™''*° '""*• 
 has disappeared. In vain was B];uno burnt and Galileo imprisoned ; the 
 truth forced its way, in spite of all opposition, at last. The end of the 
 conflict was a total rejection of authority and tradition, and the adop- 
 tion of scientific truth. 
 
542 THE EUROPEAN AGE OF EBASOJS'. 
 
 CHAPTER XXni 
 
 THE EUROPEAN AGE OF 'REASO'S— (Continued). 
 
 HISTOKX OP THE EAEIH.^HEK SnOCESSIVE CHANGES IN THE COtTSSE OP TIME. 
 
 Oriental and Occidental Doctrines respecting the Earth in Time. — Gradual Weakening ofth 
 
 Latter by astronomical facts, and the, Ri^e of Scientific, Geology. 
 Impersonal Manner in which the Prohlem was eventually solved, chiefly through Facts connected 
 
 viith Heat. 
 Proofs of limitless Duration from inorganic Facts.-^Igrmms and Aqueous Bocks. 
 Proofs of the same from organic Facts., — StKcessive Creations and Extinctions of living Forms, 
 , and their conternporaneous Distribution. . 
 Evidences of a slowly declining Temperature, and, therefore, of a long Time. — The Process of 
 
 Events by Catastrophe and by Law. ^Analogy of Individual and Bace Development.— Boik 
 
 are determined by unehdngeable Law. 
 Conclusion that the Plan of the Universe indicates a Multiplicity of Worlds in, infinite Space, 
 
 and a Succession of Worlds in infinite Time. 
 
 A VICTORY could not be more complete nor a triumpli more brilliant 
 Age of the tii-Si.n that wliicli had been gained by science in the contest con- 
 eavth. cerning the position of the earth. Though there followed close- 
 ly thereupon an investigation of scarcely inferior moment — that respect- 
 ing the age of the earth-— so thoroughly was the ancient authority intel- 
 lectually crushed that it found itself incapable of asserting by force the 
 patristic idea that our planet is less than six thousand years old. 
 
 Not but that a resistance was made. It was, however, of an indirect 
 
 The question kind. The contest might be likened rather to a partisan war- 
 is impersonal- n t ' T t TT .1 
 ly solved. lare than to the deliberate movement of regular armies under 
 
 recognized commanders. In its history there is no central figure like 
 Gralileo, no representative man, no brilliant and opportune event like 
 the invention of the telescope. The question moves on to its solution 
 impersonally. A little advance is made here by one, there by another. 
 The war was finished, though no great battle was fought. In the chap- 
 ter we are entering upon there is, therefore, none of that dramatic inter- 
 est connected with the last. Impersonally the question was decided, 
 and, therefore, impersonally I must describe it. 
 
 In Oriental countries, where the popular belief assigns to the creation 
 Oriental and of man a Very ancient date, and even asserts for some empires 
 trines of the a duration of hundreds of thousands of years, no difficulty as 
 earth. rcspects the age of the earth was felt, there seeming to have 
 
 been time enough for every event that human researches have detected 
 to transpire. But in the West, where the doctrine that not only the 
 
PROBLEM OF THE AGE OF' THE EARTH. 543 
 
 eartli, but the universe itself, was intended for man, has been carried to 
 its consequences with exacting rigor, circumstances forbid us to admit 
 that there was any needless delay between the preparation of the habi- 
 tation and the introduction of the tenant. They also force upon us the 
 conclusion that a few centuries constitute a very large portion- of the 
 time of human existence, since, if we adopt the doctrine of an almost 
 limitless period, we should fall into a dificulty in expkinitig what has 
 become of the countless myriads of generations in the long time so past, 
 and, considering that we (are: taught that the end of the world is at hand, 
 and must be expected in a few years at the most, we might seem to ar- 
 raignthe goodness of Crod in this, that He has' left to their fate immeas- 
 urably the larger proportion of our race, and has restricted His mercy to 
 us alone, who are living in the departing twilight of the evening of the 
 world. 
 
 But in this, as in the former case, a closer examination of the facts 
 brings us to the indisputable conclusion that we have decided unwor- 
 thily and untruly ; that our guiding doctrine of the universe correctionof 
 being intended for us is a miserable delusion ; that the scale doctrine. 
 on which the world is constructed as to time answers to that on which 
 it is constructed as to space ; that, as respects our planet, its origin dates • 
 from an epoch too remote for our mental apprehension; that myriads 
 of centuries'havd been consumed in its coming to its present state ; that, 
 by a slow progression, it has passed from stage to stage, uninhabited, and 
 for a long time uninhabitable by any living thing ; that, in their proper 
 order and in due lapse of time, the organic series have been its inhabit- 
 ants, and of these a vast majority, whose numbers are so great that we can 
 not offer an intelligible estimate of them, have passed away and become 
 extinct, and that finally, for a brief period, we have been its possessors. 
 
 Of the intentions of God it becomes us, therefore, to speak with rev- 
 erence and reserve. In those ages when there was not a man upon the 
 earth, what was the object? Was the twilight only given that. the wolf 
 might follow his flying prey, and the stars made to shine that the royal 
 tiger might pursue his midnight maraudings ? Where was the use of 
 so much that was beautiful and orderly, when there was not a solitary 
 intellectual being to understand and enjoy ? Even now, when we are 
 so much disposed to judge of other worlds from their apparent adapted- 
 nessto be the abodes of a thinking and responsible order like ourselves, 
 it may be of service to remember that this earth itself was for countless 
 ages a dungeon of pestiferous exhalations and a den of wild beasts. 
 
 It might moreover appear that the conclusions to which we come 
 both as respects the position and age of the world, must it elevates rather 
 necessarily have for their consequences the diminution and Josttion^/man?' 
 degradation of man, the rendering him too worthless an object for God's 
 regard. But here again we fall into an error. True, we have debased 
 
544 THE BEGINNING AND END OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Ms animal value, and taught him how little he is — how insignificant are 
 the evils, how vain the pleasures- of his life. But, as respects his intel- 
 lectual principle, how does the matter stand ? What is it that has thus 
 been measuring the terrestrial world, and weighing it in a balance? 
 What is it that has been standing on the sun, and marking out the or- 
 bits and boundaries of the solar system? What is it that has descend- 
 ed into the. infinite abysses of space, examined the countless worlds that 
 they contain, and compared and contrasted them together ? , What is it 
 that has shown itself capable of dealing with magnitudes that are infi- 
 nite, even of comparing infinites together? What is it that has not hes- 
 itated to trace things in their history through a past eternity, and been 
 found capable of rtegarding equally the transitory moment and endless 
 duration? That which is competent to do. all this, so far from being 
 degraded, rises before us with an air of surpassing grandeur and inap- 
 preciable worth. It is the soul of man. 
 
 From the facts given in the last chapter respecting the relations of 
 Relations of the t^® earth in space, we are next led to her relations in 
 
 earth in time. firnp 
 
 So long as science was, oppressed with the doctrine of the human des- 
 tiny of the universe, which, as its consequence, made this earth the great 
 sentral body, and elevated man to. supreme importance, there was much 
 dif&culty in treating the probleni of the age of the world. The history 
 of the earth was at first a wild and fictitious cosmogony. Scientific cos- 
 mogony arose, not from any theological considerations, but froin.the 
 telescopic ascertainment of the polar compression of the planet Jupiter, 
 and the consequent determination by Newton that the earth is a sphe- 
 roid of revolution. With a true, cosmogony, came a better chronology. 
 Anthropocentrio The patristio doctriue had been that the earth came iato ex- 
 inning and en'd istcnce but little morc than five thousand years ago, and to 
 oftheworid. this a popular opinion long current was added, thatits.end 
 might be very shortly expected. Prom, time to time periods were .set 
 by various authorities determining the latter event, and, as true knowl- 
 edge was extinguished, the year 1000 came to be the universally ap- 
 pointed date. In view of this, it was not an uncommon thing for per- 
 sons to commence their testamentary. bequests with the words; "In ex- 
 pectation of the approaching end of the world." But the tremendous 
 moment passed by, and still the sun rose and set, stUl the seasons were 
 punctual in their courses, and Nature wore her accustomed aspect. A 
 later day was then predicted, and again and again disappointment en- 
 sued, until sober-minded men began to perceive that the Scriptures were 
 never intended to give information on such subjects, and predictions of 
 the end of the world fell into discredit, abandoned to the illiterate, whose 
 morbid anticipations they stUl amuse. 
 
 As it was thus with the end of our planet, so it was as regards her 
 
AGE OF THE WOELD PBOVED BY THE MOTION OF LIGHT. 545 
 
 origin. By degrees evidence began to accumnlate casting a doubt on 
 lier recent date, evidence continually becoming more and more cogent. 
 In no insignificant manner did the establishment of the helio- E^eofthe 
 centric theory, aided by the discoveries of the telescope, assist in gJ?Slif 
 this result. As I have said, it utterly ruined past restoration ^ee. 
 the doctrine of the human destiny of the universe. With that went 
 down all arguments which had depended on making man the measure 
 of things. Ideas of unexpected sublimity as to the scale of magnitude 
 on which the world is constructed soon enforced themselves, and proved 
 to be the precursors of similar ideas as to time. At length it was per- 
 ceived by those who were in the van of the movement that the Bible 
 was never intended to deliver a chronological doctrine respecting the 
 beginning any more than the end of things, and that those well-mean- 
 ing men who were occupied in wresting it from its true purposes were 
 engaged in an unhappy employment, for its tendency could be no other 
 than to injure the cause they designed to promote. Nevertheless, so 
 strong were the ancient persuasions, that it was not without a struggle 
 that the doctrine of a long period forced its way— a struggle for the age 
 of the earth, which, in its arguments, in its tendencies, and in its results, 
 forcibly recalls the preceding one respecting the position of the earth ; 
 but, in the end, truth overrode all authority and all opposition, and the 
 doctrine of an extremely remote origin of our planet ceased to be open 
 to dispute. 
 
 In a scientific conception of the universe, illimitable spaces are of ne- 
 cessity connected with limitless time. 
 
 The discovery of the progressive motion of light offered the means of 
 an absolute demonstration of this connection. Bays emitted indications de- 
 by an object, and making us sensible of its presence by im- ^o^es!i™mo- 
 pinging on the eye, do not reach us instantaneously, but con- *'°° "^ '■e''*- 
 sume a certain period in their passage. 
 
 If any sudden visible effect took place in the sun, we should not see 
 it at the absolute moment of its occurrence, but about eight minutes and 
 thirteen seconds later, this being the time required for light to cross the 
 intervening distance. All phenomena take place in reality anterior to 
 the moment at which we observe them by a time longer in proportion 
 as the distance to be traveled is greater. 
 
 There are objects in the heavens so distant that it would take many 
 hundreds of thousands of years for their light to reach us. Then it nec- 
 essarily follows, since we can see them, that they must have been created 
 and must have been shining so long. 
 
 The velocity with which light moves was first determined by the Dan- 
 ish astronomer Eomer from the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, November, 
 1675. It was, therefore, a determination of the rate for reflected solar 
 light in a vacuum, an^ gave 198,000 miles in a second. In 1727, Brad- 
 
 M M 
 
546 SLOW COOLING OP THE EABTH. 
 
 ley determined it for direct stellar light by his great discovery of the 
 aberration of the fixed stars. More recently, the experiments of M.Fou- 
 cault and those of M. Fizeau, by the aid of rotating mirrors or wheels, 
 have confirmed these astronomical observations, Fizeau's determination 
 of the velocity approaching that of Eomer. Probably, however,- ithe 
 most correct is that of Struve, 191,515 miles per second. 
 
 This astronomical argument, which serves as a general introduction, 
 is strengthened by numerous physical and physiological facts. But of 
 Investigation of the different methods by which the age of the earth may be 
 earth ttirough elucidated, I shall prefer that which approaches it through 
 of heat™"™* the phenomena of heat. Such a manner of viewing the 
 problem has led to its determination in the minds of many thinking 
 men. 
 
 As correct astronomical ideas began to prevail, it was perceived that 
 ABtronomicai all the hcat now on the surface of our planet is derived from 
 the'el!rtVs°° ^^^ ^uu. Through the circumstance of the inclination of her 
 surface. g^^jg Qf rotation to the plane of her annual motion, or through 
 the fact of her globular form occasioning the presentation of different 
 parts of her surface, according to their latitudes, with more or less ob- 
 liquity, and hence the reception of less or more of the rays, there may 
 be local and temporary variations. But these do not affect the general 
 principle that the quantity of heat thus received must be the same from 
 year to year. 
 
 This thermometric equilibrium not only holds good for the surface, it 
 The equiubri- may also be demonstrated for the whole mass of the planet, 
 heat. ^ The day has not shortened by the -^ of a second since the 
 time of Hipparehus, and therefore the decrease of heat can not have 
 been so much as the ^-J^ of a Fahrenheit degree, on the hypothesis 
 that the mean dilatation of all terrestrial substances is equal to that of 
 glass, 1 a oV 6 for one degree. If a decline had taken place in the intrin- 
 sic heat of the earth, .there must have been a diminution in her size, and, 
 as a necessary consequence, the length of the day must have become less. 
 The earth has therefore reached a condition of equilibrium as respects 
 temperature. 
 
 A vast body of evidence has, however, come into prominence, estob- 
 its ancient HsMng with cqual certainty that there was in ancient times a 
 decline, fg^j. iiigjier temperature in the planet ; not a temperature con- 
 cerned with a fraction of a degree, but ranging beyond the limits of our 
 thermometric scale. The mathematical figure of the earth offers a re- 
 sistless argument for its ancient liquefied condition— that is, for its orig- 
 inally high temperature. But how is this to be co-ordinated with the 
 conclusion just mentioned? 'Smply by the admission that there have 
 elapsed prodigious, it might almost be said limitless periods. As thus 
 the true state of affairs began to take on a shape, it was perceived ,that 
 
ITSPEESENT INTEEIOE HEAT. 547 
 
 the age of the earth is not a question of authority, not a question of tra- 
 dition, but a mathematical problem sharply defined : to determ- Necessity of 
 ine the time of cooling of a globe of known diameter and of ai»°gt™<!- 
 given oonductibility by radiation in a vacuum. 
 
 In such a state of things, what could be more unwise than to attempt 
 to force opinion by the exercise of authority ? How unspeakably mis- 
 chievous had proved to be a like course as respects the globular form 
 of the earth,, which did not long remain a mere mathematical abstrac- 
 tion, but was abruptly brought to a practical issue by the voyage of Ma- 
 gellan's ship. And on this question of the age of the earth it would 
 have been equally unwise to become entangled with or committed to 
 the errors of patristicism — errors arising from well-meant moral consid- 
 erations, but which can never exert any influence on the solution of 3 
 scientific problem. 
 
 One fact after another bearing upon the question gradually emerged 
 into view. It was shown that the diurnal variations of tern- inaicaHons 
 perature— that is, those connected with night and day. — ex- ^^f"^*^ 
 tend but a few inches beneath the surface, the seasonal ones, ""^ '^''^ 
 connected with winter and summer, to many feet ; but beyond this was 
 discovered a stratum of invariable temperature, beneath which, if we de- 
 scend, the heat increases at the rate of 1° Fahr. for every fifty or seventy 
 feet. The uniformity of this rate seemed to imply that, at depths quite 
 .insignificant, a very high temperature must exist. This was illustrated 
 by such facts as that the water which rushes up from a depth of 1794 
 feet in the Artesian weU of Grenelle has a temperature of 82° Fahr. 
 The mean temperature of Paris b^g about 51° Pahr., these numbers 
 give a rate of 1° for every fifty-eight feet. If, then, the increase of heat 
 is only 100° per mile, at a depth of less than ten miles every thing must 
 be red hot, and at thirty or forty in a melted state. It was by all admit- 
 ted that the rise of temperature with the depth is not at aU local, but oc- 
 curs in whatever part of the earth the observation .may be made. The 
 general conclusion thus furnished was re-enforeed by the evidence of 
 volcanoes, which could no, longer be. regarded as naerely local, depend- 
 ing on restricted areas for the supply of melted material, since they are 
 found all over the land and under the sea, in the interior of continents 
 and by the shores, beneath the equator and in the polar regions. It 
 had been estimated that there are probably two thousand aerial or sub- 
 aqueous eruptions every century. Some volcanoes, as ^tna, have for 
 thousands of years poured forth their lavas, and still there is an unex- 
 hausted supply. Every where a common source is indicated by the 
 rudely uniform materials ejected. The fact that the lines of volcanic 
 activity shift pointed to a deep source; the periodic increments and de- 
 crements of force bore the same interpretation. They far transcend the 
 range of history. The volcanoes of central Prance date from the 
 
548 ARGUMENTS FOR FORMER HIGH TRMPERATURE. 
 
 Eocene period; their power increased in the Miocene, and contimied 
 through the Pliocene ; those of Catalonia belong to the Pliocene, prob- 
 ably. Coupled with volcanoes, earthquakes, with their vertical, hori- 
 zontal, and rotary vibrations, having a linear velocity of from twenty 
 to thirty miles per minute, indicated a profound focus of action. The 
 great earthquake of Lisbon was felt from Norway to Morocco, from Al- 
 giers to the West Indies, from Thuringia to the Canadian lakes. It ab- 
 solutely lifted the whole bed of the North Atlantic Ocean. Its origin 
 was in no superficial point. 
 
 A still more universal proof of a high temperature affecting the whole 
 Proof from the mass of the interior of the globe was believed to be present- 
 mean density, g^ j^ ^^g Small mean density of the earth, a density not more 
 than 5.66 times that of water, the mean density of the solid surface be- 
 ing 2.7, and that of the solid and sea-surface together 1.6. But this is 
 not a density answering to that which the earth should have in virtue 
 of the attraction of her own parts. It implied some agent capable of 
 rarefying and dilating, and the only such agent is heat. Although the 
 law of the increase of density from the upper surface to the centre is 
 unknown, yet a coraparison of the earth's compression with her velocity 
 of rotation demonstrated that there is an increasing density in the strata 
 as we descend. The great fact, however, which stands prominently 
 forth is the interior heat. 
 
 Not only were evidences thus offered of the existence of a high tem- 
 perature, and, therefore, of the lapse of a long time by the present cir- 
 cumstances of the globe ; every trace of its former state, duly considered, 
 yielded similar indications, the old evidence corroborating the new. 
 And soon it appeared that this would hold good whether considered in 
 the inorganic or organic aspect. 
 
 In the inorganic, what other interpretation could be put on the uni- 
 Inorganic proofs vcTsal occurrcnce of igneous rocks, some in enormous mount- 
 
 of a former high . • i n n i 
 
 temperature. am ranges, some ejected from beneath, forcmg their tortuous 
 way through the resisting superincumbent strata ; veins of various min- 
 eral constitution, and, as their relations with one another showed, veins 
 of very different dates ? What other interpretation of layers of lava in 
 succession, one under another, and often with old disintegrated material 
 between ? What of those numerous volcanoes which have never been 
 known to show any signs of activity in the period of history, though 
 they sometimes occur in countries like France, pre-eminently historic? 
 What meaning could be assigned to all those dislocations, subsidences, 
 and elevations which the crust of the earth in every country presents, 
 indications of a loss of heat, of a contraction in diameter, and its neces- 
 sary consequence, fracture of the exterior consolidated shell along lines 
 of least resistance ? And though it was asserted by some that the catas- 
 trophes of which these are the evidences were occasioned by forces of 
 
ITS CONSEQUENCE A LONG DUBATION. 549 
 
 Tinparalleled energy and incessant operation— unparalleled when com- 
 pared with such terrestrial forces as we are familiar with— that did not, 
 in any respect, change the interpretation, for there could have been no 
 abrupt dimimition in the intensity of those forces, which, if they .had 
 lessened in power, must have passed through a long, a gradual decline. 
 In that verv decline there thus spontaneously came forth ev- These neoeBsa- 
 
 mt 11 n -K-r ™y imply lODg 
 
 idences of a long lapse of time. The whole course of Nature time, 
 satisfies us how gradual and deliberate, are her proceedings ; that there is 
 no abrupt boundary between the past and the present, but that the one 
 insensibly shades off into the other, the present springing gently and 
 imperceptibly out of the past. If volcanic phenomena and all kinds 
 of igneous manifestations — if dislocations, injections, the intrusion of 
 melted material into strata were at one time more frequent, more vio- 
 lent — if, in the old times, mundane forces possessed an energy which 
 they have now lost, their present diminished and deteriorated condition, 
 coupled with the fact that for thousands of years, throughout the range 
 of history, they have been invariably such as we find them now, should 
 be to us a proof how long, how very long ago those old times must 
 have been. 
 
 Thus, therefore, was perceived the necessity of co-ordinating the scale 
 of time with the scale of space, and such views of the physical history 
 of the earth were extended to celestial bodies which were considered as 
 having passed through a similar course. In one, at least, this support from 
 assertion was no mere matter of speculation, but of actual obser- fects. 
 vation. The broken surface of the moon, its volcanic cones and craters, 
 its mountains, with their lava-clad sides and ejected blocks glistening in 
 the sun, proved a succession of events like those of the earth, and de- 
 monstrated that there is a planetary as well as a terrestrial geology, and 
 that in our satellite there is evidence of a primitive high temperature, of 
 a gradual decline, and, therefore, of a long process of time. Perhaps, 
 also, considering the rate of heat-exchange in Venus by reason of her 
 proximity to the sun, the pale light which it is said has been observed 
 on her non-illuminated part is the declining trace of her own intrinsic 
 temperature, her heat lasting until ndw. 
 
 If astronomers sought in systemic causes an explanation of these facts 
 — ^if, for instance, they were disposed to examine how far Astronomical facta 
 changes in the obHquity of the ecliptic were connected ihmgi."'' °™"^' 
 therewith — it was necessary at the outset to concede that the scale of 
 time on which the event proceeds is of prodigious duration, this secular 
 variation observing a slow process of only 45".7 in a century ; and 
 hence, since the time.of Hipparchus, two thousand years ago, the plane 
 of the ecliptic has approached that of the equator by only a quarter of 
 a degree. Or if, again, they looked to a diminishing of the eccentricity 
 of the earth's orbit, they were compelled to admit the same postulate. 
 
550 THE LENGTH OF TIME SHOWN BY AQUEOUS EFFECTS, 
 
 and deal with, thousands of centuries. Under whatever aspect, then, 
 the theory was regarded, if once a former high temperature was admit- 
 ted, and the fact coupled therewith that there has been no sensible de- 
 cline within the observation of man, whether the explanation was pure- 
 ly geological or purely astronomical, the motion of heat in the mass of 
 the earth is so slow, yet the change that has taken place is so great, the 
 variations of the contemplated relations of the solar system so gradual 
 — ^under whatever aspect and in whatever way the fact was dealt with, 
 there arose the indispensable concession of countless centuries. 
 
 To the astronomer such a concession was nothing extraordinary. It 
 is not because of the time required that he entertains any doubt that 
 the sun and his system accomplish a revolution round a distant centre 
 of gravity in nineteen millions of years, or that the year of e Lyrse is 
 half ^ million of ours. He looks forward to that distant day when Sir- 
 ius will disappear from our skies, and the Southern Cross be visible, 
 and Yega the polar star. He looks back to the time when y Draconis 
 occupied that conspicuous position, and the builders of the great pyrar- 
 mid, B.C. 3970, gave to its subterranean passage an inclinatiofi'of 26° 
 15', corresponding to the inferior culmination of that star. He tells us 
 that the Southern Cross began to be invisible in 52° 30' N"., 2900 years 
 before our era, and that it had previously attained an altitude of more 
 than 10°. When it disappeared from the horizon of the countries on 
 the Baltic, the pyramid of Cheops had been erected more than a thou- 
 sand years. 
 
 "We must pass by a copious mass of evidence furnished by aqueous 
 Proofs of time causes of change operating on the. earth's surface, though these 
 effects, add very weighty proof to the doctrine of a long period. The 
 
 filling up of lakes, the formation of deltas, the cutting power of running 
 water, the deposit, of travertines, the denudation of immense tracts of- 
 country, the carrying of their detritus into the sea, the changes of shores 
 by tides and waves, the formation of strata hundreds of miles in length, 
 and imbedding therein of fossil remains in numbers almost beyond be- 
 lief, furnished many interesting and important facts. Of these not a few 
 presented means of computation. It would not be difficult to assign a 
 date for such geographical events as the production of the Caspian and 
 Dead Seas from an examination of the sum of saline material contained 
 jn their waters and deposited in their bed, with the annual amount brought 
 into them by their supplying rivers. Such computations were executed 
 as respects the growth of Lower Egypt and the backward cutting of 
 Niagara, Falls, and, though they might be individually open to criticism, 
 their mutual accordance and tendency furnished- an evidence that could 
 not be gainsaid. The continual accumulation of such evidence ought- 
 not to be without its weight on those who are stiU disposed to treat 
 slightingly the power of geological facts in developing truth. ■ 
 
AND BY CHANGES OF LEVEL IN LAND AND SEA. 551 
 
 To sucli facts were added all those, with which volumes might be 
 filled, proving the universality of the movements of the solid ^"^ fr»^Jh| 
 crust of the earth— strata once necessarily horizontal now m- the earth-s crnst. 
 clined at all angles,, strata unconformable to one another— a body of ev- 
 idence most copious and most satisfactory, yet demonstrating from the 
 immensity of the results how slowly the work had gone on. 
 
 How was it possible to conceive that beds many hundred feet in thick- 
 ness should have been precipitated suddenly from water? Their me- 
 chanical condition implied slow disintegration and denudation in other 
 localities to furnish material ; their contents showed no trace of vio- 
 lence ; they rather proved the deposition to have occurred in a tranquil 
 and quiet way. What interpretation could be put upon facts contin- 
 ually increasing in number like those observed in the southeast of En- 
 gland, where fresh- water beds a thousand feet thick are covered by other 
 beds a thousand feet thick, but of marine origin ? What upon those in 
 the north of England, where masses once uplifted a thousand feet above 
 the level, and, at the time of their elevation, presenting abrupt precipices 
 and cliffs of that height, as is proved by the fractures and faults of the 
 existing strata, have been altogether removed, and the surface left plain ? 
 In South Wales there are localities where 11,000 feet in thickness have 
 been bodily carried away. Whether, therefore, the strata that have 
 been formed, and which remain to strike us with astonishment- at their 
 prodigious mass, were considered ; or those that have been destroyed, 
 ■not, however, without leaving unmistakable traces of themselves ; the 
 processes of wearing away to furnish material as well as the accumula- 
 tion, of necessity required the lapse of long periods of time. The un- 
 dermining of cliffs by the beating of the sea, the redistribution of sands 
 and mud at the bottom of the ocean, the washing of material from hiUs 
 into the lowlands by showers of rain, its transport by river courses, the 
 disintegration of soils by the influence of frost, the weathering of rocks 
 by carbonic acid, and the solution of limestone by its aid in water — 
 these are effects which, even at the quickest, seem not to amount to 
 much in the course of the life of a man. A thousand years could yield 
 but a trifling result. 
 
 We have already alluded to another point of view from which these 
 mechanical effects were considered. The Ipvel of the land and sea has 
 unmistakably changed. There are mountain eminences ten or fifteen 
 thousand feet in altitude in the interior of continents over which, or 
 through which, shells and other products of the sea are profusely scat- 
 tered. And though, considering the proverbial immobility of the solid 
 land and the proverbial instability of the water, it might at first be sup- 
 posed much more likely that the sea had subsided than that the land 
 had risen, a more critical examination soon led to a change of opinion. 
 Before our eyes, in some countries, elevations and depressions are taking 
 
552 PROOF FROM OEGANIO EEMAINS. 
 
 place, sometimes in a slow, secular manner, as in Norway and Sweden, 
 that peninsula on the north rising, and on the south sinking, at such a 
 rate that, to accomplish the whole seven hundred feet of movement, more 
 than twenty-seven thousand years would be required if it had always 
 been uniform as now. Elsewhere, as on the southwestern coast of South 
 America, the movement is paroxysmal, the shore-line lifting for hund- 
 reds of mUes instantaneously, and then pausing for many years. In 
 the Morea also, range after range of old sea-clifis exist, some of them 
 more than a thousand feet high, with terraces at the base of each ; bu't 
 the Morea has been well known for the last twenty-five centuries, and 
 in that time has undergone no material change. Again, in SicUy, 
 similar interior sea-cliffs are seen, the rubbish at their bases contain- 
 ing the bones of the hippopotamus and mammoth, proofs of the great 
 change the climate has undergone since the sea washed those ancient 
 beaches. Italy, pre-eminently the historic country, in which, within the 
 memory of man, no material change of configuration has taken place, 
 since the Pleistocene period, very late geologically speaking, has expe- 
 rienced elevations of fifteen hundred feet. The seven hiUs of Bome 
 are of the Pliocene, with fluviatile deposits and recent terrestrial shells 
 two hundred feet above the Tiber. There intervened between the old- 
 er Pliocene and the newer a period of enormous length, as is demon- 
 strated by the accumulated effects taking place in it, and, indeed, the 
 same may be said of every juxtaposed pair of distinctly marked strata. 
 It demanded an inconceivable time for beds once horizontal at the bot- 
 tom of the sea to be tilted to great inclinations ; it required also the en- 
 during exertion of a prodigious force. Ascent and descent may be de- 
 tected in strata of every age ; movements sometimes paroxysmal, but 
 more often of a tranquil and secular kind. The coal-bearing strata, by 
 gradual submergence, attained in South "Wales a thickness of 12,000 
 feet, and on our own continent, in Nova Scotia, a total thickness of 
 14,570 feet ; the uniformity of the process of submergence and its slow 
 steadiness is indicated by the occurrence of erect trees at different lev- 
 els: seventeen such repetitions may be counted in a thickness of 4515 
 feet. The age of the trees is proved by their size, some being four feet 
 in diameter. Bound them, as they gradually went down with the sub- 
 siding soil, calamites grew at one level after another. In the Sydney 
 coal-field fifty-nine fossil forests thus occur in superposition. 
 
 Such was the conclusion forcing itself from considerations connected 
 Organic proofs "^^"^ inorganic nature. It received a most emphatic endorse- 
 hightempera- ^^eut from the organic world, for there is an intimate connec- 
 '""• tion between the existence and well-being both of plants aiid 
 
 animals, and the heat to which they are exposed. Why is it that the 
 orange and lemon do not grow in New York ? What is it that wUl in- 
 evitably ensue if these exotics be exposed to one of our cold winters ? 
 
LOCALIZATION OP PLANTS AND ANIMALS. 553 
 
 What is it that must take place if, in Florida or other of the Southern 
 states, a season of unusual rigor should occur? Does not heat thus 
 codfine within a fixed boundary the spread of those plants ? And so, 
 again, how many others there are which grow luxuriantly with us, but 
 are parched up and kiUed if fortuitously carried beneath a hot tropical 
 sun. To every one there is a climate which best suits the condition of 
 its life, and certain limits of heat and cold beyond which its existence 
 is not possible. 
 
 Kthe mean annual heat of the earth's surface were slowly to rise, and, 
 in the course of some centuries, the temperature now obtaining in Flor- 
 ida should obtain in New York, the orange and lemon would Boundary of 
 certainly be found here. With the mcreasmg beat those plants teat, 
 would commence a northward march, steadily advancing as opportunity 
 was given. Or, if the reverse took place, and for any reason the heat 
 of the torrid zone declined until the winter's cold of New York should 
 be at last reached under the equator, as the descent went on the orange 
 and lemon would retreat within a narrow and narrower region, and end 
 by becoming extinct, the conditions of their exposure being incompat- 
 ible with the continuance of their life. From such considerations it 
 was therefore seen that not only does heat arrange the limits of the dis- 
 tribution of plants, erecting round them boundaries which, though in- 
 visible, are more insuperable than a wall of brass, it also regulates their 
 march, if march there is to be — ^nay, even controls their very existence, 
 and to genera, and species, and individuals appoints a period of dura- 
 tion. 
 
 Such observations apply not alone to plants ; the animal kingdom of- 
 fers equally significant illustrations. Why does the white fnimaiB lomi- 
 bear enjoy the leaden sky of the pole and his native iceberg ? plants. 
 Why does the tiger restrict himSelf to the jungles of India ? Can it be 
 doubted that, if the mean annual temperature should decline, the polar 
 bear would come with his iceberg to corresponding southern latitudes, 
 or, if the heat should rise, the tiger would commence a northward jour- 
 ney ? Does he not, indeed, every summer penetrate northward in Asia 
 as far as the latitude of Berlin, and retire again as winter comes on? 
 Why is it that, at a given signal, the birds of passage migrate, pressed 
 forward in the spring by the heat, and pressed backward in the autumn 
 by the cold? The annual migration of birds illustrates the causes of 
 geological appearances and extinctions. Do we not herein recognize 
 the agent that determines animal distribution? We must not deceive 
 ourselves with any fancied terrestrial impediment or restraint. Let the 
 heat rise but a few degrees, and the turkey-buzzard, to whose powerful 
 wing distances are of no moment and the free air no impediment, would 
 be seen hovering over New York ; let it fall a few degrees, and he would 
 vanish from the streets of Charleston; let it fall a little more, and he 
 
554 CREATIONS AND EXTINCTIONS 
 
 would vanish from the earth. Shell-fish, once the inhabitants of the 
 British seas, retired during the glacial period to the Mediterranean, and 
 with the returning warmth have gone back northward again, ♦ 
 
 Animals are thus controlled by heat in an indirect as well as a direct 
 Control of ani- ^W- Indirectly ; for, if their food be diminished, they must 
 mala ty food. .ggg]j. g, mgre ample supply; if it fails, they must perishf; 
 Doubtless it was insufficient food, as well as the setting in of a more rig- 
 orous climate, that occasioned the destruction of the mastodon giganteus," 
 which abounded in the United States after the drift period. Such great 
 elephantine forms could not possibly sustain themselves against the rig- 
 ors of our present winters, nor could they find a sufficient supply of foodi 
 for a considerable portion of the year. The disappearance of animals 
 from the face of the earth was, as Palaeontology advanced, ascertained 
 to have been a determinate process, a condition of their existence, and 
 either inherent in themselves or dependent on the surrounding circum- 
 stances. It was proved that the forms- now existing are only an insig- 
 rdficant part of the countless tribes that had lived. The earth has been 
 Nature of ore- the theatre of a long succession of appearances and removals,' 
 tinctions; of creatious and cxtinctious, reacMug to the latcst times. In 
 the Pleistocene of Sicily, -j^ of the fossil shells are extinct ; in the bone-- 
 oaverns of England, out of thirty-seven mammals eighteen 'are extinct. 
 But judging, from what may be observed of the duration of races con- 
 temporary with us, that their life is prolonged for thousands' of years, 
 successive generations of the same species in a long order replacing 
 their predecessors before final removal occurs, this again resistlessly 
 brought forward the same conclusion to which all the foregoing facts 
 had pointed, that there have transpired since the introduction of animal 
 life upon this globe very long periods of time. 
 
 Through the operation of this law of extinction and of creation, ani- 
 mated nature, both on the continents and in the seas, has undergone a 
 marvelous change. In the lias and oolitic seas, the Enaliosauria, Cetio- 
 sauria, and Grocodilia dominated as the Delphinidae and BalffinidEe do 
 in ours ; the former have been eliminated, the latter produced.' ■ Along 
 with the cetaceans came the soft-scaled Cycloid and Ctenoid fishes, or- 
 ders which took the place of the Ganoids and Placoids of the Mesozoic 
 times. One after another successive species of air-breathing reptiles have 
 been created, continued for their appointed time to exist, and'then died 
 out. The development has been, not in the descending, but in the as- 
 cending order ; the Amphitheria, Spalacotheria, Triconodon of the Meso- 
 zoic times were substituted by higher tertiary forms. Nor have these 
 mutations been abrupt. , If mammals are the chief characteristic of 
 the- Tertiary ages, their first beginnings are seen far earlier; in the tri- 
 assic and oolitic formations there are a few of the lower orders strug- 
 gling, as it were, to emerge. The aspect of animated nature has alto? 
 
DEPEND ON LAW. 555 
 
 gether changed. No more does the oamelopard wander over Europe as 
 he did in the Miocene and Pliocene times ; no more are great elephants 
 seen in the American forests, the hippopotamus in England, the rhinoc- 
 eros in Siberia. The hand of man has introduced upon this continent 
 the horse of the Old World; but the American horse, that ran on the 
 great plains contemporary \nth the megatherium and megalonyx, has 
 for tens of thousands of years been extinct. Even the ocean and the 
 rivers are no exception to these changes. 
 
 "What, then, is the manner of origin of this iafinite succession of 
 forms? It is often sufacient to see clearly a portion of a ^^^jjj^^* 
 plan to be able to determine with some degree of certainty law. 
 the general arrangement of the whole ; it is often sufficient to know 
 with precision a part of the life of an individual to guess with probable 
 accuracy his action in some forthcoming event, or to determine the share 
 he has borne in affairs that are past. It is enough to appreciate thor-' 
 oughly the style of a master to ascertain without doubt the authenticity 
 of an imputed picture. And so, in the affairs of the universe, it is 
 enough to ascertain the manner of operation of a part in order to settle 
 the manner of flperatioii of the whole. When, therefore, it was per- 
 ceived how the disappearance of vanishing forms from the surface of 
 the globe is accomphshed — ^that it is not by a sudden and grand provi- 
 dential intervention — that there is no visible putting forth of the Omnip- 
 otent hand, but slowly and silently, yet surely, the ordinary laws of Na- 
 ture are permitted to take their course — that heat, and cold, and want 
 of food, and dryness, and moisture, in the end, as if by an irresistible , 
 destiny, accomplish the event, it seemed to indicate that, as regards the 
 introduction of new-comers, a suitableness of external conditions had 
 called them forth, as an unsuitableness could end them. Changes- in the 
 constitution of the air or its pressure, in the composition of the sea or 
 its' depth, in the brilliancy of light or the amount of heat, in the inor- 
 ganic material of a medium, wiU modify old forms into new ones, or 
 compel their extinction. Birth and death go hand in hand ; creation 
 and extinction are inseparable. The variation of organic form is con- 
 tinuous ; it depends upon an orderly succession of material events ; ap- 
 pearances and eliminations are managed upon a common principle ; they 
 stand connected with the irresistible course of great mundane changes. 
 It was impossible that geologists could reach any other conclusion than 
 that such phenomena are not the issue of direct providential interven- 
 tions, but of physical influences. The procession of organic life is not 
 a motley march ; it follows the procession of physical events ; and, since 
 it is impossible to re-establish a sameness of physical conditions that 
 have once come to an end, or reproduce the order in which they have 
 occurred, it of necessity follows that no organic form can reappear after 
 it has once died out — once dead, it is clean gone forever. 
 
556 MOLECULAR CREATIONS AND EXTINCTIONS. 
 
 In the course of the life of individual man, the parts that constitute 
 Interstitial mole- ^^^ systcm are Undergoing momentary changes ; those of to- 
 cuiar creations. ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^]^g ^^^^^ g^g t]iose of j/esterday, and they -ffill 
 
 be replaced by others to-morrow. There have been, and are every in- 
 stant, interstitial deaths of all the constituent portions, and an unceasing 
 removal of those that have performed their duty. In the stead of de- 
 parting portions, new ones have been introduced, interstitial births and 
 organizations perpetually taking place. In physiology it became no 
 longer a question that all this proceeds in a determinate way under the 
 operation of principles that are fixed, of laws that are invariable. The 
 alchemists introduced no poetical fiction when they spoke of the micro- 
 cosm, asserting that the system of man is emblematical of the system 
 of the world. The intercalation of a new organic molecule in a living 
 being answers to the" introduction of a new form in the universal organ- 
 ic series. It requires as much power to call into existence a living 
 molecule as to produce a living being. Both are accomplished upon, 
 the same principle, and that principle is not an incessant intervention 
 of a supernatural kind, but the operation of unvarying law. Physical 
 agents, working through physical laws, remove in orgaaisms such mole- 
 cules as have accomplished their work and create new ones, and physi- 
 cal agents, working through physical laws,, control the extinctions and 
 creations of forms ia the universe of life. The difiference is only in the 
 time. What is accomplished in the one case in the twinkling of an 
 eye, in the other may demand the' lapse of a thousand centuries. 
 
 The variation of organic forms, under the force of external circum- 
 stances, is thus necessary to be understood in connection with that 
 countless succession of living beings demonstrated by geology. It car- 
 ries us, in common with so much other evidence, to the lapse of a long 
 time. Nor are such views as those to which we are thus constrained 
 inconsistent with the admission of a Providential guidance of the world. 
 Man, however learned and pious he may be, is not always a reliable in- 
 terpreter of the ways of God. In deciding whether any philosophical 
 doctrine is consistent or inconsistent with the Divine attributes, we are 
 too prone to judge of those attributes by our own finite and imperfect 
 standard, forgetting that the only test to which we ought to resort is the 
 ascertainment if the doctrine be true. If it be true, it is in unison with 
 God. Perhaps some who have rejected the conception of the variation 
 of organic forms, with its postulate limitless duration, may have failed 
 to. remember the grandeur of the universe and its relations to space and 
 to time ; perhaps they do not recall the system on which it is adminis- 
 tered. Like the anthropomorphite monks of the Nile, they conceive of 
 God as if he was only a very large man ; else how could it for a mo- 
 ment have been doubted that it is far more — I use the expression rev- 
 erently—in the style of the great Constructor to carry out his intentions 
 
PALEONTOLOGY, OR THE HISTORY OF FOSSILS. 557 
 
 by tlie summary operations of law? It migtt be consistent Defense of the 
 with the weakness and ignorance of man to be reduced to the things by law. 
 necessity of personal intervention for the accomplishment of his plans, 
 but would not that be the very result of such ignorance ? Does not ab- 
 solute knowledge actually imply procedure by preconceived and unvary- 
 ing law ? Is not momentary intervention altogether derogatory to the 
 thorough and absolute sovereignty of God ? The astronomical calcula- 
 tion of ancient events, as well as the prediction of those to come, is essen- 
 tially founded on the principle that there has not in the times under con- 
 sideration, and that there will never be in the future, any exercise of an 
 arbitrary or overriding will. The comer-stone of astronomy is this, that 
 the solar' system — nay, even the universe, is ruled by necessity. To op- 
 erate by expedients is for the creature, to operate by law for the Creator ; 
 and so far from the doctrine that creations and extinctions are carried on 
 by a foreseen and predestined ordinance — a system which works of itself 
 without need of any intermeddling — ^being an unworthy, an ignoble con- 
 ception, it is completely in unison with the resistless movements of the 
 mechanism of the universe, with whatever is orderly, symmetrical, and 
 beautiful upon earth, and with all the dread magnificence of the heav- 
 ens. 
 
 It was in Italy that particular attention was first given to organic re- 
 mains. Leonardo da Vinci asserts that they are real shells, Historical sketch 
 or the remains thereof, and hence that the land and sea ^i^^ ^'^'™'" 
 must have changed their relative position. At this time fossils were 
 looked upon as rare curiosities, no one supposing that they were at all 
 numerous, and many were the fantastic hypotheses proposed to account 
 for their occurrence. Some referred them to the general deluge men- 
 tioned in Scripture ; some to a certain plastic power obscurely attrib- 
 uted to the earth ; some thought that they were engendered by the sun- 
 light, heat, and rain. To Da Yinci is due the first clear assertion of 
 their true nature, that they are actually the remains of organic beings. 
 Soon the subject was taken up by other eminent Italians. Fracaster 
 wrote on the petrifactions of Yerona ; Scilla, a Sicilian, on marine bod- 
 ies turned into stone, illustrating his work by engravings. • Still later 
 Yallisneri, 1721, published letters on marine bodies found in rocks, at- 
 tempting by their aid to determine the extent of the marine deposits, of 
 Italy. These early cultivators of geology soon perceived the advantage 
 to be gained by the establishment of museums and the publication of 
 catalogues. The first seems to have been that of John Kentman, an ex- 
 ample that was followed by Calceolarius and Yallisneri. Subsequently 
 Fontanelle proposed the construction of charts in accordance with fossil 
 remains; but the principle involved was not applied on the great scale 
 as a true geological test until introduced by Smith in connection with 
 the English strata. 
 
558 PEEOKGANIO AND OEGANIO AGES. 
 
 To Steno, a Dane, is due the recognition of preorganio in contradi?- 
 The preorganic tinction to Organic rocks, a distinction the terms of whioli 
 time. necessarily involve the idea of time. Soon it became gen- 
 
 erally recognized that the strata in which organic remains occur are of 
 a later date than those devoid of them, the preorganic rocks demon- 
 ; strating a preorganic time. Moreover, as facts, were developed, it was 
 plain that there- are essential differences in the relations of fossOs, and 
 that, though in Italy the same species of shells may occur in the mount- 
 ains that occur in the adjacent seas, this was very far from being the 
 case uniformly elsewhere. At length the truth began to emerge, that 
 in proportion as the strata under examination are. of an older date, so are 
 the differences between their organic remains and existing species more 
 marked. It was also discovered that the same species often extended 
 superficially over immense districts, but that in a vertical examinatiijn 
 one species after another rapidly appears in a descending order — an or- 
 der which could be verified in spite of the contortions, fractures, and 
 displacements of the strata. A very important theoretical conclusion 
 'was here presented ; for the f&pid succession of essentially different or- 
 ganic forms, as the rooks were older, was clearly altogether inoohsisterit 
 with one catastrophe, as the universal deluge, to which it had been gen- 
 erally referred. It was plain that the thickness of the strata in which 
 , they were enveloped, and the prodigious numbers in which they occur- 
 red, answered in some degree to the period of life of those fossUs, since 
 everyone- of them, large or small, must have had its tJrne of birth, of 
 maturity, and of death. When, therefore, it could be no longer doubt- 
 inaufflciency of ed that Strata many hundreds of feet in thickness were 
 . tropie. crowded with such remains, it became altogether out of the 
 
 question to refer- their entombment to the confusion of a single catas- 
 trophe, for every thing indicated an orderly and deliberate proceeding. 
 Still more cogent did this evidence become when, in a more critical 
 manner, the fossils were studied, and some strata were demonstrated to 
 be of a fresh-water and others of a marine origin, the one intercalated 
 with the other like leaves in a book. To this fact may be imputed the 
 final overthrow of the doctrine of a single catastrophe, and its replace- 
 ment by a doctrine of periodical changes. 
 
 Prom these statements it will therefore be understood that, commenc- 
 ThB orderly pro- ing with the first appcaranco of organization, an orderly 
 
 " £rF63310Tl of OrCTAn." ^^^ 
 
 ization. process was demonstrated from forms altogether unlike 
 
 those with which we are familiar, up to those at present existing, a pro- 
 cedure conducted so slowly that it was impossible to assign for it a 
 shorter duration than thousands of centuries. Moreover, it seemed that 
 the guiding condition which had controlled this secular march of organ- 
 ization was the same which stiU determines the possibility of existence 
 and the distribution of life. The succession of organic forms indicates a 
 
GEADUAIi PEODUOTIGN OF CLIMATES. 559 
 
 clear relation to a descending temperature. The plants of tlie earliest 
 times are plants of an nltratropioal climate, and that primitive vege- 
 tation seemed to demonstrate that there had been a uniform climate — 
 a climate of high temperat^re^— all over the globe. The coal-beds of 
 Nova Scotia exhibited the same genera and species as those of Europe, 
 and so well marked was the botanical connection with the declining 
 temperature in successive ages that attempts were made to express eras 
 by their prevailing organisms; thus Brongniart's division is for the Pri- 
 mary strata, the Age of Acrogens; the Secondary, exclusive of the Cre- 
 taceous, the Age of Gymnogens ; the third, including the Cretaceous and 
 Tertiary, the Age of Angiosperifts. It is to be particularly remarked 
 that the Cretaceous flora, in the aggregate, combines the antecedent and 
 succeeding periods, proving that the change was not by crisis or sudden 
 catastrophe, but that the new forms rose gently among the old ones. 
 After the Eocene period, dicotyledonous angiosperms became the prev- 
 alent form, and &om that date to the Pleistocene tha evidences of a con- 
 tinued refrigeration are absolute. 
 
 As thus an examination was made from the most ancient to the later 
 agps, indications were found of a climate arrangement more and more 
 distinct — ^in the high latitudes, from the .ultratropical through ciimatesm 
 the tropical, the temperate, down to the present irigid state ; m piace. 
 lower latitudes the declining process stopping short at an earlier point. 
 It therefore appeared that there has been a production of climates both 
 in an order of time and in an order of locaKty, the greatest change hav- 
 ing occurred in the frigid zone, which has passed through all mean tem- 
 peratures, an intermediate change in the temperate, and a minimum in 
 the torrid zone. The general effect has thus been to present a succes- 
 sion of surfaces on the same planet adapted to a varied organization, 
 and offering a more magnificent spectacle than if we were permitted to 
 .inspect many diEferent planets ; for in them there might be no neces- 
 sary connection of their forms of life, but in this there is, so that, were 
 our knowledge of Comparative Physiology more perfect, we might amuse 
 ourselves with' intercalating among the plant and animal organisms fa- 
 miliar to us hypothetical forms that would make the series complete, 
 and verify our principles by their subsequent discovery in the deep 
 strata of the earth. 
 
 Does not this progression of life in our planet suggest a like progres- 
 sion for the solar system, which in its aggregate is passing in myriads 
 of years through all organic phases? May we not also, from our solar 
 system, rise to a similar conception for the universe? 
 
 There are two;very important considerations, on which we must dwell 
 for the complete understanding of the consequences of these changes: 
 1st. The mechanism of the declining temperature; 2d. Its effect in the 
 organic world. , 
 
660 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF CLIMATES. 
 
 1st. A uniformly high temperature could never be manifested all 
 over the surface of our planet through any heating influence of the sun. 
 The nature of -A- high and uuiform temperature unerringly points to an in- 
 ciStog™m^^ ternal cause ; and the gradual appearance of climates, man- 
 perature. ifestiug a relatively increasing power ot the sun, indicates the 
 slow diminution of that internal heat. But this is precisely the conclu- 
 sion which was come to from a contemplation of the earth from a purely 
 physical point of view. So long as its intrinsic heat overpowered that 
 derived from the sun, it was not possible that any thing answering to 
 climates could be established ; and, until a certain degree of cooling 
 by radiation had been accomplished, the heat must have been com- 
 paratively uniform in all latitudes ; but, that point gained, there neces- 
 sarily ensued an arrangement of zones of different temperatures, or, in 
 other words, climates appeared, the process being essentially slow, and 
 becoming slower as the loss of heat went on. Finally, when loss of heat 
 from the earth ceased, an equilibrium was reached in the climate ar- 
 rangement as we now find it. Thus purely physical as well as geolog- 
 ical considerations brought philosophers on this point to the same con- 
 clusion — that conclusion which has been so often repeated — very long 
 periods of time. 
 
 2d. As to the effect on the organic world. Nothing can live at a 
 Conscciuent effect tcmpcrature higher than the boiling-point of water, for the 
 Fauna. conditiou of life implies that there shall circulate from part 
 
 to part of a living mechanism a watery liquid, sap, or blood. From this 
 it necessarily follows that a planet, the temperature of which is above a 
 certain limit, must necessarily have a lifeless surface ; and this seemed 
 to be the interpretation of that preorganic time to which we have re- 
 ferred. Moreover, when the temperature suitably descends so as to 
 come within the limit at which life is possible, its uniformity over the 
 surface of a planet will produce a sameness in the organization. It 
 would be an identity if heat were the only regulating condition of life. 
 At this stage, of things, the solar heat overpowered, and a.sensibly uni- 
 form temperature in all latitudes existing, still the only possible organic 
 forms are those consistent with a high temperature, uniformity in the 
 physical condition impressing a general uniformity in the aspect of hfe 
 Production and geographically. But the moment that climate arrangement 
 
 distribution of ° ° ^ -i i . ,. ■ n i 
 
 new organisms, has Dccome possiDle, variety 01 organic form becomes possi- 
 ble. Now also ensues another all-important result — geographical dis- 
 tribution. Both of plants and animals, those whose vital conditions are 
 inconsistent with the occurring change must retire from the affected lo- 
 cality. In plants this retrocession is brought to pass by the gradual 
 sickening and death of individuals, or the impossibility of reproduction; 
 in animals there is added thereto, because of their power of locomotion, 
 voluntary retirement, at least in the case of individuals, and immobility 
 
EEA OF THE PEODUOTION OF COAL. 561 
 
 in tte species is corrected by locomotion in the individual. The affect- 
 ed region has become unsuitable, cheerless, uncomfortable ; they aban- 
 don it ; and as the boundary they thus, in the one case, can not, and in 
 the other will not overpass, advances, so do they recede before it. If 
 the change was abrupt, or took place by a sudden crisis, there would 
 seem to be no other possible event than an overcrowding of the unaf- 
 . fected region and a desolation of the part that had varied. But, since 
 a developing cell under a new condition produces a new form, and since 
 the physical change is taking place with extreme slowness, the appear- 
 ance of modified structures ensues. And thus, by decline of tempera- 
 ture, two distinct results are accomplished — the production of organic 
 forms in an order of succession, new ones replacing the old, as if they 
 were transmutations of them, and geographical distribution. 
 
 In my Physiology I have endeavored to explain in detail the princi- 
 ples^here set forth. I have endeavored to show that the as- DeiuBivc mture 
 pect of sameness presented bj an animal or plant is no proof ubrinm. 
 of unchangeability. Those forms retain in our times their special aspect 
 because the conditions of the theatre in which they live do not change ; 
 but let the mean temperature rise, let the sun-rays become brighter, 
 change the composition of the air, and forthwith the world of organiza- 
 tion would show how profoundly it was affected. Nor need such 
 changes, in one sense, be more than insignificant to produce prodigious, 
 results. Thus the air contains only ao^oo of i^ volume of carbonic acid 
 gas. That apparently trifling quantity taken away, in an instant the 
 whole surface of the earth would become a desolate waste, without the 
 possibility of vegetable life. 
 
 As physical geology advanced, the Coal period was perceived to be 
 the chief epoch in the history of our planet. Through a slow TheCoai 
 decline of temperature, a possibility had gradually been attained, v^'^°^ 
 so far as the condition of heat was concerned, for a luxuriant vegetable 
 growth. All that prodigious mass- of carbon now found- in the earth in 
 the various fcJrms of coal existed as carbonic acid in the atmosphere. 
 The proportion of free oxygen was less than at present by a volume 
 equal to the excess of carbonic acid. A change in the constitution of 
 this primaeval atmosphere was occasioned by the action of the light ; 
 for, under the influence of the sun-rays, plants decompose car- Effects of ught 
 bonic acid, appropriating its carbon, and, for the most part, phcre, 
 setting the oxygen free. The quantity of carbon which can thus be. 
 condensed for the use of a plant, and, indeed, every such decomposing 
 action by light, is directly proportionate to the quantity of light con- 
 sumed, as experiments which T have personally made have proved. 
 For the production of so great a weight of combustible matter a very 
 long period of time was necesSarUy required, that the sun might supply 
 the necessary luminous influence. 
 
 Nn 
 
562 i DEPOSIT OF LIMESTONE STRATA FBOM THE SEA, 
 
 For age after age the sunbeams continued their work, changing the 
 mechanical relations and composition of the atmosphere, the constitution 
 of the sea, and the appearance of the surface of the earth. There was a 
 prodigious growth of ferns, lepidodendra, equisetacese, conifers. The 
 percentage of oxygen in the air continually increased, that of carbonic 
 acid continually declined ; the pressure of the air correspondingly dimin- 
 ished, partly because of the replacement of a heavy gas by a lighter one, 
 and partly because of the general decline of temperature slowly taldng 
 place, which diminished the absolute volume of vapor. The sea, in its 
 and also on dcepcst abysscs, was likewise affected by the sunlight; not di- 
 the aea. rcctly, but in an indirect way ; for, as the removal of carbonie 
 acid from the atmosphere went on, portions of that gas were perpetually 
 surrendered by the ocean in order to maintain a diffusion-equilibrium 
 between its dissolved gas and the free gas of the air. And now no lon- 
 ger could be held in transparent solution by the water those great quan- 
 tities of carbonate of lime which had once been concealed in it, the de- 
 posit of a given weight of coal in the earth being inevitably followed 
 by the deposit of an equivalent weight of carbonate of lime in the sea. 
 It might have taken place as an amorphous precipitate ; but the prob- 
 abilities were that it would occur, as in fact it did, under forms of or- 
 ganization in the great limestone strata coeval with and posterior to the 
 coal. The air and the ocean were thus suffering an invisible change 
 through the disturbing agency of the sun, and the surface of the soUd 
 earth was hkewise undergoing a more manifest, and, it may be said, more 
 glorious alteration. Plants, in wild luxuriance, were developing them- 
 selves in the hot and dank climate, and the possibility was now approach- 
 ing for the appearance of animal types very much higher than any that 
 had yet existed. In the old heavy atmosphere, full of a noxious gas, 
 coia-Mooded nonc but slowly -respiring cold-blooded animals cotdd main- 
 ceededbyhot. tain thcmsclves ; but after the great change in the constitu- 
 tion of the air 'had been accomplished, the quickly-respiring and hot- 
 blooded forms might exist. Hitherto the highest advancement that an- 
 imal life could reach was in batrachian and lizard-like organisms ; yet 
 even these were destined to participate in the change, increasing in 
 magnitude and vital capacity. The pterodactyl of the chalk, a flying 
 lizard, measures nearly seventeen feet from tip to tip of its wings. The 
 air had now become suitable for mammals, both placental and implacen- 
 tal, and for birds. One after another, in their due order, appeared the 
 highest vertebrates : marine, as the cetacean ; aerial, as the bat ; and in 
 the terrestrial reaching, in the Eocene, quadrumanous animals, but not, 
 until long after the Pliocene, man. 
 
 Although the advancement of geology may hereafter lead to a cor- 
 rection of some of the , conclusions thus attained to respecting the first 
 dates of different organic forms, and carry them back to more ancient 
 
OEDEB OF SUCCESSION OP OEGANISMS, 563 
 
 times, yet it is scarcely likely that any material modification The dates of or- 
 of their order of occurrence wHl ever be made. Birds, mam- e^™= ^^^j^^ 
 mals, reptiles, fishes, atid invertebrates may each be detected "*^ °°'- 
 in earlier strata ; even for some of those formations now regarded as non- 
 fossiliferous, organisms may be found ; but it is not at all probable that 
 the preponderance of reptiles wiU ever cease to be the essential character- 
 istic of the Secondary rocks, or that 'of mammals of the Tertiary, or that 
 a preceding period of vast duration, in which the type of life had been 
 the invertebrate, will ever be doubted. Nothing, probably, will ever be 
 discovered to invalidate the physical conclusion that, while there was an 
 excess of carbonic acid in the air, the Flora would tend to be Cryptoga- 
 mic and Gymnospermic, and thai there would be a scarcity of monocotyl- 
 edons and dicotyledonous angiosperms in the coal ; nothing to disprove 
 the fact that the animals were slow-breathing and cold-blooded ; and that 
 it was not until after the oxygen of the air had increased and the mean 
 temperature had declined that birds made their appearance. Though 
 both placental and marsupial animals may hereafter be found earlier than 
 the Stonesfield slate ; though wood and herb eating beetles, grasshoppers, 
 dragon-flies, and May-flies may be found beneath the lias, and scorpions 
 and cockroaches beneath the coal; though, also beneath the coal, sal- 
 amanders and Sauroid batrachians, of which the archegosaurus is an 
 example, may occur ; though reptiles, as the tel^rpetto, may be found 
 deeper than the old red sandstone ; yet the connection between aerial 
 constitution and form of life will never be shaken. Still will remain 
 the facts that the geographical distribution of types was anterior to the 
 appearance of existing species ; that organisms first appeared in a liqtiid 
 medium, primitively marine, then fluviatile, and at last terrestrial ; that 
 Eadiates, MoUusks, Articulates, Yertebrates, were all at first aquatic, and 
 that the Eadiates have ever remained so ; that the plane of greatest vital 
 activity has ever been the sea-level, where the earth and air touch each 
 other; that the order of individual development is the order of mun- 
 dane development. Still will remain the important conclusions that the 
 mammalian Fauna has diverged more rapidly than the testaceous ; that 
 hot-blooded animals have not had that longevity of species which has 
 been displayed by the cold, just as we observe in the individual the pos- 
 sibility of muscular contraction by a given galvanic force lasts much 
 longer in the latter than in the former ; that if the hot-blooded tribes 
 have thus a briefer duration, they enjoy a compensation in the greater 
 energy of their life— perhaps this being the cause and that the effect ; 
 that, notwithstanding the countless forms exhibited by species, their 
 duration is so great that they outlive vast changes in the topographical 
 configuration of countries— the Fauna of some countries having been in 
 existence before those countries themselves; that the plan of individual 
 development has ever been as it is now, and that sameness of external 
 influence produces similarity of organization. 
 
564 THEORIES OF PROGRESSIVE CHANGE AND CATASTROPHES. 
 
 In its early history theoretical geology presented two schools — one 
 The doctrine insisting on a doctrine of catastrophes, one on a doctrine of 
 "hefandSM- Uniformity. The former regarded those changes which have 
 foi-mity. manifestly taken place in the history of our planet as having 
 occurred at epochs abruptly. To this doctrine the prevailipg impres- 
 sion that there had been providential interventions lent much force. 
 The other school, reposing on the great principle of the invariability of 
 the laws of Nature, insisted that affairs had always gone on at the same 
 rate and in the same way as they do now. Hence it maintained an op- 
 position to the catastrophists, and in this, it may be said, was actually not 
 true to its own principles. Any doctrine of uniformity, rightly consid- 
 ered from its most general point of view, includes an admission of catas- 
 trophes. Numerous illustrations of this truth spontaneously suggest 
 themselves. A tower, the foundations of which are slowly yielding, 
 may incline more and more for many centuries, but the day must come 
 in which it will fall at last. In the uniformity of the disturbance a ca- 
 tastrophe was eventually involved. And thus, in what has been said 
 respecting geological events, though they are spoken of as proceeding 
 quietly and with uniformity, it may be understood that sudden crises 
 are also contemplated. Moreover, they who adopt the doctrine of uni- 
 formity in an absolute sense must pay a due regard to the variations in 
 intensity of physical acts which their own principles imply. The uni- 
 form cooling of a hot body actually means a cooling at first fast, and 
 then slower and slower ; and invariability of chemical change actually 
 implies more violent and summary modifications at a high temperature 
 than at one which is low. 
 
 But, though it may at first sight have appeared that an admission of 
 the doctrine of catastrophes was in harmony with a providential gov- 
 ernment of the V7orld, and that the emergence of different organic forms 
 in successive ages was a manifestation of creative intervention, of which 
 it was admitted that as many as from twelve to twenty, if not more, suc- 
 cessive instances might be recognized, we may well congratulate our- 
 selves that those important doctrines rest upon a far more substantial 
 basis. Eightly considered, the facts lead to a very different conclusion. 
 Physiological investigations have proved that all animals, even man, 
 sucoesaive during the process of development, pass in succession through 
 sumedby ^ definite cycle of forms. Starting from a simple cell, form 
 ^^- ■ after form, in a definite order, is assumed. In this long line of 
 advance the steps are ever, in all individuals, the same. But no one 
 would surely suppose that the changed aspect at any moment presented 
 is due to a providential interposition. On the contrary, it is the inevi- 
 Bot they are table Tesult of what has been taking place under the law of 
 
 ngidlydeterm- ., ,, ° ^ ■, n 1 
 
 ined bj lav. development, and the sure precursor of what is about to lol- 
 low. In the organic world, the successive orders, and genera, and spe- 
 
CBITICISM OK CHANGES BY CATASTROPHE. 
 
 565 
 
 cies are tlae counterparts of these temporary embryonic forms of the in- 
 dividual. Indeed, we may say of those successive geological beings 
 that they are mere embryos of the latest— embryos that had gained a 
 power of reproduction. How shall we separate the history of the indi- 
 vidual from the history of the whole ? Do not the fortunes and way of 
 progress of the one follow the fortunes and way of progress of the oth- 
 er ? If, in a transitory manner, these forms are assumed in the individ- 
 ual, equally in a transitory manner are they assumed by the race. Nor 
 would it be philosophical to suppose that the management in the one 
 instance differs from the management in the other. If the one is de- 
 monstrably the issue of a law in action, so must the other be too. It 
 does not matter that the entire cycle is passed through by the ^f «:j»}„^* 
 individual in the course of a few months, while in the race it ^f^^°^^^^ 
 demands ages. The standard of time that ought to be ap- vay. 
 plied is the respective duration of life. In man it is much if he attains 
 to threescore years and ten ; but the entire period of human record, em- 
 bracing several thousand years, offers not a single instance of the birth, 
 maturity, and death of a species. They, therefore, who think they find 
 in the successive species that have in an orderly manner replaced each 
 other in the life of the earth the sure proof of Divine intervention, 
 would do well to determine at what point the production of such forms 
 by law ceases, and at what point their production by the immediate act 
 of God begins. Their task will be as hard as to tell where one color in 
 the rainbow ends and where the next commences. They will also do 
 well to remember that, in great mundane events, the scale of time is am- 
 ple, and that there may be no essential difference between a course that 
 is run over in a few days and one that requires for its completion thou- 
 sands of centuries. 
 
 The co-existence of different, types in the organic series wa& the in- 
 controvertible fact by which was demonstrated the gradual catastrophes aia- 
 
 «-■«■ •ji' 1 1 proved by the co- 
 
 passage from form to form without catastrophes, the ar- existence of types, 
 gument relied upon gathering strength from such circumstances as 
 these, that even the fossil shells of the modern Italian tuffs which are 
 not extinct exhibit a slight want of correspondence when compared 
 with those now inhabiting the Mediterranean, some of the old ones be- 
 ing twice and a half as large as the present, and that there is a numeri- 
 cal passage from strata containing seventy per cent, of recent shells to 
 those that are altogether recent, or contain one hundred per cent. This 
 is manifestly indicative of a continual impression bringing on a corre- 
 sponding modeling. It is the proof of a slow merging into, or of a meas- 
 ured assumption of, the new form — a transition, for the completion of 
 which probably a very long time is required. That the existing rein- 
 deer is found in the same fluviatile deposits with an extinct hippopota- 
 mus seemed certainly to prove that there was a condition of things in 
 
566 CRITICISM ON PEEMANENOE OF SPECIES. 
 
 whioli the co-life of those animals was possible in the same locality, and 
 that, as the physical causes slowly changed, the one might be eliminated 
 and the other might be left. That the regulating conditions were alto- 
 gether physical was obvious from such facts as that in the bone-caves 
 of Australia all the mammals are marsupial, and in the pampas of South 
 America they are allied to such forms as are indigenous, armadiUoeS; 
 sloths, etc., showing the tokens of lineage or hereditary transmission. 
 For still more remote times numerous instances of a similar nature were 
 detected ; thus, throughout the whole Secondary period, the essential 
 characteristic was the wonderful development of reptile life, while in the 
 Tertiary it was the development of mammals. But the appearance of 
 mammals had commenced long before that of reptiles had ceased. In- 
 deed, the latter event is incomplete in our times ; for, though the marine 
 Saurians have been almost entirely removed, the fluviatile and terres- 
 trial ones maintain themselves, though diminished both in species and 
 individuals. Now such an overlapping of- reptiles and mammals was 
 altogether irreconcilablo with the doctrine of a crisis or catastrophej 
 and, in fact, it demonstrated the changing of organisms in the changii^ 
 of physical states. 
 
 Guvier maintained the doctrine of the permanence of animal species 
 cuvier's doofrine from the Considerations that'the oldest knownido not ap- 
 
 of permanence of ■ - _ Tn ,• t ,t , 
 
 speciea. . pear to havc undergone any modmcation, and that every 
 
 existing one shows a resistance to change. If his observations are re- 
 stricted to periods not exceeding human history, they may perhaps he 
 maintained ; bnt that duration can not be looked upon as more than a 
 moment in the limitless progress we are considering, and it was in this 
 Imperfection of yiew that Cuvicr's doctrine proved to be incapable of de- 
 support, fense. What does it signify if our domestic animals show 
 no variations when compared with the corresponding images depicted 
 on the hieroglyphic monuments of Egypt, or with the descriptions leS 
 by ancient authors ? Evidence of that kind is valueless. Does the ge- 
 ologist ask of the architect his opinion whether there have ever been 
 upliftings and down-sinkings of the earth? If he did, would not every 
 structure in Europe be brought forward as an evidence that nothing of 
 the kind had ever occurred ? A leaning tower, or a church with inclin- 
 ing walls in Italy, might pass for nothing; the Pyramids would testify 
 that Egypt itself had never undergone any disturbance — they remain 
 solid on their bases, undisturbed. But what is the weight of all this 
 when placed in opposition with the mass of evidence offered by inclined 
 and fractured strata? And yet such is precisely the proof offered in 
 behalf of the permanence of animals. The facts with which the zool- 
 ogist deals, like those on which the architect depends, are insufficient 
 for the purpose— they are wanting in extent of time. There have been 
 movements in the crust of the earth, though every building in the 
 
EFFECT OF PHYSICAL CONDITIONS ON ORGANISMS. 567 
 
 ^orld may be perpendicular ; there have been transformations of or- 
 ganisms, though for four thousand years there may have been no per- 
 ceptible change. 
 
 If ever there had been a universal creation of all possible organic 
 forms or combinations, forthwith vast numbers of them must control of organ- 
 have disappeared, every type being eliminated which was conditions, 
 not in correspondehqe with the external conditions or with the medium 
 in which it was placed. If the medium or the physical conditions un- 
 derwent a variation, a corresponding variation in the forms that could 
 by possibility exist must ensue, and, from a thorough study of those not 
 eliminated, the physical conditions might be ascertained ; and converse- 
 ly, from a thorough knowledge of the physical conditions, the forms 
 that could escape elimination might be designated. The facts on which 
 Guvier rested did not demonstrate what he supposed. His immobility 
 of species was no consequence of an innate or intrinsic resistance pos- 
 sessed by them, but merely an illustration that external physical agents 
 had not undergone any well-marked variation in the time with which 
 he was concerned. 
 
 "What is here meant by variation in physical forces or conditions is 
 not any intrinsic change in their nature, but the varied man- Nature of varia- 
 ner in which they may work by interfering with one anoth- crditLnar"^ 
 er, or experiencing declines of intensity. From the fact that we may 
 read in the fixed stars, through the progressive motion of light, the his- 
 tory of a million of past years, we may be sure that the forces of nature 
 have undergone no intrinsic change; that light was propagated at the 
 same rate, was capable of producing the same optical and chemical ef- 
 fects, and varied in its intensity by distance, as it does now ; that heat 
 determined corporeal magnitudes. These are things that in their na- 
 ture are absolutely unchangeable. Always, as now, the freezing of wa- 
 ter, and its boiling under a given pressure, must have been the same ; 
 there must have been a thermometric zero of life and an upward limit 
 no organic process ever going on below 32° Fahrenheit or above 212° 
 Fahrenheit. 
 
 But out of this invariability of natural causes variations in their con- 
 dition of action arise, and it is these that affect organic forms. ,,«„,, , 
 
 r\e T. J? 1 •. ■. . G " "'"■ Effect thereof 
 
 Ut sucn- torms, some become at length mcapable of maintain- "" "'■e^isma. 
 ing themselves in the slow progress of change; others acclimate, or ac- 
 commodate, or suit themselves thereto by undergoing modifications, and 
 this was at last discerned to be the true explanation of extinctions and 
 appearances, events taking place very slowly in untold periods of time 
 and rather by imperceptible degrees than by a sudden catastrophe or 
 crisis. 
 
 _ The doctrine of the transmutation of species has met with no little re- 
 sistance. They who have refused to receive it as one of the truths of 
 
568 TEAKSMUTATION OF SPECIES. 
 
 TraMmutaiion Nature have perhaps not given full weight to physiological 
 of speoiea. evidonce. When they ask, Has any one ever witnessed such 
 an event as the transmutation of one species into another? has any ex- 
 perimenter ever accomplished it by artificial means? they do not take 
 a due account of time. In the Fables it is related that when the flowers 
 were one evening conversing, " Our gardener," said the rose to the lily, 
 " will live forever. I have not seen any change in him. The tulip, 
 who died yesterday, told me that she had remarked the same thing; 
 she believed that he must be immortal. I am sure that he never was 
 born." 
 
 Two modes have been presented by which we may conceive of the 
 Two modes of influence of physical agents upon organic forms. Their long 
 action. persistcut action upon the individual may give rise to modifi' 
 
 cations, developing one part, stunting another ; and such variations, be- 
 ing transmitted in an hereditary way, may become firmly fixed at last. 
 Thus a given plant may, in the course of ages, under the influence of 
 unremittingly acting physical conditions, undergo a permanent change, 
 and a really new plant arise as soon as, through the repetitions of suc- 
 cessive generations, the modifications have become so thorough, so pro- 
 found, as to be capable of transmission with certainty. Perhaps this is 
 what has taken place with many of our kitchen-garden plants, of which 
 the special varieties may be propagated by seeds. But there is another 
 mode by which that result may be reached, even if we decline the doc- 
 trine of St. Augustine, who, in his work " De Civitate Dei," shows how 
 islands may be peopled with animals by " spontaneous generation." 
 All organic forms originally spring from a simple cell, the development 
 of which, as indicated by the final form attained, is manifestly dependent 
 on the physical conditions it has been exposed to during its course. If 
 those conditions change, that final form must change correspondingly; 
 and in this mt.nner, since all organic beings come fi:om the same start- 
 ing-point — the same cell, as has been said, which helplessly submits to 
 whatever impression may be put upon it — the issue is the same as though 
 a transformation or transmutation had occurred, since the descendant is 
 not like its ancestors. Such a planner of considering these changes is 
 in harmony with our best physiological knowledge, since it does not 
 limit itself to a small portion of the life of an individual, but embraces 
 its whole cycle or career. For the more complete examination of this 
 view I may refer to the second chapter of the second book of my Phys- 
 iology. 
 
 But here has arisen, the inquiry, Does the modiQcation of organic 
 P™wemofthe forms depend exclusively on the impressions of external in- 
 forms, fluences, or is it due to a nisus or force of development resid- 
 ing in the forms themselves ? 
 
 Whether we consider the entire organic series in its succession, or tha 
 
CAUSES OP THE MODIPICATION OF GERMS. 569 
 
 progress of an individual in his deTelopment, the orderly course pre- 
 sented might seem to indicate that the operation is taking place under a 
 la-w— an orderly progression being always suggestive of the operation of 
 law. But a philosophical caution must, however, be here exercised ; for 
 deceptive appearances may lead us into the error of imputing to such a 
 law, impressed by the Creator -on the developing organism, that which 
 really belongs to external physical conditions, which, on their part, are 
 following a law of their own. What is here meant may be illustrated 
 by the facts that occur on the habitable surface of a planet suffering a 
 gradual decline of heat. On such a surface a succession of Three boiu- 
 vegetable types might make its appearance, and, as these differ- ''""'"f"- 
 ent types emerged or were eliminated, we might speak of the events as 
 creations and extinctions, and therefore as the acts of God, Or, in the 
 second place, we might refer them to an intrinsic force of development 
 imparted to each germ, which reached in due season its maximum, and 
 then declined and died out ; and, comparing each type with its pre- 
 ceding and succeeding ones, the interrelation might be suggested to us 
 of the operation of a controlling law. Or, in the third place, we might 
 look to the external physical condition — the decline of heat — ^itself tak- 
 ing place at a determinate rate under a mathematical law, and drawing 
 in its consequences the organic variations observed. 
 
 Now the first of thege explanations in reality means the arbitrary and 
 unchallengeable will of God, who calls into existence, and extinguishes 
 according to his sovereign pleasure,' whatever he pleases; the orderly 
 progression we notice becoming an evidence that his volitions are not 
 erratic, but are according to pure reason. The second implies that there 
 has been impressed upon every germ a law of continuous organic varia- 
 tion— it may have been through the arbitrary fiat of God. The third 
 implies that the successive types owe their appearance and elimination 
 to a physical influence,'which is itself varying under a strict mathemat- 
 ical iiecessity ; for the law of cooling, which the circumstances force on 
 our attention, is such a strict mathematical necessity. 
 
 If at this point we balance the probabilities of these three explana- 
 tions, we shall, perhaps, find ourselves biased toward the last, Tudr relative 
 as physiologists have been, because of its rigorous scientific p^iabm^'™ 
 aspect,- and should not be surprised to find it supported by an array of 
 facts depending on the principle that the appearance of riew forms does 
 not observe a certain inevitable order, or stand in a certain relation to 
 time. From individual development it might seem as if the advancing 
 procession of an organism is such that specific forms ever appear in a 
 certain order one after another, and at certain intervals; but the fallacy 
 of such a conclusion is apparent when we attend to the orderly proce- 
 dure of the physical conditions to which the developing organism is ex- 
 posed. The passing through a given form at a given epoch is due to the 
 
570 MODIFICATIONS DEPEND ON PHYSICAL AGENTS. 
 
 Development- relation being to space and its conditions, not to time. And 
 not in time'. SO in the life of the earth, if development were according to 
 time, we should have an orderly succession of grades as the earth grew 
 older, and in all localities, at a given moment, the contemporary orgaur 
 isms would be similar ; but if it were according to space, that rigorou3 
 procedure would not occur ; in its stead we should have a broken series, 
 the af&liation being dependent on the secularly continuous variation of 
 the physical condition. 
 
 Now this was discovered to be the case. For instance, throughout 
 the northern hemisphere, during the Tertiary period, an extinct placental 
 Fauna was contemporaneous with an extinct marsupial Fauna in Aus- 
 tralia. If the development was proceeding according to timejby an in- 
 nate nisus, and not according to externa/l influences; the types for the 
 same epoch in the two hemispheres should be the same; if under ex- 
 ternal influences, irrespective of time, they should be, as they were found 
 to be, different. 
 
 If true-going clocks; which owe their motion to their own interior 
 mechanism, were Started in all countries of the earth at the same in* 
 stant, they would strike their successive hours simultaneously. But 
 sun-dials, which owe their indications to an exterior cause, would in dif- 
 ferent longitudes teU different times, or, when the needful- light was ab- 
 sent, their shadows would altogfcthef fail. They count no hours but 
 those that are serene. 
 
 As to the vegetable kingdom, the principles that hold for the animal 
 again apply. At a very early period, even before the deposit of the 
 coal, all the distinct forms of vegetable tissue were in existence, and 
 nothing to prevent, so far as time was concerned, their being united to- 
 gether all' over the world into similar structural combinations. And, in 
 truth, as the botany of the Coal period proves, there was a far more ex- 
 tensive sameness than we see at present, simply because the distribution 
 of heat was more uniform and climates were less marked. But from 
 this point the diversity of form in climate distribution becomes more 
 and more conspicuous, though we must descend, perhaps, as late as the 
 Wealden before we discover any flowering plants, except Gymnosperms, 
 as Conifers and Cycads. All this is what might be expected on the 
 doctrine of external influence, but not on the doctrine of an innate and 
 interior developmental force. 
 
 If, at this stage, attention is once again, turned to the animal king- 
 dom, we find our opinion confirmed. The diminution of carbonic acid 
 in the atmosphere, the deposit of c'oal in the earth, the precipitation of 
 carbonate of lime in the sea, the disengagement of .an increased quanti* 
 ty of oxygen in the air, and the reduction of atmospheric pressure— dif- 
 ferent effects contemporaneously occurring — were soon followed by the 
 consequence which they made possible— the appearance of hot-blood- 
 
heej:ditaet TEANgmssioiir. 571 
 
 ed mammals, PeAapa those first arising might, like our hi- c^a^-^^ho' 
 bernates, lead a sluggish existence, with imperfect respiration ; maia. 
 but, as the media improved and the temperature decUned, more vigor- 
 ous' forms of life emerged, though we have probably to descend to.the 
 Tertiary epoch before we meet with birds, which of aU animals have 
 the most energetic respiration,- and possess the highest heat. 
 
 As with the atmosphere, so with the sea. Variations in its composi- 
 tion must control the organisms it contains. With its saline Theorganiamfl 
 constituents its life must change; Before the sunlight had re- .°' "" "^_ 
 moved from the atmosphere so much of its carbonic acid, decomposing 
 it through the agency of plants, the weight of carbonate of lime held in 
 solution by the highly carbonated water was far greater than was sub- 
 sequently possible, and the occurrence of limestone became a necessary 
 event. With such a disturbance in the composition of the sea- water, its 
 inhabiting organisms were necessarily disturbed. And so again, subse-! 
 quently, when the solar heat began to preponderate on the surface over 
 the subsiding interior heat, the constitution of the sea- water, as respects 
 its salinity, was altered through difference of evaporation in dififerent 
 latitudes, an effect inevitably making a profound impression on marine 
 animal life. 
 
 Supported by the facts that have been mentioned respecting the later 
 fossils of Australia and Brazil, and their analogy to forms Nature of hered- 
 now existing in those countries, much stress was laid on, the sion. 
 hereditary transmission of structure, and hence the inference was drawn ' 
 that such examples are of a mixed nature, depending in part on exter- 
 nal -agency, in part on an interior developmental force. From marsu- 
 pial animals, marsupials will issue ; from placental ones, those that are 
 placental. But here, perhaps, an illustration drawn from the inorganic 
 kingdom may not be without interest and use. Two pieces of carbon^ 
 ate of lime may be rolling among the pebbles at the bottom of a brook, 
 one perpetually splitting: into rhomboids, the other into arragonitic 
 prisms. The fragments dif^r from one another not only thus in their 
 crystalline form, but in their physical qualities, as density and hardness, 
 and in their optical qualities also. We might say that the calc-spar 
 crystals gave birth to calc-spar crystals, and the arragonitic to arrago- 
 nite ; we might admit that there is an interior propensity, an intrinsic 
 tendency to produce that result, just as we say that there is a tendency 
 in the marsupial to engender a marsupial ; but if, in our illustration, we 
 look for the cause of that cause, we find it in a physical impression long 
 antecedently made, that the carbonate of lime, crystallizing at 212° Eahr., 
 produces arragonite, and, at a lower temperature, calc-spar ; and that 
 the physical impression thus accomplished, though- it may have been 
 thousands of years ago, was never cast off, but perpetually manifested 
 itself in all the future history of the two samples., That which we 
 
572 AGE OF THE EAETH. 
 
 sometimes speak of as hereditary transmission, and refer to an interior 
 property, peculiarity, or force, may be nothing more than the manifesta- 
 tion of a physical impression long antecedently made. 
 
 In the last place, the idea of an intrinsic force of development is in 
 connection with time and a progression, and only comes into prominence 
 •when we examine a limited portion or number of the tilings under con- 
 sideration. The earth, though very beautiful, is very far from being 
 The broken or- pcrfect. The pkuts End animals we see are only the wrecks 
 ganic chain, ^f g, broken series, an incomplete, and, therefore, unworthy 
 testimonial of the j Almighty power. We should judge very inadequate- 
 ly of some great author if only here and there a fragmentary paragraph 
 of his work remained ; and so, in the book of organization, we must 
 combine what is left with what we can recover from past ages and bur- 
 ied strata before we can rise to a comprehension of the grand argument,! 
 and intelligibly grasp the whole work. 
 
 Of that book it is immaterial to what page we turn. It tells us.of ef- 
 Enormoua fects of such magnitude as imply prodigiously long periods of 
 earth. tlmc for their accomplishment. Its moments look to us as if 
 they were eternities. What shall we say when we read in it that there 
 are fossiliferous rocks which have been slowly raised ten thousand feet 
 above the level of the sea so lately as since the commencement of the 
 Tertiary times ; that the Purbeck beds of the upper oohte are in them- 
 selves the memorials of an enormous lapse of time ; that, since a forest 
 in a thousand years can gcarce produce more than two or three feet of 
 vegetable soil, each dirt-bed is the work of hundreds of centuries. What 
 shall we say when-it'tells us that the delta of the Mississippi could only 
 be formed in many tens of thousands of years, and yejt that is only as 
 yesterday when compared with the date of the inland terraces; that the 
 recession of the Falls "of Niagara from Queenstown to the present site 
 consumed thirty thousand years; that if the depression of the carbonif- 
 erous strata of N"ova Scotia took place at the rate of four feet in a cen- 
 tury, there were demanded 375,000 years for its completion— such a 
 movement in the upward direction would have raised Mont Blanc; that 
 it would take as great a river as the Mississippi two millions of years to 
 convey into the Grulf of Mexico as much sediment as is found in those 
 strata. Such statements may, appear to us, who with difficulty shake 
 off the absurdities of the patristic chronology, wild and impossible to be 
 maintained, and yet they are the conclusions that the most learned and 
 profound geologists draw from their reading of the book of Nature. 
 
 Thus, as respects the age of the earth and her relations in time, we 
 ?MpMtaThe° ^PP^°^°^ *l^s doctrine of the Orientals, who long, ago ascertain^ 
 world in time, ed that the scales of time and of space correspond to each 
 other. More fortunate than we, they had but one point of resist- 
 ance to encounter, but that resistance they met with dissimulation, and 
 
THE SUCCESSION OF WOELDS. 573 
 
 not in an open way. They attempted to conceal the tendency of their 
 doctrine by allying or affiliating it with detected errors. According 
 to their national superstition, the earth is supported on the back of 
 an elephant, and this on a succession of animals, the last of which is a 
 tortoise. It is not to be supposed that the Brahmans, who wrote com- 
 mentaries on the Surya Siddhanta, should for a moment have accepted 
 these preposterous delusions— that was impossible for such great geom- 
 eters ; yet led, perhaps, by a wish to do nothing that might disturb pub- 
 lic feeling, they engaged in the hopeless task 'of showing that their pro- 
 found philosophical discoveries were not inconsistent with the ancient 
 traditions ; that a globular and revolving earth might be sustained on a 
 descending succession of supporting beasts. But they had the signal 
 advantage over us that those popular traditions conceded to them that 
 limitless time for which we have had to struggle. 
 
 The progression of life on the surface of our planet is under the guid- 
 ance of preordained and resistless law — ^it is afSliated with iheiifeofthe 
 material and correspondingly changing conditions. It sug- "°'™'"«- 
 gests that the succession of organic forms which, in a due series, the 
 earth's surface in the long lapse of time has presented, is the counter- 
 part of a like progress which other planets in the solar system exhibit 
 in myriads of years, and leads us to the conception of the rise, develop- 
 ment, and extinction of a multiplicity of such living forms in other sys- 
 tems — a march of life through the universe, and its passing away. 
 
 Magnitudes and times, therefore, go parallel with one another. With 
 the abandonment of the geocentric theory, and of the doctrine of the 
 human destiny of the universe, have vanished the unworthy hypotheses 
 of the recent date of creation and the approaching end of all things. 
 In their stead are substituted more noble ideas. The multi- Muuipudt of 
 plicity of worlds in infinite space leads to the conception of ZfcSsilS rf" 
 a succession of worlds in infinite time. This existing uni- ^°'''^- 
 verse, with all its splendors, had a beginning, and will have an end ; it 
 had its predecessors, and will have its successors ; but its march through 
 all its transformations is under the control of laws" as unchangeable as 
 destiny. As a cloud, which is composed of myriads of separate and iso- 
 lated spherules of water, so minute as to be individually invisible, on a 
 summer's afternoon changes its aspect and form, disappearing, from the 
 sky, and being replaced in succeeding hours by other clouds of a differ- 
 ent aspect and shape, so the universe, which is a cloud of suns and 
 worlds, changes in the immensity of time its form and fashion, and that 
 which is contemporary with us is only an example of countiess combi- 
 nations of a like kind, which in ancient times have one after another 
 vanished away. In periods yet to come the endless succession of met- 
 amorphoses will still go on, a series of universes to which there is no 
 end. 
 
574 THE EUROPEAN AGE OF BEASON, 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIY. 
 
 THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON— {Cb»«!BBed). 
 
 THE NATUEE AND EELATIONS OF MAN. 
 
 Position of Man according to the HeSoceniric and Geocentric Theories. 
 
 Of Animal Life. — The transitory Nature of living Forms. — Relations of Plants and Am- 
 
 mals. — Aninuds are Aggregates of Matter expending Force originally derived from the Sun, 
 The Organic Series. — Man a Member of it. — His Position determined by Anatomical and 
 
 Physiological Investigation of his Nervous System. — Its triple Form: Automatic, Instinctive, 
 
 Intellectual. 
 The same progressive Development is seen in individual Man, in the entire animal Serks, and in 
 
 the Life of the Ghbe. — They are all under the Control of an eternal, universal, irresistible 
 , Law. 
 
 The Aim of Nature is intellectual Development, and human Institutions must conform thereto. 
 Summary of the Investigation of the Position of Man. — Production of Inorganic and Orgmic 
 
 Forms by the Sun. — Nature of Animals and their Series. — Analogies and Differences between 
 
 them and Man. — The Soul. — The World. 
 
 When the ancient doctrine of the plurality of worlds was restored 
 The apparent po- ^J Bruno, Gralileo, and other modern astronomers, the re- 
 th"°heiiocSo™ sistance it encountered was mainly owing to its anticipated 
 theory. bearing on the nature and relations of man. It was said, 
 
 if round our sun, as a centre, there revolve so many planetary hodies, 
 experiencing the changes of summer and winter, day and night— bodies 
 illuminated by satellites, and perhaps enjoying twilight and other bene'- 
 fits such as have been conferred on the earth — shall we not consider 
 them the abodes of accountable, perhaps of sinfu], beings hke ourselves? 
 ISTay, more ; if each of the innumerable fixed stars is, as our sun, a cen- 
 tral focus of light, attended by dark and revolving globes, is it not nec- 
 essary to admit that they also have their inhabitants? But among so 
 many families of intelligent beings, how is it that we, the denizens of 
 an insignificant speck, have alone been found worthy of God's regard? 
 
 It was this reasoning that sustained the geocentric theory, and made 
 the earth the centre of the universe, the most noble of created things; 
 the sun, the moon, the stars, being only ministers for the service of man. 
 
 But, like many other objections urged in that memorable conflict, this 
 The fallacy "was fouuded ou a misconceptiou, or, rather, on imperfect knowl- 
 to ttaTth^ edge. There may be an infinity of worlds placed under the 
 '"^- mechanical relations alluded to, but there may not be one among 
 
 them that can be the abode of life. The physical conditions under 
 which organization is possible are so numerous and so strictly lirnited 
 that the chances are millions to one against their conjoined occurrence. 
 
 In a religious point of view, we are greatly indebted to Geology for 
 
NATURE OP AlSriMALS. 575 
 
 the light it has cast On this objection. It has taught ns that ^;f™» ^^ 
 during inconceivable lapses of time our earth itself contained oiogy. 
 no living thing. These were those preorganic ages to which reference 
 was made in the last chapter. Then, by slow degrees, as a possibility 
 for existence occurred, there gradually emerged one type after another. 
 It is but as yesterday that the life of man could be maintained. 
 
 Only in the presence of special physical conditions can an animal ex- 
 ist. Even then it is essentiaUv ephemeral. The life of it, as The transitory 
 
 •1 rt . . --. nature of liv- 
 
 a whole, depends on the death of its integrant parts, in a ingfonnB. 
 waterfall, which maintains its place and appearance unchanged for many 
 years, the constituent portions that have been precipitated headlong 
 glide finally and forever away. For the transitory matter to exhibit a 
 permanent form, it is necessary that there should be a perpetual supply 
 and also a perpetual removal. So long as the jutting ledge over which 
 the waters rush, and the broken gulf below that receives them, remain 
 unchanged, the cataract presents the same appearance. But variations 
 in them mould it into a new shape ; its color changes with a clear or a 
 cloudy sky; the rainbow seen in its spray disappears when the beams 
 of the sun are withdrawn. 
 
 So in that collection of substance which constitutes an animal; what- 
 ever may be its position, high or low, in the realm of life, there is a per- 
 petual introduction of new material and a perpetual departure of the old. 
 it is a form, rather thah an individual, that we see. Its permanence al- 
 together depends on the permanence of the external conditions. If they 
 change it also changes, and a new form is the result. 
 ■- An animal is therefore a form through which material substance is 
 visibly passing, and suffering transmutation into new prod- characteristic. 
 ucts. In that act of transmutation force is disengaged. That "' ^o^ai ^«- 
 which we call its life is the display of the manner in which the force 
 thus disengaged is expended, 
 
 A scientific examination of animal life must include two primary 
 facts. It must consider whence and in what manner the stream Matter ana 
 of material substance has been derived, in what manner and *^°'^"- 
 whither it passes away. And, since force can not be created from noth- 
 ing, and is in its very nature indestructible, it must determine from what 
 source that which is displaced by animals has been obtained, in what 
 manner it is employed, and what disposal is made of it eventually. 
 
 The force thus expended is originally derived &om the sun. Plants 
 are the intermedium for its conveyance. The inorganic mate- Force is de- 
 rial of a saline nature entering into their constitution is obtained ttosm™ 
 from the soil in which they grow, as is also, for the most part, the wa- 
 ter they require ; but their organic substance is derived from the sur- 
 rounding atmosphere, and hence it is strictly true that they are conden- 
 sations from the air. 
 
576 ' EELATIONS OF PLANTS TO THE AIE. 
 
 These statements may be sufficiently illustrated, and the relation be- 
 tween plants and animals shown, by tracing the course of any one of 
 Wodeinvhich tlie ingredients entering into the vegetable composition, and 
 S^^'ub" derived, as has been said, from the air. For this purpose, if 
 etance. ^g sclcct their cMcf solid element, carbon, the remarks ap- 
 
 plicable to the course it follows will hold good for other accompanying 
 elements. It is scarcely necessary to embarrass the brief exposition of 
 vegetable life now to be given by any historical details, since these will 
 come with more propriety subsequently. It is sufficient to mention that 
 the chemical explanations of vegetable physiology rest Essentially on 
 the discovery of oxygen gas by Priestley, of the constitution of cap 
 bonic acid by Lavoisier, and of water by Cavendish and Watt. 
 
 While the sun is shining, the green parts of plants, especially the 
 Action of a Icavcs, dccompose carbonic acid, one of the ingredients of the 
 Jb." ™ ° atmospheric air. This substance is, composed of two elements, 
 carbon and oxygen ; the former is appropriated by the plant, and enters 
 into the composition of elaborated or descending sap, from which forth- 
 with organic products, sucb as starch, sugar, wood-fibre, acids, and bases 
 are made. The other element, the oxygen, is for the most part refused 
 by the plant, and returns to the air. As the process of decomposition 
 goes on, new portions of carbonic acid are presented through mechan- 
 ical movements, the trembling of the leaf, breezes, and currents rising 
 from the foliage warmed by the solar beams giving place to other cool 
 currents that set in below. 
 
 The action of a plant upon the air is therefore the separation of com- 
 bustible material from that medium. Carbon is thus obtained from car- 
 bonic acid ; from water, hydrogen. Plant life is chemically an opera- 
 tion of reduction, for in like manner ammonia is decomposed into its 
 constituents, which are nitrogen and hydrogen ; and sulphuric and phos- 
 phoric acids, which, like ammonia, may have been brought into theplant 
 through its fopts in the form of salt bodies, are made to yield up the 
 oxygen with which they had been combined, and their sulphur and 
 phosphorus, combustible elements, are appropriated. 
 
 Every plant, from the humblest moss to the oak of a thousand years, 
 Composition is ^^'^ foTmcd by the Sun from material obtained from the air, 
 of matter"ana combustiblo material once united with oxygen, but now sep- 
 '»««• arated from that body. It is of especial importance to re- 
 
 mark that in this act of decomposition, force, under the form of light, 
 has disappeared, and become incorporated with the combustible, the or-, 
 ganizing material. This force is surrendered again, or reappears when- 
 ever the converse operation, combination with oxygen, occurs. 
 
 Vegetable products thus constitute a magazine in which force is stored 
 up and preserved for any assignable time. Hence. they are adapted for 
 animal food and for the procuring of warmth. The heat evolved in the 
 
RELATIONS OF ANIMALS TO PLANTS. 577 
 
 combustion of coal in domestic economy was originally light from the 
 sun appropriated by plants in the Secondary geological times, and lock- 
 ed up for untold ages. The sun is also the source from which was de- 
 rived the light obtained in all our artificial operations of burning gas, 
 oil, fat, wax, for the purposes of illumination. 
 
 My own experiments have proved (Physiology, p. 461) that it is the 
 light of the sun, in contradistinction to the heat, which occa- correlation of 
 sions the decomposition of carbonic acid, furnishing carbon v^7'«^(orces. 
 to plants and oxygen to the atmosphere. But such is the relation of 
 the so-called imponderable principles of chemistry to each other, and 
 their mutual convertibility, that that which has disappeared in perform- 
 ing its function as light, may reappear as heat or electricity, or in the 
 production of some mechanical effect. 
 
 Food is used by all animals for the sake of the force it thus contains, 
 the remark applying to the camivora as well as the herbiv- The nature 
 ora. In both cases the source of supply is the vegetable king- <''*'°°*- 
 dom, indirectly or directly. The plant is thus indispensable to the ani- 
 mal. It is the collector and preserver of that force the expenditure of 
 which constitutes the special display of animal life. 
 
 From this point of view, animals must therefore be considered as ma- 
 chines, in which force, obtained as has been described, is utilized. The 
 food they take, or the tissue that has been formed from it, is acted upon 
 by the air they breathe, and undergoes partial or total oxydation, and 
 now emerges again, in part as heat, in part as nerve-force, in some few 
 instances in part as light or electricity, the force that originally came 
 from the sun. 
 
 There is, therefore, a cycle or revolution through which material par- 
 ticles suitable for organization incessantly run. At one mo- cycie through 
 ment they exist as inorganic combinations in the air or the andforMpasa! 
 soil, then as portions of plants, then as portions of animals, then they re- 
 turn to the air or soil again to renew their cycle of movement. The 
 metamorphoses feigned. by the poets of antiquity have hence a founda- 
 tion in fact, and the vegetable and animal, the organic and inorganic 
 worlds are indissolubly bound together. Plants are reducing, animals 
 oxydizing, machines. Plants form, animals destroy. 
 
 Thus, by the light of the sun, the carbonic acid of the atmosphere is 
 decomposed— its oxygen is set free, its carbon furnished to plants. The 
 products obtained serve for the food of animals, and in their systems 
 the carbon is reoxydized by the air they respire, and, resuming the con- 
 dition of carbonic acid, is thrown back into the atmosphere in the breath, 
 ready to be decomposed by the sunlight once more, and run through the 
 same cycle of changes again. The growth of a pknt and the respira- 
 tion of an animal are dependent on each other. 
 
 Material particles are thus the vehicles of force. They undergo no 
 
 Oo 
 
578 METHOD OF DETERMINING THE POSITION OF AN ANIMAL. 
 
 The duration of destruction. Chemically speaking, they are eternal. And 
 "eri^habmty'rf SO, UkewisB, force never deteriorates or becomes lessened. It 
 force. j^g^y assume new phases, but it is always intrinsically unim- 
 
 paired. The only changes it can exhibit are those of aspect and of dis- 
 tribution ; of aspect, as electricity, af&nity, light, heat ; of distribution, 
 as when the diffused aggregate of many sunbeams is concentrated in 
 one animal form. 
 , It is but little that we know respecting the mutations and distribu- 
 tion of force in the universe. We can jiot tell what becomes of that 
 which has characterized animal life, though of its perpetuity we may be 
 assured. It has no more been destroyed than the material particles of 
 which such animals consist. They have been transmuted into new 
 forms — it has taken on a new aspect. The sum total of matter in the 
 world is invariable ; so, likewise, is the sum total of force. 
 
 These conclusions resemble in many respects those of the philosophy 
 Theory of of Averrhocs, but they are free from the heresy which led the 
 Averrhoea. Latgran Council, Under Leo X., to condemn the doctrines of the 
 great Spanish Mohammedan. The error of Averrhoes consisted in this, 
 that he confounded what is here spoken of under the designation of 
 force with the psychical principle, and falsely applied that which is true 
 for animals to the case of man, who is to be considered as consisting of 
 three essentially distinct parts — a material body, upon which operate 
 various physical forces, guided and controlled by an intelligent soul. 
 
 In the following paragraphs the distinction here made is brought into 
 more striking relief. 
 
 The station of any animal in the organic series may be determined 
 AEatomicai mode from the Condition of its nervous system. To this obser- 
 sUion°taThe\?d- vation man himself is not an exception. Indeed, just views 
 mai series. gf j^jg positiou in the world, of the nature of his intellect 
 
 and mental operations, can not be obtained except from the solid sup- 
 port afforded by Anatomy. The reader has doubtless remarked that, 
 in the historical sketch of the later progress of Europe given in this 
 rfthemefaTs- ^°°^' ^ ^^^^ ^ot referred to metaphysics, or psychology, or 
 icai sciences. mental phHosophy. Cultivated as they have been, it was 
 not possible for them to yield any other result than they did among 
 the Greeks. A lever is no mechanical power unless it has a material 
 point of support. It is-only through the physical that the metaphysical 
 can be discovered. 
 
 An exposition of the structure, the physical forces, and the intellec- 
 Necessityofre- t^^al Operations of man must be founded on anatomy. We 
 omy ald°A^- c^u Only determine the methods of action from the study of 
 °'°ey- the mechanism, and the right interpretation of that mecha,n- 
 
 ism can only be ascertained from the construction of its parts, from ob- 
 servations of the manner in which they are developed, from compari- 
 
CRITICISM ON PSYCHOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS. .579 
 
 sons with similar structures in other animals, not rejecting even the 
 lowest, and from an investigation of their habits and peculiarities. Ee- 
 lieving that; in the present state of science, doctrines in psychology, un- 
 less they are sustained by evidence derived from anatomy and physi- 
 ology, are not to be relied on,. I have not thought it necessary to devote 
 much space to their introduction. They have not taken a part in the 
 recent advances of humanity. They belong to an earlier social period, 
 and are an anachronism in ours. I have referred to these points here- 
 tofore in my work on Physiology, and perhaps shall be excused the 
 following extract (p. 259) : 
 
 " The study of this portion of the mechanism of man brings us there- 
 fore in contact with metaphysical science, and some of its fundamental 
 dogmas we have to consider. Nearly all philosophers who have cul- 
 tivated in recent times that branch of knowledge, have viewed with ap- 
 prehension the rapid advances of physiology, foreseeing that it would 
 attempt the final solution of problems which have exercised the s„iuti„nof 
 ingenuity of the last twenty centuries. In this they are not cS^oum?' 
 mistaken. Certainly it is desirable that some new method ''°'^- 
 should be introduced, which may give point and precision to whatever 
 metaphysical truths exist, and enable us to distinguish, separate, and dis- 
 miss what are only vain and empty speculations. 
 
 " So far from philosophy being a forbidden domain to the physiolo- 
 gist, it may be asserted that the time has now come when no one is en- 
 titled to express an opinion in philosophy except he has first p^^^ . 
 studied physiology. It has hitherto been to the detriment ™etophy8i(H. 
 of truth that these processes of positive investigation have been repudi- 
 ated. If from the construction of the human brain we may demonstrate 
 the existence of a soul, is not that a gain ? for there are many who are 
 open to arguments of this class on whom speculative reasoning or a 
 mere dictum falls without any weight. Why should we cast aside the 
 sohd facts presented to us by material objects ? In his communications 
 throughout the universe with us, God ever materializes. He equally 
 speaks to us through the thousand graceful organic forms scattered in 
 profusion over the surface of the earth, and through the motions and ap- 
 pearances presented by the celestial orbs. Our noblest and clearest con- 
 ceptions of his attributes have been obtained from these material things. 
 I am persuaded that the only possible route to truth in mental philoso- 
 phy is through a study of the nervous mechanism. The experience of ■ 
 2500 years, and the writmgs of the great metaphysical intellects attest 
 with a melancholy emphasis, the vanity of all other means. ' 
 
 " Whatever may be said by speculative philosophers to the contrarv 
 the advancement of metaphysics is through the study of physiologv' 
 What sort of a science would optics have been among men who had 
 purposely put out their own eyes ? What would have been the prog- 
 
580 COMPOSITIOK OF THE NEEVOUS SYSTEM. 
 
 ress of astronomy among those who disdained to look at the heavens ? 
 Yet such is the preposterous course followed by the so-called philoso- 
 phers. They have given us imposing doctrines of the nature and at- 
 tributes of the mind in absolute ignorance of its material substratum. 
 Of the great authors who have thus succeeded one another in ephem- 
 eral celebrity, how many made themselves acquainted with the struc- 
 Necessity of the ture of the humau brain? Doubtless some had been so un- 
 Btruoture. fortunatc as never to see one !^ ' Yet that wonderful organ 
 was the basis of all their speculations. In voluntarily isolating them- 
 selves from every solid fact which might serve, to be a landmark to 
 them, they may be truly said to have sailed upon a shoreless sea from 
 which the fog never lifts. The only fact they teach us with certainty is, 
 that they know nothing with certainty. It is the inherent difficulty of 
 their method that it must lead to unsubstantial results. What is not 
 founded on a material substratum is necessarily a castle in the air." 
 
 Considering thus that scientific views of the nature of man can only 
 ' Intellectual re- be obtained from an examination of his nervous system, and 
 
 lations of man --.-. . _- /»•/»! 
 
 depend on hia that the right mtcrnretation oi the manner oi action oi that 
 
 nervous sya- -- ^- .-, -.™ - 
 
 tem. system depends on the guiding' light oi comparative anato- 
 
 my and physiology, I shall, in the following exposition, present the 
 progress of discovery on those principles. 
 
 In those low tribes of life which show the first indications of a nerv- 
 The rudiment- ous systcm, its Operation is purely mechanical. An external 
 ^LmTauto- impression, ias a touch, made upon animals of that kind, is in- 
 '^^ stantly answered to by a motion which they execute, and this 
 
 without any manifestation of will or consciousness. The phenomenon 
 is exactly of the same kind as in a machine, of which, if a given lever 
 is touched, a motion is instantly produced. . 
 
 In any nervous system there are two portions anatomically distinct. 
 
 Two elementary They are, Ist, the fibrous ; 2d, the vesicular. It may be de- 
 forms of nerre . ^, n -i i . n i - t /. • r 
 
 matter. siraole to aescribe briefly the construction and lunctions oi 
 
 each of these portions. Their conjoint action will then be intelligible. 
 
 1st. A nerve fibre consists essentially of a delicate thread — ^the axis 
 structure of a filament, as it is called — enveloped in an oil-like substance, 
 nerve fibre. yj^j^Q}^^ coagulatcs Or congeals after death. This, in its turn, is 
 inclosed in a thin investing sheath or membranous tube. Many such 
 fibres bound together constitute a nerve. 
 
 The function of such a nerve fibre is indisputably altogether of a 
 Function of a physical kind, being "the conveyance of influences from part 
 conduction, to part. The axis filament is -the line along which the trans- 
 lation occurs, the investing material being for the purpose of confining 
 or insulating it, so as to prevent any lateral escape. Such a construc- 
 tion is the exact counterpart of many electrical contrivances, in which 
 a metallic wire is coated over with sealing-wax or wrapped round with 
 
NERVE FIBKBS AND VESICLES. 581 
 
 silk, the current being thus compelled to move in the wire without any 
 lateral escape. , Of such fibres, some convey their influences to the inte- 
 rior, and hence are called centripetal ; some convey them to the exterior, 
 and hence are called centrifugal. . No anatomical difference in the struc- 
 ture of the two has, however, thus far been discovered. As in a conduct- 
 ing wire the electrical current moves in a progressive manner with a def- 
 inite velocity, so in a nerve filament the influence advances progressive- 
 ly at a rate said to be dependent on the temperature of the animal ex- 
 amined. It seems in the cold-blooded to be much slower than in the 
 hot. It has been estimated in the frog at eighty -five feet in a second ; 
 in man at two hundred feet — an estimate probably too low. 
 
 The fibres thus described are of the kind designated by physiologists 
 as the cerebro-spinal ; there are others, passing under the name of the 
 sympathetic, characterized by not possessing the investing medullary 
 substance. In color they are yellowish-gray ; but it is not necessary 
 here to consider them further. 
 
 2d. The other portion of the nervous structure is the vesicular. As" 
 its name imports, it consists of vesicles filled with a gray gran- structure of a 
 ular material. Bach vesicle has a thickened spot or nucleus ""^"^^ ™'''''^- 
 upon it, and appears to be coimected with one or more fibres. If the 
 connection is only with one, the vesicle is called unipolar ; if with two, 
 bipolar; if with many, multipolar or stellate. Every vesicle is abun- 
 dantly supplied with blood. 
 
 As might be inferred from its structure, the vesicle differs altogether 
 from the fibre in function. I may refer to page 268 of my i^eti„„ „, 
 Physiology for the reasons which have led to the inference "'"'"' "^^''°'«* 
 that these are contrivances for the purposes of permitting influences 
 that have been translated along or confined within the fibre to escape 
 and diffuse themselves in the gray granular material. They also per- 
 mit influences that are coming through many different channels into a 
 multipolar vesicle to communicate or mix with one another, and com- 
 bine to produce new Results. Moreover, in them influences may be long 
 preserved, and thus they become magazines of force. Combined to- 
 gether, they constitute ganglia or nerve centres, on which, if impressions 
 be made, they do not necessarily forthwith die out, but may remain 
 gradually declining away for a long time. Thus is introduced into the 
 nervous mechanism the element of time, and this important function of 
 the nerve vesicle lies at the basis of memory. 
 
 It has been said that the vesicular portion of the nerve mechanism is 
 copiously supplied with blood. Indeed, the condition indispensably nec- 
 essary for its functional activity is waste by oxydation. Arterial vessels 
 are abundantly furnished to insure the necessary supply PhysMogicai con 
 of aerated blood, and veins to carry away the wasted prod- tSn^^Lt 
 ucts of decay. Also, through the former, the necessary materials for re- 
 
582 SIMPLE AND COMPLEX NERVOUS SYSTEMS. 
 
 pair and renovation are brought. There is a definite waste of nervous 
 substance in the production of a definite mechanical or intellectual re- 
 sult — a material connection and condition that must never be overlook- 
 ed. Hence it is plain that unless the repair and the waste are synchro- 
 nously equal to one another, periodicities in the action of the nervous 
 system will arise, this being the fundamental condition connected with 
 the physical theories of sleep and fatigue. 
 
 The statements here made rest upon two distinct forms of evidence. 
 In part they are derived from an interpretation of anatomical structure, 
 and in part from direct experiment, chiefly by the aid of feeble electric- 
 al currents. The registering or preserving action displayed by a gan- 
 glion may be considered as an effect, resembling that of the construc- 
 tion known as Eitter's secondary piles. 
 
 It will not suit my purpose to offer more than the simplest illustra- 
 tion of the application of the foregoing facts. When an impression, 
 either by pressure or in any other way, is made on the exterior termi- 
 nation of a centripetal fibre, the influence is conveyed with a velocity 
 such as has been mentioned into the vesicle to which that fibre is attach- 
 Reflex action ed, and theucc, going forth along the centrifugal fibre, mav 
 0U3 system, give rise to motion through contraction oi the muscle to which 
 that fibre is distributed. An impression has thus produced a motion, 
 and to the operation the designation of reflection is commonly given. 
 This reflection takes place without consciousness. The three parts — ^the 
 centripetal fibre, the vesicle, and the centrifugal fibre — conjointly consti- 
 tute a simple nervous arc. 
 
 A repetition of these arcs, each precisely like all the others, constitutes 
 Gradual com- t^^ first stcp toward a complex nervous system. Their man- 
 neCToua°By3''-° ncr of arrangement is necessarily subordinated to the general 
 '™- plan of construction of the animals in which they occur. 
 
 Thus, in the Eadiates it is circular ; in the Articulates, linear, or upon an 
 axis. But, as the conditions of life require consentaneousness of mo- 
 tion in the different parts, these nerve arcs are not left isolated or with- 
 out connection with each other. As it is anatomically termed, they are 
 commissured, nerve fibres passing from each to its neighbora, and each 
 is thus brought into sympathy with all the others. 
 
 The next advance is a very important one, for it indicates the general 
 plan on which the nervous system is to be developed : it is the dedica- 
 Firat appear- tiou of spBcial ucrvc arcs for special duties. Thus, in the high- 
 
 anoe of spe- . \ ^ , . . 
 
 ciai ganglia, er articulatcs and moliusks, there are such combinations ex- 
 pressly for the purpose of respiration -and deglutition. Their action is 
 altogether of the reflex kind; it takes place without consciousness. 
 These ganglia are commissured for the sake of sympathetic action, and 
 frequently several of them are coalesced for the sake of package. 
 This principle of dedication to special uses is carried out in the intro- 
 
AUTOMATIC ANIMALS. 583 
 
 auction of ganglia intended to be affected by light, or sounds or odors. 
 The impressions of those agencies are carried to the ganglion by its cen- 
 tripetal fibres. Such ganglia of special action are most commoBly coa- 
 lesced together, forming nervous masses of conspicuous size;_ they are 
 always commissured with those for ordinary motions, the action being 
 reflex, as in the preceding case, though of a higher order, smce it is at- 
 tended with consciousness. ■ . 
 Such being the elementary construction of a nervous system,. it is 
 plain that animal tribes in which it exists in no higher de- ^^y «-£: 
 gree of complexity must be merely automata. In this re- isms, 
 mark insects must be included, for the instinct they display is altogeth- 
 er of a mechanical kind, and, so far as they are concerned, without de- 
 sign. Their actions are uniformly alike; what one does under given 
 circumstances, under the same circumstances another will certainly do. 
 They are incapable of education, they learn nothing by experience, and 
 the acts they are engaged in they accomplish as well at the first trial as 
 ever after. 
 
 Of parts like those thus described, and of others of a higher order, as 
 will be presently seen, is the most complex nervous system, even that 
 of man, composed. It might, perhaps, be expected that for EvUence tote 
 the determination of the duty of each part of such complex mvcBtigationB. 
 systems the physiologist must necessarily resort to experiment, observ- 
 ing what functions have been injured or destroyed when given portions 
 have been removed by his knife. At the best, however, evidence of 
 that kind must be very unsatisfactory on account of the shock the en- 
 tire system receives in vivisections, and, accordingly, artificial evidence 
 can, for the most part, be used only in a corroborative way. But, as 
 Cuvier observed, the hand of Nature has prepared for^us these very ex- 
 periments without that drawback. The animal series, as we advance 
 upward from its lowest member, proves to us what is the effect of the 
 addition of new parts in succession to a nervous system, as also does any 
 individual thereof in its successive periods of development. It is one 
 of the most important discoveries of modern physiology that, as respects 
 their nervous system, we can safely transfer our reasonings and conclu- 
 sions from the case of the lowest to that of the highest animal tribes. 
 
 The articulata present structures and a mode of action illustrating in 
 a striking manner the nervous system of man. Lengthwise upon their 
 ventral region is laid a double cord, with ganglia, like a string of beads ; 
 sometimes the cords are a little distance apart, but more generally they 
 are coalesced, each pair of ganglia being fused into one. To First introauo- 
 every segment of the body a pair is supplied, each pair con- ing ganguT"' 
 trolling its own segment, and acting toward it automatically, each also 
 acting like any of the others. But in the region of the head there is a 
 special pair, the cephalic ganglia, receiving fibres from the eyes and other 
 
584 INSTINCTIVE ANIMALS. 
 
 organs of sense. Prom tliem proceed filaments to the ventral cord, es- 
 tablishing communications with every segment. ^ .So every part has 
 two connections, one with its own ventral ganglia, and one with the 
 cephalic. 
 
 It is not difficult to determine experimentally the functions of the 
 ventral ganglia and those of the cephalic. If a centipede be decapitateds 
 its body is still capable of moving, the motion Ipeing evidently of a re- 
 flex kind, originating in the pressure of the legs against the surface on 
 But thua far ac whioh they rest. The ventral cord, with its ganglia, is hence 
 fStl™.°'^'"°" purely an automatic mechanism. But if, in making the de- 
 capitation, we leave a portion of the body in connection with the head, 
 we recognize very plainly that the cephalic ganglia are exercising a 
 governing power. In the part from which they have been cut off the 
 movement is forward, regardless of any obstacle ; in that to which they 
 are attached there are modifications in the motions, depending on sight" 
 or other special senses ; obstacles are avoided, and a variety of dire& 
 tions pursued. Yet still the actions are not intelligent, only instinct 
 ive. The general conclusion therefore is, that the cephalic ganglia are 
 of a higher order than the ventral, the latter being simply mechanical, 
 the former instinctive ; but thus far there is no trace of intelligence. 
 
 In man these typical parts are all present, and discharge the functions 
 Nervous anat- Specified. His Spinal cord answers to the ventral cord of the 
 bStes.asman. articulates. It has its lateral communications in the same 
 way, and each segmental portion presents the same reflex action. To- 
 ward its upper part it dilates to form the medulla oblongata, sending 
 forth nerves for respiration and deglutition. Of these the action is still 
 reflex, as is proved by the involuntary movements of respiration and 
 Their auto- dcglutition. A portiou of food being placed in the pharynx, 
 ma^oappa- ^qj^^j-q^^^q^ instautly occurs, the will having no kind of control 
 over the act of swallowing. Above or in front of this enlargement is 
 a series of ganglia, to which converge the nerves of special sense — of 
 Their instinct, hearing, sight, smell ; these are, therefore, the equivalents of 
 ive apparatus, ^-j^q cepbalic ganglia of insects, their function being also the 
 same. In the lowest vertebrates, as in the amphioxusj the nervous sys- 
 tem consists of nothing' more. It may therefore be said to have only 
 two parts — ^the cord and the sensory ganglia, and to have two functions 
 — ^the automatic, attributable to the former, and the instinctive, attrib- 
 utable to the latter. 
 
 But as we advance from the low vertebrates upward in the animal 
 scale, we begin to detect new organs ; on the medulla oblongata a cere- 
 Their intellect- bcUum, and ou the sensory ganglia a cerebrum. Prom this 
 uai apparatus, moment the animal displays reasoning powers, its intelli- 
 gence becoming more strikingly marked as the development of the new 
 organs is greater. 
 
THE BBAIK AND THE SPINAL CORD. 585 
 
 It remains to determine with exactness the function of one of these 
 
 new parte, the cerebrum; t^^« ^^^^^ ^^T S' tith IHo' ---"' 
 ins of minor interest, and connected, probably, with the loco- 
 mftiye appaxatus. For the same reason xt is unnecessary to speak of 
 7e sympathetic nerve, since it belongs to the apparatus of organic life. 
 Confining our attention, therefore, to the true brain, or cerebrum, we 
 soon recognize that the intelligence of an animal is, m a general man- 
 ner proportional to the relative size of this organ as compared with the 
 sensory gangha. We are also struck with the fact, that the cerebrum 
 does not send forth to other portions any independent fibres of its own, 
 nor does it receive any from them, its only means of communication be- 
 ing through the parts that have been described— that is to say, through 
 the sensory and automatic apparatus. The cerebrum is there- na relations to 
 fore a mechanism of a higher order, and its relationship with *d"„tomafe 
 the thalami optici and corpora striata indicate the conditions i"^'™»- 
 of its functions. It can only receive impressions which have come 
 through them, and only act upon the body through their intermedium. 
 Moreover, as we ascend the animal scale, we find that these cerebral 
 parts not only increase in size, but likewise, in their turn, give rise to 
 offihoots; secondary lobes, emerging posteriorly on the pn-^^^^™*^ 
 mary ones, and, in due season, tertiary lobes posteriorly on the loto. 
 secondary. To these, in human anatomy, the designations of anterior, 
 middle, and posterior lobes have been respectively given. In propor= 
 tion as this development has proceeded, the intellectual qualities have 
 become more varied and more profound. 
 
 The relation of the cerebrum to the cranio-spinal axis is manifested 
 bv the circumstance that the latter can act without the for- Action of uie 
 
 "^J - , • 1 1 • spinal cord 
 
 mer. In sleep the cerebrum is, as it were, torpid, but respira- aione. 
 tion, deglutition, and other reflex actions go on. If we touch the palm 
 of a sleeping infant our finger is instantly grasped. But, though the 
 axis can work without the cerebrum, the cerebrum can not conjoint action 
 
 , _ ., _ of tiie Oram and 
 
 work without the axis. Illustrations of these truths may be cord, 
 experimentally obtained. An animal from which the cerebrum has 
 been purposely removed may be observed to perform actions automatic 
 and instinctive, but never intelhg^t; and that there is no difference 
 between animals^ and man in this respect is demonstrated by the nu- 
 merous instances recorded in the works of medicine and surgery of in- 
 juries by accident or disease to. the human nervous system, the effects 
 corresponding to those artificially produced in experiments on animals. 
 This important observation, moreover, shows that we may with correct- 
 ness use the observations made on animals in our investigations of the 
 human system. 
 
 Thus, then, the matter stands. In the nervous system of man our at- 
 tention is especially demanded by three essentially distinct parts — ^the 
 
586 TRIPLE CONSTEUCTION OF THE HUMAN" NEEVOUS , SYSTEM. 
 
 Three distinct Spinal cord, the sensory ganglia, and the cerebrum. Of the 
 Serous system fi^st, the Spinal oord, the action is automatic ; by its aid we can 
 "tni'^D- -vralk, without bestowing a thought on our movements, from 
 
 place to place ; by it we swallow involuntarily ; by it we respire un. 
 Theyaretheau. cousplously. Thc sccoud portion, the sensory ganglia, is, as 
 8tSctwe'?hetaI "^^ ^^^^ ^^^^i *^^ counterpart of the cephalic ganglia of in- 
 teiieetuai. yertcbrates ; it is the place of reception of sensuous im- 
 
 pressions and the seat of consciousness. To these ganglia instinct is to 
 be referred. Their function is not at all impaired by the cerebrum' su- 
 perposed upon them. The third portion, the cerebrum, is anatomically 
 distinct. It is the seat of ideas. It does not directly give rise to mor 
 tions, being obliged to employ for that purpose its intermediate auto- 
 matic associated apparatus. In this realm of ideas thoughts spring forth 
 suggestively from one another in a perpetual train or flux, and yet the 
 Dominating con- highcst branch of the nervous mechanism still retains traces 
 troi of the latter. q£ ^j^g modcs of Operation of the parts from which it was de- 
 veloped. Its action is still often reflex. Eeason is not always able to 
 control our emotions, as when we laugh or weep in spite of ourselves, 
 under the impression of some external incident. Nay, more; the in- 
 citing cause may be, as we very well know, nothing material — nothing 
 but a recollection, an idea — and yet it is enough. But these phenom- 
 ena are perhaps restricted to the first or anterior lobes of the brain, and, 
 accordingly, we remark them most distinctly in childrea and in animals. 
 As the second and third lobes begin to exercise their power, such ef- 
 fects are brought under control. 
 
 • There is, therefore, a regular progression, a definite improvement in 
 Progressive new- the ucrvous systcm of the animal series, the plan never va- 
 TtKiiffie- rying, but being persistently carried out, and thus offering 
 '^^- a powerful argument for relationship among air those suc- 
 
 cessively improving forms, an observation which becomes of the utmost 
 interest to us in its application to the vertebrates. In the amphioxus, 
 as has been said, the cranio-spinal axis alone exists ; the Cyclostome 
 fishes are but a' step higher. In fishes the true cerebrum appears at first 
 in an insignificant manner, a condition repeated in, the early embryonic 
 state both of birds and mammals. An improvement is made in reptiles, 
 whose cerebral hemispheres are larger than their optic lobes. As we 
 advance to birds, a farther increase occurs ; the hemispheres are now of 
 nearly suf6.cient dimensions to cover over those ganglia. In the lower 
 mammals there is another step, yet not a very great one. But from the 
 anterior lobes, which thus far have constituted the entire brain, there 
 are next to be developed the middle lobes. In the Eodents the progress 
 is still continued, and in the Ruminants and Pachyderms the convolu- 
 xt attains its tioiis have become well marked. In the higher carnivora and 
 
 maximum in - . . t i nu, -^na 
 
 man. quadrumaua the posterior or tertiary lobes appear, ine pas- 
 
NEEVOUS DETELOPMENT IN THE LIFE OF THE EAETH. 587 
 
 sage from tlie anthropoid apes to man brings us to the utmost devel- 
 opment thus far attained by the nervous system. The cerebrUm has 
 reached its maximum organization by a continued and unbroken pro- 
 cess of development. 
 
 This orderly development of the nervous system in the animal series 
 is recognized again in the gradual development of the indi- '^l^^'^^^J'^- 
 vidual man. The primitive trace, as it faintly appears in the opment occma 
 germinal membrane, marks out the place presently to be oc- vidnaiman. 
 cupied by the cranio-spinal axis, and, that point of development gained, 
 man answers to the amphioxus. Not until the twelfth week of em- 
 bryonic life does he reach the state permanently presented by birds ; at 
 this time the anterior lobes are only perceptible. In four or six weeks 
 more the middle lobes are evolved posteriorly, on the anterior, and, 
 finally, in a similar manner, the tertiary or posterior one's are formed. 
 And thus it appears that, compared with the nervous system of other 
 animals, that of man proceeds through the same predetermined succes- 
 sion of forms. Theirs suffers an arrest, in some instances at a lower, in 
 some at a higher point, but his passes onward to completion. 
 
 But that is not all. The biography of the earth, the life of the entire 
 globe, corresponds to this progress of the individual, to this n occurs again in 
 
 ■11 1 , • n .1 • 1 • r\ • . . , the entire life of 
 
 orderly relation oi the animal series. Commencing with thegiobe. 
 the oldest rocks that furnish animal remains, and advancing to the most 
 recent, we recognize a continual improvement in construction, indicated 
 by the degree of advancement of the nervous system. The earliest 
 fishes did not proceed beyond that condition of the spinal column which 
 is to be considered as embryonic. The Silurian and Devonian rocks do 
 not present it in an ossified state. The fishes, up to the Carboniferous 
 epoch, had a heterocercal tail, just as the embryos of osseous fishes of 
 the present time have up to a certain period of their life. There was 
 therefore, an arrest in the old extinct forms, and an advance to a higher 
 point in the more modern. The buckler-headed fishes of the Devonian 
 rocks had their respiratory organs and much of their digestive appa- 
 ratus in the head, and showed an approximation to the tadpoles or em- 
 bryos of the frog. The crocodiles of the oolite had biconcave verte- 
 bra, like the embryos of the recent ones which have gained the capa- 
 bility of making an advance to a higher point. In the geological order 
 reptiles make their appearance next after fishes, and this is what we 
 should expect on the principle of an ascending nervous development. 
 Not until long after come birds, later in date and higher in nervous ad- 
 vancement, capable not only of instinct, but also of intelligence. Of 
 mammals, the first that appear are what we should have expected— the 
 marsupials; but, among the tertiary rocks, very many other forms are 
 pr^ented, the eariier ones, whether herbivorous or carnivorous, having 
 a closer correspondence to the archetype than the existing ones, save 
 
588 NERVOUS DEVELOPMENT IN MAN. 
 
 in their embryonic states, tlie analogies, occurring in such minor detaUa 
 as the possession of forty-four teeth. The biography of the earth is thus 
 Absolute necessity on the great scalc, tvpical of individual life, even that of 
 
 of actaitting trans- ° , . „ . . , „ 
 
 mutation of forms, man, and the succession oi species in the progress of num- 
 berless ages is the counterpart of the transmutation of an individual 
 from form to form. As in a dissolving view, new objects emerge from 
 old ones, and new forms spontaneously appear without the exercise of 
 any periodical creative act. 
 
 For some days after birth the actions of the human being are merely 
 Life of man from reflex. Its crauio-spinal axis alone is in operation, and thus 
 
 infancy to matu- „ . . , _, - . 
 
 rity in accord- tar it IS Only an automaton, isut soon the impressions of 
 atomy. cxtemal objects begin to be registered or preserved in the 
 
 sensory ganglia, and the evidences of memory appear. The first token 
 of this is perhaps the display of an attachment to persons, not through 
 any intellig^it recognition of relationship, but, merely because of famil- 
 iarity. : This is. followed by the manifestation of a liking to accustomed 
 places and a dread of strange ones. At this stage the infant is lead- 
 ing an instinctive life, and has made no greater advance than many of 
 the lower mammals ; but they linger here, while he proceeds onward. 
 He soon shows high powers of memory, the exercise of reason in the de^ 
 terminations of judgment, and in the adaptation of varied means to va- 
 ried ends. 
 
 Such is therefore the process of development of the nervous system 
 of man ; such are the powers which consequently he successively dis- 
 plays.- His reason at last is paramount. No longer are his actions ex- 
 clusively prompted by sensations ; they are determined much more by 
 ideas that have resulted from his former experiences. While animals 
 which approach him most closely in construction require, an external 
 stimulus to commence a train of thought, he can direct his mental oper- 
 ations, and in this respect is parted from them by a vast interval. The 
 states through which he has passed are the automatic, the instinctive, 
 the intellectual ; each has its own apparatus, and all at last work har- 
 moniously together. 
 
 But besides this superposition of an instinctive apparatus upon an au- 
 Every person tomatic ouc, and an intellectual upon an instinctive, the nerv- 
 iSsi^indSr"' ous system consists of two equal and symmetrical lateral por- 
 Tiduais. tions, a right half and a left. Each person may be considered 
 as consisting in reality of two individuals. The right half may be strick- 
 en with, palsy, the left be unimpaired; one may lose its sightior hear- 
 ing, the other may retain them. These- lateral halves lead independent 
 lives. Yet, though independent in this sense, they are closely connected 
 in another. The brain of the right side rules over the left half of the 
 body, that of the left side rules over the right of the body. On the re- 
 lationships and antagonisms of the two halves of the cerebro-spinal sys- 
 
HIS DOUBLE INDIVIDUALITY. 589 
 
 tern imastbe founded our explanations of the otherwise mys- c^XTeneT^' 
 terious phenomena of double and alternate life; of the sen- of oonBtruetion. 
 timent of pre-existence ; of trains of thought, often double, but never 
 triple ; of the willful delusions of castle-building, in which one hemi- 
 sphere of the brain listens to the romance suggestions of the other, though 
 both well know that the subject they are entertaining themselves with 
 is a mere fiction. The strength and precision of mental operations de- 
 pend as much upon the complete equivalency of the two lateral halves 
 as upon their absolute development. It is scarcely to be expected that 
 great intellectual indications will be given by Mm, one of whose cere- 
 bral hemispheres is unequal to the other. But for the detailed consid- 
 eration of these topics I may refer the reader to my work on Physiol- 
 ogy. He will there find the explanation of the nature of registering 
 ganglia; the physical theory of memory; the causes of our variable 
 psychical powers at different times ; the description of the ear as the or- 
 gan of time ; the eye as the organ of space ; the touch as that of press- 
 ures and temperatures ; the smell and taste as those for the chemical 
 determination of gases and liquids. 
 
 From a consideratioii of the construction, development, and action of 
 the nervous svstem of man, we may gain correct views of conciusionB from 
 
 J . ** ^ ^ . the foregoing an- 
 
 his relations to other organic beings, and obtain true psy- atomicai acts. 
 chical and metaphysical theories. There is not that homogeneousness 
 in his intellectual structure which writers on those topics so long sup- 
 posed. It is a triple mechanism. A gentle, a gradual, a definite devel- 
 opment reaches its maximum in him without a breach of continuity. 
 Parts which, because of their completion, are capable of yielding in him 
 such splendid results^are seen in a rudimentary and useless Manamepater 
 condition in organisms very far down below. On the clear eerics. 
 recognition of this rudimentary, this useless state, very much depends. 
 It iildicates the master-fact of psychology-^ the fact that Averrhoes 
 overlooked^that, while man agrees with inferior beings in the type 
 of his construction, and passes in his development through transforma- 
 tions analogous to theirs, he differs from them all in this, that he alone 
 possesses an accountable, an immortal soul. It is true that there are 
 some which closely approach him in structure, but the existence of 
 structure by no means implies the exercise of functions. In the still- 
 born infant, the mechanism for respiration, the lungs, is completed; but 
 the air may never enter, and the intention for which they were formed 
 never be carried out. 
 
 Moreover, it a,ppears that the order of development in the life of in- 
 dividual man and the order of development in the life of the nia ufe and 
 earths are the same, their common features indicating a com- pi^net aiike. 
 mon plan. The one is the movement of a few hours, the other of myr- 
 iads of ages. This sameness of manner in their progression points out 
 
590 CONTEOL OF LAW OVEE HUMAK PROGRESS. 
 
 their dependence on a law immutable and universal. The successive 
 appearance of the animal series in the endless course of time has not^ 
 therefore, been accidental, but as predetermined and ,as certain as the suc- 
 cessive forms of the individual. In the latter we do not find any cause 
 of surprise in the assumption of states ever increasing in improvement, 
 ever rising higher and higher toward the perfection destined to be at- 
 tained. We look upon it as the course of nature. Why, then, should 
 we consider the extinctions and creations of the former as offering any 
 thing unaccountable, as connected with a sudden creative fiat or with 
 an arbitrary sentence of destruction ? 
 
 In this book I have endeavored to investigate the progress of human- 
 progress of hu- ity, and found that it shows all the phases of individual move- 
 cording to law. mcut, the cvidcnce employed being historical, and, therefore, ' 
 of a nature altogether different from that on which our conclusions in 
 the collateral instances rest. It may serve to assure us that the ideas 
 here presented are true when we encounter, at the close of our investiga- 
 tion, this harmony between the life of the individual, the life of society, 
 and the life of the earth. 
 
 Is it probable that the individual proceeds in his movement, of devel- 
 opment under law, that the planet also proceeds in its movement under 
 law, but that society does not proceed under law ? 
 
 Man, thus, is the last term of an innumerable series of organisms. 
 Eternity and which, uudcr the domination of law, has, in the lapse of time, 
 rfthauaw.'^ been evolving. Law has controlled the inorganic world, and 
 caused the earth to pass through various physical conditions, gently and 
 continuously succeeding one another. The plastic forms of organic be- 
 ings have been piodeled to suit those changing conditions. The inva- 
 riability of that law is indicated by the numberless ages through which 
 it has been maintained, its universality by its holding good in the life 
 • of the meanest individual. 
 
 But it is only a part of sociology that we have considered^ and of 
 which we have investigated the development. In the most philosoph- 
 comparative i^^ aspcct the subjcct includcs comparative as well as human 
 sociology. sociology. For, though there may not be society where ac- 
 tions are simply reflex, there is a possibility of it where they are instinct- 
 ive, as well as where they are intellectual. Its essential condition being 
 intercommunication, there are necessarily modifications depending re- 
 spectively on touch or upon the higher and more delicate senses. That 
 is none the less society which, among insects, depends upon antennal 
 contacts. Human society, founded on speech, sight, hearing, has its in- 
 distinct beginnings, its rudiments, very low down in the animal scale, 
 as in the bell-like note which some of the nudibranchiate gasteropods 
 emit, or the solitary midnight tapping with which the death-watch sa- 
 lutes his mate. Society resting on instinct is characterized by immo- 
 
ITS AIM IS INTELLKCTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 591 
 
 bility; it is necessarily unprogressive. Society resting on intellect is 
 always advancing. 
 
 But, for the present, declining this general examination of sociology, 
 and limiting our attention strictly to that of humanity, we can not fail 
 to be struck with the fact that in us the direction of evolution is alto- 
 gether toward the intellectual, a conclusion equally impressed upon us 
 whether our mode of examination be ^anatomical or historical. Ana- 
 tomically we find no provision in the nervous system for The ato^^of ja- 
 the improvement of the moral, save indirectly througli the J^^f^l;,''^'^"^^ 
 intellectual, the whole aim of development being for the ment. 
 sake of intelligence. Historically, in the same manner, we find^that the 
 intellectual has always led the way in social advancement, the moral 
 ■ having been subordinate thereto. The former has been the mainspring 
 of the movement, the latter passively affected. It is a mistake to make 
 the progress of society depend on that which is itself controlled by a 
 higher power. In the earlier and inferior stages of individual life we 
 may govern through the moral alone. In that way we may guide chil- 
 dren, but it is to the understanding of the adult that we must appeal. 
 A system working only through the moral must sooner or srstemB of 
 later come into an antagonism with the intellectual, and, if it fn "Smm 
 does not contain within itself a means of adaptation to the 'iierewith. 
 changing circumstances, must in the end be overthrown. This was the 
 grand error of that Eoman system which presided while European civ- 
 ilization was developing. It assumed as its basis a uniform, a station- 
 ary, psychological condition in man. Torgetting that the powers of the 
 mind grow with the possessions of the mind, it considered those who 
 lived in past generations as being in no respect mentally inferior to 
 those who are living now, though our children at sixteen may have a 
 wider range of knowledge than our ancestors at sixty. That such an 
 imperfect system c6uld exist for so many ages is a proof of a contem- 
 porary condition of undeveloped intellect, just as we see that the under- 
 standing of a child does not revolt against the moral suasion, often in- 
 trinsically feeble, through which we attempt to influence him. But it 
 would be as unphilosophical to treat with disdain the ideas that have 
 served for a guide in the earlier ages of European life, as to look witi 
 contempt on the motives that have guided us in youth. Their feeble- 
 ness and incompetency is excused by their suitability to the period of 
 life to which they are applied. 
 
 But whoever considers these things will see that there is a term be- 
 yond which the application of such methods can not be extended. The 
 head of a family would act unwisely if he attempted to ap- ThoAgeofEea- 
 ply to his son at twenty-one the methods he had successful- ?eSeoS°toceS: 
 ly used at ten ; such methods could be only rendered effect- Suai''."'^"' 
 ive by a resort to physical compulsion. A great change in the inter- 
 
592' SUMMARY OF THE POSITIOK OF MAN. 
 
 vening years has taken place, and ideas once intrinsically powerful can 
 exert their influence no more. The moral may have remained un- 
 changed ; it may be precisely as it was — no better, no worse ; but that 
 which has changed is the understanding. Eeasoning and inducements 
 of an intellectual kind are now needful. An attempt to persist in an 
 absolute system by constraint would only meet with remonstrance and 
 derision. 
 
 If it is thus with the individual, so it is likewise with humanity. For 
 And the same ceuturies natious may live under forms that meet their re- 
 huinamty. " quircments, forms suitable to a feeble state ; but it is altogeth' 
 er illusory to suppose that such an adaptedness can continue forever. 
 A critical eye discerns that the mental features of a given generation 
 have become different from those of its ancestors. New ideas and a 
 new manner of action are the tokens that S, modification has silently 
 taken place. Thbugh after a short interval the change might not 
 amount to much, in the course of time there must inevitably be exhibit- 
 ed the spectacle of a society that had outgrown its forms, its rules of life. 
 
 Wherever, then, such a want of harmony becomes perceptible^ where 
 the social system is incompatible with the social state, and is, in effect, 
 an obsolete anachronism, it is plainly unphilosophical and unwiseto re- 
 sort to means of compulsion. No matter what the power of govern- 
 ments or of human authorities may be, it is impossible for them to stop 
 the intellectual advancement, for it forces its way by an organic law 
 over which they have no kind of control. 
 
 Astronomers sometimes affirm that the sun is the cause, directly or 
 Summary of the Indircctly, of all the mechanical movements that take place 
 thrpSnV upon the earth. Physiologists say that he is the genera- 
 '"'"'• tor of the countless living forms with which her surface is 
 
 adorned. 
 
 If the light, the warmth, and other physical influences of the sun 
 infloenceof the could be excludcd, there would be a stagnant and icy sea 
 
 sun on inorgan- . i. •! ' , t t i -rC i >i 
 
 io nature cncirclmg sueut and solitary shores. But the veil once 
 withdrawn, or the influences permitted to take effect, this, night and 
 stillness would give place to activity and change. In the morning 
 beams of the day, the tropical waters, expanding, would follow from 
 east to west the course of the sun, each renewed davm renewing the 
 impulse, and adding force to the gentle but resistless current. At one 
 place the flowing mass would move compactly ; at another, caught by 
 accidentally projecting rocks, it would give off little eddies, expending 
 their share of its force ; or, compressed in narrow passages, it would 
 rush impetuously along. Upon its surface myriads of momentary rip- 
 ples would play, or opposing winds, called into existence by similar dis- 
 turbances in the air, would force it into waves, making the shores re- 
 
THE EELATIONS OF ORGANIZED FOEMS. 593 
 
 sound with their breaking surge. Twice every day under the conjoint 
 nfluenl of the sun and the moon, as if the inanimate globe itself were 
 brelTng/the tide would rise and fall again upon the bosom of the deep. 
 Z eddy, the ripple, the wave, the current, are ^cidental forms 
 through wH^h the originally imparted force is displayed. They are all 
 expendmg power. Their life, if such a term can be used, is not the 
 property of themselves, but of the ocean to which they belong. 
 
 Influences which thus metaphorically give life to the sea m reality 
 give life to the land. Under their genial operation a wave of ana_onorgan. 
 verdure spreads over the earth, and countless myriads of ani- 
 mated things attend it, each hke the eddies and ripples of the sea, ex- 
 pending its share of the imparted force. The life of these accidental 
 forms, through which power is being transposed, belongs, not to itself, 
 but to the universe of which it is a part. 
 
 Of the waves upon the ocean there may not be two alike. The winds, 
 the shores, their mutual interferences, a hundred extraneous Nature of an- 
 influences, mould them into their ephemeral shapes. So those """''■ 
 collections of matter of which animated things consist offer a plastic 
 substance to be modified. The number of individuals counts like the 
 ripples of the sea. 
 
 As external circumstances change, animated forms change with them, 
 and thus arises a series of which the members stand in a con- ^hey cooBti- 
 nected relation. The af&liated sequence of the external cir- «>"«»=™™ 
 cumstances is represented in the af&liated succession of 'living types. 
 From parts, or from things already existing, new parts and new things 
 emerge, the new not being added or juxtaposed to the old, but evolved 
 or developed from it. From the homogeneous or general, the heteroge- 
 neous or special is brought forth. A new member, fashioned in secrecy 
 and apart, is never abruptly ingrafted on any living thing. New ani- 
 mal types have never been suddenly located among old ones, but have 
 emerged from them by process of transmutation. As certainly as that 
 every living thing must die, so must it reach perfection by passing 
 through a succession of subordinate forms. An individual, or even a 
 species, is only a zoological phase in a passage to something beyond. 
 An instantaneous adult, like an immortal animal, is a physiological im- 
 possibility. 
 
 This bringing forth of structure from structure, of function from func- 
 tion, incidentally presents, upon the whole, an appearance of The doctrine of 
 progressive improvement, and for such it has been not un- provement. 
 frequently mistaken. -Thus, if the lowest animals, which move by re- 
 flex action, instantly but unconsciously, when an impression is made 
 upon them, be compared with the higher ones, whose motions are exe- 
 cuted under the influence of antecedent impressions, and are therefore 
 controlled by ideas, there seems to have been such an improvement. 
 
 Pp 
 
594 DISTINCTIONS OF ANIMALS AND MAN. i 
 
 Still, however, it is altogether of a physical kind. Every impression of 
 which the dog or elephant is conscious implies change in the nerv6 cen- 
 tres, and these changes are at the basis of the memory displayed by 
 those animals. Our own experience furnishes many illustrations. When 
 we gaze steadfastly on some brightly-illuminated object, and then close 
 or turn aside our eyes, a fading impression of the object at which we 
 have been looking 'still remains; or, when a spark is made to revolve 
 rapidly, we think we see a circle of fire, the impression upon the retina 
 lasting until the spark has completed its revolution. In like manner, 
 though far more perfectly, are impressions registered or stored up in the 
 sensory ganglia, the phantoms of realities that have once been seen, 
 In those organs countless images may thus be superposed. 
 
 Man agrees with animals thus approaching him in anatomical con- 
 Analogies te- structiou iu mauv important respects. He, too, represents a 
 
 tween animals , .■'■_ ■*■ , ■*-,. 
 
 and man. contmuous successiou 01 matter, a contmuous expenditure of 
 power. Impressions of external things are concealed in his sensory 
 ganglia, to be presented for inspection in subsequent times, and to con- 
 stitute motives of action. But he differs from them in this, that what 
 was preparatory and rudimentary in them is complete and perfect in 
 him. From the instrument of instinct there has been developed an in- 
 strument of intellection. In the most perfect quadrupeds, an external 
 stimulus is required to start a train of thought, which then moves on in 
 a determinate way, their actions indicating that, under the circumstances, 
 they reason according to the same rules as man, drawing conclusions 
 more or less correct from the facts offered to their notice. But, the in- 
 strument of intellection completed, it is quickly brought into use, and 
 now results of the highest order appear. The succession of ideas is 
 under control ; new trains can be originated not only by external causes, 
 but also by an interior, a spontaneous influence. The passive has be- 
 come active. Animals remember, man alone recollects. Every thing 
 demonstrates that the development and completion of this instrument 
 of intellection has been followed by the superaddition of an agent or 
 principle that can use it. 
 
 There is, then, a difference between the brutes and man, not only as 
 pointaofdiB- rcspccts Constitution, but also as respects destinv. Their act- 
 
 tinction be- . _ , ^ "^ 
 
 tween them. • lye force mcrgcs mto other mundane forces and disappears, 
 but the special principle given to him endures. We willingly persuade 
 ourselves that this principle is actually personified, and that the shades 
 of the dead resemble their living forms. To Eastern Asia, where phi- 
 losophy has been accustomed to the abstract idea of force, the pleasures 
 we derive from this contemplation are denied, the cheerless doctrine of 
 Buddhism likening the life of man to the burning of a lamp, and death 
 to its extinction. Perceiving in the mutation of things, as seen in the 
 narrow range of human vision, a suggestion of the variations and distri- 
 
THE EUROPEAN AGE OF EEASON. 595 
 
 bution of power througtout nature, it rises to a grand, and, it must be 
 added, an awM conception of the universe. 
 
 But Europe, and also the Mohammedan nations of Asia, have not re- 
 ceived with approbation that view. To them there is an individualized 
 impersonation of the soul, and an expectation of its life here- The human 
 after. The animal fabric is only an instrument for its use. The "^• 
 eye is the window through which that mysterious principle perceives ; 
 through the ear are brought to its attention articulate sounds and har- 
 monies; by the other organs the sensible qualities of bodies are made 
 known. From the sUent chambers and winding labyrinths of the brain 
 the veiled enchantress looks forth on the outer world, and holds the 
 subservient body in an irresistible spell. 
 
 This difference between the Oriental and European ideas respecting 
 the nature of man reappears in their ideas respecting the nature Ertenaon of 
 of the world. The one sees in it only a gigantic engine, in *SiMtu?e 
 which stars and orbs are diffusiag power and running through oftiieworia. 
 predestined mutations. The other, with better philosophy and a higher 
 science, asserts a personal God, who considers and orders events in a 
 vast panorama before him. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE EUROPEAN AGE OE REASON— (Continued). 
 THK nnON OP SCIENCB AND lurnsTKT. 
 
 European Progress in the Acquisition of exact Emowledgc—Its Eesemlhnce to that of Greece. 
 
 Discoveries respecting the Air. — Its mechamcal and chemical Properties. — Its Belatim to Ani- 
 mals and Plants. — The Winds. — Meteorology. — Sounds. — Acoustic Phenomena. 
 
 Discoveries respecting the Ocean. — Physical and chemical Phenomena. — Tides and Currents. 
 
 Clouds, — Decomposition of Water. 
 
 Discoveries respecting other material Substances. — Progress of Chemistry. 
 
 Discoveries respecting Electricity, Magnetism, Light, Heat. 
 
 Mechamcal Philosophy md Inventions.— Physical Instruments.— The Sesult illustrated by the 
 Cotton Manufacture— Steam-engine— Bkaddng—CanaU— Smhoays.— Improvements in the 
 Construction of Machinery.— Social Changes produced.— Its Effect on inteUedml Activity. 
 
 The sdentijic Contrihuttons of various Nations, and especially of Italy. 
 
 The Age of Eeason in Europe presents all the peculiarities of the 
 Age of Reason in Greece. There are modern representatives of King 
 Ptolemy Philadelphus among his furnaces and crucibles ; of Hippar- 
 chus cataloguing the stars; of Aristyllus and Timochares, with their 
 stone quadrants and armyls, ascertaining the planetary motions ■ of Era- 
 tosthenes measuring the size of the earth; of Herophilus dissecting the 
 human body; of Archimedes settling the laws of mechanics and hydro- 
 stetics- of Manetho coUating the annals of the old dynasties of E^f 
 ot Jiuchd and ApoUonius improving mathematics. There are bot^cal 
 
596 SCIENTIFIC PEOGEESS IN THE AGE OF REASON. 
 
 Analogies be- . gardens and zoological menageries like those of Alexandria, 
 of Reason in and expeditions to the sources of the Nile. The direction of 
 Gree^"" ™ thought is the same ; but the progress is on a greater scale, 
 and illustrated by more imposing results. The exploring voyages to 
 Madagascar are replaced by circumnavigations of the world ; the revolv- 
 ing steam-engine of Hero by the double-acting engine of Watt ; the great 
 galley of Ptolemy, witTi its many banks of rowers, .by the ocean steam- 
 ship ; the solitary watch-fire on the Pharos by a thousand light-houses, 
 with their fixed and revolving, lights; the courier on his Arab horse by 
 the locomotive and electric telegraph ; the scriptorium in the Serapion, 
 with its shelves of papyrus, by countless "priiiting-presses; the Almagest 
 of Ptolemy by the Principia of Newton ; and the. Museum itself by En- 
 glish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, and Eussian philosophical socie- 
 ties, universities, colleges, and other institutions of learning. 
 
 So grand is the scale on which this cultivation of science has been re- 
 Europeanprog- sumcd, SO many are those engaged in it, so rapid is the ad- 
 quMHon'^of '■'^ vancc, and SO great are the material advantages, that there is 
 knowledge. jjq difficulty in appreciating the age of which it is the char- 
 acteristic. The most superficial outline enables us to recognize at once 
 its resemblance to that period of Greek life to which I have referred. 
 To bring its features into relief, I shall devote a few pages to a cursory 
 review of the progress of some of the departments of science, selecting 
 for the purpose topics of general interest. 
 
 First, then, as respects the atmosphere, and the phenomena connected 
 with it. 
 
 From observations on the twilight, the elasticity of aerial bodies, and 
 The atmos- ^hc condeusing action of cold, the conclusion previously arrived 
 phere. ^^ -j^y. _A_iliazen was established, that the atmosphere does not 
 extend unlimitedly into space. Its height is considered to be about 
 forty -five miles. From its compressibility, the greater part of it is with- 
 in a much smaller limit ; were it of uniform density, it would not ex- 
 tend more than 29,000 feet. Hence, comparing it with the dimensions 
 of the earth, it is an insignificant aerial shell, in thickness not the eight- 
 ieth part of the distance to the earth's centre, and its immensity alto- 
 gether an illusion. It bears about the same proportion to the earth 
 that the down upon a peach bears to the peach itself. 
 
 A foundation for the mechanical theory of the atmosphere was laid 
 as soon as just ideas respecting liquid pressures, as formerly taught by 
 Archimedes, were restored, the conditions of vertical and oblique press- 
 ures investigated, the demonstration of equality of pressures in all di- 
 rections given, and the proof furnished that the force of a liquid on the 
 bottom of a vessel may be very much greater than its weight. 
 
 Such of these conclusions as were applicable were soon transferred to 
 the case of aerial bodies. The weight of the atmosphere was demonstra- 
 
DISCOVEEIES EESPECTING THE ATMOSPHEEE. 597 
 
 ted, its pressure illustrated and measured; then came the dis- ns mechanical 
 pute about the action of pumps, and the overthrow of the Aris- ''''''"°°"- 
 totelian doctrine of the horror of a vacuum. Coinoidently occurred the 
 invention of the barometer, and the proof of its true theory, both on a 
 steeple in Paris and on a mountain in Auvergne. The invention of the 
 air-pump, and its beautiful illustrations of the properties of the atmos- 
 phere, extended in a, singular manner the taste for natural philosophy. 
 
 The mechanics of the air was soon followed by its chemistry. From 
 remote ages it had been numbered ainong the elements, though its chemical 
 considered liable to vitiation or foulness. The great discovery '^^'*"™'' 
 of oxygen gas placed its chemical relations in their proper position. 
 One after another, other gases, both simple and compound, were dis 
 covered. Then it was recognized that the atmosphere is the common 
 receptacle for all gases and vapors, and the problem whether, in the 
 course of ages, it has ever undergone change in its constitution arose 
 for solution. 
 
 The negative determination of that problem, so far as a few thousand 
 years were concerned, was" necessarily followed by a recogni- Tiie antagonism 
 tion of the antagonism of animals and plants, and their mu- pianS™ 
 tually balancing each other, the latter accomplishing their duty under 
 the influence of the sun, though he is a hundred millions of miles dis- 
 tant. From this it appeared that it is not by incessant interventions 
 that the sum total. of animal life is adjusted to that of vegetable but 
 that, in this respect, the system of government of the world is by the 
 operation of natural causes and law, a conclusion the more imposing 
 since it contemplates all living things, and includes even man himself. 
 The detail of these investigations proved that the organic substance of 
 plants is condensed from the inorganic air to which that of all animals 
 returns, the particles, running in ever-repeating cycles, now in the air 
 now in plants, now in animals, now in the air again, the impulse of 
 niovement being in the sun, from whom has come the force incorporated 
 in plant tissues, and eventually disengaged in our fires, shining in our 
 flames, oppressing us. in fevers, and surprising us in blushes. ' 
 
 Organic disturbances by respiration and the growth of plants being 
 in the lowest stratum of the air, its uniformity of composition would be 
 impossible were it not for the agency of the winds and the dif- The winds- 
 fusion of gases, which it was found would take place under any anfna?n?e° 
 pressure. The winds were at length properly referred to the influence 
 ot the sun, whose heat warms the air, causing it to ascend,.while other 
 portions, flow in below. The explanation of land and sea breezes was 
 given, and in the trade-wind was found a proof of the rotation of the 
 earth. At a later period followed the explanation of monsoons in the 
 alternate heating and cooling of Asia and Africa on opposite sides of 
 the line, and of tornadoes, which are disks c5f air rotating round a trans- 
 
598 SOUNDS AJSTD ACOUSTIC PHENOMENA. 
 
 lated axis witlx a diameter of one hundred or one hundred and fifty 
 miles, the axis moving in a curvilinear track with a progressive advance 
 of twentj or twenty-five miles an hour, and the motions being in oppo- 
 site directions on opposite hemispheres of the globe. 
 
 The equatorial calms and trade-winds accounted for on physical prin- 
 ciples, it was admitted that the winds of high latitudes, proverbially un- 
 certain as they are, depend in like manner on definite causes. 
 
 With these palpable movements there are others of a less obvious 
 kind. Through the air, and by reason of motions in it, sounds are 
 transmitted to us. 
 
 The Alexandrian mathematicians made sound a favorite study. Mod- 
 ern acoustics arose from the recognition that there is nothing issuing 
 ofapjinaa; from -the sounding body, but that its parts are vibrating and af- 
 t^arv 00- £gg^-^g ^j^Q medium between it and the ear. Not only by the 
 air-pump, but also by observations in the rare atmosphere of the upper 
 regions, it was shown that the intensity of sound depends upon the dens- 
 ity. On the top of a mountain the report of a pistol is no louder than 
 that of a cracker in the valley. As to the gradual propagation of sounds, 
 it was impossible to observe fire-arms discharged at a distance without 
 noticing that the flash appears longer before the report in proportion as 
 the distance is greater. The Florentine academicians attempted a de- 
 termination of the velocity, and found it to be 1148 feet in a second. 
 More accurate and recent experiments made it 1089.42 feet at the freez- 
 ing-point of water ; but the velocity, though independent of the dens- 
 ity, increases with the temperature at the rate of 1.14 foot for each de- 
 gree. For other media the rate is different ; for water, about 4687 feet 
 in a second, and in cast iron about lOJ times greater than in air. All 
 sounds, irrespective of their note or intensity, move at. the same veloc- 
 ity, the medium itself being motionless in the mass. ISTo sound can pass 
 through a vacuum. The sudden aerial condensation attending the prop- 
 agation of a sound gives rise to a momentary evolution of heat, which 
 increases the elasticity of the air, and hence the velocity is higher than 
 916 feet in a second, otherwise the theoretical rate. 
 
 Turning from soniferous media to sounding bodies, it was shown that 
 Acoustic phe- ^-^e difference between acute and grave sounds depends on 
 nomena. ^^lq frcquency of vibration. The ear can not perceive a sound 
 originating in less than thirty-two vibrations in a second, nor one of 
 more than 24,000. The actual number of vibrations in a given note 
 r was counted by means of revolving wheels and other contrivances. I 
 have not space to relate the investigation of many other acoustic facts, 
 the reference of sounds to phases of condensation, and rarefaction in the 
 elastic medium taking place, in a normal direction ; the affections of 
 note, intensity, quality ; the passage in curved lines and around obsta- 
 cles ; the production of sympathetic sounds ; nodal points ; the effect of 
 
THE OCEAN TIDES AND OUERENTS. 599 
 
 reeds-, the phenomena of pipes and flutes, and other wind instruments ; 
 the various vibrations of soHds, as bells ; or of membranes, as drums ; 
 visible acoustic lines ; the reflection of undulations by surfaces of vari- 
 ous forms ; their interferences, so that, no inatter how intense they may 
 be individually, they can be caused to produce silence ; nor of whisper- 
 ing galleries, echoes, the nature of articulate sounds, the physiology of 
 the vocal and auditory organs of man, and the construction of speak- 
 ing machines. 
 
 Like the air, the ocean, which covers three fourths of the earth's sur- 
 face, when reduced to a proper standard of measure, loses very ^he ocean; 
 much of its imposing aspect. The varnish that covers a twelve- "' '"^^ 
 inch globe represents its relative dimension not inadequately. 
 
 On the theory of gravitation, the tides of the ocean were explained 
 as depending on the attractive force of the sun and moon. Its Tiaea and 
 currents, in a general manner, are analogous to those of the air. ™™"'»- 
 They originate in the disturbing action of solar heat, the temperature 
 of the sea vaiying from 85° in the tqrrid zone to the freezing-point as 
 the poles are approached. Its specific gravity at the equator is estima- 
 ted at 1.028 ; but this density necessarily varies with the rate at which 
 superficial evaporation takes place ; the pure vapor rising, leaves a more 
 concentrated salt solution. The effect is therefore, in some degree, to 
 counteract the expansion of the water by warmth, for the sun-rays, being 
 able to penetrate several feet below the surface, correspondingly raise 
 the temperature of that portion, which expands and becomes lighter ; 
 but, simultaneously, surface evaporation tends to make the water heav- 
 ier. Notwithstanding this, currents are estabhshed through the prepon- 
 derance of the dilatation, and of them the Gulf Stream is to us the most 
 striking example. 
 
 The physical action of the sun-rays in occasioning currents operates 
 through the expansion of water, of which warm portions as- r,„ , , 
 
 T 1 „ . . ; -r ^ •^ Effects of ocean 
 
 cena to tne surtace, colder portions from beneath setting in ='™™»- 
 to supply their place. These currents, both hot and cold, are affected 
 by the diurnal rotation of the earth, the action being essentially the 
 same as that for the winds. They exert so great an influence as con- 
 veyers of heat as to disturb the ordinary climate' relation depending on 
 the sun's position. In this way the Gulf Stream, a river of hot water in 
 a sea of cold, as soon as it spreads out on the surface of the Atlantic in 
 higher latitudes, liberates into the air the heat it has brought from the 
 torrid zone; and this, being borne by the southwest wind, which blow 
 in those localities for the greater part of the year, to the westerly part 
 ot the European continent, raises by many degrees the mean annual 
 temperature, thus not only regulating the distribution of animals and 
 plants, but also inffuencing human life and its pursuits, making places 
 congemal that would otherwise be inclement, and even facilitating the 
 
600 •WATER, STEAM, AND CLOUDS. 
 
 progress of civilization. Whatever, therefore, can affect the heat, the 
 volume, the velocity, the direction of such a stream, at once produces 
 important consequences in the organic world. ^ 
 
 The Alexandrian school had attained correct ideas respecting the me- 
 physicai and chauical propcrtics of water as the type of liquids. This knowl- 
 totlmsofw^ edge was, however, altogether lost in Europe for many ages, 
 '*''■ and not regained until the time of Stevinus and Galileo, who 
 
 recovered correct views of th,e nature of pressure, both vertical and 
 oblique, and placed the sciences of hydrostatics and hydrodynamics on 
 proper foundations. The Florentine academicians, from their experi- 
 ments on water inclosed in a globe of gold, concluded that it is incom- 
 pressible, an error subsequently corrected, and its compressibility meas- 
 ured. The different states in which it occurs, as ice, water, steam, were 
 shown to depend altogether on the amount of latent heat it contains. 
 Out of these investigations originated the invention of the steam-engine, 
 of which it may be said that it has revolutionized the industry of the 
 world. Soon after the explanation of the cause of its three states fol- 
 lowed the great discovery that the opinion of past ages respecting its 
 elementary nature is altogether erroneous. It is not a simple element, 
 but is composed of two ingredients, oxygen and hydrogen, as was rigor- 
 ously proved by decomposing and forming it. By degrees, more cor- 
 rect views of the nature of evaporation were introduced; gases and va- 
 pors were found to coexist in the same space, not because of their mu- 
 tual solvent power, but because of their individual and independent 
 elasticity. The instantaneous formation of vapors in a vacuum showed 
 that the determining condition is heat, the weight of vapor capable of 
 existing in a given space being proportional to the temperature. More 
 scientific views of the nature of maximum density were obtained, and 
 on these principles was effected the essential improvement of the low- 
 pressure steam-engine — ^the apparent paradox of condensing the steam 
 without cooling the cylinder. 
 
 In like manner much light was cast on the meteorological functions 
 of water. It was seen that the diurnal vaporization from the earth de- 
 cioada and their pcuds on the amount of heat received, the vapor rising in- 
 nomenciature. , yigibiy i^ the air till it reachcs a region where the temper- 
 ature is sufficiently low. There condensation into vesicles of perhaps 
 aaouu of an inch in diameter ensues, and of myriads of such globules a 
 cloud is composed. Of clouds, notwithstanding their many forms and 
 aspects, ai classification was given — cirrus, cumulus, stratus, etc. It was 
 obvious why some dissolve away and disappear whein they encounter 
 warmer or drier spaces, and why others descend as rain. It was shown 
 that the drops can not be pure, since they come in contact with dust, 
 soluble gases, and organic matter in the air. Sinking into the ground, 
 the water issues forth as springs, contaminated with whatever is in the 
 
PEOGEESS OP CHEMISTEY. 
 
 601 
 
 SOU, and finds its way, through streamlets and rivers, back to The^^tum of 
 the sea, and thus the drainage of countnes is accomplished. Bea. 
 Through such a returning path it comes to the repeptacle from which it 
 set out; the heat of the sun raised it from the ocean, the attraction of 
 the earth returns it thereto; and, since the heat-supply is invariable 
 from year to year, the quantity set in motion must be the same. Col- 
 lateral results of no little importance attend these movements. Every 
 drop of rain falling on the earth disintegrates and disturbs portions of 
 the soil ; every stream carries solid matter into the sea. It is the prov- 
 ince of geology to estimate the enormous aggregate of detritus, conti- 
 nents washed away and new continents formed, and the face of the earth 
 remodeled and .renewed. 
 
 The artificial decomposition of water constitutes an epoch in chem- 
 istry. The European form of this science, in contradistinction progiessof 
 to the Arabian, arose from the doctrine of acids and alkalies, "='"'™«'"7- 
 and their neutralization. This was about A.D. 1614. It was perceived 
 that the union of bodies is connected with the possession of opposite 
 qualities, and hence was introduced the idea of an attraction of affinity. 
 On this the discovery of elective attraction followed. Then came the 
 recognition that this, attraction is connected with opposite electrical 
 states, chemistry and electricity approaching each other. A train of 
 splendid discoveries followed; metals were obtained light enough to 
 float in water, and even apparently to accomplish the proverbial impos- 
 sibility of setting it on fire. In the end it was shown that the chemical 
 force of electricity is directly proportional to its absolute quantity. 
 Better views of the nature of chemical attraction were attain- Attraction 
 ed, better views of the intrinsic nature of bodies. The old ThceiementB. 
 idea of four.elements was discarded, as also the Saracenic doctrine of salt, 
 sulphur, and mercury. The elements were multiplied until at last they 
 numbered more than sixty. Alchemy merged into chemistry through 
 the theory of phlogiston, which accounted for the change that Theoiyof 
 metals undergo when exposed to the fire on .the principle that p'^<'gis'o°- 
 something was driven off from them— a something that might be re- 
 stored again by the action of combustible bodies. It is remarkable how 
 adaptive this theory was. It was found to include the cases of combus- 
 tive operations, the production of acids, the breathing of animals. It 
 maintained its ground even long after the discovery of oxygen gas, of 
 which one of the first names was dephlogisticated air. 
 
 But a false theory always contains within itself the germ of its own 
 destruction. The weak point of this was, that when a metal is burnt 
 the product ought to be lighter than the metal, whereas it proves heav- 
 
 ier. At length it was detected that what the metal had gain- i„t„,a„,tion 
 ed the surrounding air had lost. This discovery implied that ?" '"ebateMe 
 the balance had been resorted to for the determination of '°7- °''™'°' 
 
602 CHEMICAL THEOBIES. 
 
 ■weights and for the decision of physical questions. The reintroduc- 
 tion of that instrument — for, as we have seen, it had ages before been 
 employed by the Saracen philosophers, who used several different forma 
 of it— marked the epoch when chemistry ceased to be exclusively a sci- 
 ence of quality and became one of quantity. 
 
 On the ruins of the phlogistic theory arose the theory of oxygen, 
 Theory of oxy- wHch was Sustained with singular ability. Its progress was 
 lomenoiature. greatly facilitated by the promulgation of a new nomencla- 
 ture in conformity to its principles, and of remarkable elegance and 
 power. In the course of time it became necessary, however, to modify 
 the theory, especially by deposing oxygen from the 'attitude of sover- 
 eignty to which it had been elevated, and assigning to it several col- 
 leagues, such as chlorine, iodine, etc. The introduction of the balance 
 was also followed by important consequences in theoretical chemistry, 
 among which pre-eminently was the establishment of the laws of com- 
 binations of bodies. 
 
 Extensive and imposing as is the structure of chemistry, it is very far 
 Present Btate from its Completion. It is so surrounded by-the scaffolding ite 
 of chemistry, guilders are using, it is so deformed with the materials of their 
 work, that its true plan can not yet be made out. In this respect it is 
 far more backward than astronomy. It has, however, disposed of the 
 idea of the destruction and creation of matter. It accepts without hesi- 
 indestrnctibii- t^tion the doctriue of the imperishability of substance ; for, 
 tty of matter. tJjoTigh the aspBCt of a thing may change through decompo- 
 sitions and recombinations, in which its constituent parts are concerned, 
 every atom continues to exist, and may be recovered by suitable pro' 
 cesses, though the entire thing may have seemingly disappeared. A 
 particle of water raised from the sea may ascend invisibly through the 
 air, it may float above us in the cloud, it may fall in the rain-drop, sink 
 into the earth, gush forth again in the fountain, enter the rootlets of a 
 plant, rise up with the sap to the leaves, be there decomposed by the 
 sunlight into its constituent elements, its oxygen and hydrogen; of these 
 and other elements, oils, and acids, and various organic compounds, may 
 be made ; in these or in its undecomposed state it may be received in 
 the food of animals, circulate in their blood, be essentially concerned in 
 acts of intellection executed by the brain, it may be expired in the 
 breath. Though shed in the tear in moments of despair, it may give 
 birth to the rainbow, the emblem of hope. Whatever the course through 
 which it has passed, whatever mutations it has undergone, whatever the 
 force it has submitted to, its elementary constituents endure. Not only 
 have they not been annihilated, they have not even been changed; and 
 in a period of time, long or short, they find their way as water back 
 again to the sea from which they came. 
 
 Discoveries in electricity not only made a profound impression on 
 
STATIOAIi AND VOLTAIC ELEOTEIOITT. 
 
 603 
 
 chemistry, they have taken no insigoificant share in modifying human 
 opinion on other very interesting subjects. In all ages the Eieotrkai 
 lightning had been looked upon with superstitious dread. The ^'°^'^'- 
 thunderbolt had long been feigned to be the especial weapon of Divin- 
 ity. A like superstitious sentiment had prevailed respecting the norths 
 ern lights, universally regarded in those countries in which they display 
 themselves as glimpses of the movements of. the angelic hosts, the ban- 
 ners and weapons of the armies of heaven. A great blow against su- 
 perstition was struck when the physical nature of these phenomena was 
 determined. As to the connection of electrical science with the prog- 
 ress of civilization, what more needs to be said than to allude to the tel- 
 egraph. 
 
 It is an illustration of the excellence and fertility of modern methods 
 that the phenomena of the attraction displayed by amber, which ^^^0^8 ot 
 had been known and neglected for two thousand years, in one ^'^''^^y- 
 tenth of that time led to surprising results. First it was shown that 
 there are many other bodies which will act in like manner; Electrical phe- 
 then earner the invention of the electrical machine, the disco v- ™™™''- 
 ery of electrical repulsion, and the spark ; the differences of conduct!- 
 bility in bodies ; the two apparent species of electricity, vitreous and 
 resinous; the general law of attraction and repulsion; the wonderful 
 phenomena of the Leyden phial and the electric shock ; the demonstra- 
 tion of the identity of lightning and electricity ; the means of protecting 
 buildings and ships by rods ; the velocity of electric movement — that 
 imrtiense distances can be passed through in an inappreciable time;' the 
 theory of one fluid and that of two ; the mathematical discussion of all 
 the phenomena, first on one and then on the other of these doctrines ; 
 the invention of the torsion balance; the determination that the at- 
 tractive and repulsive forces follow the law of the inverse squares ; the 
 conditions of distribution on conductors ; the elucidation of the phe- 
 nomena of induction. At length, when discovery seemed to be paus- 
 ing, the facts of galvanism were announced in Italy. Up to vouaic eiec 
 this time it was thought that the most certain sign of the death *"°^'y- 
 of an animal was its inability to exhibit muscular contraction ; but now 
 it was shown that muscular movements could be excited in those that 
 were dead and even mutilated. Then followed quickly the invention 
 of the Yoltaic pile. Who could have foreseen that the twitching of a 
 frog's leg in the Italian experiments would establish beyond nestatsofthe 
 all question the compound nature of water, separating its con- Gaivlm?"^ 
 stituents from one another? would lead to the deflagration and dissipa- 
 tion in a vapor of metals that could hardly be melted in a furnace? 
 would show that the solid earth we tread upon is an oxide? yield new 
 metals light enough to swim upon water, and even seem to set it on 
 fire? produce the most brilliant of all artificial lights, rivaling, if not 
 
604: MAGNETISM. — ELECTRO-MAGNETISM. 
 
 excelling, in its intolerable splendor, tlie noontide sun ? -wouid occasion 
 a complete revolution in chemistry, compelling that science tq accept new- 
 ideas, and even a new nomenclature ? that it would give us the power 
 of making magnets capable of lifting more than a ton, and cast a light 
 on that riddle of ages, the pointing of the mariner's compass north and 
 south, and explain the mutual attraction or repulsion of magnetic nee- 
 dles ? that it would enable us to form exquisitely in metal casts of all 
 kinds of objects of art, and give workmen a means of gilding and silver- 
 ing without risk to their- health? that it would suggest to the evil-dis- 
 posed the forging of bank-notes, the sophisticating of jewelry, and be in' 
 valuable in the uttering of &lse coinage ? that it would carry the mes- 
 sages of commerce and friendship instantaneously across continents or 
 under oceans, and " waft a sigh from Indus to the pole ?" 
 
 Yet this is only a part of what the Italian experiment, carried out by 
 modern methods, has actually done. Could there be a more brilliant 
 exhibition of their power, a brighter earnest of the future of material 
 philosophy ? 
 
 As it had been with amber, so with the magnet. Its properties had 
 DisooverieBin l^iu uninvestigated for two thousand years, except in China, 
 magnetism, -^yhere thc observatiou had been made that its qualities may 
 be imparted to steel, and that a little bar or needle so prepared, if float- 
 ed on the surface of water or otherwise suspended, will point north and 
 south. In that manner the magnet had been applied to the navigation 
 of ships, and in journeys across the trackless deserts. The first Euro- 
 pean magnetical discovery was that of Columbus, who observed a line 
 of no variation west of the Azores. Then followed the detection of the 
 dip, the demonstration of poles in the needle, and of the law of attrac- 
 tion and repulsion ; the magnetic voyage undertaken by the English 
 government ; the construction of general variation charts ; the observa- 
 tion of diurnal variation ; local perturbations ; the influence of the Au- 
 rora, which affects all the three expressions of magnetical power; the 
 disturbance of the horary motion simultaneously over thousands of 
 miles, as from Kasan to Paris. In the mean time, the theory of magnet- 
 ism improved as the facts came out. Its germ was the Cartesian vor 
 tices, suggested by the curvilinear forms of iron filings in the vicinity 
 of magnetic poles. The subsequent mathematical discussion was con- 
 ducted upon the same principles as in the case -of electricity. 
 
 Then came the Danish discovery of the relations of electricity and 
 Electro-mag- i^S'giietism, illustrated in England by rotatory motions, and in 
 netism. France adorned by the electrodynamic theory, embracing the 
 action of currents and magnets, magnets and magnets, currents and cur- 
 rents. The generation of magnetism by electricity was after a little 
 delay followed by its converse, the production of electricity by magnet' 
 ism ; and thermoelectric currents, arising from the unequal applicatioD 
 
LIGHT AND OPTICS. 
 
 605 
 
 or propagation of heat, were rendered serviceable in producing the most 
 sensitive of all thermometers. 
 
 The investigation of the nature and properties of light rivals m inter- 
 est and value that of electricity. What is this agent, light, onight 
 which clothes the earth with verdure, making animal life pos- ""d"?'™- 
 sible,- extending man's intellectual sphere, bringing to his knowledge 
 the forms and colors of things, and giving him information of the exist- 
 ence of countless myriads of worlds ? What is this light which, in the 
 midst of so many realities, presents him with so many delusive fictions, 
 which rests the colored bow against the cbud — the bow once said, 
 when men transferred their own motives and actions to the Divinity, to 
 be the weapon of God ? 
 
 The first ascertained optical fact was probably the propagation of 
 light in straight lines. The theory of perspective, on which opUcaidia- 
 the Alexandrian mathematicians voluminously wrote, implies '""^^■ 
 as much ; but, agreeably to the early methods of philosophy, which were 
 inclined to make man the centre of all things, it was supposed that rays 
 are emitted from the eye and proceed outwardly, not that they come 
 from exterior objects and pass through the organ of vision interiorly. 
 Even the great geometer Euclid treated the subject on that erroneous 
 principle, an error corrected by the Arabians. In the mean time the 
 law of reflection had been discovered ; that for refraction foiled Alha- 
 zen, and was reserved for a European. Among natural optical phe- 
 nomena the form bf the rainbow was accounted for, notwithstanding a 
 general belief in its supernatural origin. Its colors, however, could not 
 be explained until exact ideas of refrangibiiity, dispersion, and the com- 
 position of white light were attained. The reflecting telescope was in- 
 vented; the recognized possibility of achromatism led to an improve- 
 ment in the refractor. A little previously the progressive mo-' coiow and 
 tion of light had been proved, first for reflected light by the ^^^'eiight. 
 eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, then for the direct light of the stars. A 
 true theory of colors originated with the formation of the solar spec- 
 trum ; that beautiful experiment led to the discovery of irrationality of 
 dispersion and the fixed lines. The phenomena of refraction in the case 
 of Iceland spar were examined, and the law for the ordinary and extra- 
 ordinary rays given. At the same time the polarization of light by 
 double refraction was discovered. A century later it was followed by 
 polarization by reflection and single refraction, depolarization, irised 
 rings, bright and black crosses in crystals, and unannealed or compressed 
 glass, the connection between optical phenomena and crystalline form, 
 uniaxial crystals giving circular rings and biaxial oval ones, and circu- 
 lar and elliptical polarization. 
 
 ' The beautiful colors' of soap-bubbles, at first mixed up with those of 
 stnated and dotted surfaces, were traced to their true condition— thick- 
 
606 VISION. — THE UNDULATOBY THEORY. 
 
 ness. The determination of .thickness of a film necessary to giye a cer- 
 tain color was the first instance of exceedingly minute measures beauti- 
 fully executed. These soon became connected with fringes in shadows, 
 and led to ascertaining the length of waves of light. 
 
 Meantime more correct ideas respecting vision were obtained. Al- 
 viaion; the hazen's explanation of the use of the retina and lens was adopt- 
 fonctamsof ^^^ ^j^.g -^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ly scientific investigation in 
 
 physiology. The action of the eye was reduced to that of the camera- 
 obscura described by Da Vinci, and the old notion of rays issuing there- 
 from finally abandoned. It had held its ground through the deceptive 
 illustration of the magic-lantern. Of this instrument the name indicates 
 the popular opinion of its nature. In the stories of necromancers and 
 magicians of the time are to be found traces of applications to which it 
 was insidiously devoted — the raising of the dead, spectres sMpping along 
 the ground or dancing on the walls and chimneys, pendulous images, 
 apparitions in volumes of smoke. These early instruments were the 
 Optical inatru- forerunucrs of many beautiful inventions of later times — the 
 menta. kaleidoscopc, producing its forms of marvelous symmetry; 
 
 the stereoscope, aided by photography, offering the very embodiment 
 of external scenery ; the achromatic and reflecting telescope, to which 
 physical astronomy is so greatly indebted ; and the achromatic micro- 
 scope, now working a revolution in anatomy and physiology. 
 
 In its theory optics has presented a striking contrast to acoustics. 
 The unduia- Almost from the very beginning it was recognized that sound 
 tory theory, ^g ^^^ ^ material substaucc emitted from the sounding bady, 
 but only undulations occurring in the air. Por long, optics failed to 
 reach an analogous conclusion. The advancement of the former science 
 has been from the general principle down to the details, that of the lat- 
 ter from the details up to the general principle. 
 
 That light consists of undulations in an elastic medium was first in- 
 ferred in 1664. Soon after, reflection, refraction, and double refiraction 
 were accounted for on that principle. The slow progress of this theory 
 was doubtless owing to Newton's supremacy. He gave a demonstra- 
 tion in the second book of the Principia (Prop. 42) that such motions 
 must diverge into the unmoved spaces, and carried popular comprehen- 
 sion with him by such illustrations as that we hear sounds though a 
 mountain interpose. It was thought that the undulatory theory was 
 disposed of by such facts as the impossibility of seeing through a crook- 
 ed pipe, though we can hear through it ; or that we can not look round 
 a corner, though we can listen r.ound one. 
 
 The present century finally established it through the discovery of 
 interference, the destruction of the emission theory being inevitable 
 when it was shown that light, interfering under certain circumstances 
 with light, may produce darkness, as sound added to sound may pro- 
 
NATURE OF LIGHT. 607 
 
 duoe sUeiice--result3 aiismg from the action of undulating motion. 
 The difficulties presented by polarization were not only removed, but 
 that class of phenomena were actually made a strong support of the the- 
 ory. The discovery that two pencils of oppositely polarized light would 
 not interfere, led at once to the theory of transverse vibrations. Great 
 mathematical ability was now required for the treatment of the subject, 
 and the special consideration of many optical problems from this new 
 point of view, as, for example, determining the result of transverse vi- 
 brations coming into a medium of different density in different direc- 
 tions. As the theory of universal gravitation had formerly done, so 
 now the undulatory theory began to display its power as a physical 
 truth, enabling geometers to. foresee results, and to precede the experi- 
 menter in conclusions. Among earlier results of the kind was the pre- 
 diction that both the rays in the biaxial crystal topaz are ex,traordinary, 
 and that circular^ polarization might be produced by reflection in a 
 rhomb of glass. The phenomena of depolarization offered no special 
 difficulty; and many new facts, as those of elliptic polarization and con- 
 ical refraction; have since illustrated the power of the theory. 
 
 Light, then, is the result of ethereal undulations impinging on the eye. 
 There exists throughout the universe and among the parti- ^^ ^4^^^ and 
 cles of all bodies an elastic medium, the ether. By reason "» movements. 
 of the repulsion of its own parts it is uniformly diffused in a vacuum. 
 In the interior of refracting media it exists in a state of less elasticity 
 compared with its density than in vacuo. Yibrations communicated to 
 it in free space are propagated through such media by the ether in their 
 interior. The parts of shining bodies vibrate as those of sounding ones 
 communicating their movement to the ether, and giving rise to waves 
 in it. They produce in us the sensation of light. The slower the vi- 
 bration, the longer the wave ; the more frequent, the shorter. On wave- 
 length color depends. In aU cases the vibrations are transverse. The 
 undulatory movement passes onward at the rate of 192,000 miles in a 
 second. The mean length of a wave of light is 0.0000219of an inch ; 
 an extreme red wave is twice as long as an extreme violet one. The 
 yellow is intermediate. The vibrations which thus occasion light are " 
 at a mean, 555 in the billionth of a second. As with the air, which is 
 motionless when a sound passes through it, the ether is motionless 
 though traversed by waves of light. That which moves forward is no 
 material substance, but only a form, as the waves seen runniuR along 
 a shaken cord, or the circles that rise and fall, and spread outwardl? 
 when a stone is thrown into water. The wave-like form passes onward 
 to the outlying spaces, but the water does not rush forward And as 
 wemay have on the surface of that liquid waves the height of which is 
 insigmficant, or those which, as sailors say, are mountains high in storms 
 at sea, their amplitude thus differing, so in the midst of the ether differ 
 
608 PHOTOGEAPHY. — THE PHENOMENA OF HEAT. 
 
 ence of amplitude is manifested to us by difference in the intensity or 
 brilliancy of light. 
 
 The human eye, exquisitely constructed as it is, is nevertheless an im- 
 The human perfect mechanism, beilig limited in its action. It can only 
 plbuitiea!*" perceive waves of a definite length, as its fellow organ, the ear, 
 can only distinguish a limited range of sounds. It can only take note 
 of vibrations that are transverse, as the ear can only take note of those 
 that are normal. In optics there are two distinct orders of facts : the 
 actual relations of light itself, and the physiological relations of our or- 
 gan of vision, with all its limitations and imperfections. Light is alto- 
 gether the creation of the mind. The ether is one thing, light is an- 
 other, just as the air is one thing and sound another. The ether is not 
 composed of the colors of light any more than the atmospheric air con- 
 sists of musical notes. 
 
 To the chemical agency of light much attention has in recent times 
 Chemical in- been devoted. Already, in photography, it has furnished us 
 lighr"' ° an art which, though yet in its infancy, presents exquisite rep- 
 resentations of scenery, past events, the countenances of our friends. 
 In an almost magical way it evokes invisible impressions, and gives du- 
 ration to fleeting shadows. Moreover, these chemical influences of light 
 give birth to the whole vegetable world, with all its varied charms of 
 color, form, and property, and, as we have seen in the last chapter, on 
 them animal life itself depdnds. 
 
 The conclusions arrived at in optics necessarily entered as funda- 
 ofiieat; re- mental idcES in thermotics, or the science of heat ; for radiant 
 fra°ctTon! " hcat movcs also in straight lines, undergoes reflection, refrac- 
 tion, double refraction, polarization, and hence the theory of transverse 
 vibrations applies to it. Heat is invisible light, .as light is visible heat. 
 Correct notions of radiation originated with the Florentine academi- 
 cians, who used concave mirrors; and, in the cold -ray experiment, 
 masses of ice of five, hundred pounds' weight. The refraction of invis- 
 ible heat was ascertained in consequence of the invention of the ther- 
 moelectric pile. Its polarization and depolarization soon followed. Al- 
 ready had been demonstrated the influence of the physical state of ra- 
 diant surfaces, and that the heat comes also from a little depth beneath 
 Exchanges them. Thc fclicitous doctrine of exchanges of heat imparted 
 of heat. ^j.jjg -^gg^ Qf ^.^g nature of calorific equilibrium and the heating 
 and cooling of bodies, and offered an explanation of many phenomena, 
 as, for instance, the formation of dew. This deposit of moisture occurs 
 The dew, na. after sunsct, the more copiously the clearer the sky ; it never 
 ture of. appears on a cloudy night ; it neither ascends from the ground 
 like an exhalation, nor descends like a rain. It shows preferences in its 
 manner of settling, being found on some objects before it is on others. 
 All these singular peculiarities were satisfactorily explained, and an- 
 
CONSEQUENCES TO EUEOPE OF MECHANICAL INVENTIONS. 
 
 609 
 
 other of the mysteries, the unaccountable wonders of the Middle Ages, 
 brought into the attitude of a simple physical fact. 
 
 It is impossible, in a limited space, to relate satisfactorily what has 
 been done respecting ignition, the production of light by incan- mcandes- 
 descence, the accurate measurement of the conductibility of bod- ''""'■ 
 ies, the determination of the expansions of solids, liquids, gases, under 
 increasing temperature, the variations of the same substance at different 
 degrees, the heat of fluidity and elasticity, and specific heat, or to do 
 justice to the great improvements made in all kinds of instru- physical in- 
 ments — ^balances, thermometers, contrivances for linear and an- "™'"™ ■ 
 gular measures, telescopes, microscopes, chronometers, aerostats^ tele- 
 graphs, and machinery' generally. The tendency in every ^^^^^f™; 
 direction has been to practical applications. More accurate ventione. 
 knowledge implies increasing power, greater wealth, higher virtue. The 
 morality of man is enhanced by the improvement of his intellect and 
 by personal ind^endence. Our age has become rational, industrial, 
 progressive. In its great physical inventions Europe may securely 
 trust. There is nothing more to fear from Arabian invasions or Tar- 
 tar irruptions. The hordes of Asia could be swept away like chaff be- 
 fore the wind. Let him who would form a correct opinion of the posi- 
 tion of man in the present and preceding phases of his progress reflect 
 on the losses of Christendom in Asia and Africa, in spite of all the ma- 
 chinery of an Age of Eaith, and the present security of Europe from 
 every, barbarian or foreign attack. 
 
 From almost any of the branches of industry facts might be presented 
 illustrating the benefits arising from the application of physical discov- 
 eries. As an example, I may refer to the cotton manufacture. 
 
 In a very short time after the mechanical arts were applied to the 
 manufacture of textile fabrics, so great was the improvement that a man 
 could do more work in a day than he had previously done in mustration 
 a year. That manufacture was moreover accompanied by Jon'^nlfa'' 
 such collateral events as actually overturned the social condi-* '"^• 
 tion throughout Europe. These were 'such as the invention of the 
 steam-engine, the canal system, the prodigious development of the iron 
 manufacture, the locomotive, and railroad? ; results not due to the place- 
 men and officers to whom that continent had resigned its annals, whose 
 effigies encumber the streets of its cities, but to men in the lower walks 
 of life. The assertion is true that James Watt, the instrument maker 
 conferred on his native country more solid benefits than all the treaties 
 she ever made and all the battles she ever won. Arkwright was a bar- 
 ber, Harrison a carpenter, Brindley a millwright's apprentice. 
 
 By the labors of Paul or of.Wyatt, who introduced the operation of 
 spinning by rollers, a principle perfected by Arkwright ; by the rotating 
 
 Qq ^ 
 
610 THE COTTON MANUFACTUEE, 
 
 carding-engine, first devised by Paul; by the jenny of Highs or Har- 
 greaves ; the water-frame ; the mule, invented by Crompton, so greatly 
 Development ~^^ ^^^ cottou manufacture developed as to demand an entire 
 maSSa^ure phauge iu the life of operatives, and hence arose the factory 
 in England, gygtem. At a critical moment was introduced "Watt's inven- 
 tion, the steam-engine. His first patent was taken out in 1769, the same 
 year that Arkwright patented spinning by rollers. Watt's improve- 
 The steam-en- Hient cMefly cousisted in the use of a separate condenser, 
 gine of Watt, g^^^ ^\^q replacement of atmospheric pressure by that of steam. 
 StUl, it was not until more than twenty years that this engine was intro- 
 duced into factories, and hence it was not, as is sometimes supposed, the 
 cause of their wonderful increase. It came, however, at a fortunate 
 time, nearly coincident with the invention of the dressing-machine by 
 Eadcliffe and the power-loom by Cartwright, 
 
 If the production of textile fabrics received such advantages from me- 
 chanics, equfilly was it favored by chemistry in the discovery of bleach- 
 Bieaohingby i"g ^J chloriue. To blcach a piece of cotton by the action of 
 chlorine. ^j^g g^jp and the sun required from six to eight months, and a 
 large surface of land must be used as a bleach-field. The val^e of land 
 in the vicinity of great towns presented an insuperable obstacle to such 
 uses. By chlorine the operation could be completed in the course of a 
 few hours, and in a comparatively small building, the fibre being beau- 
 tifully and permanently whitened. Nor were the chemical improve- 
 cauco-printing meuts restricted to this. Calico-printing, an art practiced 
 by cylinders, many thousand years ago among the Egyptians, was perfect- 
 ed by the operation of printing from cylinders. 
 
 It deserves to be remarked that the cotton manufacture was first in- 
 troduced into Europe by the Arabs. Abderrahman III., A.D. 930, 
 caused it to be conimenced in Spain; he also had extensive manufac- 
 tures of silk and leather, and interested himself much, in the culture of 
 the sugar-cane, rice, the mulberry. One of the most valuable Spanish 
 applications of cotton was in the invention of cotton papQr. The Arabs 
 were also the authors of the printing of calicoes by wooden blocks, a 
 great improvement on the old Indian operation of painting by hand. 
 
 We may excuse the enthusiastic literature of the cotton manufacture 
 Extent of the its boastiug, for men had accomplished works that were nearly 
 
 cotton manu- ^.^.^.. Tn--r»' ... 
 
 fecture. God-hke. Mr. Baines, writmg m 1833, states that the length 
 of yarn spun in one year was nearly five thousand millions of miles, 
 sufficient to pass round the earth's circuniference more than two hund- 
 red thousand times — sufficient to reach fifty-one times from the earth to 
 the sun. It would encircle the earth's orbit eight and a half times. 
 The wrought fabrics of cotton exported in one year would form a gir- 
 dle for the globe passing eleven times round the equator, more than suf- 
 ficient, to form a continuous sheet from the earth to the moon. And, if 
 
CANALS AND EAILWAYS. 611 
 
 this was tlie case thirty years ago, by what illustrations would it be pos- 
 sible to depict it now (1859), when the quantity of cotton imported by 
 England alone is more than twelve hundred millions of pounds? 
 
 But such a vast development in that particular manufacture necessa- 
 rily implied other improvements, especially in locomotion and improvemento 
 the transmission of intelligence. The peddler's pack, the *" i""™"'""- 
 pack-horse, and the cart became altogether inadequate, and, in succes- 
 sion, were replaced by the canal system of the last century, and by the 
 steam-boats and railroads of this. The engineering triumphs BriDdiey-s 
 of Brindley, whose canals were carried across valleys, over or ""^'^• 
 through mountains, above rivers, excited unbounded admiration in his 
 own times, and yet they were only the precursors of the railway engi- 
 neering of ours. As it was, the canal system proved to be inadequate 
 to the want, and oaken railways, which had long been used in quarries 
 and coal-pits, with the locomotive invented by Murdoch in 1784, were 
 destined to supplant them. It does not fall within my present purpose 
 to relate how the locomotion of the whole civilized world was revolu- 
 tionized, not by the act of some mighty sovereign or soldier, Stephenson- s 
 but by George Stephenson, once a steam-engine stoker, who, i°«™">«™- 
 by the invention of the tubular boiler and the ingenious device of blow- 
 ing the chimney instead of the fire, converted the locomotive of the last 
 century, which, at its utmost speed, could only travel seven miles an 
 hour, into the locomotive of this, which can accomplish seventy. I 
 need not dwell on the collateral improvements, the introduc- r,^^ rauway 
 tion of iron for rails, metallic bridges, tubular bridges, viaducts, "y"*^™- 
 and all the prodigies of the existing system of railway engineering. 
 
 It is not only on account of the gigantic nature of the work it has to 
 execute that the machinery employed in the great manufactures, such 
 as those of cotton and iron, is so worthy of our admiration ; improvement in 
 
 ■ . i J.1 i_ ^ , 1 1 **ie construction 
 
 improvements as respects the correctness, and even the ele- of machinery. 
 gance of its own construction, attract our attention. It has been truly 
 said of steam-engines that they were never properly made until they 
 made themselves. In any machine, the excellence of its performance 
 depends on the accuracy of^its construction. Its parts must be made 
 perfectly true, and, to work smoothly, must work without error. To ac- 
 complish such conditions taxed to its utmost the mechanical ingenuity 
 of the last century ; and, indeed, it was not possible to reach perfect suc- 
 cess so long as the hand alone was resorted to. "Work executed by the 
 most skillful mechanic could be no more than approximately correct. 
 Not until such machines as the sliding rest and planing engine were 
 introduced could any approach to perfection be made. Improvements 
 of this nature reacted at once on the primary construction of machinery, 
 making it more powerful, more accurate, more durable, and also led to 
 the introduction of greater elegance in its planning or conception, as 
 
612 MENTAL EFFECT OF MACHINEEY. 
 
 any one may see who will compare the clumsy half wood, half metal 
 machinery of the last century with the light and tasteful constructions 
 of this. 
 
 "While thus the inventive class of men were gratifying their mental 
 activity, and following that pursuit which has ever engrossed the ener- 
 getic in all ages of the world — -the pursuit of riches; for it was quickly 
 Social changes perccivcd that succcss in this direction was the high road to 
 chinery. '^™' Wealth, publio Consideration, and honors — the realization of 
 riches greater than the wildest expectations of the alchemists, there 
 were silently and in an unobserved manner great social and national re- 
 sults arising. The operative was correct enough in his conclusion that 
 machinery was throwing him out of work, and reflecting persons were 
 right enough in their belief that this extensive introduction of machines 
 was in some way accomplishing a disorganization of the social economy. 
 Doubtless, for the time being, the distress and misery were very severe ; 
 men were compelled to starve or to turn to new avocations ; families 
 were deprived of their long-accustomed means of support ; such must 
 necessarily be the incidents of every great social change, ejven though it 
 be a change of improvement. Nor was it until the new condition of 
 things had passed through a considerable advance that its political tend- 
 ency began to be plainly discerned. It was relieving the laborer from 
 the burden of his toil, supplanting manual by mechanical action. In 
 Life In the ^^^ cottou-miU, which may be looked upon as the embodiment 
 """'• of the new system and its tendencies, the steam-engine down 
 below was doing the drudgery, turning the wheels and executing the 
 labor, while the operatives above — men, women, and children — were 
 engaged in those things that the engine could not accomplish — things 
 requiring observation and intelligent action. Under such a state it was 
 not possible but that a social change should ensue, for relief from cor- 
 poreal labor is always followed by a disposition for mental activity; and 
 it was not without a certain degree of plausibility that the philanthro- 
 pist, whose attention was directed to this subject, asserted that the lot 
 of the laboring man was no better -^han it had been before : he had 
 changed the tyrant, but had not got rid of the tyranny ; for the demands 
 of the insatiate, inexorable, untiring steam-engine must be without delay 
 satisfied ; the broken thread must be ingtantly pieced ; the iron fingers 
 must receive their new supply; the finished work must be forthwith 
 taken away. 
 
 . What was thus going on in the mill was a miniature picture of what 
 Intellectual "^^ goiDg On in the State. Labor was comparatively dimin- 
 ""tivity. igiiiug^ mental activity increasing. Throughout the last cen- 
 tury the intellectual advance is most significantly marked, and surpris- 
 ing is the contrast between the beginning and the close. Ideas that 
 once had a living force altogether died away, the whole community of- 
 
CONTBAST OP THE AGES OP FAITH AND KEASQN. 613 
 
 fering an exemplification of the fact that the more opportunity men 
 have for reflection the more they will think. Well, then, might those 
 whose interests lay in the perpetuation of former ideas and the ancient 
 order of things look with intolerable apprehension on what was taking 
 place. They saw plainly that this intellectual activity would at last 
 find a political expression, and that a power, daily increasing in inten- 
 sity, would not fail to 'make itself felt in the end. 
 
 In such things are manifested the essential differences between the 
 Age of Faith and the Age of Eeason. In the former, i£ life f »|J™=fj^';=- 
 was enjoyed in calmness, it was enjoyed in stagnation, in un- present ages. 
 productiveness, and in a worthless way. But how different in the lat- 
 ter ! Every thing is in movement. So many are the changes we wit- 
 ness, even in the course of a very brief period, that no one, though of 
 the largest intellect, or in the most favorable position, can predict the 
 future of only a few years hence. "We see that ideas which yesterday 
 served us as a guide die to-day, and wUl be replaced by others, we 
 know not what, to-morrow. 
 
 In this scientific advancement, among the triumphs of which we are 
 living, all the nations of Europe have been engaged. Some, |°^^°^° ™°^: 
 with a venial pride, claim for themselves the glory of hav- ™s nations, 
 ing taken the lead. But perhaps each of them, if it might designate the 
 country — alas I not yet a nation — that should occupy the succeeding 
 post of honor, would inscribe Italy on its ballot. It was in Italy that 
 Columbus was bom ; in Yenice, destined one day to be restored t6 Italy, 
 newspapers were first issued. It was in Italy that the laws of espeeiaUy of 
 the descent of bodies to the earth and of the equilibrium of "''^^• 
 fluids were first determined by Galileo. In the Cathedral of Pisa that 
 illustrious philosopher watched the swinging of the chandelier, and, ob-. 
 serving that its vibrations, large and small, were made in equal times, 
 left the house of God, his prayers unsaid, but the pendulum clock rein- 
 vented. To the Venetian senators he first showed the satellites of Ju- 
 piter, the crescent form of Venus, and, in the garden of Cardinal Ban- 
 dini, the spots upon the sun. It was in Italy that Sanctorio invented 
 the thermometer ; that Torricelli constructed the barometer and demon- 
 strated the pressure of the air. It was there that Castelli laid the found- 
 ation of hydraulics and discovered the laws of the flowing of water. 
 There, too, the first Christian astronomical observatory was established, 
 and there Stancari counted the number of vibrations of a string emit- 
 ting musical notes. There Grimaldi discovered the diffraction of light, 
 and the Florentine academicians showed .that dark heat may be reflect- 
 ed by mirrors across space. In our own times Melloni furnished the 
 means of proving that it may be polarized. The first philosophical so- 
 cieties were the Italian ; the first botanical garden was established at 
 Pisa ; the first classification of plants given by Csesalpinus. The first 
 
614 SCIENTIFIC POSITION OF ITALY. 
 
 geological inuseiim was founded at Verona ; the first who cultivated the 
 study of fossil remains were Leonardo da Vinci and Fracaster. The 
 great chemical discoveries of this century were made by instruments 
 which bear the names of Galvani and Volta. "Why need I speak of 
 science alone ? Who will dispute with that illustrious people the palm 
 of music and painting, of statuary and architecture ? The dark cloud 
 which for a thousand years has hung over that' beautiful peninsula is 
 fringed with irradiations of light. There is not a ^department of human 
 knowledge from which Italy has not extracted glory, no art that, she 
 has not adorned. 
 
 Notwithstanding the adverse circumstances in which she has been 
 Causes of her placed, Italy has thus taken no insignificant part in the ad- 
 depression. yancemcnt of science. I may, at the close of a work of which 
 so large a portion has been devoted to the relation of her influences, 
 political and religious, on the rest of Europe, be perhaps excused the 
 expression of a hope that the day is approaching in which she will, with 
 Eome as her capital, take that place in the modern system to which she 
 is entitled. The course of centuries has proved that her ecclesiastical 
 relation with foreign countries is incompatible with her national life. 
 It is that, and that alone, which has been the cause of all her iUs. She 
 has asserted a jurisdiction in every other government ; the price she has 
 paid is her own unity. The first, the all-important step in her restitu- 
 tion is the reduction of the papacy to a purely religious element. Her 
 great bishop must no longer be an earthly prince. Eome, in her out- 
 cry for the preservation of her temporal possessions, forgets that Chris- 
 tian Europe has made a far greater sacrifice. It has yielded Bethlehem, 
 Grethsemane, Calvary, the Sepulchre, the Mount of the Ascension. That 
 is a sacrifice to which the surrender of the fictitious donations of barba- 
 rian kings is nOt to be compared. - 
 
THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. 616 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 CONCLUSION.— THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. 
 
 Summary of the Argument presented in this Book respecting the mental Progress of Murine. 
 
 Intellectual Development is the Object vf individual Life. — It is also the Result of social Prog- 
 ress. 
 
 Nations arriving at Maturity instinctively attempt their own intellectual Organizaticn.^-Exantple 
 of the Marnier in which this lias been done in Ghina.^Its Imperfection.- — What it has accom- 
 plished. 
 
 The Organization of public Intellect is the End to which European Civilization is tending. 
 
 A PHILOSOPHICAL principle becomes yaluable if it can be used as a 
 guide in the practical purposes of life. 
 
 The object of this book is to impress upon its reader a conviction 
 that civilization does not proceed in an arbitrary manner or General anm- 
 bj chance, but that it passes through a determinate succession work. 
 of stages, and is a development according to law. 
 
 For this purpose, we considered the relations between individual and 
 social life, and showed that they are physiologically insepara- indivianaiana 
 ble from one another, and that the course of communities teen'raMWe™ 
 bears an unmistakable resemblance to the progress of an in- '* ' 
 dividual, and that man is the archetype or exemplar of society. 
 
 We then examined the intellectual history of Greece — a nation offer- 
 ing the best and most complete illustration of the life of hu- and the intei- 
 manity. From the beginnings of its mythology in old Indian T&LSf^ 
 legends and of its philosophy in' Ionia, we saw that it passed through 
 phases like those of the individual to its decrepitude and death in Alex- 
 andria. 
 
 Then, addressing ourselves to the history of Europe, we found that, if 
 suitably divided into groups of ages, these groups, compared an^thehisto 
 with each other in chronological succession, present a strik- "f ^'•"'pe. 
 ing resemblance to the successive phases of Greek life, and therefore to 
 that which Greek life resembles— that is to say, individual life. 
 
 For the sake of convenience in these descriptions we have assumed 
 arbitrary epochs, answering to the periods from infancy to maturity. 
 History justifies the assumption of such periods. There is a well-mark- 
 ed difference between the aspect of Europe during its savage' The contrasts 
 and mythologic ages ; its changing, and growing, and doubt- %'^^ ^^' 
 ing condition during the Eoman republic and the Ceesars ; its submiss- 
 ive contentment under the Byzantine and Italian control; the assertion, 
 of its manhood, and right of thought, and freedom of action which char- 
 
616 CIVILIZATION AIMS AT INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 acterize its present state — a state adorned by great discoveries in sci- 
 ence, great inventions in art, additions to the comforts of life, improve- 
 ments in locomotion, and the communication of intelligence. , Science, 
 capital, and machinery conjoined are producing industrial miracles. 
 Colossal projects are undertaken and executed, and the whole globe is 
 literally made the theatre of action of every individual. 
 
 Nations, like individuals, are bom, proceed through a predestined 
 growth, and die. One comes to its end at an early period and in an 
 untimely way ; another, not until it has gained maturity. One is cut 
 off by feebleness in its infancy, another is destroyed by civil disease, 
 another commits political suicide, another lingers in old age. But for 
 every one there is an orderly way of progress to its final term, what- 
 ever that term may be. 
 
 Now, when we look at the successive phases of individual life, what 
 The object of is it that wc find to be their chief characteristic ? Intellectual 
 is inteueot. advancement. And we consider maturity to be reached when 
 intellect is at its maximum. The earlier stages are preparatory ; they 
 are wholly subordinate to this. 
 
 If the anatomist is asked how the human form advances to its high- 
 it is the same est perfection, he at once disregards all the inferior organs of 
 
 in individual , .^, . . ' , - ° , . . , ° 
 
 ufe, wmch it is composed, and answers that it is through provis- 
 
 ions in its nervous structure for intellectual improvement; that in suc- 
 cession it passes through stages analogous to those observed in other 
 animals in the ascending scale, but in the end it leaves them far behind, 
 reaching a point to which they never attain. The rise in organic de- 
 velopment measures intellectual dignity. 
 
 In like manner, the physiologist, considering the vast series of ani- 
 and in the an- J^als now inhabiting the earth with us, ranks them in the or- 
 imai series, ^gj. of tj^eir intelligence. He shows that their nervous mech- 
 anism unfolds itself upon the same plan as that of man, and that, as its 
 advancement in this uniform and predetermined direction is greater, so 
 is the' position ajttained to higher. 
 
 The geologist declares that these conclusions hold good in the history 
 and in the gen- of the carth, and that there has been an orderlv improve- 
 
 eral life of the , • • , m . i „ , , . , , . , , . , 
 
 globe. ment m intellectual power of the bemgs that have inhabited 
 
 it successively. It is manifested by their nervous systems. He affirms 
 that the cycle of transformation through which every man must pass is 
 a miniature representation of the progress of life on the planet. The 
 intention in both cases is the same. 
 
 The sciences, therefore, join with history in affirming that the great 
 Succession of au- aim of nature is intellectual improvemenli. They proclaim 
 and intelligence, that the successivc stagcs of cvcry individual, from its ear- 
 liest rudiment to maturity — the numberless organic beings now living 
 contemporaneously with us, and constituting the animal series — the or- 
 
EXAMPLE IN CHINA. 617 
 
 ieilj appearance of that grand succession which, in the slow lapse of 
 time, has emerged — all these three great lines of the manifestation of 
 life furnish not only evidences, but also proofs of the dominion of law. 
 In all those three lines the general principle is to differentiate instinct 
 from automatism, and then to differentiate intelligence from instinct. 
 In man himself the three distinct modes of life occur in an epochal or- 
 der through childhood to the most perfect state. And this holding 
 good for the individual, since it is physiologically impossible to separate 
 him from the race, what holds good for the one must also hold good for 
 the other. Hence taan is truly the archetype of society. His devel- 
 opment is the model of social progress. 
 
 What, then, is the conclusion inculcated by these doctrines as regards 
 the social progress of great communities ? It is that all polit- The object of 
 ical institutions — imperceptibly or visibly, spontaneously or opement. 
 purposely — should tend to the improvement and organi^tion of nation- 
 al intellect. 
 
 The expectation of life in a community, as in an individual, increases 
 in proportion as the artificial condition or laws under which it is living 
 agree with the natural tendency. Existence may be maintained under 
 very adverse circumstances for a season ; but, for'stabHity, and duration, 
 and prosperity, there Inust be a correspondence betweeii the artificial 
 conditions and the natural tendency. 
 
 Europe is now entering on its mature phase of life. Each of its na- 
 tions will attempt its own intellectual organization, and will Appucation of 
 accomplish it more or less perfectly, as certainly as that bees piStoSope. 
 build combs and fill them with honey. The excellence of the result 
 will altogether turn on the suitability and perfection of the means. 
 
 There are historical illustrations which throw light upon the working 
 of these principles. Thus, centuries ago, China entered on Exam le offer 
 her Age . of Eeason, and instinctively commenced the opera- ^* ^^ '^''™- 
 tion of mental organization. "What is it that has given to her her won- 
 derful longevity ? What is it that insures the well-being, the prosperity 
 of a population of three hundred and sixty millions — more than one 
 third of the human race — on a surface not by any means as large as 
 Europe ? Kot geographical position ; for, though the country may in 
 former ages have been safe on the East by reason of the sea, it has been 
 invaded and conquered from the West. Not a docility, want of spirit, 
 or submissiveness of the people, for there have been bloody insurrec- 
 tions. The Chinese empire extends through twenty degrees of latitude ; 
 the mean annual temperature of its northern provinces differs from that 
 of the southern by twenty-five Fahrenheit degrees. Hence, with a won- 
 derful variety in its vegetation, there must be great differences in the 
 types of men inhabiting it. But the principle that lies at the basis of 
 its political system has confronted successfully all these human varieties 
 and has outlived all revolutions. 
 
618 ORGANIZATION OF HER PUBLIC INTELLECT. 
 
 The organization of the national intellect is that principle. A broad 
 She has organ- foundation is laid in universal, education. It is intended that 
 inteuect, evcry Chinese shall know how to read and write. The spe- 
 cial plan then adopted is that of competitive examinations. The way to 
 public advancement is open to all. Merit, real or supposed, is the only 
 passport to office. Its degree determines exclusively social rank. The 
 government is organized on mental qualifications. The imperial consti- 
 tution is imitated in those of the provinces. Once in three years public 
 examinations are held in each district or county, with a view of ascer- 
 taining those who are fit for office. The bachelors, or those who are 
 successful, are triennially sent for renewed examination' in the provin- 
 cial capital before two examiners deputed from the general. board of 
 public education. The licentiates thus sifted out now offer themselves 
 for final examination before the imperial board at Pekin. Suitslble can- 
 didates for va(?ant posts are thus selected. There is no one who is not 
 liable to such an inquisition. When vacancies occur they are filled 
 from the list of approved" men, who are gradually elevated to the high- 
 est honors. 
 
 It is not because the talented, who, when disappointed, constitute in 
 and obtains sta- Other countrics the most dangerous of all classes, are here 
 atitutions. pr6vided for, that stability of institutions has been attained, 
 but because the political system approaches to an agreement with that 
 physiological condition which guides all social development. The in- 
 tention is to give a dominating control to intellect. 
 
 The method through which that result is aimed at is imperfect, and, 
 Imperfection of conscqueutly, au absolute coincidence between the system 
 employs. and the tendency is not attained, but the stability secured by 
 their approximation is Very strikmg. The method itself is the issue of 
 political forms through which the nation for ages has been passing. 
 Their insufficiency and imperfections are incorporated with and reap- 
 pear in it. 
 
 To the practical eye of Europe a political system thus founded on a 
 Its literary literary basis appears to be an absurdity. But we must look 
 equate. with respect on any thing that one third of mankind have con- 
 cluded it best to do, especially since they have consistently adhered to 
 their determination for several thousand years. Forgetting that herein 
 they satisfy an instinct of humanity which every nation, if.it lives long 
 enough, must feel, Europe often asserts that it is the competitive system 
 which has brought the Chinese to their present state, and made them a 
 people without any sense of patriotism or honor, without any faith or 
 vigor. These are the results, not of their system, but of old age. There 
 are octogenarians among us as morose, selfish, and conceited as China. 
 
 The want of a clear understanding of our relative position vitiates all 
 our dealings with that ancient empire. The Chinese has heard of our 
 
CONSEQUENT STABILITY OF HEE INSTITUTIONS. 619 
 
 discordant opinions, of our intolerance toward those who dif- ^^^%^^ 
 fer in ideas from us, of our worship of wealth, and the honor <ma cuna. 
 we pay to birth ; he has heard that we sometimes commit political pow- 
 er to men who are so little above the animals that they can neither read 
 nor write ; that we hold military success in esteem, and regard the pro- 
 fession of arms as the only suitable occupation for a gentleman. It is 
 so long since his ancestors thought and acted in that, manner that he 
 justifies himself in regarding us as having scarcely yet emerged from 
 the barbarian stage. On our side, we cherish the delusion that we shall, 
 by precept or by force, convert him to our modes of thought, religious 
 or political, and that we can infuse into his stagnating veins a portion 
 of our enterprise. 
 
 A reliable account of the present condition of China would be a val- 
 uable gift to philosophy, and also to statesmanship. On a former page 
 I have remarked (p. 9) that it demands the highest policy to govern 
 populations living in great differences of latitude. Yet China ^J^ji''^* 
 has not only controlled her climatic strands of people, she hascompUBhed. 
 even made them, if not homogeneous, yet so fitted to each other that 
 they all think and labor alike. Europe is inevitably hastening to be- 
 come what China is. In her we may see what we shall be' like when 
 we are old. 
 
 A great community, aiming to govern itself by intellect rather than 
 by coercion, is a spectacle worthy of admiration, even though the mode 
 by which it endeavors to accomplish its object is plainly inadequate. 
 Brute force holds communities together as an iron nail binds Difference in 
 pieces of wood by the compression it makes — a compression forefStftS 
 depending on the force with which it has been hammered in. "s™"*- 
 It also holds more tenaciously if a little rusted with age. But intelli- 
 gence binds like a screw. The things it has to unite must be carefully 
 adjusted to its thread. It must be gently turned, not driven, and so it 
 retains the consenting parts firmly together. 
 
 Notwithstanding the imperfections of a system founded on such a 
 faulty basis, that great community has accompHshed what many con- 
 sider to be the end of statesmanship. I have already (p. 426) quoted 
 the remark of Machiavelli that, " as to governments, their form is of 
 very little moment, though half-educated people think otherwise. The 
 great end of statesmanship should be permanence, which is worth every 
 thing else, being far more valuable than freedom." But permanence is 
 only, in an apparent sense, the object of good statesmanship ; progres- 
 sion, in accordance with the natural tendency, is the real one. The suc- 
 cessive steps of such a progression follow one another so imperceptiblv 
 ^at there is a delusive appearance of permanence. Man is so consti- 
 tuted that he is never aware of continuous motion. Abrupt variations 
 alone impress his attention. 
 
620 PASSAGE OF EUROPE TO THE SAME END. 
 
 Forms of government, therefore, are of moment, thougli not in the 
 manner commonly supposed. Their vahie increases in proportion as 
 they permit or encourage the natural tendency for development to he 
 satisfied. 
 
 While Asia has thus furnished an example of the effects of a national 
 organization of intellect, Europe, on a smaller scale, has presented an il- 
 A similar ex- lustration of the same kind. The papal system opened, in its 
 c"e of i°aiyf spcoial circumstances, a way for talent. It maintained an in- 
 tellectual organization for those who were within its pale, irrespective of 
 wealth or birth. It was no objection that the greatest churchman fre- 
 quently came from the lowest walks of life. And that organization sus- 
 tained it in spite of the opposition of external circumstances for several 
 centuries after its supernatural and ostensible basis had completely de- 
 cayed away. 
 
 Whatever may be the facts under which, in the different countries of 
 Europe, such an organization takes place, or the political forms guiding 
 Approach of i^i the basis it must rest upon is universal, and, if necessary, 
 vSVduca-" compulsory education. In the more enlightened places the 
 tion. movement has already nearly reached that point. Already- 
 
 it is an accepted doctrine that the state has rights in a child as well as 
 its parent, and that it may insist on education ; conversely also, that ev- 
 ery child has a claim upon the go.vernment for good instruction. After 
 providing in the most liberal manner for that, free countries have but 
 one thing more to do for the accomplishment of the rest. 
 
 That one thing is to secure intellectual freedom as completely as the 
 rights of property and personal liberty have been already secured. 
 Necessity of Philosophical opiuious and scientific discoveries are entitled to 
 
 intellectual I'tTnii- ■% -i i- i. .. 
 
 freedom, bc judged 01 by their truth, not by their relation to existing 
 interests. The motion of the earth round the sun, the antiquity of the 
 globe, the origin of species, are doctrines which have had to force their 
 way in the manner described in this book, not against philosophical op- 
 position, but opposition of a totally different nature. And yet the in- 
 terests which resisted them so strenuously have received no damage 
 from their establishment beyond that consequent on the discredit of 
 having so resisted them. 
 
 There is no literary crime greater than that of exciting a social, and 
 especially a theological odium against ideas that are purely scientific, 
 none against which the disapproval of every educated man ought to be 
 more strongly expressed. The republic of letters owes it to its own 
 dignity to tolerate no longer offenses of that kind. 
 
 To such an organization of their national intellect, and to giving it a 
 ^« futoe . political control, the countries of Europe are thus rapidly ad- 
 Europe, vauciug. They are hastening to satisfy their instinctive tend- 
 ency. The special form in which they will embody their intentions 
 
CONCLUSION, 
 
 621 
 
 must, of course,, depend to a great degree on the political forms under 
 wHch they have passed their lives, modified by that approach to ho- 
 mogeneousness which arises from increased intercommunication. The 
 canal system, so wonderfully developed in' China, exerted no little in- 
 fluence in that respect— an influence, however, not to be compared with 
 that which must be the result of the railway system of Europe. 
 
 In an all-important particular the prospect of Europe is bright. China 
 is passing through the last stage of civil life in the cheerless- iJ^^^^Pf^'J?;' 
 ness of Buddhism ; Europe approaches it through Christiani- timtofchina. 
 ty. Universal benevolence can not fail to yield a better fruit than un- 
 social pride. There is a fairer hope for nations animated by a sincere 
 religious sentiment, who, whatever their political history may have been, 
 have always agreed in this, that they were devout, than for a people 
 who dedicate themselves to a selfish pursuit of material advantages, who 
 have lost all belief in a future, and are living without any God. 
 
 I have now come to the end of a work which has occupied me for 
 many years, and which I submit, with many misgivings as to its execu- 
 tion, to the indulgent consideration of the public. These pages will not 
 have been written in vain if the facts they present impress the reader, 
 as they have impressed the author, with a conviction that the civiliza- 
 tion of Europe has not taken place fortuitously, but in a definite man- 
 ner, and under the control of natural law ; that the procession of nations 
 does not move forward like a dream, without reason or order, but that 
 there is a predetermined, a solemn march, in which all must join, ever 
 moving, ever resistlessly advancing, encountering and enduring an in- 
 evitable succession of events ; that individual life and its advancement 
 through successive stages is the model of social life and its secular va- 
 riations. 
 
 I have asserted the control of natural law in the shaping of human 
 affairs — a control not inconsistent with free-will any more than the una- 
 voidable passage of an individual as he advances to maturity and de- 
 clines in old age is inconsistent with his voluntary actions ; that higher 
 law limits our movements to a certain direction, and guides them in a 
 certain way. As the Stoics of old used to say, an acorn may lie torpid 
 in the ground, unable to exert its living force, until it receives warmth, 
 and moisture, and other things needful for its germination; when it 
 grows, it may put forth one bud here and another bud there ; the wind 
 may bend one branch, the frost blight another ; the innate vitality of the 
 tree may struggle against adverse conditions or luxuriate in those that 
 are congenial; but, whatever the circumstances may be, there is an over- 
 ruling power forever constraining and modeling it. The acorn can 
 only produce an oak. 
 
622 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The application of this principle to human societies is completely es- 
 tablished by a scientific study of their history ; and the more extensive 
 and profound that study, the better shall we be able to distinguish the 
 invariable law in the midst of the varying events. But that once thor- 
 oughly appreciated, we have gained a philosophical guide for the inter- 
 pretation of the past acts of nations, and a prophetic monitor of their 
 future, so far as prophecy is possible in human affairs. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Abderrahman III., 349. 
 
 Abelard, his doctrine, 333. 
 
 Aboul Wefa, 241. 
 
 Absorption, doctrine of, 44. 
 
 Acacias, 261. 
 
 Academies, Italian, 482 ; foundation of, 637 
 
 fourth and fifth, 126. 
 Academy, middle, 125 ; new, 164. 
 Achernsian Cave, 26. 
 Achilles' puzzle, 90; spear, 37. 
 Acoustics, discoveries in, 698. 
 Adriatic, changes of the, 23. 
 iEneas Sylrius, 221. 
 Aerial martyrs, 316. 
 ^sohylus, 35. 
 Africa, circumnavigation of, 57. 
 
 " conquered by Arabs, 247. 
 Age of the Earth, 542. 
 
 " " Faith, European, 228. 
 
 " " " Greek, 106. 
 
 " " " in the East, 241. 
 
 " " " in the West, 258, 326, 345, 382, 
 402. 
 Age of Faith, its literary condition, 419. 
 
 " " " its problems, 163. 
 
 " " " result of, in England, 494. 
 
 " " Greek decrepitude, 153. 
 
 " " Inquiry, European, 177, 197. 
 
 " " " its solutions, 161. 
 
 " " Reason, European, 511, 542. 
 
 " " " approach of, 436, 466. 
 
 " " '.' its problems, 164. 
 
 " " , " Greek, 127. 
 Ages, Greek, their duration, 165. 
 
 " of man, 364. 
 
 " the five European, 15. 
 Air the first principle, 72. 
 Aix la Chapelle, 277. 
 Alaric, capture of Home by, 223. 
 Albategnins, 241. 
 Albertus Magnus, 437. 
 Albigensian revolt, 433. 
 Alchemists, 439. 
 Alchemy, 301. 
 
 Alexander the Great, 127, 128. 
 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 192. 
 Alexandria, city of, 239 ; foundation of, 128 ; 
 political state, 149 ; capture, 247 : decline, 
 153. 
 Algazzali, works of, 362. 
 Alhazen, 358, 596. 
 All, 257. 
 Alineations used by Hipparchus, 150. 
 
 Alliacns, Cardinal, 513. 
 
 Almagest, 151. 
 
 Alps, upheaval of the, 23. 
 
 Al-Sirat, bridge of, 256. 
 
 Amber, 71. 
 
 Ambrose of Milan, 232. 
 
 Ambrose Pare, 535. 
 
 America, Church and State in, 430. 
 
 " discovery of, 445. 
 American aboriginal civilization, 463 ; its an- 
 tiquity, 464. 
 American clergy, 493. 
 
 ' refisrmation, 492. 
 Ammonins Saccas, 156. 
 Analogy of Greek and Indian philosophy, 166. 
 Analysis, higher, commencement of, 99. 
 
 « dangers of, 102. 
 Anasagoras, 36. 
 
 " of Clazomene, 79. 
 
 " " " persecution of, 81. 
 Anaximander, 78. 
 Anaximenes, 72. 
 
 Animals, 44; automatic, 583; instinctive, 
 584 ; hot-blooded, 562 ; merely forms, 593 ; 
 nature of, 575. 
 Anthropocentric philosophy, 537. 
 
 " stage, 27. 
 
 Antimony, its use, 440. 
 Antiochus, 182. 
 
 " of Ascalon, 126. 
 Antisthenes, 110. 
 Antoninus, 191. 
 Apeimines upheaved, 23. 
 Apocalypse, comment on the, 383. 
 Apollonius Fergseus, 150. 
 
 " ofTyana, 155, 409. 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 835. 
 
 Arabian astronomy, 355 ; commerce, 357 ; in- 
 fluence, 284; medicine, 354; numerals, 
 361 ; practical art, 356 ; practical science, 
 353 ; school system, 351 ; sorcery, 289. 
 Arabs cultivate learning, 248 ; their develop- 
 ment, 249, 251 ; in Spain, 347, 348, 349. 
 Arcesilaus, 125. 
 Archimedes, 144. 
 Arctinus, poems of, 38. 
 Arddha Chiddi, 48. 
 Argonautic voyage, 30, 33. 
 Ariminium, Council of, 214. 
 Aristarchus finds the sun's distance, 148. 
 Aristippus, 110. 
 Aristotle, 95, 130, 294. 
 
 " influence of, 128. 
 Aristotelism compared with Platonism, 131.- 
 
624 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Arithmetic, Indian, 355. 
 
 Arius, his heresy, 211 ; his death, 214. 
 
 Arnold de ViUa Nova, 421. 
 
 Arnold of Brescia, 344. 
 
 Art, black, 300. 
 
 Artesian wells, 647. 
 
 Articulata, anatomy of, 583. 
 
 Asclepions, 286, 291. 
 
 Asoka patronizes Buddhism, 49. 
 
 Aspasia, 97. 
 
 Astronomical refraction, 359. 
 
 Astronomy and fetichism, 74. 
 
 " of Eratosthenes, 148. 
 Athanasius, 214. 
 Athene, statues of, 88. 
 Athenian philosophy, 99. 
 Athens, her progress in art, 97, 98. 
 Atlantic, first voyage across, 444. 
 Atmosphere, its phenomena, 596. 
 " effects of light on, 661. 
 
 height of, 359. 
 Atomic theory, 92. 
 Attains, king of Pergamus, 183. 
 Augustine, St., 233 ; his life, 225. 
 
 " on spontaneous generation, 668. 
 Auricular confession, 873. 
 Australian savages, 20. 
 Averrhoes, phUosophy of, 468, 678, 589. 
 Avicenna, his works, 305. 
 Avignon, papacy removed to, 389. 
 " voluptuousness of, 395. 
 
 B. 
 
 Babylonian astronomy, 148. 
 
 " observations, 143. 
 Babylonish captivity, 395. 
 Bacon, Lord, 515. 
 
 " Roger, his discoveries, 438. 
 Bactrian empire, 33. 
 Baghavat Gita, 48. 
 Basil Valentine, 440. 
 Basle, Council of, 400. 
 Beatific vision, 394. 
 Benedict, St., his miracles, 323. 
 Benedictines, their numbers, 324. 
 Berengar of Tours, 332, 339. 
 Berkeley, 172. 
 Bernard of Clairvaux, 343. 
 Bible, 491. 
 
 Biology, origin of, 78. 
 Birds, migration of, 5. 
 Bishops, rivalries of, 221. 
 
 " three, fate of, 227. 
 Black Sea, 21. 
 Bleaching by chlorine, 610. 
 Blood admixture, effect of, 11. 
 
 " degeneration, its effect, 431. 
 Bodin's De Kepublica, 5. 
 Boethius, 262, 265. 
 Boniface VIII., 384, 389. 
 
 " Count, 226. 
 Books, their longevitv, 473. 
 Boyle, 536. 
 Brahman, 46. 
 Brain, functions of, 585. 
 Bruno, martyrdom of, 615. 
 
 Brutes, their nature, 76. 
 Buddhism, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54. 
 Bunsen on Chronology, 147. 
 Banyan, John,. 226, 604. 
 Burnet's Sacred Theory, 636. 
 
 C. 
 
 Cabot, Sebastian, 458. 
 Cabral discovers Brazil, 453. 
 Caisar, 183. 
 Calico printing, 610. 
 Callimachus, 149. 
 Callisthenes, 128, 129, 143. 
 Calydonian boar, 38. 
 Cambyses, 58, 138. 
 Canal of Egypt, 67, 68, 69, 241. 
 Canals, 611. 
 
 Cannibalism of Europe, 23. 
 Canonic of Epicurus, 124. 
 Cape of Good Hope doubled, 449. 
 Caracalla, 224. 
 Cameades, 125. 
 Carthage, 96, 129, 181. 
 Carthaginian commerce, 96. 
 Caspian and Dead Seas, date of, 550. 
 Casuistry, development of, 374. 
 Catalogue of stars, 150. 
 Catasterism of Eratosthenes, 146. 
 Catastrophes, doctrine of, 658, 564, 665. 
 Cato, 126. 
 Celt, sorcery of, 25. 
 Cerebral sight, 319. 
 Cerinthus, 200. 
 
 Chadizah, wife of Mohammed, 245. 
 Chakia Monni, 49. 
 Charlemagne, 273, 276. 
 Charles Martel, 273, 314. 
 Chemistry, its history, 601. 
 " fetichism of, 74. 
 " Pythagorean, 85. 
 China, her policy, 617, 618. 
 Chinese Buddhism, 63, 55. 
 Christianity allied to art, 266. 
 
 " antagonizes imperialism, 203. 
 
 " debased in Boine, 196.- 
 
 " first organization of, 199. 
 
 " Gnostic, 202. 
 
 " hellenized, 215; 
 
 " influence of, 179, 197, 621. 
 
 " its persecutions, 204, 205. 
 
 " three modifications, 200. 
 
 " . Judaic, 201. 
 
 " paganization of, 228. 
 
 " Platonic, 202. 
 
 " spreads from Syria, 203. 
 Chronology of Eratosthenes, 146. 
 Church and State separated, 492. 
 " " " union of, 279. 
 " Greek and Latin, 215. 
 " services, their influence, 474. 
 " what she had done, 432. 
 Cicero, 191. 
 
 Cimbri, cause of their invasion, 22. 
 Circle, quadrature of the, 145. 
 Circumnavigation, 129. 
 
 " of Africa, 67. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 625 
 
 Circamnavigation of the earth, 452. 
 
 " " " results of, 453. 
 
 Clement V., 388. 
 Cleomedes, 151. 
 Cleopatra, 149. 
 Clergy, American, 498. 
 
 " accused by the Commons, 498. 
 
 " Discipline Act, «00. 
 Clermont, Council of, 341. 
 Climates, their production, 559. 
 Clouds, their nomenclature, 600. 
 Cnidos, medical school of, 294. 
 Coal period, 561. 
 
 " " its botany, 570. 
 Coenobitism, 821. 
 Coffee-houses, 509. 
 Coinage, its adulteration, 186. 
 Cold, influence of, 21. 
 Colleges founded by Jews, 298, 414. 
 Colonial system, origin of, 95. 
 Colonies, Greek, 83, 93, 94. 
 Colossus of Barneses, 64. 
 Columbus, 442. 
 Commerce, ancient, 84. 
 
 Cyril, his acts, 237. 
 
 D. 
 
 Communities, progress of, 9. 
 Condesuya, aqueduct of, 462. 
 Condillac, 172. 
 Conon of Alexandria, 144. 
 Constance, Council of, 398. 
 Constantine the Great, his policy, 205 ; his in- 
 fluence, 206; tendency to paganism, 207; 
 removes the metropolis, 206, 208 ; his 
 Church relation, 207, 208; conversion and 
 death, 210. 
 Constantinople, Council of, 310. 
 " faU of, 405. 
 
 " its literature, 368. 
 
 " sack of, 367. ' 
 
 " siege of, by the Turks, 404. 
 
 Copais, tunnel of, 23. 
 Copernican system condemned, 619. 
 
 " theory rectified, 522. 
 Copernicus, 513. 
 
 " his doctrine, 614, 517. 
 
 Copronymus the Iconoclast, 310. 
 Corinth, its arts, 97. 
 Cosmas Indicopleustes, 442. 
 Cosmo de' Medici, 467. 
 Cosmogony, 78. 
 
 " Pythagorean, 85. 
 Cotton manufacture, 609. 
 Councils, their nature, 176, 221. 
 Criterion of truth, 81, 162, 170, 174. 
 Criticism, effects of, 34, 490. 
 
 " rise of, 465. 
 Cross, the true, discovered, 229. 
 Crotona, 82, 95. 
 Crusades, origin of, 340. 
 " effects of, 342, 425. 
 " in south of France, 370. 
 Cuvier's doctrine, 566. 
 Cycle of life, 173. 
 Cyclopean structures, 23. 
 Cynical school, 110. 
 Cyrenaic school, 110. 
 
 Damasus, riots concerning, 216. 
 Death, interstitial, 10. 
 Delos a slave market, 182. 
 Deluges, ancient, 22. 
 Delusions of the sense, 171. 
 Demetrius Phalareus, 140. 
 " Poliorcetes, 123. 
 Democritus, 92. 
 Descartes, 171. 
 Desert, influences of the, 5. 
 Destiny, 93. 
 
 " Stoical doctrine of, 136. 
 Deucalian deluge, 38. 
 Dew theory, 608. 
 Diaphragm of Dicsearchus, 146. 
 
 Dies Irse, 825. 
 
 Dioclesian, state of things under, 204. 
 
 Diogenes, 111. 
 
 ", of Apollonia,73. 
 
 Docetes, 200. 
 
 Dominic, St., 372. 
 
 Donatists, 209. 
 
 Dmids, 178. 
 
 Du Molay, 393. 
 
 E. 
 
 Ear, 4. 
 
 Earth, age of the, 681. 
 
 density of the, 548. 
 development in the life of the, 587. 
 motions in the strata of the, 551. 
 its slow cooling, 646. 
 Earthquakes, 548. 
 Easter, dispute respecting, 216. 
 Ebionites, 200. 
 
 Ebn Junis, astronomy of, 361. 
 Ecdesiasticism, its decline, 430. 
 
 " " downfaJl, 534. 
 
 Eclipses predicted, 71. 
 Echptic, obliquity of the, 73, 355, 549. 
 Ecstasy, 158. 
 
 Egypt, antiquity of civilization in, 69 ; cause 
 of civilization in, 62 ; conquest of, by Cam- 
 byses, 58 ; geological age of, 64 ; hydraulic 
 works of, 65; influence of, on Europe, 60; 
 originates Greek legends, 60 ; prehistoric 
 life of, 60, 62 ; Homan annexation of, 188 ; 
 topography of, 64. 
 Egyptian ciTiUzation, 55. 
 ' ports opened, 56. 
 theology, 67. 
 Elcano, the lieutenant of Magellan, 452. 
 Eleatic philosophy, 87. 
 
 school, 163. 
 Electricity, discoveries in, 603. 
 Electro-magnetism, 604. 
 Elixiroflife, 302, 305. 
 Elphinstone, quotation from, 47. 
 Elysium, 26. 
 
 Emanation, theory of, 168. 
 Empedocles, 91. 
 England, condition of, 497. 
 conversion of, 271. 
 
 Re 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Ephesus, Council of, 219. 
 
 Eplctetus, 191, 
 
 Epicureans, modern, 125. 
 
 Epicurus, 122. 
 
 Epicycles and eccentrics, theory of, 150. 
 
 Epochsoflife, 11, 437. 
 
 Eratosthenes, 145. 
 
 Eremitism, 320. 
 
 Erigena, John, a pantheist, 332. 
 
 Essenes, 316. 
 
 Ether, movements of, 607. 
 
 Ethical philosophy, 106. 
 
 " " ■ its secondary analysis, 122, 
 
 Ethics of Plato, 117. 
 
 Ethnical elementj 9, 11. 
 
 Euclid, 144. 
 
 " ofMegara, 110. 
 
 Eunapius, 157. 
 
 Euripides, 35. i 
 
 Europe, barbarism of, 345 ; condition of, after 
 Charlemagne, 279 ; conversion of, 270 ; de- 
 scription of, 17 ; elevation of, above the sea, 
 17 ; future of, 615; social changes in, 429 ; 
 physical changes in, 270 ; vertical displace- 
 ment of, 21. 
 
 European old religion, 177 ; priesthood, 178. 
 ' ' modifications by climate, 25. 
 " slave-trade, 276. 
 
 Eusebius, his chronology, 147. 
 
 Eutychianism, 220. 
 
 Everlasting Gospel, 382. 
 
 Existence depends on physical conditions, 5. 
 
 Extinctions, cause of, 6. 
 
 " and creations, 554, 555. 
 
 Eye, 4. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fabricius ab Aquapendente, 535. 
 
 Fairies destroyed by tobacco, 418. 
 
 Fallopius, 635. 
 
 Faustus, his accusation, 229. 
 
 Fetichism, 3. 
 
 Fine arts, use of the, 406. 
 
 Fire the first principle, 76. 
 
 Flagellants, 381. 
 
 Florence, Medicean gardens of, 463. 
 
 Food, its nature, 577. 
 
 Formosus, Pope, 271. 
 
 Forms contrasted with law, 16. 
 
 " permanence of, 76. 
 Francis, St., 372. 
 Fratricelli, their affirmation, 209. 
 Frederick II., 374. 
 Free trade, its effects, 188. 
 Free-will, 16. 
 
 G. 
 Galen, 192. 
 Galileo, 518, 519, 520. 
 
 " on laws of motion, 624. 
 Geber, the alchemist, 303. 
 Geminus, 151. 
 Genoa, her commerce, 442. 
 Geocentric theory, 512. 
 Geographical discovery, effects of, 32. 
 Geography of Ptolemy, 151. 
 
 Geology, 542. 
 
 Geological movements of Asia, 21. 
 
 Gerbert the Pope, 328, 329, 330. 
 
 Gesner, 535. 
 
 Gilbert, 535. 
 
 Globes used by the Saracens, 355. 
 
 Gobi, changes of, 18, 21. 
 
 Gold and silver, ancient value of, 186. 
 " potable, problem of, 304. 
 
 Gotama, 49. 
 
 Gotschalk, his persecution, 331. 
 
 Gravitation, theory of, 527. 
 
 Greece, Koman invasion of, 182. 
 
 Greek, dislike of Bome to, 469 ; fire, 303 ; 
 learning, revival of, 468; movements re- 
 peated in Europe, 39 ; mythology, 28; cause 
 of its destruction, 32 ; secession from, 34 ; 
 transformations of, 32 ; philosophy, its four 
 topics, 165; summary of, 104. 
 
 Gregory VII., his policy, 337. 
 the Great, 263. 
 of Nazianzen, 221. 
 
 Gulf Stream, 18, 599. 
 
 Gunpowder, 303. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hades, 29, 68. 
 
 Halley's comet, 512. 
 
 Hallucination, cause of, 817. 
 
 Haroun al Raschid, 277. 
 
 Harpalns, 129. 
 
 Harvey's circulation of the blood, 535. 
 
 Heart, 4. 
 
 Heat, boundary of animals by, 553 ; control 
 
 of, over life, 6 ; decline of, in the earth, 560 ; 
 
 distribution of, in Europe, 19 ; interior, 546 ; 
 
 sources of, 76 ; theories of, 608. 
 Heliocentric theory, 512, 527. 
 Henry VIII., 500. 
 Heraclitus, 76. 
 Hercules, legend of, 27. 
 Heretics, burning of, 380. 
 Hermits, 316. 
 
 grazing, 317. 
 Hero, 162. 
 Herodotus, 36. 
 
 Herschels, their discoveries, 529. 
 Hesiod, theogony of, 31. 
 Hieroglyphics, 61. 
 Hildebrand, 336. 
 
 Hindu philosophy, 41 ; polytheism, 25. 
 Hipparchus, 150. 
 Hippocrates, 93. 
 
 " review of, 291. 
 
 Hobbes, 171. 
 Holy places, loss of, 424. 
 Homer, theogony of, 31. 
 HomoeomerisB, 80. 
 Homogeneousness, national, 12. 
 Homer's observations in Egypt, 64. 
 Hosius of Cordova, 212. 
 Houris of Paradise, 256. 
 Humboldt, 146. 
 Huss, John, the martyr, 899. 
 Hycksos, invasion of, 66. 
 Hypatia, 238, 240. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 627 
 
 Hypocrisy, organization of, 40. 
 
 lamblicns, 159. 
 Iconoclasm, 309. 
 Ideal theory, 113, 120. 
 Images, bleeding and winking, 308. 
 Image worship, 306; in the West, 312; re- 
 sisted by Charlemagne, 276. 
 Imitation of Christ, 470. 
 Immortality, double, 119. 
 Impulses against the Church, 422. 
 
 " moral and intellectual, 428. 
 Incarnations, 67. 
 Incombustible men, 303. 
 Indian, American, 20. 
 Indo-Germanic invasion, 23. 
 Inductive philosophy, 131. 
 Indulgences, nature of, 478. 
 Innocent III., 364. 
 Inquisition, 371, 487. 
 
 " its sacrifices, 464. 
 Insane, their nature, 75. 
 Institutes of Menu, 46. 
 Intellect, the primal, 80. 
 Intellectual class represents a community, 10. 
 
 " development, 591. 
 Interstitial creations, 556. 
 
 " death, 10. 
 Ionian philosophy, 78. 
 Irene, the Empress, 311. 
 Isis, her worship, 139. 
 Isothermal lines, 18, 19. 
 Israfil, the angel, 256. 
 Italian Chri 
 
 Italy, cause of'K 
 pression, 614; immorali^Jr of, i*! 
 tions of, 94 ; scientific contributions of, 613. 
 
 Jason, voyage of, 30. 
 
 Jaxartes, its drying up, 22. 
 
 Jerome of Prague, his martyrdom, 400. 
 
 Jerome, St., 217. 
 
 " " against marriage, 266. 
 
 Jerusalem, bishops of, 201 ; capture of, 342 , 
 Chm-ch of, 215; fall of, 243, 248; position 
 of, 57. 
 
 Jesuits, 488. 
 
 Jewish physicians, their writings, 414. 
 
 Jews, conversion of, 201 ; expulsion of, from 
 France, 417; medical studies of, 414; Span- 
 ish, their works, 416; on supernaturalism, 
 
 John of Damascus, 313. ' 
 
 Judgment, future, 67. 
 
 Jugurthine war, 183. 
 
 Julian, 230. 
 
 Justinian closes philosophical schools, 160. 
 
 " conquers Italy, 262. 
 
 " his wars, 242, 259. 
 Justin Martyr, 202. 
 
 Kant, 172. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kempis, Thomas k, 470. 
 Kepler, 521 ; his laws, 3, 522. 
 Kirk's lambs, 505. 
 Koran, review of, 251, 254. 
 
 Labarum, 229. 
 
 Lactantius, 233. ' 
 
 Languages, modern, their effects, 467 
 
 Languedoc, light literature of, 351. 
 
 Lapland, inferiority of, 10. 
 
 Latin a sacred language, 466. 
 
 Law, dominion of, 15 ; its control, 590. 
 
 Leaning towers, 23. 
 
 Legends of saints, 322. 
 
 Legion, how constructed, 185. 
 
 Leibnitz, 172, 536. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 145. 
 
 Leo the Great, 260. 
 
 X.,483. 
 Leontius Pilatus, 468. 
 Lesches, poems of, 38. 
 Levites, their medicine, 297. 
 Lewenhoeck, 536. 
 
 Liberty not appreciated in India, 46. 
 Library, Alexandrian, 140, 235. 
 Licinius, 205. . . 
 Life, individual, its nature, 2. 
 
 " social, its nature, 2. ' 
 
 " variable rapidity of, 14. 
 Light, motion of, 531, 645, 605. 
 
 proves the age -of the world, 545. 
 Limestone deposited from the sea, 562. 
 Literature, profiigate, 505. 
 Locke, 172. 
 
 locomotives, 611. 
 
 " :ic, Aristotle's, 132 ; medieval, 407. 
 |os, 155, 202. 
 Lorenzo de' Medici, 469. 
 Loretto, miracle of, 384. 
 Louis, St., 379. 
 Lucius Apuleius, 156. 
 Lucretius, 190. 
 
 Luitprand captures Eavenna, 313. 
 Luther, 478 ; excommunication of, 479 ; ex- 
 perience of, 411 ; revolt of, 435. 
 Lyceum, 131. 
 
 M. 
 
 Macedonian campaigns, 33, 127, 138. 
 
 Machiavelli, 426, 431. 
 
 Magellan, his great voyage, 450. 
 
 Magic and necromancy, 159. 
 
 Magic lantern, 606. 
 
 Magna Charta, 365. 
 
 Magnetic variations, 445. 
 
 Magnetism, discoveries in, 604. 
 
 Maimonides, 416. 
 
 Malpighi, 536. 
 
 Man controlled by physical agents, 7 ; his race 
 connections, 173 ; first form of, 79 ; lateral 
 halves of, 588 ; nature of, 173, 574 ; varia- 
 tions of, 8 ; social archetype, 1. 
 
 Marco Polo, 453. 
 
 Mariner's compass, 357. 
 
 Mai-riage, compulsion of, 187. 
 
628 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Marsilio, his work, 394. 
 Marsilius Ficinus, the Platonist, 467. 
 Matter, its indestructibility, 602. 
 Maximum of certaitity, 175. 
 Maximus Tyrius, 191. 
 Max Muller on language, 24. 
 Medicine, Alexandrian, 296. 
 "• Egyptian, 295. 
 " suppression of, 286. 
 Mediterranean; 21, 29 ; trade of, 441 ; won- 
 ders of, 31. 
 Megaric school, 110. 
 Melissus of Samos, 91. 
 Mendicant orders, 371. 
 Menu, Institutes of, 46, 166. 
 Metaphysics, Aristotle's, 182. 
 
 " -uselessness of, 578. 
 
 Meteoric stone, 81. . 
 Mexico, social condition of, 454. 
 Middle Ages, their condition, 103. 
 Migration of birds, 5. 
 Milky Way, 86. 
 Mill Ufe, 612. . 
 Milton's Paradise Lost, 506. 
 Miracle cure, 286. 
 " plays,. 607. 
 Missionaries, Irish and British, 271. 
 Moeris, Lake, 70. 
 Mohammed, 244. 
 
 " II., 404. 
 
 Mohammedanism, arrest in Europe of, 347. 
 " effect of, on Christendom, 
 
 257. 
 , Mohammedanism, literature of, 350 ; sects of, 
 257. 
 Mohammedanism, popular, 255. 
 Monasteries, suppression o^ 495. 
 Monasticism, amelioration of, 320. 
 
 " spread of, 321. 
 
 Monks, 314. 
 
 " African and European, 176. 
 " Eastern and Western, 322. 
 " influence of, 324. 
 Monotheism preceded by imperialism, 190. 
 
 " Koman, its boundaries, 193. 
 
 Montanus, the Paraclete, 216. 
 Moon, volcanic action in, 549. 
 Moral plays, 508. 
 Motion, laws of, 524. 
 Muggleton, Lewis, 502. 
 Museum, Alexandrian, 139, 140, 295. 
 Mycense, lion gate of, 23. 
 Mythology, Greek, origin of, 26. 
 
 N. 
 Napier, 535. 
 
 Nations, transitional forms of, 13 ; death of, 
 T 13; progress of, 9; secular variations of, 
 12. 
 Nearchus, 129. 
 NebnlsB, existence of, 633. 
 Nebular hypothesis, 632. 
 Necromancy, Alexandrian, 299. 
 Neo-Platonism, 156. 
 Nervous system, 580, 586. 
 Nestorianism, 218, 286, 290. 
 
 New Academy, 125. 
 
 Newspapers, 475, 609. 
 
 Newton, 89, 150, 526, 536. 
 
 Niagara, Falls of, 572. 
 
 Nicea, Council of, 212. 
 
 Nicene Creed, 213. 
 
 Nicolas v., 406. 
 
 Nicomeffia, Church of, destroyed, 205. 
 
 Niebuh'r, 97. 
 
 Nile, 63. 
 
 Nirwana, or nonentity, 62, 170. 
 
 Nogaret, William de, 387. 
 
 Nomades, Asiatic, 22. 
 
 Nominalism and Bealism, 334. 
 
 Norway, depth of rain in, 19. 
 
 and Sweden, motion of, 552. 
 Norwegian, diet of, 20. 
 Novatus, the heretic, 211. 
 Numa, 83. 
 
 Numbers the first principle, 84. 
 Nnmenius a Trinitarian, 156. 
 
 O. 
 
 Oaks, sacred, 187. 
 
 Obelisks, 66, 61. 
 
 Ocea^i, its size, 399. 
 
 Octave, musical, 86. 
 
 Olympian deities, their nature, 37. 
 
 Omar takes Jerusalem, 248. 
 
 Opinion and Reason, 89. ' 
 
 Optics, discoveries in, <505. 
 
 Orchomenos, ruins of, 23. 
 
 Orders, monastic, their spread, 323. 
 
 Organisms, dates of variona.563. 
 
 Pacific Ocean crossed, 461. 
 Paganism, its attitude, 198. 
 Painting and sculpture, 267. 
 Palaeontology, history o^ 557. 
 Pantheism, 89, 105. 
 
 " Greek, 166 ; Indian, 43. 
 
 Papacy, origin of, 215, 283. 
 " intellectual end of, 401. 
 " political independence of, 269. 
 Paper, invention of, 473. 
 Pappus, 152. 
 
 Parliailient accuses the clergy, 499. 
 Parma, John of, 382. 
 Parmenides, 89. 
 PascaJ, 636. 
 
 " his view of humanity, 13. 
 Path-zone, 17. 
 Patristic ethnology, 447. 
 
 " geography, end of, 446. 
 " learning, its decline, 491. 
 Patristicism, conilict of, with philosophy, 234. 
 
 " decline of, 420. 
 
 " doctrines of, 232. 
 
 " effects of, 491. 
 
 Paulus .aimilius, his severity, 184. 
 Pausanias, 97. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 629 
 
 Pdagianism, 217. 
 
 Penance, 44. 
 
 Pepin, 274. 
 
 Pergamus, library of, 235. 
 
 Pericles, 97. 
 
 Perictione, 112. 
 
 Periodicities, human, cause Ot, 5. 
 
 Peripatetics, 131. 
 
 Persecution, effects of, 491. 
 
 Persepolis, burning of, 129. 
 
 Perses, revolt of, 182. 
 
 Persian wars, 96, 127. 
 
 Personified forms introduced, 27. 
 
 Perturbations, astronomical, 528. 
 
 Peru, its social condition, 457. 
 
 " rainless district of, 63. 
 Peter Morrone, 383. 
 ■ Pet^ the Hermit, 341. 
 Peter the Venerable, 334. 
 Philadelphus, Ptolemy, 141. 
 Philse, temple of, 66. 
 Philip the Pair, 385. 
 Philo the Jew, 155, 174. 
 
 " ofLarissa, 126. 
 Philosophers, persecution of, 231. 
 Philosopher's stone, 302. 
 Philosophical principles, application of, 176. 
 
 " schools, Indian, 48. 
 
 Philosophy, Greek and Indian, their analogy, 
 
 175. 
 Philosophy, Greek, end of, 160. 
 
 " " summary of, 160. 
 
 " its'defects, 172. 
 
 " peripatetic, 133. 
 
 ^|k|^^^^27 
 
 Phocseans buTl _ ^^ ^ 
 
 Phoenicians, enterprise of, _ _ . 
 Phosphorus discovered by Arabs, 304. 
 Photography, 608. 
 Physicians, Jewish; 296. 
 Physics of Zeno, 136. 
 Physiology of Aristotle, 134. 
 
 " '' Plato, 116. 
 Plagues, ancient, 185. 
 Plants, action on air of, 676. 
 
 " and animals, relation of, 75, 577. 
 Platsea, battle of, 96. 
 Plato, 39, 112. 
 Platonism, 156. 
 
 " restored in Europe, 467. 
 Plays, miracle, moral, real, 307. 
 Pleiades, 149. 
 Plotinus, writings of, 157. 
 Plutarch, 128, 156. 
 Pole star, 550. 
 Polygamy, its effects, 247. 
 Polytheism, decline of, 38. 
 
 " antagonism of, toBcience, 36. 
 
 Pontifical power sustained, 222. 
 Popes, biography of, 280. 
 Porphyry, 158. 
 
 " his writings bumtj 159. 
 Porsenna takes Bome, 181. 
 Posidonius, 172. 
 Pre-existence, sentiment of, 118. 
 
 Press, liberty of, 509. 
 Principia, Newton's, 3, 526, 628. 
 Printing, invention of, 471. 
 
 " its effects, 472. 
 Problems of Greek philosophy, 161» 
 ProclUs bums Vitalian's ships, 169. 
 
 « his theology, 160. 
 Prosper Alpinus, 635. 
 Protestants, origin of, 481. 
 Psammetichus, 65. ' 
 
 Psammites of Archimedes, 145. 
 Psychology, origin of, 74. 
 Ptolemies, biography of, 149. 
 
 " position of, 138. 
 Ptolemy, his ^taxis, 151. 
 Pulpit affected by the press, 474. 
 " decline of, influence, 475. 
 Punic wars, 181. 
 Puranas, 47. 
 Pyramids, 65, 59, 62. 
 Pyrrho, 121. 
 Pyrrhus, the Epirot, 181. 
 Pythagoras, 82, 83. 
 
 " his services, 171. 
 
 Q- 
 
 Quintus Sextius, 191. 
 
 Eabbis, 415. 
 Eailways, 611. 
 
 Bain, maximum points of, 19. 
 " quantity of, 18. 
 
 Bainless countries, 62, 63, 458. 
 
 iainy days, influence of, 20. 
 ' number of, 19. 
 
 jses, his policy, 57. 
 ictio ad absurdum, 90. 
 
 Eeflection, 92. 
 
 Beflex action, 582. 
 
 Eeformation, 476 ; arrest of the, 482; attempt, 
 ed in Greece, 37; counter, 487^ in Swit- 
 zerland, 480 ; in Italy, 481. 
 
 Belies, age of, 37. 
 " worship of, 307. 
 
 Beminiscence, 114. 
 
 Eepublic of Platoj 117, 157. 
 
 Bevolution, French, 435. 
 
 Bhacotis, 143. 
 
 Bhodes raised from the sea, 23. 
 
 Ehodians, maritime code of, 33. 
 
 Big Veda, 43. 
 
 Bobber Synod, 220. 
 
 Boman conquest, effects of, 189; depravity, 
 187; ethnical element disappears, 189; le- 
 gends, 180 ; philosophy, 189 ; power, influ- 
 ence of, 38 ; triple form, 180 ; republic, 180; 
 women, their dissoluteness, 187. 
 
 Bome, elevation of, 562 ; fall and pillage of, 
 by Vandals, 259 ; fall of, 222 ; relations of, 
 to Constantinople, 261 ; permanence of, 
 cause of the, 9 ; progress of, to supremacy, 
 260 ; history of, 179 ; three pressures upon, 
 327; tyranny of, 198. 
 
 Boyal societies, foundation of, 537. 
 
630 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 S. 
 Sahara, Desert of, 18. . 
 Salamanca, Council of, 443. 
 " University of, 530. 
 
 Sanscrit vocabulary, 24. 
 
 Saracens, their policy, 250, 287. 
 
 Savior, model of the, 267. 
 
 Scandinavian discovery of America, 446. 
 " geological motion, 23. 
 
 Schism, the great, 396. 
 
 Scholastic philosophy, 333. 
 " theology, 334. 
 
 Schools, philosophical Greek, 82, 110. 
 
 Science, Alexandrian, suppressed, 240. 
 
 Sea of Azof, 21. 
 
 Seasons, effect of, 5. 
 
 Sebastian de Elcano, 452. 
 
 Secular inequalities, 530. 
 " movement of Asia, 21. 
 
 Seneca, 191. 
 
 Septuagint Bible, 141. 
 
 Serapion, destruction of, 237. 
 
 Serapis, 139. 
 
 " statue of, destroyed, 236. 
 
 Servetus, 535. 
 
 ' ' martyrdom of, 492. 
 
 Shakspeare, 508. 
 
 Shepherds, 381. 
 
 Simon Magus, 409. 
 
 Simony, organization of, 396. 
 
 Sirius, the Dog-star, 66. 
 
 Skeptics, 121. 
 
 Slavery under Charlemagne, 276. 
 
 Slave system, Roman, 184. 
 
 Snow, distribution of, in Europe, 19. 
 
 Snowy days, number of, 19. 
 
 Social war, 183. 
 
 Society, its true representative, 10. 
 
 Sociology, comparative, 590. 
 
 Socrates, 35, 106. 
 
 Solar system proves law, 3. 
 
 Sopater decapitated, 230. 
 
 Sophists, 100, 163. 
 
 Sorcery, European, 410. 
 
 Soul, 115; absorption of, 169; the human, 
 595 ; Indian ideas of, 44 ; purification of, 
 45; nature of, 162; of the world, 73; a 
 part of God, 169. 
 
 Sound, nature of, 598. 
 
 Spain, crimes of, 448 ; Mohammedan litera- 
 ture of, 351 ; conquest of, 346 ; Koman an- 
 nexation of, 183. 
 
 Sparta, 95. 
 
 Spartacus, the gladiator, 183. 
 
 Specific gravity, tables of, 360. 
 
 Sphserus, the Stoic, 141. 
 
 Spheres, their music, 86. 
 
 Sphinxes, 56. 
 
 Spinal cord, its action, 585. 
 
 Spontaneous generation, 78,*80. 
 
 Stars, clusters of, 532. 
 " multiple, 4. 
 
 Star worship, 3, 66. 
 
 Stephen, Pope, consecrates Pepin, 274. 
 
 Stevinus, his mechanical works, 524. 
 
 Stoicism, 137. 
 
 Stoics, 135. 
 
 Stylites, St. Simeon, 316. 
 
 Sun-dials, 79. 
 
 Sun, his influence on nature, 592. 
 
 " the source of force, 575. 
 Supererogation, theory of, 478. 
 [Supernatural appearances, cause of, 318^ 
 Superstitions, disappearance of, 189. 
 Sybaris, 95.. 
 Syphilis, 496. 
 
 Tacitus on Eoman morality, 188. 
 Tartars, 20. 
 Tartarus, 26. 
 Taxation, Eoman, 186. 
 Telescope, invention of, 517. 
 Templars, process against, 392. 
 TertuUian, 265. 
 
 his letter to Scapula, 204, 
 Testimony, human, value of, 412. 
 Tetractys, 84. 
 
 Thabor, mysterious light of, 369. 
 Thales, philosophy of, 70. 
 Theatre in England, 506. 
 Theodora restores images, 812. 
 Theodoric,a61, 262. 
 Theodosius, the geometer, 152. 
 
 the Great, 231. 
 Theon, l52. 
 Thucydides, 36. 
 Tides and currents, 599. 
 Time not absolute, 13. 
 preorganic, 558. 
 adqes, 597. 
 attle o£| 
 
 tionTjnbings, 43. 
 Transitional forms, 9. 
 Transmigration, 44, 52, 86, 114. 
 Ti-ansmission, hereditary, 571. 
 Transmutation, doctrine of, 567. 
 
 of metals, 301. 
 
 of organisms, 361. 
 Transubstantiation, 302. 
 
 conflict on, 332, 
 Tribonian, 265. 
 Trinitarian controversy, 210. 
 Trinity, Indian, 47. 
 
 Egyptian, 67, 142, 156. 
 Triumvirate, 183. 
 Trojan horse, 37; war, 37. 
 Troubadours, 369. 
 Turkish invasion, effect of, 406. 
 Turks, their origin, 403. 
 Tycho, 635. 
 Types, Platonic, 114. 
 Tyrians, their enterprise, 33. 
 Tyre, fall of, 59. 
 
 U. 
 
 Ulphilas invents an-alphabet, 272. 
 Under world, 29. 
 Undulatory theory, 606. 
 Uniformity, doctrine of, 564. 
 Unity of mankind, 8. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 631 
 
 Universe unchangeable, 79. 
 
 " its magnitude, '540. 
 Unreliability of sense, 90. 
 
 V. 
 Vandal attack, 242. 
 Van Helmont, 535. 
 Variation of species, 7. 
 Varro, 190. 
 Vasco de Gama, 448. 
 Vedaism, 42. 
 
 " its changes, 47. 
 Vedic, minor, doctrines, 45. 
 Venice, her commerce, 442. 
 Venus, light of, 549. 
 
 Vesicles, nerve, structure aiidfhnctionsof,581. 
 Vieta, 535. 
 
 Vinci, Leonardo da, 523. 
 Virgin Mary, model of, 267. 
 
 ' " worship of, 219. 
 
 Visconti, Barnabas, his irreverence, 395. 
 Vocabulary, Indo-Germanic, 23. 
 Volcanoes, 547. 
 
 Voyages and travels, minor, 453. 
 Vulgate, 226. 
 
 W. 
 War system, Koman, 185. 
 
 War, usages of, 496. 
 Water, chemical, 302. 
 
 " its composition, 600. 
 Watt invents the steam-engine, 610. 
 Week, origin of the, 299. 
 Weeping statues, 37. 
 Westphalia, peace of, 481. 
 WicUf, 398, 434. 
 Willis, 536. 
 Wind, nature of, 3, 597. 
 
 ' southwest, effects of, 18. 
 Winking pictures, 37. 
 Witchcraft, 410. 
 
 Women, condition of, in India, 46L 
 World, absorption of the, 167. 
 
 " end of the, 279, 544. 
 
 " origin of the, 161. 
 Worlds, succession of, 578. 
 
 Xantippe, 109. 
 Xenophanes, 87. 
 Xerxes, 96. 
 
 Zeno, 135. 
 
 ' the Eleatic, 90. 
 ZoingUus, 480. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Drajier's IntelleBual Development 
 of Europe. 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 
 OF EUROPE. Fourth Edition. By John William Draper, 
 M.D., LL.D., Profefsor of Chemiftry and Phyfiology in the 
 Univerfity of New York, Author of a "Treatise on Human 
 Phyfiology," "Thoughts on American Civil Policy," Text-Books 
 on Chemiftry and Natural Philosophy, &c. 8vo, Cloth, $5 oo. 
 
 The aim of this book is to show that the Civilization of Europe has not 
 proceeded in an arbitrary manner, or by chance, but that it has passed through 
 a determinate succession of stages, and has been developed according to nat- 
 ural law. 
 
 The author's mode of treating the subject is altogether from a scientific 
 point of view, and hence he is led to the consideration of many of those ques- 
 tions that have attracted public attention of late years so strongly. In this 
 respect, the work presents very great novelty ; yet it is composed in so popular 
 a style as to render it suitable not only for persons who delight in philosophical 
 reading, but likewise for students of history everywhere. 
 
 In the "United States at the present moment its publication can not but be 
 acceptable. Tliough written before our present troubles began, it is full of 
 principles and suggestions that every thoughtful reader will connect with the 
 great events 50W transpiring. It also, from the history of the past, in no in- 
 distinct manner foreshadows our future. 
 
 Scientific opinions are steadily exercising an ever-increasing power in Mod- 
 ern Civilization. They are beginning to modify political institutions. The 
 work of Dr. Draper is the first attempt that has been made to describe their 
 rise and progress, and how it is that in recent times they have acquired such 
 a wonderful influence. A growing want of some authentic exposition of them 
 has long been felt among intelligent readers. That want is here supplied, 
 with the advantage that ideas too generally serving only to provoke contention 
 are presented in a temperate manner, and discussed with a candor that can 
 not fail to command respect. 
 
 Extracts from Foreign Critical Kotices. 
 
 It is one of the not least remarkable achievenienta in the progress of the positive philosophy 
 that have yet heen made in the English tongue. A noble and even magniUcent attempt to 
 frame an induction from all the recorded phenomena of European, Asiatic, and North African 
 history. The strongly human sympathy and solicitude pervading this book is one of its most 
 entrancing charms. Unaccustomed though a reader might be to scientific habits of thought, or 
 uninterested in the gradual elaboration of eternal rules and principles, here he can at least dis- 
 port himself amid noble galleries of historical paintings, and thrill again at the vision of the 
 touching epochs that go to form the drama of the mighty European past. This is no dry enu- 
 meration of names and dates, no mere catalogue of isolated events and detached pieces of 
 heartless mechanism. Kathor does this ^rork come to us as a mystic harmony, blending into 
 
2 Draper^s Intellectual Development of Europe, 
 
 one the treasured records of unnumbered histories and biographies, the accumulated stores 
 of sciences the most opposed, and erudition the most incongruoua, now descending into slow 
 and solemn depths of tone, as sin, cruelty, intolerance, form the theme, now again lost in un- 
 approachahle raptures of sound, as true greatness* endurance, self-control, are reflected in the 
 grand turning-points of European story. 
 
 The hook of Dr. Draper is eminently encyclopsedSc. It ransacka every accredited science, 
 all the most recent discoveries, and every independent source of historical information. 
 
 "What Comte showed might and ought to he done for the whole world of Man, what Mr. 
 Buckle commenced for England, Scotland, France, and Spain, pr. Draper has effected for the 
 whole of Europe. The gigantic vastness of the task is almost paralysing, contained sjb is the 
 result in a very moderate space, hut it is done none the less carefully and thoroughly. 
 
 All the latest researches in history, all the most recent discoveries in the realms of geology, 
 mechanical science, natural science^ and language, every minute particular that can explain 
 or illustrate the general progress or all the European races from the most primitive ages, are 
 accurately and copiously detailed in their several relations. Nor is the author without such an 
 art of representation as can render a hook not only fluch as we ought to read, hut also such as 
 we like to read.— >re«(min«(er Eeview. 
 
 We proceed now to the agreeable task of giving some slight idea of the merits of this mag- 
 nificent woi'k. It is pre-emipently a practical book. The application of its arguments, its 
 erudition, and its proofe to the controversies and the needs of the social' state of the present can 
 be mistaken by no one. This great theme is well and worthily handled by Draper, To this 
 end the, eflforts of many of the highest minds of the dai.y.are converging,- effects at once and 
 causes of the progress of historical science. Our author thinks that a man must be satisfied if 
 only his book lives a little longer than himself. But the great generalizations he propounds will 
 not be so speedily surpassed. It is not, therefore, to he wondered at that the highest problems 
 of anthropology should be so well handled in the United States. We accept this book as an 
 earnest of what we may expect from the intellectual genius of that nation. — Anthropological 
 Review. 
 
 This, book is the most instructive and complete of all that have been yet written wilh a 
 similar ambition. It is no light commendation to say that its Execution is not altogether un- 
 equal to its magnitude, If it were equal, the world would place Dr. Draper on one of the 
 very highest pinnacles of intellectual achievement. His tenacity and completeness of grasp 
 makes itself felt for the most part on every page. It must he admitted that this treatise is one 
 of the best attempts to treat the entire history of man on a scientific theory, — Atbsnaewm. 
 
 In the special portions of his History Professor Draper displays remarkable industry, vigor, 
 and skill. His narration is accurate and graphic, and his grasp of historical truth powerful 
 and tenacious.. His work has thus a real value as a comprehensive summary of facta, apart 
 from the particular theories of philosophy which it is intended to u^YiolA.— Saturday Re- 
 view. 
 
 This work must speak for itself; and to those who admire clear and comprehensive details, 
 expressed in elegant language, and supported by consecutive ai'guments, it will he esteemed as 
 having completely exhausted the subject it is intended to elucidate. It mujjt take a popular 
 no less than a permanent stand. — BelVs Weekly, Messenger. 
 
 We heartily admire and recommend this book. It is the work of a really original mind, 
 and is executed with very great literary skill. The style is excellently adapted to the character 
 of tlie work. And every reader whq views the progress of mankind by, the jjowerful cross light 
 thrown on it by Dr. Draper will see much that he never saw before, and what he had seen be- 
 fore from a new pointof view. In conclusion we would say that these volumes must not be 
 supposed to be at all heavy reading ; on the contrary* they are very amusing. — Spectator. 
 
 This book is an emphatic testimony to the great truth proclaimed by an older and a better 
 book— that while the world by wisdom knows not God, yet it knows that human affairs are gov- 
 erned not by chance but by law, and therefore by the Divine will, of which law is the expres- 
 s[iou. — Christian Advocate and Review. 
 
 The hi story -ipriting in these volumes is admirably done. Regarded in this light they bear a 
 high value. The reader's interest can not but grow as he proceeds, since the style is direct 
 and clear, and the thought always of a kind to arouse and repay reflection.— I/ondon Daily 
 News. 
 
 There is enough in the work to engage the attention and command the admiration of the 
 reader. — London Some News. 
 
 Extracts from Critical Notices. 
 
 This is a work of which the brief space now at our command will not enable us to give the 
 measure. It covers the entire history of European progress. The author's endeavor is to 
 trace the action of primordial law to the general development of the race, and in the suc- 
 cessive stages of growth and decline that have marked the cpllective life of portions of the 
 race. To have made the attempt is of itself a great merit and a high achievement. This 
 work must take its place as among the most truly original profound, and- instructive contribu- 
 tions of the age in the department of speculative philosophy. — Xorth American Review. 
 
Draper's IntdUctuaL De velopment of Europe. 3 
 
 "^^unt the "HiBtory of the InteLtu.^^^^°7t;/-^t'Xof'hX,?; 
 ant contribution which hss been nwde ^Ly^^ 'SieoiVmay he dispnted by Bome, the gi-eat 
 -^rotr^ora^^'-SSS^^^cr.T.ir^Serhere^^^ le re«d.-..» ro.* 
 
 ^Sripe. ha. unae^tauen a ^eat ta.., hut In our Judgment he has whoily and 
 
 worthily axKompliahed it. Jistraction of civil war, such a work as this 
 
 It is gratifying that, amid all the t"™"'},^,?? it ? S the strongest meaning of the 
 can be fafely launched upon the sea •'iVf^'^^'^^l ^'.^i^'^L, J. the book will add 
 
 Sy\?tr;?erdneS™™^;eVfrCtt'or!lc^^^ 
 
 7t is a powerfully.written and closely^re^oned book, and is entitled to a place with the works 
 of Hallam, Guizot, and Buckle.— A'ew York Berald. 
 
 Professor Draper, who is probably one of the --'.J^'^^-'f XM^dVSwMoh 
 both physios and metaphysics of <*« P'^f °'^^J' "^^.'"J'^wM^an^^^^^ '"'4 »y»- 
 
 no other author of our tune has ventured '° ""^^'''f i^ * „na%nd analyzed certain histor- 
 tematic manner. Many have gone over a port'"^ iMeUectual pr™ and development, but 
 lCrat\rmXu^°if^S?vShetrr^^^^^ 
 
 "IS^a taok which every one should read wl«. aspires to leam not only the facts of history, 
 but theix moral and application.— Commerow J BvOetin. 
 
 This is intended as the completion of the ?»tto-s very aMe work on Iton^nPh^^^^ 
 It evinces the same profound and comprehensive views »-.°* ^^^Pl'^^^I^Ziuity, and lUns- 
 ing a ne* aspect of humanity, .«?* tl^* "e ^s c^ceived ^th tto^^^ 
 
 St'Cr^S^^^^tnrfS^S^Si K» 
 
 s^id^o^Si^r^sSt^rrfcis^iis^^^ 
 
 Professor Draper's " Human Physiology" has taken unqueBtioned rank aj one of the most pro- 
 found SfsSSve wS of the ageTTheohject of th^ was to treat f ^^^e devel^-P^fS^^f 
 mu M an ^l^dual. The present work treats of the developi^ent of the race. Warbnr- 
 Sn^a ^d\^ lSSl" is perhaps the only other book in which snch an immense mass of l^rn- 
 Sg and SrS expendfdin the eluci^tion and defense of two or three propositions wbich 
 ^n he Sed^ aa many scores of wordB.-Awrican Pvblisher^s Cirmlar and Literary 
 Qazette. 
 
 It traverses almost the whole range of literature and science, of human thought and prog- 
 ress, for upward of three thousand years ; and this in no superficial way, hut in the spirit of 
 scientific investigation, and with one object ever in view. 
 
 Aside from its main scope, there are particular sections of this book which are of great value 
 to the non-Bcientific reader. If one would study the progress of the sciences in their relation 
 to humanity, not even Whewell's IHstory of the Inductive Sciences will be so helpful to him as 
 Dr. Draper's Chapters on Astronomy, the History of the Earth, Animal Life, the Orgamc Se- 
 ries, &c. — Congregationalist 
 
 Scholars will be greatly interested in this book; and though they may dissent from the 
 theory, will acknowledge the author's industry and ability, and admire the perspicuity of its 
 style and the vigor of its thought.— Ziion'a Serald, 
 
 The very valuable and interesting work of Prof. Draper ftankly accepts the doctrine that the 
 development both of animal and intellectual life depends on physical conditions, and asserts 
 this position with a fertility of argument and a wealth of illustration which give it a com- 
 manding rank among similar treatises. "We can not call to mind an author who has stated 
 it with equal force, or shown himself so thoroughly master of that variety of scientific proof 
 which was needed to fortify it. There is at onca a freedom of handling, and a clear, earnest, 
 reverent tone in the discussion. The general sketch in the beginning of those physical condi- 
 tions which have shaped the' historic life of Europe is unsurpassed in clearness of outline and 
 comprehensive vigor of gi'asp. And the closing portion, which contains the scientific analogies 
 that justify his leading position — ^that the true doctrine of histoi-y or ethnology must be found- 
 ed on Physiology— has the independent force and value of an original argument. 
 
 The same vigorous independence of thought and facile wealth of illustration appear in the 
 treatment of historical periods, especially in the advance of philosophy and science. Massive 
 generalization, with a command of detail that pves vitality and inter^t to all the parts — the 
 magnetizing of facts by a powerful current of thought, is the highest quality that can be de- 
 manded in a work of this kind, and they are found to a rare and high degree in this pres- 
 ent treatise. We should point to it sooner than to any other we could name, to do the im- 
 portant service of crystallizing in the mind of a thoughtful person the loose aggi'egate of facts 
 gathered up in the course of much desultory reading before the age of twenty-five. And the 
 rather, because its independent and courageous temper is not marred, bo fSiV as we can observe, 
 by any irreverence or undue defiance of tone Christian Examiner. 
 
4 Draper* s Intellectual Development of Europe. 
 
 i^^ 
 
 In a merely paasing notice we can not expect to do juBtice to a work of such magnitude; 
 enough to note its leading idea, to sketch its plan, and cordially to commend it as rich in in- 
 struction and powerful in thought. 
 
 No reader, whether satisfied or doubtful of the Boundnesa of this theory, can faU to be im- 
 pressed by the comprehensive knowledge and intellectual vigor with which it is set forth. — 
 N. Y. Albion. 
 
 The work supplies a vacuum not before filled. Whewell's History of Science is the nearest 
 approach to it, but is too narrow, by reason of its technical character, to have met the demand. 
 The author has succeeded to a very remarkable extent in giving interest, and even vivacity 
 and picturesqueness, to that diyest of all historical presentments, a condensed statement cov- 
 ering large and disconnected tracts of time. — Littheran Observer. 
 
 This work is pi-operly the complement to Dr. Draper's "Human Physiology." In that work 
 man was considered as an individual, whose growth and decline are governed by fixed and 
 invariable laws. In this he is considei'ed in his social relations as a component part of a 
 nation or people. The proposition which Dr. Draper undertakes to demonstrate is, '■'• that so- 
 cial advancement is aa completely under the Control of law as is bodily growth : the life of 
 an individual is a miniature of^the life of a nation." To demonstrate the majesty of I^w in the 
 history of nations, the author brings an accumulation of learning and a wealth of illustration 
 for which we know of only tw6 parallels— Warhur ton's "Divine Legation of Moses" and 
 Buckle's " History of Civilization." Drl Warburton's immense learning was exhausted in 
 maintaining a proposition which nobody denied, with little bearing upon the disputable one, 
 which was essential to the validity of his argument, while Buckle was oppressed by the very 
 weight of his illustrative examples. Dr. Draper moves with ease and vigor under the weight 
 of his mighty panoply. He undertakes to give the histoiy of the development of Europe, 
 almost contemptuously ignoring the petty struggles of kings and emperors, touching upon them 
 only when they are exponents of thoughts and ideas. The grand conclusions are, that ''the 
 organization of public intellect is the end toward which' European Civilization is tending;'* 
 that "Europe is now entering on its mature phase of national life;" and that, '■^in an all-im- 
 portant particular, the prospect of Europe is bright. China is passing the last stage of civil 
 life in the cheerleasness of Buddhism; Europe approaches it through Christianity." We are 
 confident that this volume will be recognized as the great philosophical work ot the age.— 
 Harper's "Magazine. -j 
 
 Among the contributions to philosophic thought that iave appeared within the last few 
 years, few present stronger claims upon the attention of intelligent students than the present 
 work. The title opens at once the most imposing problems that can engage the human mind 
 — the progress of man — the conditions of his unfolding — the forces which impel it, and the ob- 
 stacles which impede it — the course and method of human evolution— these are the grave 
 questions discussed in this original and elaborate volume. 
 
 The exposition of the infiuence of the Arabs and Jews upon the intellectual development 
 of Europe, of the Italian system of civil and chui'ch polity in the European age of Faith, and 
 of the rise of independent inquiry ; the struggle of advancing opinions with eccleaiasticiem, 
 the origin of sciences, the extension of human knowledge and the consequent gradual regenera- 
 tion of society whiich characterized the European age of Keason — these form contributions to 
 the history of intellectual progress alike remarkable in wealth of erudition and comprehensive 
 vigor of statement. The peculiar claims of Professor Draper's work to an eminent place among 
 historic compositions are chiefiy those which arise from his view of the subject as a man of 
 science. At once and without hesitation he lays down the broad principle that the develop- 
 ment both of animal and intellectual life depends on physical conditions, and he has fortified 
 this position with a power of reasoning and a copiousness of illustration which have made the 
 argument peculiarly his own. His work introduces more of nature into history than any of its 
 predecessors. Rising to the clear and steady conception of a comprehensive immutable order 
 in nature, he regards the development of the human min^ as but part of that order, to be in- 
 terpreted only in connection with the all-pervading scheme. It is written in a singularly 
 clear and attractive style, often rising into a vivid eloquence. Indeed there runs through it 
 a vein of genuine poetry wjiich shows that the cultivation of exact science is not necessarily 
 hostile to imagination and a deep sense of beauty. — X. V. Tribxuie. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York. 
 
 Sent by Mail, postage free, on receipt of the price. 
 
"INCOMPARABLY THE BEST WORK ON THE SUBJECT." 
 
 Draper's Physiology. 
 
 HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY, STATICAL AND DYNAMICAL; 
 or. The Conditions and Cpurse of tlie Life of Man : Being the 
 Text of the Leftures delivered in the Medical Department of the 
 University. By John- William Draper, M.D., LL.D., Profefsor 
 of Chemiftry and Phyfiology in the University of New York ; 
 Author of "Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America," 
 "A Hiftory of the Intelleftual Development of Europe," Text- 
 Books on Chemiftry and Natural Philosophy, &c. Illuftrated by 
 nearly 300 Fine Woodcuts from Photographs. 8vo, 650 pages. 
 Cloth, $5 00; Sheep, $5 50. 
 
 The favorable reception which has been given to this work by the Public 
 and the Medical Profession, both in America and Europe, prwes how com- 
 pletely it has accomplished its object of bringing the science on which it ti-eats 
 to the comprehension of the general reader without any sacrifice of its high 
 scientific position. As a representation of the present state of Phj'siology, 
 embodying all the recent foreign discoveries in a form not otherwise accessible 
 to the student, it has been adopted as a text-book in a majority of American 
 Colleges. 
 
 Great, however, as its success in that respect has been, the favor extended 
 to it by the reading and educated classes genei-ally is still more striking. They 
 have appreciated the manner in which it brings knowledge on a subject of the 
 highest importance to the well-being of society to the easy comprehension of 
 persons not familiar with medical matters. They have found it to be a book 
 not alone adapted to the University or College, but suited to the instruction 
 of every head of a family. The numerous photographic engravings it con- 
 tains tend greatly to a clear illustration of the various topics it discusses, en- 
 abling those who have only the opportunity of casual study to follow the Au- 
 thor in his descriptions without any difficulty. 
 
 Of all the sciences, none comes more closely hoine to us than Physiology. 
 It explains to us how "fearfully and wonderfully we are made," teaches us 
 how the various parts of our system act in a state of health, and enables us 
 to understand the causes of our ailments and diseases. There is no class of 
 society, and, indeed, no individual, who may not profitably become acquainted 
 with it. li ii?, therefore, to the general reader, as well as the profession, that 
 this book is offered. 
 
Draper's Physiology, 
 
 A book that is full of interest, containing many striking vievsand novel experimental illuB- 
 trationg. We make our sincere acknowledgments to the author for the freeh contributions he 
 has furnished to our knowledge of the laws of life, and the new impulse he has imparted to the 
 study of its mysteries. ■ It is full and thorough beyond all previous treatises that we have seen. 
 As to descriptive detail and the entire theory of organization, it comprehends the latest dis- 
 coveriea and embodies the latest conclaeions of science.— A'ort A Avtierican Review. 
 
 It is an original and interesting work, rich in expeiiment, fertile in suggestion, and scholar- 
 like in composition. — Boston Medical and Surgical Journtu. 
 
 We rise from the survey of thi^ work with an impression of its great power and value. We are 
 satisfied that Draper's Physiology will take an important place at once, and will add one more 
 to the number of American text-books which may be placed side by side with the best of those 
 obtained from abroad Philadelphia Medical Examiner. 
 
 Dr. Draper's Physiology, is perhaps the greatest work ever issued from the American press. 
 It ranks with the kindred (German) work of Lehman, but is much more readable and plain. 
 The reading and studying of it is worth the reading and studying all the medical pmctices of 
 the last quarter of a century.— (Si. Louis Medical and Surgical Joum^L 
 
 Written in an easy, fluent style, it is a work that deserves to be in the library of every 
 student.— iojidon Atheneeum. 
 
 A profound and comprehensive treatise of man's physical life through all Its changes — a work 
 highly honorable to himself and his profession — London Eclectic Re-mew. 
 
 This work has all the graphic distinctness of oral teaching. — London Economic. 
 
 As a book for occasional reference it 'will be prized by every well-informed person.— Zondon 
 Standard. 
 
 Its arrangement is original, and in its width of view it stands first of our physiological 
 treatiaes.-r-i*ondQn Medical Times and Gazette. 
 
 Probably the best work of the kind before the public. — Christian Chronicle (Philadelphia), 
 " Compact and lucid, it embraces an immense amount of most interesting and valuable matter. 
 
 The great amount of information logically arranged and clearly stated in this comprehensive 
 yet compact work renders it pre-eminently fit to be adopted as a text-book in all institutions 
 of learning in which Physiology forms pai t of a course of instiiiction, and gener^ readers will 
 find it the most interesting and useful compendium of the science for private stu^y. — New York 
 Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 It constitutes an admirable book for students while in attendance on lectures,; at the same 
 time it will be found well adapted to the general student, who is without an oral feacher, and 
 yet is seeking to know and understand the physical laws of his being — Amencan Medical 
 Gazette. 
 
 Far above elementary works in scope and character, it seems fitted to secure a wide circula- 
 tion. — London Examiner. 
 
 It would do excellent sei*vice as a text-book in schools and colleges, and is a valuable contri- 
 bution to every library in the country. — A'eio York Chronicle. '^ 
 
 It is the largest and most complete treatise on Physiology ever published in our country, and 
 will be received and honored as a standard of high authority in colleges and academies, and 
 among professional men.— PAitode^Aia Christian Observer. 
 
 A complete exposition of the science in its present state, embracing the latest views publish- 
 ed in France, England, and Germany, adapted to professional and non-professional readers. — 
 Hartford Religious Herald. 
 
 Beyond question the best presentation of this great subject accessible to the mass of Amer- 
 ican students .Richmond Central Presbyterian. 
 
 We should be sorry to see its knowledge confined to the collegiate class, when a diffusion of 
 more accurate physiological knowledge, even among our educated classes, is exceedingly de- 
 sirable. — Protestant Churchman. 
 
 The Pupils of our public and private schopls, who have been well drilled in the school phys- 
 iologies, will take gi'eat interest in pursuing the subject in this more extended treatise. — Mem- 
 phis Medical Recorder. 
 
 Iff can not fail to be useful to the physician and student, and deserves a place in colleges and 
 libraries. — Lutheran Observer. 
 
 To the scholar it will exhibit the progress of the physical'sciences in connection with the 
 human organization. To all it will convey, in a readable form, the doctrines and facts of 
 physiology. — Larwa^ter Independent Whig. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 Sent by mail, postage free, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price^ 
 
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 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 ^" Harper & BKOrnEES will send tlmr Books by Jfazi, 2'ostage free^ to any part of the 
 United Statest on receipt of the Price, 
 
 !^" Habpeb's Catalogue and new Tbade-Libt may be obtained gratuitously, on application 
 to tlie Publishers psrsowiUy, or by letter, enclosing Five Cents. 
 
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 By His Imperial Majesty Napoleon III. Vol. I. A new Elegant 
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 with Portrait and Colored Maps. 480 pages, 8vo, Cloth, $3 50. 
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