0t t\xt PRINCETON, N. J. HQ 734 . C84 1879 Cook, Joseph, 1838-1901. Marriage Section .. . Shelf . Number ' V-fTv • V • . - , ' , ■ ( J " • * - ‘ ' . . - - ’ . i V . , ' V ' • ■ . ■ • • 1/. A • . • . • " . . ■ • - ■ . , * ■ v _ ; -/■ ' r , • . . * 1 - , . ’ t, s . . At ^ . ■ / . / : ' - •* • * Sej f i ■ ■ i . ,A | • • '' . - /■ .. ^ vC \ ■ ■ 1 t s • l * ' .. r* ' r - % / I * V Boston Monday Lectures. BY JOSEPH COOK. BIOLOGY. With Preludes on Current Events. Three Colored Illustrations. 12mo. Sixteenth thousand . $1.50 TRANSCENDENTALISM. With Preludes on Current Events. 12mo. Eleventh thousand . 1.50 ORTHODOXY. With Preludes on Current Events. Sixth thousand . . 1.50 CONSCIENCE. With Preludes on Current Events. Fourth thousand . . 1.50 HEREDITY. With Preludes on Current Events. (Just ready.) . . . 1.50 MARRIAGE. With Preludes on Current Events. (Just ready.) . . . 1.50 “I do not know of any work on Conscience in which the true theory of ethics is*o clearly and forcibly presented, together with the logical inferences from it in support of the great truths of religion. The review of the whimsical and shallow speculations of Matthew Arnold is especially able and 6atisiactory.” — Professor Francis Bowen, Harvard Univer¬ sity. ‘•These Lectures arc crowded so full of knowledge, of thought, of argument, illumined with such passages of eloquence and power, spiced so frequently with deep-cutting though good-natured irony, that I could make no abstract from them without utterly mutilating them.” — Rev. Dr. Thomas Hill, ex- President of Harvard University, in Christian Register. “Joseph Cook is a phenomenon to be accounted for. No other American orator has done what he has done, or any tiling like it; and, prior to the experiment, no voice would have been bold enough to predict its success.” — Rev. Professor A.P. Peabody of Harvard University. “ Mr. Cook is a specialist. His work, as it now stands, represents fairly the very latest and best researches.” — George 31. Beard, 31. D., of Few York. “By far the most satisfactory of recent discussions in this field, both in method and execution.” — Professor Borden P. Bourne of Boston University. “ Mr. Cook is a great master of analysis. lie shows singular justness of view in his manner of treating the most difficult and perplexing themes.’’ — Princeton Review. “The Lectures are remarkably eloquent, vigorous, and powerful.” — R. Payne Smith , Dean of Canterbury. “They are wonderful specimens of shrewd, clear, and vigorous thinking.” — Rev. Dr. Angus, the College, Regent's Park. “These are very wonderful Lectures.” — Rev. C. IT. Spurgeon. “Traversing a very wide field, cutting right across the territories of rival specialists, the work on Biology contains not one important scientific misstatement, either of fact or theory.” — Bibliotheca Sacra. “ Vigorous and suggestive. Interesting from the glimpses they give of the present phases of speculation in what is emphatically the most thoughtful community in the United States.” — London Spectator. “ I admired the rhetorical power witli which, before a large mixed audience, the speaker knew how to handle the difficult topic of biology, and to cause the teaching of German philosophers and theologians to be respected.” — Professor Schoberlein, of Gottingen Uni¬ versity. “ II is object is the foundation of a new and true metaphysics resting on a biological basis, that is the proof of the truth of philosophical theism, and of the fundamental ideas of Christianity. These intentions he carries out with a full, and occasionally witli a too full, application of his eminent oratorical talent, and with great sagacity and thorough knowledge of the leading works in physiology for the last thirty years.” — Professor Ulrici, University of Halle, Germany. HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO., Publishers. Boston Monday Lectures. MARRIAGE, WITH PRELUDES ON CURRENT EVENTS. By JOSEPH COOK. Mer Slnfang ift fdjtoer, ant fdjtoerjien ber tttnfang ber SBirtfjfdjaft. ______ - — •' ' '"“Goethe. BOSTON: HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY. QLl )t Etoemfce Jprefitf, Camfcrtfise. 1879. Copyright, 1879, By JOSEPH COOK. All rights reserved . Stereotyped and Printed By Ra?id, Avery, Company, Z17 Franklin Street, Boston. INTRODUCTION. The object of the Boston Monday Lectures is to present the results of the freshest German, English, and American scholar¬ ship, on the more important and difficult topics concerning the relation of Religion and Science. They were begun in the Meionaon in 1875 ; and the audiences, gathered at noon on Mondays, were of such size as to need to be transferred to Park-street Church in October, 1876, and thence to Tremont Temple, which was often more than full during the win¬ ter of 1876-77, and in that of 1S77-78. The audiences contained large numbers of ministers, teachers, and other educated men. The thirty-five lectures given in 1876-77 were reported in the Boston Daily Advertiser, by Mr. J. E. Bacon, stenographer ; and most of them were republished in full in New York and Lon¬ don. They are contained in the first, second, and third volumes of “Boston Monday Lectures,” entitled “Biology,” “Transcen¬ dentalism,” and “Orthodoxy.” The lectures on Biology oppose the materialistic, and not the theistic, theory of evolution. The lectures on Transcendentalism and Orthodoxy contain a discussion of the views of Theodore Parker. The thirty lectures given in 1877-78 were reported by Mr. Bacon, for the Advertiser, and republished in full in New York and Lon¬ don. They are contained in the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes of “Boston Monday Lectures,” entitled “Conscience,” “Hered¬ ity,” and “Marriage.” In the present volume some of the salient points are : — 1. The employment of natural law only as the basis of the justi¬ fication of sound views as to marriage. v VI INTRODUCTION. 2. The empanelling of a jury consisting chiefly of pagan arbi¬ trators, to decide what the teaching of natural law is as to mar¬ riage (Lectures I. and II.). 3. The presentation of scientific and unscientific contrasted propositions to this unprejudiced jury or symposium, supposed to be assembled in Pliny’s villa in Italy. 4. The swift refusal of the symposium to admit to its hospital¬ ity the supporters of the infidel attack on the family. 5. The discussion before the jury of lax divorce-laws (Lecture IV.). 6. An examination of the obstacles to marriage (Lecture V.). 7. A discussion of elective affinities from Goethe’s point of view (Lecture VII.). 8. A study of woman’s nature as exhibited in literature, espe¬ cially in Shakspeare, Goethe, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, and Plato (Lecture VIII.). 9. An examination of the laws of morbid alterations in the blood (Lectures IX. and X.). 10. A study of the pre-natal influences which connect the topic of Marriage with that of Heredity (Lectures IX. and X.). The committee having charge of the Boston Monday Lectures for the coming year consists of the following gentlemen : — Hon. A. H. Rice, Ex-Governor of Mas¬ sachusetts. Hon. William Claflin, Ex-Governor of Massachusetts. Prof. E. P. Gould, Newton Theologi¬ cal Institution. Rev. William M. Baker, D.D. Rev. William F. Warren, D.D., Bos¬ ton University. Prof. L. T. Townsend, Boston Univer¬ sity. E. M. McPherson. Robert Gilchrist. Prof. George Z. Gray, D.D., Episco¬ pal Theological School, Cambridge. Prof. Edwards A. Park, D.D., An- dover Theological Seminary. Right Rev. Bishop Paddock. Prof. E. N. Horsford. Hon. Alpheus Hardy. Rev. J. L. Withrow, D.D. A. Bronson Alcott. Russell Sturgis, Jr. Right Rev. Bishop Foster. Reuben Crooke. Samuel Johnson. William B. Merrill. Prof. B. P. Bowne. M. R. Deming, Secretary. B. W. Williams, Financial Agent. HENRY F. DURANT, Chairman. I CONTENTS. LECTURES. PAGE I. Infidel Attack on the Family . 13 II. A Supreme Affection between Two .... 39 III. The Leper’s Theory and Practice . 71 * IY. Marriage without Love . 101 Y. Obstacles to Marriage . 129 YI. Love without Marriage . 155 YII. Elective Affinities; or, Who should Marry Whom? . 180 YIII. Goethe and Shakspeare on Marriage . . . 205 IX. Inherited Educational Forces . 232 X. Hereditary Taints in Blood . 257 PRELUDES PAGE I. The Reformation of Romanism . 3 / II. American Bondage to the Uneducated ... 29 III. Ruskin’s Character and Writings . 63 IY. Falstaff and Lord Yerisopht as Theologians, 89 Y. Why am I not a Universalist? . 115 YI. Cause and Effect in the Soul’s Future . . 143 YII. Equal Educational Rights for Black and White . - . 169 YIII. Literary Conferences at World’s Exhibitions, 199 IX. Yirchow’s Reply to Hackel’s Materialism . 225 X. What lies behind the Key-Board of the Nerves? . 251 ix PUBLISHERS’ NOTE. In the careful reports of Mr. Cook’s Lectures printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, were included by the stenographer sundry expressions (applause, &c.) indicat¬ ing the immediate and varjfing impressions with which the Lectures were received. Though these reports have been thoroughly revised by the author, the publishers have thought it advisable to retain these expressions. Mr. Cook’s audiences included, in large numbers, representa¬ tives of the broadest scholarship, the profoundest philoso¬ phy, the acutest scientific research, and generally of the finest intellectual culture, of Boston and New England ; and it has seemed admissible to allow the larger assembly to which these Lectures are now addressed to know how they were received by such audiences as those to which they were originally delivered. V-"'''— C1 ~~***d*T n §a y\A> I. INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. THE ONE HUNDRED AND FIRST LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, FEB. 18. vo<4Jjl " «-~o wOr )b rT Y 5 " " ' v'*> yif . P S&A^-v ■V\_V~v'"v (r~kJt *' v •Wx (J iAA- • A, ■ -h A \ r ■■ * , 4 ^ '* ■ # fr o i (H * V V 1/ a CW . \ JT* a* r'VKf f 1 tV T 1 'Iv, UvA> To a man who is in love, the thought of another woman is uninteresting, if not repulsive. Instead of love being the occasion of all the misery of this world, as is sung by fantastic hards, I believe that the misery of this world is occasioned by there not being love enough. — Lord Beaconsfield: Contarini Fleming , iii. 17. ’ATieTTTVG’ avrrjVy rjng uvdpa jov nupog Kaivolat Tie ktpolq ano[3a?.ovo’ aKKov &i\d. Euripides: Troad, 660. MARRIAGE. - o - - I. INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. If the Pope is infallible, he is irreformable except by death and a successor. Although it is difficult to bend any one link in the papal chain, its succession of links may easily change its direction. In spite of the infallibility of the Papacy, the fallible elections in which the Popes are chosen are a succession of links; and every election of an incumbent of the great chair at St. Peter’s is an opportunity for changing the direction of the chain. History exhibits curious alterations in the policy of the Papacy, and proves that its mediaeval armor is far from being wholly impervious to the heavier weapons of military and political necessity, however true it may be that the clouds of the lighter arrows of modern discussion drop off its breastplate like so much futile rain. Let us thank God that no Julius II., and no Leo X., who 4 MARRIAGE. thought more of art than of the 44 fables concerning Christ,” could now be elected to the chair in the Vatican. This result has been effected by the pres¬ sure of scholarly discussion upon Romanism. The continuance of that pressure will not be without vic¬ torious effects in time to come. We cannot exter¬ minate the Roman Catholic Church, nor very easily change its name. For one, I think that it may be in existence twenty centuries hence, or when Mac¬ aulay’s New Zealander, in the midst of a vast sol¬ itude, shall take his position on the remnant of some arch of the London Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s. If Romanism is not likely to change its name, can it not change its nature ? The proverb says that Catholicity is the strength of Romanism, but that Romanism is the weakness of Catholicity. What if Protestantism should set her¬ self vehemently to the task of fostering Catholicity inside of Romanism, by taking the position of the old Catholics, and opposing, as vigorously as in Luther’s day, not Romanists, but Romanism? Will not that be the strategic line of effort for changing an in¬ fallible Pope? The system of ecclesiastical order perfected by the management of Italians is by some regarded as a greater triumph of the genius of the people of the peninsula south of the Alps than was the Roman Empire. It is to be remembered that two hundred millions, or very nearly that number, profess the Romish faith. Certain it is that church machinery has never had in history such colossal power as that INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 5 which is represented by the 122 vicars, the 693 bish¬ ops, the 183 archbishops, all obedient in every part of the world to the slightest beckoning of the Pope’s finger on the Tiber. The temporal power is not likely to be insisted on with such untimely empha¬ sis in the future as it has been in the past. Political interference with strong nations is likely to become unfashionable, even with Vatican Romanism. Pius IX. was himself a reformer in his youth. It is supposed that he never quite gave up his zeal for Italian unity. Of course so many men who were not religious defended the political enterprise which Garibaldi led, and which finally the brave Victor Emmanuel carried to success, that a Pope pledged to conservatism could not very well appear at its front. It is not surprising that Pius IX., soon after his succession to the papal chair, was thrown into the background, instead of being placed in the fore¬ ground of political reforms. But it is said, in spite of the fulminations he now and then officially issued against Victor Emmanuel, that he retained always his friendship for that king. Certain it is that Italy had in it combustible material both for moral and political reforms ; but Romanism did not kindle it. What is Protestantism not doing that it could do for the Romish nations of the globe? What is their condition ? Glance from St. Peter’s around the planet, and compare Catholic countries with Protes¬ tant. Let us not forget King Bomba. Let us not for¬ get how Italy has been sliced and peeled and seared. But, every thing considered, has Italy suffered more 6 MARRIAGE. since Luther’s time than Germany did under the Thirty Years’ War? Have cannon-wheels and sabres injured her more since the period of the Reformation than they have injured Germany ? Has she been the battlefield of all the European wars, as Germany has been? Where are the demoralizing influences in Italy to account for her inferiority to Prussia to-day as a moral, intellectual, and political force on the globe ? Put into contrast Italy and Prussia. North Germany, as compared with Italy, has many physical disadvantages, — a poor soil, an inclement climate. We know what the German universities are, as compared with the Italian ; what German literature is, as compared with the Italian in the last hundred years. I was assured in Rome by a most scholarly and painstaking Italian statistician, that when the Papal states, in which the Pope had his own way, fell into the hands of Victor Emmanuel, a less proportion of the adult inhabitants could read and write than in the darkest provinces of Spain. Contrast Spain with England, or Portugal with Scotland. Edmund Burke called Spain a stranded whale on the coast of Europe. Why has it not had recuperative force enough to flounder back into the sea ? How is it that Protestant nations not greatly favored by climate or position strike into the van¬ guard of progress, while the most favored, semi- tropical Catholic countries drop behind, fall into ignorance, pauperism, general decay, and exhibit so little recuperative force ? Compare the Catholic and Protestant cantons of Switzerland. Dickens INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 7 says you would perceive the difference in their condition, even if you walked across the borders between them in the night. Do you say that climate is against the semi-tropical territories of the Latin races? Very well: cross the ocean, and study Canada. It has two ends, an east¬ ern and a western, and the climate does not differ vastly in the two sections ; but the state of society does ! It has been my fortune to be mobbed on the St. Lawrence for temperately asserting in defence of a Protestant colportor, who was my companion, that I did not believe that a priest could raise the dead. I have travelled, I suppose, a hundred miles on foot along the banks of the St. Lawrence, and not been able to find a single cottage of an habitant — this was twenty years ago — in which I could have obtained an amanuensis to write a letter to my friends, if I had been too sick to write one myself, or have found a Bible in the vernacular tongue. One is surprised in Canada to this moment, in the eastern and Romish portion of the Dominion, to find the rural population very largely in a state of prolonged childhood, just such as characterizes the agricultural populations of Italy and South Germany and Austria. In Western Canada we have the brain of the Domin¬ ion, and a heart and enterprise that are reaching out their arms to clasp Manitoba and the fat valley of the Saskatchewan and the Pacific. Western Canada is a Protestant region ; and its recuperative force, its pro¬ gressive valor, contrast sharply with the lassitude of Eastern Canada, and result very largely from its 8 MARRIAGE. different church life. I know how beautiful the shores of a portion of the eastern provinces have been made by the marvellous local sorcery cast upon them in a famous New-England poem. An Evangeline, indeed, may be born in a Catholic province ; but, if you come closely into contact with the social life of the villages of the type of Grand Pr6, you will find that, little by little, they lose their hold upon your fancy. Little by little, as stories, probably not well authenticated in nine cases out of ten, but with something behind them in one case out of ten, remind you of charges which caused a convent to be burned once yonder in sight of Bunker Hill, you begin to doubt whether it. is best, after all, to bring up young men and maidens in an undisturbed Romish style. The truth is, that to-day, in Eastern Canada, the progress of the newspaper press in popular influence, and the advance of education, are preparing a large revolt against priestly power. There is hardly a more promising field on this continent for Protestant effort than Lower Canada in its present gradual emergence from a state of subserviency to Romanism, and in its contagious quickening by the Protestant spirit of education and self-rule. We have many faults which I hope the Canadian Romanist will not copy. The Catholic peasant of Eastern Canada is reverent ; he is docile under religious instruction ; he is cheerful under hard tasks ; he is not without vague religious aspirations, which seem to h^ve come down to him by hereditary descent. But he is at the same time INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 9 choked by ignorance and, in many cases, by subser¬ viency to superstition. It was my fortune once to ride from Pointe-aux-Trembles to Montreal, when a driver said to me, “ Do you notice how the fields are left desolate on account of the grasshopper scourge?” — “Yes, sir.” — Do you know that last summer we implored the aid of our priests to rid us of this plague ? ” — “ No, sir.” — “ Well, you should know what these small buildings placed at intervals at the side of the way were made for. The priests offered prayer in them when the grasshopper plague was here last summer. They came into these struc¬ tures by the roadside, and burned incense, and of¬ fered prayers.” The man was perfectly in earnest, and thoroughly honest. “ And, sir, the grasshoppers began to leap over each other in billows. They had eaten up the very fences previous to the swinging of the censers; but they jumped over and over and over each other and away from the censers, until there was not a grasshopper left on our fields.” — “ Why have you not swung the censers this season?” — “It is for our sins. The priests will not interfere.” I was then within sixty miles of the United States. Who does not see that, in the present posture of the Latin and the Saxon races, so far as they are touched by Romanism, we have a loud call for the inspiriting of all Protestant endeavor in the Latin nations? Where are the men to go to Mexico to occupy to the full the opportunity opening there? In Colorado there is now in process of construction a college which hopes to stand as a lighthouse for the 10 MARRIAGE. range of the Rocky Mountains and the great valley between the Sierras and Colorado. Conversing lately with its president and with a bishop from Mexico, I found a concert of action between Protes¬ tants in that southern nation and in the western por¬ tion of our own, for spreading abroad the light through the desolate valley of the Colorado, and southward into the sandy stretches of Northern Mex¬ ico, and then upward to those highlands of Central Mexico, which are ultimately to contain a great population. A railway is being built southward from Denver, and will reach, before many years, the city of the Montezumas. It will awaken the Spanish villages on its route. How sublime is the duty of lighting college beacons to blaze afar from the Rocky Mountains and the Mexican heights ! “We have,” says President Tenney, “ mediaeval Spanish Catholi¬ cism voting in Colorado. If the Spirit of the Lord descends with tongues of fire on a Christian college in the New West, it is likely that one of the tongues will be Spanish.” (Tenney, E. P., President of Colo¬ rado College, The Neiv West , pp. 39, 40. 'Boston, 1878.) Where are the men who can fill up the openings in Lower Canada ? Where are the men to teach a pure gospel in Portugal and in Spain ? Where are the men that can carry the light of Protestantism to the very edges of the windows of the Vatican, open the Scriptures under the dome of St. Peter’s, and show Rome what she never has seen, a Protes- tanfc church of great power doing its duty thoroughly ? [Applause.] INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 11. Go to the secretaries who are watching the Latin races in their relations to Romanism. Ascertain the sehret whisper of experts on this theme. It is that Romanism at’ this moment is discouraged on account of the number of defections from Romanism in the Latin races. . In Spain, in Portugal, in Italy, in Mex¬ ico, there are great stretches of popular, to say noth¬ ing of educated, defection. The word of the hour with the Jesuit party is, “Let us occupy the Saxon zone. Let us remember what support we have had from perverts in the last fifty years. A Newman, a Bronson, a Cardinal Manning, a Tractarian party in Oxford and elsewhere, have been our most effective apologists. Let us remember that the future church of the globe is in the hands of Saxon nations. As we are failing to hold our own zone of the Latin centres, let us make an attack, not only upon the religious faith, but upon the political quiet, of Ger¬ many, of Scotland, of England, and of the United States. We Jesuits have had a bad name since Pas¬ cal wrote his Provencal letters ; but we once knew how to manage courts, and shall we not learn how to manage political parties ? Once we led because we were better teachers than other men : shall we not lead now because we are better politicians? Who does not know that the world is more and more governed by popular suffrage ? Who does not know that two hundred million people are behind us, and have hitherto followed our political as well as reli¬ gious bidding ? Who does not know, that, if a politi¬ cian sees in our hands the power to mass the Romish 12 MARRIAGE. vote, lie is ours, unless lie is more honest than most politicians are?” [Applause.] This soliloquy of the Jesuit power is heard oftener on the Tiber than we think. It seems to have been overheard by Bis¬ marck and Gladstone, but not by America. It is the explanation of the Pope’s remark that America is the hope of Romanism. Its success is expected here through the political worth of the Romish vote in the quarrels of American parties. [Applause.] There is no way of intimidating politicians of the unscrupulous sort, except by massing votes; and there is no way to mass votes, except by agitation. We must, therefore, occasionally, difficult as the topic is, speak very frankly as to the divided alle¬ giance of Romanists. The creed of Pope Pius IV. is put for subscription before every priest and every bishop. Every convert to Romanism must signify his assent to it. One of its sections reads, “I do give allegiance to the bishop of Rome;” and the sense is, “I do give political as well as religious allegiance.” Let us remember, however, that a great body of the Romish Church in republican countries is edu¬ cated by general custom into distrust of priestly rule. Let us stand by the Roman laity when they do not stand by their oath of allegiance to the bishop on the Tiber. [Applause.] Let us take Bismarck and Gladstone for our leaders in regard to all domestic remedies against Catholic usurpation and disloyalty. [Applause.] Let us have it understood from the first, that there are some ecclesiastical political ma- INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 13 noeuvres which cannot be carried through in America, nor even begun, without a protest that will amount to an explosion. [Applause.] THE LECTURE. After the Greek reformer Phocion, who resembles our Washington, had drunk the hemlock, the politi¬ cal party which had put him to death refused him burial in Attic soil. No Athenian was permitted to kindle the funeral pyre on which he was to be laid ; none who belonged to Attica dared assist at his funeral. The ages remember Phocion. They ought not to forget his wife. Eleusis lies not a dozen miles to the west from Athens, and many of you have seen the white sacred road which leads through the pass of Daphne from the Acropolis to that city. In the concealment of evening the wife of Phocion, with her handmaids, and with a man whose name Plu¬ tarch has preserved for us as Canopion, went through the groves in which Plato had taught his scholars ; ascended the pass of Daphne in the midnight, came down on the other side, found the border-line be¬ tween Attica and Megara, took Phocion’s remains over the border, obtained fire from beyond the fron¬ tier of Megara to light the funeral pile ; and, when the obsequies were completed, erected there an empty tomb, and performed the customary libations. Then the wife gathered up the bones of Phocion in her lap, carried them back by night to her own house in Athens, and buried them, says Plutarch, under the hearthstone, and uttered over them this prayer: 14 MAEEIAGE. “Blessed hearth, to your custody I commit the re¬ mains of a good and brave man ; and, I beseech you, protect and restore them to the sepulchre of his fathers when the Athenians return to their right minds.” (Plutaech’s Lives , Phocion, at the end. Dryden’s translation, ed. by Clough.) That was in the year 317, before Christ. The memory of this scene has been authentically preserved for us more than two thousand years. Has paganism any ideals as to the family? Has human nature any crystalline waters bursting out from those arid rocks which lie beyond the range of the falling showers of Christianity? Certain it is, that if we go out boldly upon the desolate pagan waste, and study the waters that burst forth, not from the swamps that lie on the surface, not from any oozy region where the mere sediment of discussion settles, and where the amphibious croaking troops of slimy leprosy have their home, but go out until we find the waters that burst from the lowest, innermost depths of the pagan native granite, the quality of that sweet crystalline water, and of the water that drops in showers from the Christian heavens, will be found to be the same. [Applause.] Xenophon tells us of Cyrus, and we remember him ; but the centuries ought not to forget Panthea, who was once a captive of this king. She had op¬ portunity to desert her husband for any life she pleased to choose, even were it that of a queen in the court of Cyrus. Xenophon, an old Greek who had heard nothing of Christianity, sits down to write a INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 15 romance, stating what man ought to be. He tells the story of this Panthea to illustrate his ideal of family life. The woman was the wife of Abradatus, and she had married him with a supreme affection. When she became the captive of Cyrus, the king asked her where her home was. “ On the bosom of my husband,” was in substance her answer. “Do you wish to return home in spite of the possibilities before you here ? ” — “ Send me swiftly.” When she had been restored by Cyrus to Abradatus, she was desirous of showing her gratitude, and so induced her husband to enter the army of Cyrus, and defend that king in battle. As her husband was about leaving her, she brought him what she had secretly pre¬ pared, a set of ornaments for his armor. She had a helmet also, and breastplate and greaves, and put upon him gloves which had been filled with iron, links by her own hands. She said, “If ever there was a woman that regarded her husband more than her own soul, I am that woman.” This is Xeno¬ phon’s language ( Cyropedia , book vi. chap. iv.). Here is a spring bursting out of the depths of pagan soil. Notice its quality. If you see its flashing here, and are dazzled by it, look into the original documents, and you will be dazzled yet more. She put upon her husband the armor, and said, “ Although I care more for you than for my soul, I certainly would rather choose to be put under ground jointly with you, while you approve yourself a brave man, than to live dishonored with you in dishonor ; so much do I think you and myself worthy of the noblest things.” 16 MARRIAGE. Then the door was shut, and she kissed the chariot seat; and, as it moved away*, she followed after it unperceived until Abradatus, looking back, said, “Take courage, Panthea. Farewell; and now re¬ turn.” After the battle the news came of the death of Abradatus. She had his corpse brought to the river Pactolus. She caused it to be prepared for burial ; she sat down beside it ; she covered her face ; she put her face upon her knees. Cyrus came, Xenophon says, and, looking upon the scene wept, and then took hold of the right hand of Abradatus, as it lay there a part of the remains, and the hand came off the arm. “Why need you disturb him?” said the woman. “ The rest of the body is in the same condition.” And she took the hand from Cyrus, and kissed it, and put it back upon the wrist, and covered the face of her husband and her own. When Cyrus began to renew his offers, and assured her that she should not want honor, and asked where she wished to be conveyed, she said, “ Be assured, sir, that I will not conceal from jrou to whom it is that I desire to go.” (Cyropedia, book vii. chap, iii.) She begged then to be left alone, even by her servants. One maid remained with her. I cannot justify Pan¬ thea in every thing. She had been brought up to the stern opinions which sanctioned suicide. What she did was to tell her maid to cover her in the same mantle with her husband; then she smote herself, put her head upon his breast, and fell asleep. Great Nature is in that! You wish me to teach what science proclaims concerning family life ! I INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 17 must ask you to go back to the deepest springs of human experience. These women, Phocion’s wife and the wife of Abradatus, are sisters to us all, and helpers to every age. They are crystalline water bursting up from the innermost rifts of human nature and society, and one in its purity with that rain which falls on all the hills, and is the real source, after all, of every one of these crystalline springs. [Applause.] Well, but you say, Lord Byron has taught us that somewhere a Christian maiden nursed her father in prison, and that no such family virtues were to be found in heathendom. Will you go with me to that museum at Naples where Pompeiian relics that can¬ not be seen by both sexes together are exhibited in one quarter of the collection ? Go with me to Pom¬ peii, which seems to have been justly cursed of God; and in the ashes there I will show you the place where men found what now is on the wall of the museum at Naples for the eyes of every nation to look upon, — a picture of a gray-haired man in a prison with a light streaming through the barred windows. When was this picture made? Before Pompeii was destroyed. Where was this picture reverenced ? In that soft Italian watering-place, one of the worst spots, even in Italy, in that age. In the ruins uncovered lately on the Palatine Hill, we find none of the infamous Pompeiian affairs. The watering-places appear corrupt in that time as they do now. Even Rome has not been able to unearth any thing equally infamous with some things found 18 MARKIAGE. at Pompeii. But out of Pompeii, from tlie very heart of that festering portion of heathendom, this picture has been taken of a father in his age, and in impris¬ onment, and obtaining his nourishment from his daughter’s breast. You say that story Byron has told us. I say that story heathendom has told us, and that thSre again we have great Nature, a sister and helper of us all; and that on this theme any man who wishes to know what is natural, what is scientific, must take not the amphibian pools, but these crystalline springs, for his answer. [Applause.] Stand there, Pompeiian daughter ; stand here, Pan- thea ; stand here, Phocion’s wife : and come up hither and confront them, Strauss, Sehoepenhauer, Voltaire, Bousseau, and any leprous free-lovers that undermine American society. [Applause.] Come up here ! Come up here ! for this discussion is not in a corner. New England listens to what this audience says, although not to what your poor lecturer may utter. Come up here, and face, not the Bible, but this pagan libation. I pour it out here from goblet after goblet. I might have made the examples stretch out in a long line. Do you stand here, underminers of the family life, and gaze into the eyes of these women while we discuss your theories ! In the mood brought to you by these examples, are you ready to listen without prejudice to these theories? We must put aside all prejudice ! Yes, just so soon as the fundamentals of the nature of things do. We must put aside all partisanship, and discuss every thing in a scientific manner, without anyheat, without the least rhetoric, INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 19 without any expressiveness in style; we must be cool, balanced, and give every side a fair hearing ! Yes, we will be cool if the heart of the nature of things is cool on family life ! We will have no opinion, if the very structure of human nature has no opinion on this theme ! As we speak of home and love and of family life, and its sanctities and sanctions, we will use tame phrases, and avoid every thing expressive, if Almighty God, in the supreme instincts of the soul, tells us that we must : otherwise, not. [Applause.] David Ilume has said that “it is contrary to the interest of civil society, that men should have entire liberty” in infamous matters; “but, as this interest is weaker than in the case of the female sex, the moral obligation arising from it must be proportion¬ ately weaker.” ( Treatise of Human Nature , book iii. part ii. sect, xii.) The first man I wish to con¬ front Phocion’s wife and Panthea’s eyes is whoever is foremost in opposing the principles these examples illustrate. Come forward here, whoever by theory or practice has assisted in undermining family life. You must look into the nature of things, and by that I mean the eyes of this Pompeiian maiden and of all who resemble her. I mean the eyes of Phocion’s wife and of all who resemble her. I affirm that, if Strauss’s ideas of marriage and divorce had had free course in five centuries previous to the appearance of these characters on the globe, they never would have appeared ; that these springs would have been choked ; and that any refreshment we have for our thirst as we quaff these pure waters would have been 20 MARRIAGE. denied to ns and the centuries. Panthea looks into Rousseau’s eyes, Phocion’s wife looks into Strauss’s eyes, this Pompeiian maiden looks into Swinburne’s eyes, and you look into their eyes, following those of these women ; and, in the name of science, all leprosy quails. Long experience gives it no following. Long experience meets it with a prolonged hiss and curse ! I open Schoepenhauer, an angular erratic and mis¬ anthrope, you say, and yet he is temporarily one of the most popular of the non-academic philosophers of Germany; and I read that “marriage is the doub¬ ling of our duties and the halving of our rights.” A waning class of materialists, whom Germany exe¬ crates under the name of the Fleshly School of Phi¬ losophy, defend polygamy. Schoepenhauer is better ' known in Germany than here ; and, if I may whisper the whole truth, it is that there is authority for say¬ ing that he deserted his mother and his sisters, lived in considerable comfort himself, allowed them to pass through life usually in want, and that his references to marriage have behind them a life which would be a sufficient reply to his theory, if only the life could be blazoned out before the world as the theory has been. Ask shrewd men who know the facts, and you will find a similar statement true of the majority of our social deformers. I open the infi¬ del Strauss, and I find him saying in so many words that the -New Testament has “ascetic” notions con- l cerning marriage ; that the Sermon on the Mount, especially, is to be criticised for lack of knowledge of human nature ; that we must consent to lax opin- \ i INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 21 ions and laws as to divorce ; and that, on the whole, the scientific method has nothing to show in favor of the Biblical ideals concerning marriage. ( Der Alte und der Neue Grlaube , Leipzig, 18T2, pp. 252-261.) Who is Strauss ? He is the leading infidel writer of the last fifty years in Germany, although outgrown now. This book of his I brought from the Rhine when arrows were falling on it thick and fast, not from conservative ranks, but from materialistic and rationalistic. Upon the appearance of this work, — “The Old and New Faith,” — Strauss’s former sup¬ porters said, “We cannot indorse many of these propositions, although mixed with what we call sound philosophy. We cannot defend this last book.” And yet Strauss, in this volume, tries to make a com¬ plete cathedral out of his system, and to bring it into architectural symmetry. One of the central arches in it stands on this proposition, that we must discard, as unscientific, such ideas concerning marriage as the Bible supports. Let Strauss continue to look into the eyes of Panthea. There are two styles of attack on family life : one, that of bold infidelity; and the other, that of false religion. Must I mention Swedenborg as an exam¬ ple of the latter form of assault ? Distinguish always Swedenborg from Swedenborgianism. You will not understand me to accuse Swedenborgianism of a cen¬ tral mischief which must be charged upon Sweden¬ borg. I have reverence for that religious body which is called Swedenborgian. Its life by no means con- 22 MARRIAGE. forms to every thing in Swedenborg’s writings. He did not write the articles of its creed. Although no one can call Swedenborg an infidel, he is a representa¬ tive of the attack of false religion upon Christian ideas concerning the family life. This style of teaching twaddles and twaddles; talks religiosity instead of religion ; drops into sentimentality ; and finally, out of softness and effeminateness, and a false philosophy, justifying both, comes to set God’s word itself on the side of license ; and, looking through the colored glass of its own erratic constitution, believes the universe to be of the colors of the windows through which it gazes. What does Swedenborg say ?* I suppose that if he were on the globe to-day, he would cancel most of the infamous teaching that can be cited from him now; but here is his unsectarian biographer, White (Swedenborg, His Life and Writings , London, 186T, vol. ii. pp. 418, 419; see also Conj. Love , by Swedenborg, paragraphs 444 to 476 inclusive), and he is obliged to write page after page of declamation against Swedenborg’s brutal neglect of one class of women. There are, indeed, in portions of Swedenborg’s writings, lofty thoughts concerning marriage. Some of the subtlest propo¬ sitions ever put before' the world on this topic, he has advocated ; but it is not to be concealed that one part of the system of thought which he represents, and for which no one should make the denomination called by his name responsible, since its scholars practically repudiate him as this biographer does, jus¬ tifies things which would give Sodom gladness. INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 28 The detestable Oneida Community is an example of false religion more loathsome than even Mormon- ism or Mohammedanism. But bring up Islam, bring up Mormonism, bring up Oneida and Wallingford, bring up* every scheme that has undertaken to show that natural law is not harmonious with the scrip¬ tural ideas concerning marriage and the family life, and let them all gaze here into the eyes of these pagan women, and of all who have resembled them. I ask now these different gazers to listen, and what do they hear? The curse of womanhood. They hear the curse of manhood, too. They hear the curse of experience. The curse of old Rome is audible ; for, as our Woolsey says, she rose by the sanctity of family life, and fell when the sanctity was undermined. (Ex-Pkesident Woolsey, Di¬ vorce, chap, i.) But tell these women what has hap¬ pened since their time. Let them know how Cicero, one of the best of the Romans, put away his wife Terentia, for no offence, and married Publilia, that he might pay his debts, and lived with her but a year. How would the flaming indignation of Pan- then, and Phocion’s wife, and this Pompeiian maiden, rise to a white heat, when it had only a red heat before, could you tell them what has happened since their time, and could you whisper to these women that we have had loftier ideals taught the ages ! After we have had eighteen hundred years’ experi¬ ence of what pure families can do, after we have 24 MARRIAGE. been taught, not only at the mouth of science, but at that of higher authority, how to manage the family, what would not their indignation be ! My first business is to impanel a jury consisting chiefly of pagan arbitrators. These three women, Phocion’s wife, Panthea, and the Pompeiian daughter, shall have the earliest places on this unprejudiced tribunal. If you could bring before them a tithe of the deg¬ radation that has come from the divergence of the ages from their natural ideals, and of the blessing that has come from adherence to these ideals, would you not find Panthea looking into Strauss’s eyes, into Swedenborg’s, into the eyes of Schoepenliauer and Swinburne and the rest, with overawing curse ? But what if the fre e-lovers of our modern day were to come up here, and gaze into the eyes of these three women, and all whom they represent ? What if a certain Victoria on this side the sea, who is at the bottom of her sex, as the Victoria on the other side is at the top [applause], could meet the eyes of her own sex at its best, and thus ascertain what is natural ? Let these three pagan female souls gaze into the eyes of the souls of men who are neither masculine nor feminine, but so corrupt in theory or practice that nothing can make either sweet — I fear, not even a woman’s curse. This condemnation comes from the depths of the human soul. Its lightnings cannot be averted in the name of the scientific INFIDEL ATTACK ON THE FAMILY. 25 method. Look down the ages, Panthea and Phocion’s wife, and thou Pompeiian daughter, into the eyes of all Swinburnes and Rousseaus. Mrs. Browning’s words are those of science, — “ A curse from the depths of womanhood Is very bitter and salt and good.” [Applause.] # II. A SUPREME APEECTION BETWEEN TWO. THE ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, FEB. 25. But only three in all God’s universe Have heard this word thou hast said: Himself, beside Thee speaking and me listening! and replied One of us . . . that was God! . . . and laid the curse So darkly on my eyelids as to amerce My sight from seeing thee, — that if I had died, The deathweights placed there would have signified Less absolute exclusion. Nay is worse From God than from all others, O my friend! Men could not part us with their worldly jars, Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend: Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars : — And, heaven being rolled between us at the end, We should but vow the faster for the stars. Mrs. Browning: Portuguese Sonnet . Felices ter et amplius, Quos irrupta tenet copula, nec, malis Divulsus querimoniis, Suprema citius solvet amor die. Horace: Ode i. 13, 17. II. A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. PRELUDE ON CUBRENT EVENTS. Allow me to put two dignified political scenes into contrast, one American and the other English. Both are described by eye-witnesses. “A distinguished senator strolled back and forth, with that spongy and uncertain action of the knees, which plaintively suggests that one foot or the other has been caught in a skein of sewing-silk. His arms went around every man he met, in some maudlin embrace; and both sides of his desk were needed when he rose to vote. There was another senator, dis¬ tinguished for his opposition to the pending bill, who dis¬ played great anxiety ‘to strike out the second line of the word government;’ finally, by help of diligent whispering, a man prompting and supporting on each side, gave his amend¬ ment correctly, dropped back in a drunken stupor ; the amend¬ ment was voted down ; he woke, rose, repeated his amendment, repeated it the third time (senators around him nearly crazy with mirth), and, at last persuaded in his befogged mind, he tottered from group to group, denouncing the unfairness of a vote on his amendment ‘while I was down at dinner.’ He dined at five ; the amendment was voted on after ten. Still a third senator, for thirty years the honored leader of a great party in a great State, passed from his seat to the cloak-room, 29 80 MARRIAGE. and the cloak-room to his seat, only by wide-apart steps and supporting chairs, and when he reached his seat fell there into a drunken sleep, in one of the pauses of a debate in which he was endeavoring to join, and did join when he awoke — having slept with a man thundering at him, two feet from his desk — with incoherent exclamations and doubtful answers to a simple, plain, and easy question. There were other senators less noisy and farther gone, — one at full length on his desk and chair, — legislating on the silver question, as Congress insists on legis¬ lating on that, and many other questions, — eyes shut, and mouth wide open.” Macaulay describes the corresponding English * scene ; and every syllable in the picture has a vivid, trustworthy gleam. “ LordNorreys was whistling, and making all sorts of noises. Lord Maidstone was so ill-mannered, that I hope he was drunk. At last, after much grossly indecent conduct, at which Lord Eliot expressed his disgust to me, a furious outbreak took place. O’Connell was so rudely interrupted, that he used the expression ‘beastly bellowings.’ Then rose such an uproar as no mob at Covent Garden Theatre, no crowd of Chartists in front of a hustings, ever equalled. Men on both sides stood up, shook their fistsv and bawled at the top of their voices. O’Connell raged like a mad bull, and our people, — I, for one, — while regretting and condemning his violence, thought it much extenuated by the provocation. Charles Butler spoke with talent, as he always does ; and with earnestness, dignity, and propriety, which he scarcely ever does. ‘If,’ said Lord Maidstone to O’Connell, ‘the word beastly is retracted, I shall be satisfied. If not, I shall not be satisfied.’ — ‘I do not care whether the noble lord is satisfied or not.’ — ‘ I wish you would give me satisfaction.’ — ‘I advise the noble lord to carry his liquor meekly.’ At last the tumult ended from absolute physi¬ cal weariness. It was past one, and the steady bellowers of A SUPKEME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 31 the opposition had been howling from six o’clock, with little interruption. I went home with a headache, and not in high spirits.” The date of this English scene is 1839. That of the American is 1878. The peril of the present hour in the United States, and of many a moment in our crowded and hazard¬ ous future, is bondage to uneducated and bewildered opinion. God deliver us from a pickpocket Congress [applause], a part of it drunk! [Applause.] The American scene is in the Upper House. The British is in the Lower House. Where is drunken • disorder the more dangerous, — in the Senate at Washington, the Upper House of a republic, or in the Commons of Great Britain, the Lower House in a monarchy? You would have been surprised if this scene which Macaulay describes had occurred in the House of Lords ; but our Senate, if its height of dignity is measured by the power it possesses, is a loftier body than the House of Lords. Is it affirmed that we ought not to be troubled by this last scene in the Senate, because things were worse thirty and fifty years ago there? It is said that in 1830, in the cloak-rooms, in night sessions, whiskey was kept on tap, and a tin cup allowed to swim on the surface of the liquor, inside the barrel or the can. But it is affirmed that in 1878 the three highest officers of the government refuse to furnish intoxicating liquors to their guests, and that such a fashion was never before authoritatively set in Washington. It is said that we ought to take 82 MARRIAGE. heart from the fact that these shameful scenes are exciting remark now, while they would not have done so thirty or forty years ago. I undertake to affirm that there is no more honor in the Senate now than there was fifty years ago, when habits of ine¬ briation were worse. It takes more courage to-day to fall into beastly habits in a senator’s chair, than it did fifty or thirty years ago ; for public light has increased on this theme. Is there now more honor in public life than at that period of our history which preceded the overthrow of sound civil service regulations? We have had, since Washington’s election to the Presidency, forty years of very good management of our civil service, and fifty years of very bad ; and the honor of public men seems to have been lowered vastly within the last fifty years as compared even with what it was under Jefferson, and especially with what it was under Washington. Although men in Washington’s day drank more than now, although they drank more through Adams’s day, and Jefferson’s day, and Madison’s, and Mon¬ roe’s, it is certain that senatorial drunkenness to-day is a keener proof of lack of honor than it once was. Have inebriate Congressmen any account to settle with their constituents ? Has the day gone by when it is a good electioneering argument for a candidate in this country, that he gets drunk ? Charles O’ Conor thinks that there lies ahead of us in American history a popular demand for the abolition of State taxes for public common schools. (Johnson’s Cyclopaedia , article on Democracy.) Al- A SUPKEME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 33 ready taxation for the maintenance of high schools is unpopular in certain quarters. My topic is not Congressional drunkenness. This little scene points to the larger theme of American bondage to unedu¬ cated opinion. The West is filled with New-England people, and its press is at sword’s-points with that of the sea¬ board, and with that of much of the South, on a great financial question, in regard to which Europe is on the side of the East. I take up the ablest British, French, and German journals, and I find excoriation after excoriation of the present pick¬ pocket legislation in Congress. The paying of a debt by eighteen shillings to the pound cannot be repeated often, says England. She looks across the water, and remarks calmly, “ We have a large debt here in Great Britain. We pay three per cent inter¬ est for the money we borrow. You must pay six per cent. On most of your debt you are paying that already. The rate of interest rises in proportion to the badness of the security. Spendthrifts who may become defaulters cannot borrow money for a song.” Test your silver legislation by the single inquiry, whether you can borrow money more easily after it than before. The question answers itself. But who pays the interest on the national debt, the bond¬ holder or the tax-payer? Can an individual or a nation obtain low interest except by good credit? The champion of a sound currency is the champion of good credit. The champion of good credit is the champion of low interest. The champion of low 84 MARRIAGE. interest is the champion of the tax-payer. The champion of inflated currency is the champion of bad credit. The champion of bad credit is the champion of high interest, and the enemy of the tax-payer. The silver bill is not now in such monstrous form as it was when it was* first proposed. Congress, how¬ ever, has agreed to pay its creditors in depreciated coin. Who believes that this was its contract? “We promised to pay in coin” the West says. “ That was the language of the bond.” Does any but bewildered opinion maintain that the govern¬ mental engagement to pay in coin did not mean coin of full and not depreciated value? What could have been the inducement to lend money to gov¬ ernment if the promise had been to pay in depre¬ ciated metal? Everybody by the phrase payment “ in coin ” understood, of course, payment in coin of full commercial value. So Europe understood the promise, as she proves by now sending back her bonds with indignation. The quibbling over this one phrase, and the style in which millions have been misled by it, is not an argument in favor of the abolition of State taxes for common schools. The East believes that there was a contract made to pay a hundred cents on a dollar, and that nothing should rule the case but the contract. The widows, the soldiers, the people of small incomes, who, ac¬ cording to government statistics, own the majority of the bonds, understood that they were not to be paid in a coin of a depreciated value. [Applause.] I affirm that when the government promised to pay in A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 35 coin, it meant to pay in coin of full value, and not in coin worth only ninety-two cents on a dollar. [Ap¬ plause.] President Eliot of Harvard said the other day at Hew York, that the diffusion of the mere rudiments of education among the masses of a nation never has and never will prevent that nation from falling into great dangers. In this country we have the golden link of training and capacity, and an iron link ; but we have no silver link to connect the two. The iron link does not believe in the golden link. It might believe in a silver link, were such an intermediate stage of training in existence ; and that link would believe in the golden. The great need of the United States is a wider diffusion of the intermediate higher education. I heard the silver-tongued orator of Boston assert yesterday that Plarvard University has never sent a man out from her classic shades with a heart warm for the people. She sent him out. [Applause.] She sent out Charles Sumner. She listened, in the very year when my class, decimated by war, left the stu¬ dious halls yonder, to a coronation commemoration ode for Lincoln, written by a Lowell, who has criti¬ cised America, indeed, sharply, but who is, I suppose, as patriotic a poet as ever put pen to paper since John Milton was taken up into the Unseen. [Ap¬ plause.] Harvard cold ! Her president affirms that she gives two and a half times more instruction to¬ day than any other college in the United States. It is not safe to assume that his official statement is 86 MARRIAGE. an exaggeration. He assures us in the face of the nation, that Harvard, while neglecting none of the humanities, is endeavoring more and more to train journalists, social economists, statesmen, who can lead the people on practical affairs of finance and politics. In all ways instruction is being enlarged in practical directions. For one, I feel that I should like to go back, and pass through the university again, in order to get equipment for the tasks that come upon a man in public life. I know now, better than I knew in college, what the worth is of the high inspiration I received there ; and I afhnn that, for one, coming out of Harvard in the year the civil war closed, I came .out with reverence for the An¬ drews and the Sumners, and the Garrisons and the Phillipses, and all who led us in that great historic epoch. No doubt, the faults of Americans have crit¬ ics yonder and in all our colleges. There are as many opinions in Harvard Universit3T as elsewhere. But for an American to affirm that the great uni¬ versity has done nothing but choke reform, when to-day she is more nearly abreast of sound popular sentiment than any other university in the world, is to foul one’s own nest. [Applause.] Harvard needs no defence from the charge that she never sent out a man with a heart warm for the people, except the names of Phillips and Sumner and Lowell, and those of the young martyrs whom Andrew placed at the perilous front in the civil war. Landor says that a little butter on a platter is a good thing, but that the same butter melted and A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 37 sprinkled over the whole tablecloth is not available. That is a metaphor which you will not relish, but which, I think, you will understand. God deliver us from bondage to an uneducated and bewildered opinion of masses not educated beyond the rudi¬ ments, and unwilling to trust the leadership of their own sons who are ! George Combe said that the education of the citi¬ zens of Boston in 1840 was only enough to fit them for that amount of political power which belongs to the people of Spain or Austria. Who are the men who have left Harvard College ? Some of them were charity-scholars there. I know a revered ex-president of that institution, who, when he was in the university, cracked stones on a macad¬ amized road to pay his board-bills, and in other ways, teaching and writing, carried himself through with great hardship. Is he now, simply because he is a great scholar, simply because he comes from an insti¬ tution that has the name of being aristocratic, not to be allowed to say any thing to the people, to the masses, to the suffering and the toiling millions? He has suffered and toiled. Our educated great men come often from the farms and workshops. All American people are of the people. Are the better- trained part of the people not to be regarded as American ? Where are we, that we begin to intro¬ duce here class prejudice between those who are edu¬ cated, or those whose own efforts may have secured to themselves a competency, and those who by shift¬ lessness, and by lacking enthusiasm for education, 38 MARRIAGE. stand at the bottom of the social scale? God made ' certain differences among men ; but where there is no lack of opportunity, where no man can take a posi¬ tion except by deserving it, and where he cannot hold it long unless he doubly deserves it, and holds it against rivalry, it is opposition to the spirit of American institutions to assail the upper part of the people in the name of the lower. [Applause.] Let us have no leading-strings for the people, ex¬ cept those which experience proves to be absolutely necessary, — intelligence and integrity, — but let us have these. Break me either the one or the other of these bridle-stays ; give me either insufficient intelli¬ gence or insufficient integrity ; throw down the reins on the neck of ignorance and unconscientiousness, and much graver questions than whether public debts shall be paid by ninety-two cents on a hundred will soon be decided ! A new America is before us, — an era of cities. A fifth of our population is in great towns at this moment. There is no political office waiting for me, and I am waiting for no political office ; but I am one citizen here, and I hope it is not too much to say that some of us younger men, of a generation which has suffered already in sup¬ port of the Union, think that the time has come when American bondage to uneducated and bewil¬ dered opinion should be throttled as quite as danger¬ ous as bondage to the slaveholder. [Applause.] A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 39 THE LECTURE. Pliny the younger had two favorite villas, one in sight of the Mediterranean, and another at the edge of the Apennines. He was a pagan, but it was his fortune To write to the Emperor Trajan a famous letter, describing the habits of the early Christians. He wrote another letter, which ought to be famous, and the subject of it is his wife : — “ She loves me, the stirest pledge of her virtue ; and adds to this a wonderful disposition to learning, which she has acquired from her affection to me. She reads my writings, studies them, and even gets them by heart. You would smile to see the concern she is in when I have a cause to plead, and the joy she shows when it is over. She finds means to have the first news brought her of the success I meet with in court. If I recite any thing in public, she cannot refrain from placing herself privately in some corner to hear. Sometimes she accompanies my verses with the lute, without any master except love, the best of instructors. From these instances I take the most certain omens of our perpetual and increasing happi¬ ness, since her affection is not founded on my youth or person, which must gradually decay ; but she is in*love with the immortal part of me.” (Pliny the YOUNGER, Letter concerning his wife Caljpurnia , to her aunt.) Thus reads a letter which we find in the rubbish produced as old Rome began to crumble, and as her walls fell, the ghastly secrets dropping down in the 40 MARRIAGE. debris which has not been all shovelled away yet from the foundations either of her evil or her good. There the letter sparkles like a gem ; but it is pagan in every angle, and in every flash of light. Go with me now into the most pagan portion of our modern history, — the period represented by the horrors of the French Revolution, — and rake over the debris produced by the fall of the Bastille. Old secrets came to view when that prison of tyranny was sacked. Long-buried despair found voice. Read this portion of an old letter, and contrast it with Pliny’s : “ If, for my consolation, Monseigneur would grant me,” says one of the prisoners, “ for the sake of God and the most blessed Trinity, that I could have news of my dear wife, were it only her name on a card, to show that she is alive, it were the greatest consolation I could receive, and I should forever bless the greatness of Monseigneur.” “Poor pris¬ oner,” says Carlyle, — stern Scotchman, tender as any drop of dew, and yet bold as any lion, — “poor prisoner, who namest thyself Queret Fernery , and hast no other history, she is dead , — that dear wife of thine, — and thou art dead ! ’Tis fifty years since thy breaking heart put this question, to be heard now first, and long heard, in the hearts of men.” (Carlyle, The French Revolution , vol. i. book v. chap, vii.) I am to ask you to assemble to-day in Pliny’s villa ; and I wish you to bring with you this French pris¬ oner, and also Hampden, from the death-field yonder at Chalgrove Bridge, where he met Rupert. You A SUPBEME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 41 know Hampden was a close associate of Cromwell’s, and that, attacking the enemy’s ranks, he received two balls which entered the shoulder, and were de¬ flected into his body. His head drooped, and his hands sunk on the neck of his horse. He rode feebly off the field; and tradition, Macaulay says, repre¬ sents him as looking up, putting his hand upon his forehead, and gazing long upon the manor-house of his father-in-law, from which in his youth he had taken away his wife Elizabeth, and he tried to go there to die. (Macaulay, Essays; Lord Nugent’s Memorials of Hampden.') Stern Puritan, no doubt a wilted nature, desiccated by a false creed, you say ; but Hampden’s figure there, striving in death to ride toward the home from which he carried off his bride, is dignified as John Milton’s, dignified as Cromwell’s, and as little desiccated as either. Bring Hampden, bring the poor French prisoner, and bring one other person, to Pliny’s villa. Cornelia, wife of Titus Gracchus, the mother of the renowned Roman Gracchi, lived in a house which was once assailed by two serpents. The augur said that if the male serpent was allowed to escape, and the other killed, Cornelia would die before her husband ; but that if the female was allowed to escape, and the male killed, the husband would die first. Titus Gracchus, than whom there has never been a more affectionate husband, although a pagan, told the au¬ gurs at once to put fortune on the side of his wife. He trusted the augurs, and their prophecy did happen to come true. He died before his wife, and left her « 7 42 MARRIAGE. with twelve children, among them the celebrated Gracchi. She rejected every offer of marriage, be¬ cause she said that her marriage with Titus Gracchus continued. She was offered the hand of Ptolemy, King of Egypt; but, says Valerius Maximus, old pagan, “ The buried ashes of her husband seemed to lie so cold at her heart, that the splendor of a diadem and all the pomp of a rich kingdom were not able to warm it so as to make it capable of receiving the impression of a new love.” Bring Hampden, bring the French prisoner, bring Cornelia, bring the Pompeiian daughter of whom we heard lately, bring Panthea, bring Phocion’s wife. Sit down here in Pliny’s villa, in sight of the Medi¬ terranean, or sit down in that other residence of his gazing on the Apennines, and watch his face and theirs, while I read two sets of propositions. I will summarize first in Pliny’s presence, and in that of Phocion’s wife and Panthea and Cornelia, what I suppose to be the dictate of natural law concerning the details of marriage. I know what I venture, but I am assembling this pagan tribunal in order that we may have an unprejudiced hearing. It is supposed that those who, in modern times, have received a Christian education, cannot decide on this topic with¬ out prejudice ; therefore I have gathered here a jury, before which, in contrasted propositions, I am willing to put scientific thought and unscientific concerning marriage. 1. Pagan ideals of marriage make a supreme affec¬ tion its only natural basis. A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 43 Cornelia bows her bead, so does Pantbea, so does Phocion’s wife. Are there any free-lovers that dare peep into the door of Pliny’s villa after having heard his letter ? Do they open a crevice or some window, and peer in leeringly to find where the secrets are here, that justify their contempt of human nature and their unwillingness to believe that there are sound hearts on the planet ? If they look through this lattice, if they gaze through that crevice of a door yonder, if behind them any of the old Roman patrons of the Saturnalia stand, let both the ancient and modern pagans look into the face of this jury while I plead my cause. I do not wish to speak in a corner. Pagan ideals led this Panthea, this Cornelia, this Pliny, this daughter of Pompeii, to make a supreme affection the basis of marriage; and they were acting from almighty instinct ; they were utter¬ ing the voice of untutored human nature ; they cer¬ tainly spoke without Christian prejudice. 2. A supreme affection can exist only between two. Cornelia thinks that this holds good even after the death of one of the two. I am not asking her to make a rule of that proposition. There may be a second supreme affection, and perhaps a third; but I am not one of those who revere a second as a first, nor a third as a second. [Applause.] There were Roman poets who held up to contempt certain ladies who counted their years by the number of their divorces. If you wish to bring to Pliny’s counte¬ nance, or to that of Phocion’s wife, or to that of 44 MARRIAGE. Cornelia, a look of supreme scorn and loathing, recite to them the deeds of those black spirits of the cor¬ rupt Neronic Roman days. We see the faces of these women yonder through the lattice and crevice and the doors ; and, side by side with them, those of the Brisbanes and the Swinburnes, our modern pagans. [Applause.] I know where I am speaking, and over what thin ice I pass ; but it is not the cus¬ tom of any one who reveres science to avoid difficul¬ ties. I have now thrown away the use of the whole right wing of the army, which I might ask for as my support. I believe in the Christian ideals. They, by and by, will be brought before us here for Pliny’s con¬ sideration. They are, to my mind, as the noon com¬ pared with a rushlight when put into contrast with these, the best outcome of pagan ideals. But I throw away the right wing, use only the left wing of the army, come out here upon the field to combat these lies and this blasphemy ; and with only the left-hand wing it is as easy to defeat the modern pagans, as it was for Pliny to defeat the ancient ; for he had only the left-hand wing. 3. In the very nature of the case, therefore, since a supreme affection is the only natural basis of mar¬ riage, the law of monogamy is scientifically justified. It has already been shown here that the law of co-equal heredity justifies monogamy. Long before great Nature awakens in any animal moral conscious¬ ness, it begins to weed out polygamy, even from the brute race ; and, when at last your king of the forest appears,! the lion is a monogamist. We find that as A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 45 the animals rise in the scale, there are more and more hints in the direction of the social arrangements which afterwards show themselves to be natural in the human case ; and that thus, from the earliest devel¬ opment of life up to its highest, Nature — by which we mean always God’s will expressed in his works — prepares a place for the human home and for su¬ preme affections between two. Even your Sweden¬ borg, whom it was my sad duty to criticise on several points, says there is such a thing on the globe as a supreme, heavenly conjugal affection between two. This is ajfact of history, of human experience, abso¬ lutely indisputable. Now, since this" style of affec¬ tion can exist only between two, the law of monog¬ amy is scientifically justified. 4. It follows also, that, until a supreme affection exists, a marriage cannot take place naturally. Pliny assents to this, for this is the rule he fol¬ lowed. So do Hampden and the French prisoner and the Pompeiian daughter. 5. The fact of the existence of a supreme affec¬ tion between two is to be ascertained by adequate tests. 6. When only those who have an adequately tested supreme affection for each other are married, no fundamentally unhappy marriages will occur. T. Every marriage without a supreme affection is against natural, and ought to be against social, law. 8. When marriages are natural, according to this definition, the best possible means for the preser- 46 MARRIAGE. vation of the best of the race are brought into ac¬ tion. 9. When marriages are natural, according to this definition, children’s rights are likely to be adequately protected. 10. When marriage is natural, according to this definition, the family obtains in' marriage its scientific justification. 11. When marriages and families are natural in this sense, all infidel attacks on the family become futile and blasphemous from the point of view of the scientific method. We look through the lattice-work, and find that we have interested listeners among the social quacks and pagans of ancient and modern times. I do not make broad charges ; but I undertake to say this, that I have not met, thus far in life, any advocate of the blasphemous doctrines in the social range of philos¬ ophy, who has not been more or less a practiser of infamous theories. [Applause.] Unhappy, unnatu¬ ral marriages make people declaim against natural marriages. But how do unhappy marriages occur? By violation of natural law proclaimed in all the deepest instincts, — rough, liap-hazard, audacious vio¬ lation of the most sacred instincts of man and % . . . . — .. _ woman ! The inherent penalty of an unnatural marriage is fitly characterized as the hottest human Gehenna on this planet ; and men roasted there, women grilled on that gridiron, are indeed likely to clamor about their troubles. And yet they violated great Nature at first, came into a red-hot cage, when A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 47 they might have known its bars were blazing iron, had they put hands or eyes on the grating at the first. We have instincts that warn us out of such cages ! If men, shutting their eyes, if women, tear¬ ing out the instincts of the deepest soul, will plunge into cages of that sort, why, the fault is with the people that plunge in, and not with the cages. I thank God, that marriages without supreme affection are cages of red-hot , iron. [Applause.] Wendell Phillips said yesterday in this city that all the black¬ ness of the picture of evil in great cities pleased him, for the perils of democracy are its safety. So I may say that the sufferings of umtatural marriages are God’s proclamation of their unnaturalness. [Ap¬ plause.] Since the world began, have not people enough writhed in the red-hot cages of marriages without affection to teach the race the wisdom of the burned child who dreads the fire? If our eaves¬ droppers want sympathy, they had better ask me for it, rather than Pliny. They had better ask me, be¬ cause I have been brought up in an age of luxury, when advanced thought is in the air, and when more than one State of the American Union relaxes the divorce-laws to a point resembling that style of -legislation which Augustus Caesar tried to prevent. Pliny here has made pleas against just such divorce- laws as certain American commonwealths have had foisted upon their statute-books in moments of care¬ lessness. I do not believe the deliberate sentiment of America justifies lax divorce-laws; but in various 48 MARRIAGE. ways, this topic not having had the agitation it de¬ serves, we have allowed the deformers to get a hear¬ ing, and their conspiracies to obtain power, until we are disgraced in certain commonwealths by a laxness of divorce legislation, of which our Woolsey is obliged to devote a volume to exposing the errors and the dangers ; and he holds up old Rome at its best to shame us. Edmund Burke once was obliged to oppose in Parliament an unfortunate marriage law. He closed a passage of marvellous eloquence by these words : “ Why do I speak of parental feel¬ ing? The children are parties to be considered in’ this legislation. The mover of this bill has no child.” Charles James Fox, in the same debate, rushed for¬ ward with his contagious fire of manner and of thought and emotion, to the speaker’s desk, and took up the bill. The orginal draft was not so bad, but amendments had been thrust into it, which altered it in a manner to make the whole detestable. Fox lifted up the bill before the gaze of Parliament. The amenGlments were written in red ink, the original in black. Shaking the parchment there, Fox recited Shakspeare’s words : — “ Look ! in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through ; See what a rent the envious Casca made ; Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed ; * And as he plucked the cursed steel away, Mark how the blood of Csesar followed it.” In the same way I would shake before Boston cer¬ tain Christian regulations originally characterizing our legislation on divorce ; and then, pointing out the A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 49 red amendments which have been thrust into the Connecticut and the Indian aparchments, I shall be justified by you and by history in saying, “ Through this the well-beloved modern Pagan stabbed: mark how the blood has followed the accursed steel.” [Applause.] Pliny assents when I say that unless marriages are natural, according to this definition, children’s rights are likely to be but poorly protected. But we now hear a serpentine whisper from under this crevice, and under this lattice, u Let children be taken care of by the State.” I am afraid of my jury when I look into Cornelia’s face ! “ The State ! ” Pliny says : “there would be no state if there were no family! ” [Applause.] While we recall Burke’s words, there is another whisper : “ Let marriage be dissolvable at will.” Burke says again, coming here in the air, “ This speaker has no children.” “ Or,” says Cor¬ nelia, “if she has, her heart is that of the ostrich, that leaves her eggs in the sand, and knows nothing of the loftiest impulse of nature aside from marital affection, — maternal love.” [Applause.] An unnatural hideous whisperer, coming up, it would seem, from the volcanic rifts, or somewhere from the Pompeiian ashes, out of which infamies are dug up to-day, addresses Pliny, and Phocion’s wife, and Panthea, and Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi: “ Let us have a community. Let us have complex marriage.” — “ What is your name ? ” — “ Noyes.” — “ Where were you educated ? ” — “ At Andover Theo¬ logical Seminary.” What a fall is there ! [Ap¬ plause.] 50 MARRIAGE. “ Him the Almighty Power ' Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion. «•••••••• Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf : . . . but his doom Reserved him to more wrath ; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him : round he throws his baleful eyes, • • • • • • ■ • • • Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.” Milton, Paradise Lost , book i. 44-58. The ghostly propositions of socialism receive only hisses from our pagan jury, for when we question this interlocutor we find him saying that maternal love must be uprooted. “ Our system is to give no mother the care of her children. Christianity has made all things common.” We call hither Neander. There is a passage in the New Testament which affirms that at a certain period the early Church made all. things common; but Neander says it is perfectly evident from the context, that this contains no dec¬ laration of communism of any sort, that the subse¬ quent institutions of the apostles are all in the line of sound thought and the ideals of all time, and that every attempt to twist out of that part of the Bible authority for socialism is not only idiocy, but blas¬ phemy. But this man does not hear Neander. Your poor interrupter yonder in the crevice thinks Nean- der was prejudiced. He was Christian. And Pliny will walk forward, and Cornelia, Phocion’s wife, and A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 51 this Pompeiian daughter, Hampden and the French prisoner ; all of them will rise, and -come with Pliny forward, and look into this man’s face. He is not there when they reach the place ! [Applause.] I hold in my hand a report made lately by the synod of Central New York, and drawn by a professor of Hamilton College, summing up facts which I cannot recite here, and running a red-crooked thunderbolt through that infamy of Oneida ; and I hope that soon, what scholarship and piety have already done for this loathsome scandal will be done by legislation. [Applause.] [Previous to the lecture Mr. Cook read the follow¬ ing statement and request : — “ The undersigned are of opinion that many important errors of fact in criticisms on the Monday Lectureship are mis¬ leading the public. Will Mr. Cook have the kindness to point out the more important of them?” This, Mr. Cook said, was signed by doctors of divinity. One of the signatures was that of a theo¬ logical professor. On account of the great respecta¬ bility of this request, he would venture to take a few minutes after one o’clock to reply to errors of fact which are misleading the public. [Applause.] After the doxology had been sung at the close of the lec¬ ture, Mr. Cook spoke as follows.] 1. It is blunderingly proclaimed that Mr. Cook affirms that rationalism is on the decline in Germany. What he said is that it is on the decline in the Ger¬ man universities among “ those whose special study 52 MARRIAGE. is theology” (. Bibliotheca Sacra , October, 18T5, p. 769), — a very different proposition. Over and over the language used here speaks of the “specialists in religious science,” or “the decline of rational¬ ism among theological experts,” or the greatest au¬ thorities in exegetical research. ( Transcendentalism , p. 29, and Orthodoxy , pp. 838-340.) A young writer, who, it seems, has been for a short time professor in one of our smallest New England colleges, overlooks utterly this wide and reiterated distinction, and sum¬ marizes Mr. Cook’s position by the phrase, “ Rational¬ ism is on the decline in Germany.” This proposition, for which Mr. Cook is no more responsible than for the assertion that the man in the moon is an Hegelian, the haughty critic goes on to combat elaborately by painstaking history and statistics. The real proposi¬ tion which this lectureship defends, and which has great importance, because of the power of specialists to lead all scholarly thought in Germany, the critic never attacks once. Nor does he attack one of the seven acknowledged facts Mr. Cook published in an article in the Bibliotheca Sacra (October, 1875), in support of this proposition, and which never have been questioned by criticism through the two years since that article was given to the public on both sides of the Atlantic. Besides, the circumstance that the relative number of theological students has dimin¬ ished in Germany is brought forward as if it were new to Mr. Cook. The latter, as you are all aware, has himself fully discussed this state of facts, and explained it in the eightieth Monday lecture, — the A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 53 last in the hook entitled “ Orthodoxy ” (pp. 838- 341). On the basis of this inexcusable misconcep¬ tion of Mr. Cook’s meaning, the critic endeavors through page after page to raise the presumption that the Monday lectureship is incautious in its state¬ ments. It is amazing to find such utterly and baldly careless or unfair criticism in a religious periodical and proceeding from a professor. I do not know what Yale College has against me, except that I left it, and went to Harvard. I was not turned out of Yale [applause], and intend not to deserve to be. 2. The Monday Lectureship speaks neither to nor for ministers. This has been asserted again and again, until the proposition must be wearisome. Over and over it has been proclaimed here, that this lectureship is only an outlook committee, making reports which must be tested and taken for what they are worth. Your lecturer has no relatives in this audience. He hires nobody to come here. He never asked a favor of newspapers, and never will, although he has been treated royally by them all. [Applause.] But this critic says that u it is under¬ stood that Mr. Cook is personally responsible for this published demand of 'attention on the ground of es¬ tablished pre-eminence in the world of scholarship. Mr. Cook, through the extravagance of his claims, forces a strictness of criticism he would otherwise have avoided.” All this is strangely inaccurate. It is one of the felicities of discussion in this lectureship, that it is utterly free from the bondage of being, or of wish- ) 54 MARRIAGE. ing to be, representative or official. Mr. Cook has asked no one to be responsible for what is uttered . here. Except by wholly voluntary expressions, no one is thus responsible. The lecturer on this platform ran some little risk, and runs it yet. He refused to take any parish ; and it was his opinion that possibly there might be inter¬ est enough in certain great themes, on the relations between religion and science, to pay a man a small income, — not enough to provide for a family, but enough to take care of a single person, living pretty near the sky. That was the plan of life on which he came to this city. He asked nobody’s financial support. At the present moment he lectures in this Temple at a loss of two hundred dollars every time he speaks, — so says his lecture-agent. Excuse me for alluding to this point ; but when I am accused, as I am again and again in the sceptical sheets, of standing here as a mercenary, then I beg leave to point to past voluntary risks, and present voluntary losses. [Applause.] Of course I know that a base¬ line in Boston is worth something to a lecturer in the United States ; but when a man has given a hundred lectures consecutively in this city, on difficult topics, and printed fifty-five of them, he is tested about as adequately as most lecturers are before they feel under their feet a sufficient groundwork for their effort. [Applause.] 3. This critic asserts that the intuitions are not every thing, and that Mr. Cook falls into confusion of thought by bringing forward instinct, experience, A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 55 and syllogism as co-ordinate tests of truth. The critic informs Mr. Cook that syllogism stands on self-evident truth ; an amazing proposition, which I never heard before ! In Andover Seminary, where I spent four years, it was my fortune to employ the larger part of my leisure for two years in reading on logic exclusively ; and this proposition that syllo¬ gism rests on the intuitions, I had seen before I fell upon it in this criticism. When I make instinct and experiment co-ordinate with the intuitions, I mean to put a check upon the hazy theorizing of transcendentalism, falsely so called. All a 'priori reasoning, all argument from self-evident truth, must be tested by experience. All I mean, as this audi¬ ence well knows, is, that we must take these four tests, and find an agreement between them before we can feel that the earth is firm under our feet. It is wholly false to assert that all the four tests have not been used here. The definition of these different tests* was distorted in the review; and of course it is easy, from a distorted definition, to draw ludicrous inferences. I suppose you have heard of Dickens’s description of the steamboat “Agawam,” which he saw on the Connecticut. He said it was half-pony power, and eighteen feet short and nine feet nar¬ row, being neither long nor wide. I ain not refer¬ ring to the college, for which I have reverence and affection, but to the philosophy represented by this critic. [Applause.] 4. As to the authorship of an extract from Car¬ lyle’s remarks on Darwin, a virulent attack has been 56 MARRIAGE. made on this lectureship, and is completely answered. A distinguished literary gentleman writes to me : “For myself, I can assure you that I have the most unreserved confidence in the lady who wrote the letter. I know, as well as we can know any thing we do not see and hear ourselves, that Mr. Carlyle said what you have quoted in a conversation. I know this lady is intimate with the De Morgans, whom I also know, and who live a door or two from Carlyle, and are intimate with him. I will give you any statement you need to substantiate your quotation.’’ A well-known American, a public man, was with this lady when the conversation occurred, and assisted in making a record of it, and he, in the strongest terms, indorses the language as authentic. The ex¬ tract was first published in America. It was copied into a Scottish newspaper as a letter from Carlyle, and thence into the London Times. The Spencer and Lecky party in London circles obtained from Carlyle a denial that he wrote such a letter, but not that such a conversation occurred. Luskin has cited the words, and expressed the opinion that they will be long remembered. Mr. Cook has been bitterly assailed because his taste coincided with Ruskin’s as to the propriety of diffusing this public information. 5. In summing up the criticisms thus far upon that portion of the Monday lectures which touch biology, I find that the specialists who have expressed an opinion on that fraction of the discussions here are six. First, ex-President Thomas Hill has written a review of the Lectures on Biology, and it is favorable A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 57 from beginning to end. He is assuredly a specialist in philosophy. He is a great authority and a discov¬ erer in mathematical research. He has given un¬ usual attention to biological science. Next, Pro¬ fessor McCrady, who was one of the successors of Agassiz, but who had trouble with the Darwinian party at Cambridge as did Agassiz himself, and is now professor of biology in the University of the South, has written a review, as many of you know ; and it is, with the exception of a few criticisms on minor points, favorable. Dr. George M. Beard, a lecturer before the New-York Medical School, and mentioned with honor by Carpenter for original research in biology, has published a learned work of three hundred pages, which has been translated into German with high commendation by a professor at the University of Jena. This expert has written two reviews of “Biology,” and both of them favor¬ able. He is the man who read the final proof-sheets of that book, every page of them, before it was issued. Professor Bowne of Boston University, who has published a work on Herbert Spencer, which is one of the best volumes that can be referred to on that whole topic, has reviewed “Biology” favorably. He has found fault with it on a few points, and I am glad he has ; but affirms that one or two criticisms made by him would now be changed in view of sub¬ sequent discussions here. Possibly I ought to say that I hold in my hand a letter from a distinguished physician of London, Dr. J. M. Winn, which begins, “ My friend Lionel Beale 58 MARRIAGE. kindly loaned me your Boston Lectures on Biology to read. This must be my apology for writing to you, and expressing the great gratification I have derived from a perusal of your triumphant reply to the arguments of the materialists derived from phys¬ ical science.” It thus appears, that, out of six persons who have criticised “ Biology ” as specialists, five are for it. (See the opinions of the Bibliotheca Sacra , and Brit¬ ish Quarterly , and of Professor Schoberlein of Gotting¬ en University, and of Professor Ulrici of Halle, among estimates cited by the publishers in the pres¬ ent volume.) y % 6. The great blunder which the few unfavorable critics of u Biology ” fall into is, that they overlook the distinction drawn here between the two ques¬ tions, “Does Death End All?” and “Is the Soul Immortal?” These inquiries are by no means sy¬ nonymous. Answer the first in the negative, and you have not proved that the second is to be answered in the affirmative. It is true, however, that a negative answer to the first greatly facilitates an affirmative answer to the second. Answering the first nega¬ tively removes objections to an affirmative answer of the other. I discuss in “ Biology ” the first question. I think there is evidence that the materialists’ alleged proof, that death does end all, is not good for any thing. This is the central proposition of the booh. Some of this proof is physiological, some psycho¬ logical. The physiological part of it has been very significantly strengthened by the advances of micro- A SUPREME AFFECTION BETWEEN TWO. 59 scopical and biological science in the last thirty years. I think we can make it not only highly probable, but morally certain from physiological and psychological argument, that death does not end all. So far I de¬ pend on reason. As to the second question, I depend on revelation in the manner indicated in the “pri¬ vate creed ” quoted in “ Biology ” (p. 306). With the average materialistic sceptic, however, the point of most importance is, to show from physiology that death does not end all. Upon this point, therefore, I have concentrated attention. Careless and narrow theological and scientific critics think that I am dis¬ cussing the second question, and claiming too much for the physiological argument, when I am only dis¬ cussing the first inquiry. The principle involved in the argument used here is the usual one, although some of the emphases are new. As Butler in his Analogy endeavors to remove objections, and then to bring forward the Scripture argument, so this dis¬ cussion which I give to the first question is intended to remove objections, and prepare the way for the Scriptural argument on the second. Several critics have overlooked my distinction be¬ tween vitality and life, and so have attributed to me the preposterous notion that every cell sends a ghost into the unseen world. As to the immortality of instinct, I make no affirmations not contained in But¬ ler’s and Agassiz’ well-known positions. I deny the pre-existence of the soul. The latter topic was dis¬ cussed in detail in the ninety-seventh and ninety- eighth Boston Monday lectures, to which I refer for 60 MARRIAGE. a fuller statement of the distinction between vitality and life. It 'was my wholly undeserved fortune, the other day, to be elected to the Victoria Institute, the Phil- . osophical Society of Great Britain, with the Earl of Shaftesbury for its president, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Canon Liddon, and many specialists, among its members ; but I think that election must have occurred before the periodical I am criticising reached the other side of the water. [Applause.] “ Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis Tempus eget.” [Applause.] THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. THE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRD LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, MARCH 4. You did me the honor, perhaps, to he moved at my side now and then In the senses — a vice I have heard which is common to beasts and some men. Mrs. Browning: Lord Walter's Wife. If a man is to keep his health, would you allow him to have a Corinthian girl as his fair friend? Certainly not. — Plato: The Republic, Book iii. 40-1. I * /) III. THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. PEELTJDE ON CTJEEENT EVENTS. [The despatches from England, March 3, announ¬ cing Ruskin’s death, were credited in Boston, and commented on elaborately in an obituary and a leading article in the Advertiser on the morning of March 4. This prelude, although an anachronism, is allowed to stand, it will so soon be history.] John Ruskin is at home, and among his kinsfolk. The rough ways of this world, which his feet trod, not without offence and laceration, they will never press painfully again. Some of us were his pupils, and we shall be lonelier henceforth, until we, too, enter the unseen region into which all men haste. Poor infant, there at Friar’s Crag on Derwentwater, Ruskin gazed through the hollows in the mossy roots over the cliff into the gleaming lake ! This was his first memory. The intense joy mingled with awe, which he had even then, in the presence of the works of the Supreme Power, followed him through life. He never forgot the palpitation of that first moment of wonder. Ruskin’s delight in nature was such that 63 4r 64 MARRIAGE. it would often make him shiver from head to foot with the joy and fear of it, when, after being some time away from the hills, he first reached the shore of a mountain river where the brown water circled among the pebbles, or when he saw the first swell of distant land against the sunset, or the first low broken wall covered with mountain moss. He has come to a high broken wall now — and passed through it ! He has seen the first swell of a distant land against a sunrise. He has reached the shore of a river, where crystalline water circles among pebbles cast down from everlasting mountains. Through the tangled roots of his disgust with this world, which he did not approve, although you and I are in it, he is gazing now, we must suppose, if his faith was correct, upon the far gleaming of a sea before a Throne from the presence of which by and by the heavens and earth, which he loved in our present low estate, will flee away, as unclean. What are the awe and bliss of the new infant in whose experiences the sea of glass is substituted for Derwentwater ? Let us not doubt that he would gladly inspire us who remain on this lonely shore, with his present rev¬ erence for the upper as well as for the lower range of the works of Omnipotence and Omniscience. Luskin’s love of beauty was a master-passion ; and yet, after all, his love of justice and moral worth was still more intense. His love of truth was so filled with his love of beauty, and his love of beauty so filled with his love of truth, that you hardly know, in his criticisms, whether he speaks THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. 65 more as a prophet or as an artist. The genuine¬ ness of the true was to him always a part of the symmetry of the beautiful. Within the range of the faculties needed by an art-critic, he seems to have been full-orbed. The difference between our haughtiest commonplaces and what he has said on his own theme is that between a truncated cone, a stunted shrub, and the full tree, taking its top and radiance of growth from nearness to the sun. No doubt, flaws can be found, even in his best productions ; but we are to judge what Ruskin has published as an art-critic, not by comparing it with absolute perfection, but by contrasting it with what other men have done. Macaulay said, that, when he compared his history with the seventh book of Thucydides, he felt discouraged; but that, when he contrasted it with the best work in the same department in his own time, he felt that he had some ground for encouragement. Now, who as an art-critio deserves to be named on the same day with this spirit that is at last with the archangels ? Ac¬ cording to the belief which was the real inspiration of his life, we must assert that he now has first learned what art is, having entered into the world from which all its prototypes and ideals proceed. As a political economist, Ruskin, you say, was a failure ; but, although assuredly he was not as fully equipped in this department as in the range of art criticism, put his third character with his second, look at him as a philanthropist and political economist together, and who will affirm that any man of letters 66 MARRIAGE. and art in onr day has had a more courageous career than Ruslan ? He has endeavored to put into action some things of which Carlyle has only preached. Born to wealth, he has devoted the better part of his fortune to philanthropy. He was no communist. He was no wild declaimer for the abolition of prop¬ erty. He did talk, as Wordsworth sang, against the introduction of railways and factories into the heart of rural, green England. W e think W ordsworth was possessed of more sensitiveness than sense, on this subject, — perhaps we think the same of Ruskin, — but, at bottom, this art-critic meant to protest against the grinding down under the soot of the factory and the railway, and of our “ machine and Devil driven age,” to use his own language, the love of beauty, the love of cleanliness, even the sense of self-respect, among the poor. We never shall see girls go back to spinning-wheels. We never shall have men using sickles again, as reapers on the sunny fields of Eng¬ land. But Ruskin meant well in his St. George Society ; and I dare predict that a hundred years from now, when England is more crowded than she is to-day, the memory of his philanthropic motive, and the incisive radiance of many a bright gem of political and social suggestion which his questionable discussions of political economy have contained, will gleam far across the years, to his credit. Ruskin was a master of English prose ; and he was this because he had a full nature, and was obliged to express it. The more style expresses, the better, especially if its range of expressiveness be in the THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. 67 upper, subtler, moral emotions, and the finer aesthetic perceptions. That upper range of perception and emotion does not belong to the soul of a quadru¬ ped, nor the expression of it to quadruped rhetoric. If we live principally in that quadruped range, we shall no doubt find the loftier biped range unnatural. There is a quadruped rhetoric, and there is a biped rhetoric. Of the quadruped rhetoric we have a dis¬ mal sufficiency in the world ; and when we accustom ourselves to it year after year, in the newspapers and the average rubbish of circulating libraries, we are apt to think that any thing like biped rhetoric, which alone naturally expresses our whole spirit, is unlawful and unnatural. It depends much on the company a man keeps, which he likes the better, quadruped or biped rhetoric. The one is as natural as the other. If he associates with the Jeremy Taylors, with the Miltons, with the Richters, the Carlyles, and the Ruskins, he very soon will come to love an expres¬ sive style. An orator needs not one style, but twenty styles. The quadruped rhetoric fits certain subjects, and may be learned by a biped who will walk on all-fours. But to be kept there ! — this is the intolerable bondage, when the theme demands another style. Those born to the brutish style, however, cannot learn the human. It is very un¬ natural for a quadruped to stand on two feet ; and I suppose the biped human style must forever seem unnatural to quadruped rhetoricians. [Applause.] Ruskin was a biped, because fully human. Some of his phrases will live, as expressing moods of soul 68 MARRIAGE. that have rarely been described in any language. Some of th'em will live simply from their marvellous picturing power. If I were to attempt the difficult task of selecting the single sentence which seems to me to be the best description he has ever written, it would be the one he has referred to himself ( Frondes Agrestes , section 81), and describing the striking of a heavy ocean surge against a tremorless cliff. The words are : “ One moment, a flinty cave ; the next, a marble pillar; the next, a fading cloud.” Why has not a man whose soul is not that of the quad¬ ruped, a right to utter all there is in it, and to obtain expressions for the loftiest parts of his nature, as well as for the lower ? The truth is that we give too little credit to the really Shakspearian school in the literature which expresses the deeper things of the soul. Richter founded it in prose, you say ; Carlyle has carried it on ; Ruskin has strengthened the foundations of the school. Yes, but it is older than they. It runs back to Milton and Jeremy Taylor and Hooker. It runs back to one called Isaiah, some time ago ; back to a certain David who sang psalms which twenty centuries have echoed ; or to one wdiom we call Job; or to another whom we call Homer, quite a long time ago. Under the law of the survival of the fittest, the power of living literature ought to be tl^e justification of its style. Were I to choose out of all Ruskin’s writings the one sentence which best reveals the open secret of his suggestiveness as an art-critic, it would be this : “ The right hand of Christ first strewed the snow on the THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. 69 Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes of Calvary.” Al¬ low yourselves to notice what a belief, such as utters itself in that sentence, does for a man ! I must call a hush here, for we are standing at Ruskin’s grave, to ask for the secret of his power. We may say securely that it was Christian faith. Ruskin believes in the Deity of our Lord, and also in the Unity of God. The Hand that was pierced is the Hand that lifted up the hills ; and therefore, ‘behind all natural law, Ruskin saw the soul that wept over Jerusalem, and spoke as never man spake. Will you but take his position for a moment? Will you assume that these propositions represent actual verities, and then say whether the universe does not become a burning bush, every leaf of it aflame with the fire too sacred to be touched? His extraordinary equipment as art-critic, his marvel¬ lous capacity as a prose poet, all that God gave him inside the range of literary capacity, would have been but the cold summit of the Alps, had it not been irra¬ diated with this vision of the Sun which lies below the horizon of unbelieving lives. I must blame even Orthodoxy; I must blame what calls itself, some¬ times, scientific Theism, for not attaining the height of Ruskin’s outlook, and beholding beneath the hori¬ zon the yet unrisen truth of the Divine omnipresence in natural laws, and its transcendency above them all. From the certainty of the Divine immanence in mat¬ ter and mind, comes to the loftiest summits of litera¬ ture the mysterious glow of the Alpine morning dr sunset. Ruskin awes us, not from his height so much as from a certain Divine coloring, filling all his writ- 70 MARRIAGE. ings ; and that coloring proceeds from beneath the horizon, and from a philosophical Christian faith. I know what he said about narrow evangelical views ; but he was brought up in them, and to the end of his days he lived in what I suppose to be sound ortho¬ doxy. If this man did not become desiccated, crip¬ pled, and was not brought down from the height of aesthetic and philosophical speculation by his Chris¬ tian belief ; if, on the other hand, the flinty crags of these intellectual heights were irradiated by that be¬ lief, and made an inspiration by the coloring which it gives to them, we well may gaze after him into the morning ; we well may look upon his career in this life as but the upstretching aurora of a day into which he now has entered, only to find that what he learned here of the Divine immanence in matter and mind is true in the highest, as well as in the lowest, of God’s works. Wherever there is natural law, there God’s will acts ; and not only God’s will, but our Lord’s will, for God is one. Wherever there is a touch of the Holy Spirit upon conscience, there w'e have the touch of the Supreme Power as well as the touch of our ascended Lord. In this faith this man lived ; in it he swam through the three periods of his life, — through that Oxford period, in which the “ Modern Painters ” was preparing ; through those seventeen years in which he was in Venice and other capitals of Europe as a student ; and through the twenty in which, at Cam¬ bridge and Oxford, he has acted as professor. Face to face with all the philosophy of our time, this man lived and died, bathed in the light of the sun behind THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. 71 c the sun ; and was not ashamed. If the radiance of his writings is seen a thousand years hence, it will be, I think, not because of the gleam of the art criti¬ cism, or even of the philosophy, but because of this overawing light that came from a dawn yet below the edge of the sky of sceptical lives. Carlyle said of Edward Irving, “ Adieu, thou first friend, while this confused twilight of existence lasts. May we meet where twilight has become day ! ” (. Essay on the Death of Irving .) Carlyle will be lonelier, but not long. Truly life is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is to behold the light of the sun ; but sweeter is life beyond life, and yet more pleasant is it to behold the light of the sun behind the sun. THE LECTURE. The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the free-lover has no home. [Applause.] Great Nature seems to be domestic in her purposes ; for even the brute races have quiet, secluded spots, of which Almighty Providence, by the most power¬ ful instincts in the brutes themselves, and by great arrangements running through the whole domain of life, preserves the sacredness. The swallow twitter¬ ing under the eaves builds itself a home. From far Africa, or the Brazils, passing over numberless rivers and cities, the best of the birds bring the domestic impulse. The wren no less than the eagle, and the eagle no less than the wren, mates herself. Each will defend her young at the risk of life. Often 72 MARRIAGE. the faithful singing robin returns to the same spot, summer after summer, although she may have a whole zone from which to choose her resting-place. Do we not know that some winged creatures, season after season, from the billowing rice-fields of the South, from the Amazon gleaming among its tropi¬ cal forests, or, it may be, from tawny Africa, come back to the remembered humble porches of certain Northern cottages ? and do we not understand very well that all this is Nature, a proclamation of the importance of the home, even for those poor, perch¬ ing wanderers that a few years ago were not, and a few years hence shall be remembered no more for¬ ever ? The lion has a single mate in his lair, and a fatal ferocity if it be invaded. The love of children is but a part of the love of home. The unrelenting tigress, when her whelps are injured, has a tenfold greater ferocity than at other times. The mother- bird broods its young with a tenderness which Almighty God has used as a symbol of his own kindness toward the human race. [Applause.] For the cradle of the human species, however, we are told that Nature provides no safeguard. Science, we are assured, protects the nests and lairs of brutes, but not the sanctity of the homes of men ! Assembled in Pliny’s villa, we go to the lattice- work of the windows, and the crevices of the doors ; we ask Panthea and Phocion’s wife and the rest of our jury to go with us ; and we look upon this motley assembly of lepers, some of whom have in- THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. T3 terrupted us by serpentine suggestions that would undermine the home. Pliny says, “In Pome we had no case of parricide for six hundred years after the city was founded. We had no name for the crime. Our Cicero remarks that when Solon was asked why 1/ he had not instituted penalties for parricide in his famous code for Athens, he replied, 4 that to give a name to an unknown crime is to tempt men to it, rather than to prevent it ! ’ Pliny is proud of early Poman history. “We were barbarous, you say,” — he is talking to Hampden, — “ and yet six hundred years passed before any son of the city of Pome imbrued his hands in the blood of his father. When that crime was first committed, what did we do ? We passed a law that every one guilty of parricide should be flayed with a whip, then sewn up in a sack with a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and cast headlong into the sea.” Pliny looks askance upon this leprous crowd outside his villa, who would whisper sugges¬ tions into the ears of Panthea and Phocion’s wife. “ A dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape ! - The race is not dead yet,” Pliny exclaims. [Applause.] The revolt of this pagan’s heart against parricide is not the result of modern culture. “ Why,” con¬ tinues Pliny, “look across the Adriatic, look across the iEgean, carry your thoughts far on to that China of which you have learned too little in modern days.” I am presuming Pliny to speak at the pres¬ ent moment, and to be possessed of a knowledge of history up to this time. 44 There is an empire pagan yet. It is founded on reverence for parents. 74 MAEEIAGE. Its history lies outside the range of Christian influ¬ ences. What do the people do yonder when a son murders his father? The mandarins of the village in which the offence is committed are put out of office, and the neighbors suffer severe reprimand. The son is put to death ; his bones are chopped in pieces by your pagan Chinese ; they are burned ; the house in which he lived is razed to the ground, and the place where it stood is sown with salt.” Pliny goes to the window again, and looks out on this long- living breed of apes and vipers. “ What have you done to your fathers ? ” And the reply is, leering frivolity filling the countenances of the crowd, “We do not know who they are.” [Applause.] Do you want a portrait of Panthea when she hears that reply? A portrait of Cornelia? a portrait of PliocioiTs wife ? a portrait of Hampden ? a portrait of the French prisoner? We are here to ascertain what great Nature teaches, and these faces answer us. Go again to the window. “ What about the home? Does any one in this crowd possess a home ? ” Pliny asks. “ In this crowd which is making suggestions against marriage, is there one who has a home?” u The word is not in our language,” is the reply. There is one modern, cultivated language that has not the word. And yet remember that Pere Hya- cinthe stood in Notre Dame in Paris the other day, putting to shame the dissolute life of that capital, which is the playground of all Europe, and exhibits far more than the vice of the French. To put that THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. 75 life to shame, he held up, what do you suppose? Rome? No. China? No. He held up the brutes. He held up Nature building homes for the irra¬ tional animals. (Hyacinths, The Family and the Church , p. 265.) Whoever, in the spirit of the sci¬ entific method, will study how development has run on through the different tribes of sentient creatures up to man, will see great Nature preparing afar off the hearthstone, and behold the smiting of God’s hands together to light up the spark of the family fire. [Applause.] We are in presence of a crowd fitly symbolized by the animals cast into the sea with the Roman parri¬ cide. We empanel our jury again, and with all solemnity proceed to ascertain what they, as pagan judges, think of these suggestions. Again the crowd whispers under the crevices of the windows, “ Men can love twice or three times : women can love but once.” You say that this is too wild a statement to be found among the inculcations even of the most erratic teachers. There are on this platform books which assert literally that woman differs from man so far as to make it safe to affirm that man is born for polygamy, although woman for monogamy. “ Quite a discord in the works of Nature,” Pliny says, “if this be true ! I have heard from Greek and Roman philosophers,” he remarks, “that Nature builds no half-joints, and that when there is a left hand there is a right hand.” — “I know,” Cornelia says, and Panthea and Phocion’s wife assent, “that men and women are born two and two, and fall in love two 76 MARRIAGE. and two ; and now how are you to make them consti¬ tute a society made up of one and twenty? Utterly hopeless discord exists in every unscientific plan. Surely if communities are*made up in this style, and the race is born under the law of co-equal heredity, somebody must be without a home, somebody must be left unprovided for by great Nature, somebody must have awakened in- him a love of home, and have no means of finding where to lay his head. Somebody must be mocked by the Supreme Powers, if they allow the members of the race to be born two and two, and then associate them one and twenty.” “We suspect, in the name of arithmetic,” this jury says, “ a philosophy which destroys the opportunities of that part of the race which polygamy would not provide with associates.” I hold in my hand a book which I shall not advertise by naming. It is a Boston anonymous work. It was written by an old East India clerk, himself a bachelor; and, although I am not sup¬ posing that the man led an immoral life, he certainly must have been strangely warped by the experiences he met in the various seaports of the world, or he could not have written this: yA woman’s heart is so constituted that it is impossible for her to cherish a sincere love for niore than one husband at the same time. It is even difficult for her to believe that a man can cherish a sincere and honest love for more than one woman at the same time. It is difficult for her to believe it, for she cannot comprehend it. Her own instincts revolt against the thought of a plu- THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. 77 rality of husbands ; and, judging his feeling by her own, she does not see how a man can want, or at least truly love, a plurality of wives.” But at this point there is a constitutional difference of sex ! “ A man never can know the infinite tenderness and the infi¬ nite patience of a mother’s love, except imperfectly. His experience does not teach him. His paternal love does not resemble it. So a woman can never know the sincerity of a man’s conjugal love for a plurality of wives.” And on the basis of that accursed shallowness there is erected here in the desert ranges of discus¬ sion a dust-pillar of leprosy, to be the support of a new moral order in the world ! Who wants any thing more than a single whiff of the honest indig¬ nation of old Rome, or even of China, to pulverize that fallacy ? for it is only an air-hung, eddying rope of sand. [Applause.] There must be scorched lands somewhere to produce dust, for this pillar of dust seems to have been blown into form twice in Boston. The book claims to be in a second edition. Is there any Sahara here? I should like to know where dust enough was found to make a pillar of that sort, a kind of dancing, insane, whirling der¬ vish. No more science in it than in the followers of the old Saturnalia, or than in the most erratic and loathsome of the modern part of this crowd outside Pliny’s villa, and which he will not admit to the out¬ most edges of his own hearthstone ! Philosophy ? Why, this man goes on to say that the true relations of love are symbolized by the sun 78 MARRIAGE. and the planets : “ It would be as impossible and as unnatural for a pure-minded, virtuous woman to have more than one husband, as for the earth to have more than one sun ; but it is not unnatural nor impossible for a pure and noble-minded man to cherish the most devout love for several wives at the same time. It is as natural for him as it is for the sun to have several planets at the same time, each one dependent on him, and each one harmonious on his own sphere.” I beseech you to be reverent, for this is Boston. [Applause.] “ To each planet the sun yields all the light and heat which she is capable of receiving, and which she would be capable of re¬ ceiving were she the only planet in the sky. Each planet attracts the sun to the utmost of her weight, and the exhaustion of her power; and the sun re¬ turns her attraction to an exactly equal degree, and • no more. Man is the sun, they are the planets. He is strong, they are weak. Let us not find fault with the ordinances of God, or attempt to resist his will.” The black angels laugh at the sanctimonious oleagi¬ nousness of small philosophy put forward to defend polygamy. [After this sentence, Mr. Cook with a gesture of abhorrence threw the book from which he had been reading into a chair near which A. Bronson Alcott happened to be sitting. The venerable Concord philosopher, in a spirit of righteous indignation, and with a look of intense disgust, reached forward his golden-headed cane, and thrust the volume oft the chair on to the floor. Mr. Cook, noticing the sig- THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. 79 nificant movement, which attracted the attention of the whole audience, and drew forth loud applause, turned to him, and said] Underfoot is the proper place for that volume to be put by a man who has been the author of the life and training of “ Little Women,” known throughout the world in our age [applause], and whose example, God grant, may lift us here in New England to heights from which a breeze of indignation may smite these gaunt, fiend¬ ish sand-pillars, and cause them to bury each other, and not us, in destruction ! [Applause.] Are there any scandal trials by jury with uncer¬ tain results? Are there any newspapers whose ad¬ vocacy, or at least whose silence, can be bought by questionable characters? You will find excuses for social infamy made here and there, by whom ? Why, by the class of men and women I call Bohemian jour¬ nalists. I am not assailing the first, second, or third class of respectable newspaper-editors. These all are among the prophets of modern times. Your foremost newspaper-writer needs to possess encyclo¬ pedic knowledge ; he must be abreast of the century in the outlines of every department of thought. But here is your Bohemian, fifth-rate editor, in some inky, littered, verminous attic ; and he defends, slyly, loose ideas on the marriage relations. We let this style of insinuated, cowardly, anonymous attack drift through society. We make lax divorce-laws. By and by there comes some great strain on the community, and there is need of the service of the press on the right side. You can buy parts of it for the wrong side. 80 MARRIAGE. Pliny has a right to rise, as he does here and now, and say, “Boston, Chicago, New York, Brook¬ lyn, Charleston, New Orleans, Paris! remember that in a single month Rome put to death fifty women for poisoning their husbands. They were in the upper ranks of society; and they had been tempted, not by stern, but by lax, laws of divorce.” [Ap¬ plause.] We have that same cause in operation in more than one American commonwealth. Pointing to the experience of Rome, Pliny says, \ “Five hundred years after the City of the Seven Hills was founded, we had a divorce-case that ob- J tained a place in our records. I will not undertake to assert that there were no divorces for the first five hundred years of the life of Rome ; but certain it is that there is no authentic recorded divorce for the first five hundred years.” (See Woolsey, Di¬ vorce, chap, i.) “I know,” Pliny continues, “how Rome grew cor¬ rupt ; and how, at* last, the better emperors under¬ took to roll back the tide of license by increasing the naturalness of the divorce-laws ; that is, by insisting that those entering upon marriage should know what they are about, and not have power to break up, by a whim, arrangements on which the happiness of children depend, and on which the peace of society at last rests. There may be divorce for sufficient cause ; but the city of Rome, in its first hundred years, shames the present record of any American commonwealth of equal population.” We go to the window, and we find this crowd of THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. 81 serpentine whisperers consulting together as to an¬ other plea. I will not pick up that book ; but here is another, which, pardon me, I do not mean to name by its title. Ellen Sturge sends a communication to the Woman’s Advocate of Dayton, O., in which she proposes the following social platform : “ First, let the marriage-compact be limited to from one to three years at the option of the contracting parties.” I must stand at a distance from my jury, or I cannot read this with peace ! They are pagan men and women. This is from Ohio. “ Secondly, discard the erroneous idea that the contract is divine. Thirdly, 2 let love alone.” Yes, a most important provision, for this crowd outside. Pliny, and Phocion’s wife, and Panthea and Cornelia, and the Pompeiian daughter, gaze into their face§ again. “ Let love alone ! The dog, the viper, and the ape have spoken frankly at last.” But they must speak fashionably, and so we find this whisper following, which deceives no Pan¬ thea, and no Pliny: “ Love,” says Ellen Sturge, “is the sensitive, spontaneous outgrowth of the heart, subject to the control and treatment of circum¬ stances, rather than formal promises. It is too ten¬ der, too sacred, for the public gaze.” Yes, it is; but whoever knows what it is, will understand what preparation for marriage should be. When it is proclaimed that a social platform must include this proposition, that we are to let love alone, I need no other proof of its unnaturalness; for I recognize no marriage as natural that has not behind it an adequately tested, supreme affection. [Applause.] 82 MARRIAGE. There will be in every contract of this sort, con¬ tinues this Ohio teacher of philosophy, a provision by which the children shall be given over to the care of the State. I am not amazed as I wander through the litera¬ ture on this topic, to find it all a morass, without a square yard of firm footing, and with pestilence breathing from all its unskimmed, slimy pools. I have obliged myself to examine much of this Ser- bonian bog, in which whoever stands, and Struggles to defend himself, sinks the deeper with every effort. I have cited to you what I suppose to be specimens of the very best there is on this theme. Owen lies there, and I might cite him. I name him because every¬ body knows him. If you will take the improvements on his system which experience- has made, the out¬ come of them will be at last what occurred here in Boston, not long ago. A brazen woman stood up, calling herself the wife of one man, and proclaiming her perfect freedom to be whatever she pleased, and doing so with leprous language and with profanity before a mixed audience. I can go down to a cer¬ tain hall here in Boston, and on a few occasions find exercises going on with which Sodom would have had deep sympathy. [Applause.] We find these people amusing, only because we do not pity them enough. They suppose that they are uttering a great secret public sentiment. They do not com¬ prehend how the deeper heart of the community is loathing them. Social lepers never understand how insufferably odious to a pagan, to say nothing of a THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. 83 Christian, jury, is their defence of the dog, the viper, and the ape. At the door of his villa, Pliny comes forward with Panthea, and with Phocion’s wife, and stands, for once, in full presence of this infamous crowd. As he addresses them, they depart one by one, slinking away from the eyes of these pagan women, and from the blazing light of experience ; for that is the au¬ thority to which Pliny appeals at last. “Wreck,” Pliny exclaims, “ came to Pome because the family was undermined in our empire. Wreck you have seen come to Islam from the same cause. Wreck has come to every Sardanapalus. Wreck has over¬ taken every communistic society first or last. You want experiment here ? Have you not had enough of it through eighteen hundred years, wherever your views have been practised? You have no homes. You dd not know your fathers. Has the centre of Asia a hearthstone ? Has polygamous Islam a hearth¬ stone to which you feel attracted? Large experi¬ ence, you want ? What has Sardanapalus, what has Mormonism, what has Islam, done for the ages ? ” Five days in Constantinople I sought in vain to find among the polygamistic population one fresh face over forty years of age. There rides the em¬ peror into his mosque, from his seraglio which con¬ tains two thousand people ; and at forty he is a graybeard, and flaccid. The next day he slits his veins with scissors, and goes hence by suicide. Un¬ doubtedly the Turkish peasant is too often too poor to have many wives. No doubt Mahomet advised 84 MARRIAGE. monogamy, although he practised polygamy. But there are special polygamistic clauses in the Koran, and what is their effect? I sailed up the Danube, and looked at the villages that are Mohammedan, and at the villages that are Christian. Here is a Mo¬ hammedan town, in which there are no homes in the strict sense ; and the dogs in it are the only scavengers. The first object that salutes the eyes and nostrils in a Mohammedan town in the East is usually the heap of refuse at the city-gate ; the next thing, a crowd of dogs over which you stumble ; and then the cobweb tessellation of filthy booths and windows. In Hebron I have been on the edge of being mobbed in the foul streets because of the sus¬ picion and wildness of a fouler populace ; while in Bethlehem, a Christian town, I saw no rubbish ; even on obscure streets, every thing was neat. You sail up the Danube, and, as the minarets fade out of sight, the filthy villages fade out also. The spires come into view, and with them the usual sights of Christian towns. Although poverty-stricken, the villages exhibit a certain amount of enterprise and neatness. You find children that do not look as if they had been unwashed from birth. I passed through the iron gates of the Danube, in a steam¬ boat ; and on the deck were an English lord, a Ger¬ man professor, and an American politician. As we moved from the land of the minarets into the land of steeples, I said, “We are leaving the domain of the Koran, and are coming into that of the old-fashioned book called the Scriptures.” — “I know it,” said the THE LEPER’S THEORY AND PRACTICE. 85 Massachusetts politician. “Not more than half the people of a Christian population go to church, but they rule the other half. We are more indebted to the Bible, and its ideas of marriage, than to all Ro¬ man, Greek, or English law. I never appreciated the fact Before.” Said the German student, in his earnestness, mistaking me, “You should not be hu¬ morous upon a theme so grave ; for I have been thinking how, through all modern history, the Bib- , lical ideas of marriage move as the. sweet waters of Jordan through the Dead Sea.” The English lord said, “ I know what Britain has inherited from Rome. I know what came to us out of Greece. But if we are to express our opinions as to the dic¬ tates of experience on this theme, if we are to take science and history for our guides, as we contrast minarets for experience on one side, and spires for experience on the other, we shall fall on our knees on the deck of this vessel, and thank God that we were brought up in homes of the Biblical species.” [Applause.] IV. MAEEIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. THE ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, MARCH 11. Marriage is a matter of more worth Than to be dealt with by attorneyship : For what is wedlock forced but a hell, An age of discord and continual strife ? "Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss, And is a pattern of celestial peace. Shakspeare : Henry VI., Part I., Act V. Happiness passes away, leaving hardly the slightest trace, indeed, can scarcely be called happiness, since nothing lasting is gained, Unhappiness also passes away (and that is a great comfort), but leaves deep traces behind ; and, if we know how to improve them, of a most wholesome nature, and is often the cause of the highest happiness, as it purifies and strengthens the character. This I have , often observed in the case of women who have been married unhap¬ pily, but who would rather sink into the grave than abandon the position in which fate has placed them. — Wilhelm von Humboldt : Letters. IV. MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. • The current blazing discussion of future punish¬ ment is distinguished by no new evidence, but by new disputants. The progress of democracy and of luxury in the world has brought to the front in theology a communistic and an aristocratic party. The former is the patron of what I call the Bohe¬ mian theology, and the latter of the Sofa theology. My Lord Verisopht naturally believes in the latter; and Sir John Falstaff and Jack Cade, in the former. Unhappily, neither of these personages is a scientific authority. It is very significant that both Abdiel above them, and Mephistopheles below them, are too wise to believe in either the* Bohemian or the Sofa theology. But the communistic and the luxurious tendency are powerful enough to have their own newspapers, magazines, books, platforms, and even pulpits. The Lord Verisopht prefers Dr. Majolica for a preacher. Falstaff and Cade usually prefer to do their own preaching. The Bohemian and the Sofa 89 90 MARKIAGE. theology agree in possessing the democratic spirit of uncontrolled self-rule and individualism. They both regard the unwelcome as the untrue. The belief of the communistic party in liberty, and that of the luxurious party in ease, is so intense that the scien¬ tific method is to neither a master, but only a servant. The one believes in deciding the most intricate con¬ troversies by count of heads and clack of tongues ; the other, by the languid sneer of fashion. These theological parties are full of the Zeit-Geist or Spirit of the Time, and not of the Ewigkeit-Geist or Spirit of Eternity. But now, for the first time in history, the portions of society which they repre¬ sent are beginning to obtain the ear of the world on the most complicated questions of theology, hereto¬ fore left to the decision of scholars. This is the chief characteristic of many a modern debate. Not a little discussion in our times is a trial of scholars by newspapers and parlors, rather than of scholars by scholars. Neither in the historical, nor in the philosophical, nor in the exegetical portions of this debate concerning future punishment, is there any new evidence; but the new disputants are placing the old evidence with much eagerness in a new pair of scales. Age after age the evidence has been weighed in the rival scales of jealous competing scholars, and the results recorded in standard opin¬ ions. It is now to be weighed in the scales of the people. Ultimately, if the latter instrument is steadily balanced, the evidence will be found to weigh in the new scales precisely what it did in the MAEEIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 91 old. Experiment will corroborate experiment; and the more we have of it, the better. All just scales use the true weights of the Ewigkeit- Greist, and all such scales justify each other. The false weights of the Zeit- Greist are the only things to be dreaded. For one, I have made up my mind not to go out of this life trusting my chances of eternal peace to the opportunity of repentance after death. In this assembly we profess to revere the scientific method. Let me try here a serious experiment. Nothing tests a doctrine like acting it out. How many are there in this hall that are willing to trust their chances of eternal peace to the possibility of repentance after death? Canon Farrar says that his gospel is one of eternal hope ; and that, although he cannot preach the certainty of Universalism, he must yet lift up behind the darkness in the background of our views of the next life a hope that every winter will turn to spring. He assures us that there is opportunity of repentance after death. Will any one rise here, and say seriously that he is willing to act on that assurance? It is safe to put truth into practice. “ Thou shalt not steal.” I am willing to take that as a guide at this moment. “ Thou shalt commit no murder.” I am ready to trust my whole weight upon that plank in the theological platform. But, as for myself, I have personally made up my mind that I will not, if I have my senses, go hence trusting to a chance of repentance after death. [Applause.] Am I willing to advise any friend to trust liis chance of eternal peace to an opportunity of repent- 92 MAKBIAGE. ance after death? Not I. By as much as any man or woman is dear to me, by so much I should advise them to be shy of going hence trusting their eternal future and its peace to an opportunity of repentance beyond the grave. If I cannot advise John and Jane, William and Mary, to trust to repentance after death, I have no right to advise the ages to do so. John and Jane, William and Mary, are the ages. What, then, have we to do with this seductive clamor as to repentance after death, — we practical men, who believe in the scientific method, and would put every thing to the test of absolute experiment in life? If we cannot depend on the doctrine our¬ selves, if we are not willing to put our whole weight upon it, if we recoil with terror when asked to put upon it the weight of any friend, how dare we stand up, and put upon it the weight of the ages, full of passion and blindness, heat and pruriency, and what these forces may breed ? As a practical matter, the question for me is settled by a simple appeal to individual seriousness. You are not willing, I am not willing, to take the leap into the Unseen, depend¬ ing on the chance of repentance after death ; and, if we are not willing to do that ourselves, God forbid we should teach others to do what we will not do ! (Applause.] Every great doctrine should be discussed under three heads, — definition, proof, reply to objections. Here and now I attempt only definition. The first fault I find with the current loose newspaper discus¬ sion, and with much that pretends to be scholarly, MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 93 is that it gives no definitions. It is very difficult to ascertain where a man stands among the many forms of opinion on this theme. Canon Farrar makes these only four in number; but there are at least nine. 1. The Dantean view. This is often confused with the Orthodox. Dante’s poetry, his imagery of brimstone and fire, is not infrequently spoken of as if it were to-day the official utterance of the latest scholarship. The Dantean view, strictly so called, is repudiated by scholarly orthodoxy. Allow me to say, however, that I believe in the existence of a spiritual body, and that I know, beyond a per- adventure, that in this life, when a man is under the terrors of conscience, strange thrills of pain shoot through him ; he is bowed down ; there are many indications that the finest fibres of his structure are at war with the nature of things. We do not know but that in another state of existence the spiritual body will be darkened and bowed down, and shot through with pain as it is here. I cannot be sure that any one is authorized to assert that in the next life there may not be pains as nearly physical as the spiritual body is. There is a spiritual body, and here and now it lies behind the finest fibres of our flesh, and here and now we feel some of the pains and blisses-of which the spiritual body is susceptible. I do not adopt the Dantean view of the state of the lost in another life ; but I object to any man saying, who believes in a spiritual body, that there are no conditions adapted to that body to reveal God’s 94 MARKIAGE. displacency there, just as similar conditions surely reveal the displacency of conscience here. Let no man whistle on this theme until he is out of Dante’s forest. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the pains that conscience gives us by its displacency, and the blisses it imparts by its complacency. When the cover of flesh is dropped, and we possess in fulness all the powers which now exist in embryo in this mysterious organ¬ ism, who knows but that somewhere in the next state of existence we shall understand what the dim but vast prophecies of our instinctive gestures in con¬ trasted moral states mean, — standing erect, and hav¬ ing in our faces a light not of this world, or bowing down, feeling chains upon our limbs, and pains shoot¬ ing through the innermost* fibres ? This quarter of the sky deserves a long gaze. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. 2. The Romish view. This does not teach by au¬ thority that the pains of the next life will be physi¬ cal, but yet asserts that it is dangerous to deny that they will be. In the North- American Review, lately (March- April, 1878), a Romish writer defends a theory of the state of the impenitent almost Dantean. Of course the doctrine of the Romish purgatory is not upheld by Protestant scholars. 3. The Orthodox view. What is it? I know that I venture much, but I am asking no one here to indorse my propositions : I claim no right to speak for others. When I set aside all exegetical consid¬ erations, and use only the light of ethical science, my MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 95 view of future punishment is summed up in these six propositions : — . (1) Argument which proves that sin will cease involves principles which prove that it would never begin. It has begun; and optimism must adjust itself to this fact of experience. (2) Judicial blindness occurs under the operation of the two natural laws that repeated sin impairs the judgment, and that he whose judgment is impaired sins repeatedly. (3) The self-propagating power of sin arises from these same laws. (4) The effectiveness of new light , in another state of existence , to cause reform , cannot be scientifically 'pre¬ dicted face to face with these laws. (5) Under the power of judicial blindness, and the self-propagating nature of sin, a man may fall into permanent, voluntary, moral remoteness from God and its consequences, or final permanence of evil character. (6) While sin continues, its punishment will con¬ tinue. Even after repentance, sin is not covered from the Divine displacency without an atonement, conscious¬ ly or unconsciously received. As perfect frankness concerning this definition is important, allow me to say that I do not undertake, by mere* reason, to point out when probation will end. That is a question which must be answered from the Scriptures, and to which, as I think, they give a definite reply. But from mere reason we are 96 MARRIAGE. justified in affirming that character tends to final per¬ manence ; and I believe that sometimes it attains permanence in this life. I do not know but that we should be justified by reason in asserting that life gives every responsible free agent a tone of charac¬ ter, such that, when he enters the next state of exist¬ ence, the first moment will be one both of his judg¬ ment by the moral law and of his final choice. The judgment will be in the choice, and the choice will be in the judgment. This is not a second probation. To call it such is misleading. But this event and the individual judgment may occur in one and the same indivisible instant. As a projectile shot against the curved side of an iron ship glances to the right hand or the left at the instant of its impact, so the soul which strikes on the infinite bosses of God’s buckler will shoot to the right or left, upward or downward, according to the mould it has taken here from its predominant choices. [Applause.] Here is the boss of the buckler, and it is not likely to change its shape. You go through life, loving what God hates, and hating what God loves ; you form here a tone of character in dissonance with the nature of things, or with what ought to be : you strike the lower side of the boss, and the instant of impact is the instant of glancing in the direction for which your free choice has prepared you. The new light which you see, you hate ; your character is one of dissimilarity of feeling with God ; and, under fixed natural law, but with no loss of freedom, you fall into the consequences of that dissimilarity. MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 97 Certainty as to the state of individual men when they depart hence is very different from certainty as to the conditions of the peace of the soul. Some men go hence with a tone of character harmonized with God, and yet it may be that they have many faults. Possibly they are like this Union after we fought Gettysburg and Richmond, — the Union saved, although there is many a Ku-Klux Klan in the South¬ ern States. Conversion may have occurred, although sanctification be imperfect. God will treat with mercy every man who is predominantly loyal, because he ought to do so. But every man who has not fought Gettysburg and Richmond, every man who is predominantly disloyal, will find that without holi¬ ness there can be no blessedness. As evil choices progress, there is more light some¬ times thrown around men in this world. Do they always see it ? How do we know that more light in the next world will be loved or even seen ? The later Universalism has given up what was once called “the death and glory theory.” No schol¬ arly Universalist now, as I suppose, would care to be responsible for the old, crude form of assertion inside the ranks of Universalism, implying that death is a bath, washing off whatever habits we have of evil, and giving us at once harmony with the Unseen Holy. Within a few weeks a distinguished gather¬ ing of Universalists in this city has issued a series of propositions expressing the points in which they agree, and distinctly repudiating that theory. ' This event marks an important improvement upon the 98 MARRIAGE. first form in which Universalism was taught in New England. [Applause.] 4. The Second Probationist view. This does not necessarily teach that all men will be saved, but that those who die impenitent will have a second chance, and that those who do not improve will fall into eternal sin, and go into eternal punishment. 5. The Annihilationist view. This affirms that the incorrigibly wicked will sooner or later cease to exist. 6. The Universalist view. 7. The Restorationist view. Now that the doc¬ trine I have just referred to has been repudiated, there is very little difference between Universalism and Restorationism. The Universalist is a Restora¬ tionist of perhaps a more emphatic sort than the man who previously was called a Restorationist, but not a Universalist. 8. The Agnostic ’view. Those who hold this say that there is a background of mystery, and that the Bible reveals nothing on this theme. 9. The Optimistic view. This is Canon Farrar’s position, and it affirms neither the Universalist nor the Restorationist nor the Agnostic propositions, but simply an eternal hope. I might say that in the last place we have a ma¬ terialistic view which sometimes calls itself Christian, attempting to twist out of the Scriptures the idea that there is no immortality for any soul. We have erratics, unscholar ly, foolish persons, who find no teaching of immortality in the Old Testament, or even MAKBIAGE WITHOUT LOYE. 99 in the New. Indeed, there is no use in carrying for¬ ward a debate with men so twisted by native consti¬ tution that they can twist the Bible into the negation of one of the plainest of its teachings, certainly in the New Testament, that there is immortality for both the evil and the good. The worth of an opinion in the world may be esti¬ mated by the number who hold it, and by its practi¬ cal effect in making men good. I am not prepared to affirm that the agnostic doctrine is powerful in making men virtuous, nor that the optimistic is, nor that the second probationist is. Try the experiment of putting down opposite each one of these nine views a figure representing the prevalence of the opinion. Eighty out of a hundred, of the professing Christians of the world, hold the Orthodox view. Some very important excrescences on the Orthodox position are included in the Romish view. But throwing out the excrescences, and putting Romish and Orthodox together, certainly eighty per cent of those who profess Christianity hold that there is endlessness in future punishment. For one, I be¬ lieve that this has been an effective doctrine, on the whole, in making people virtuous. Put eight for the figure representing the prevalence of this Orthodox view, and eight as the figure representing its power to do good, and multiply the two together, and you have the figure that should represent the weight of that view — say, sixty-four. Take your second pro¬ bationist, take your optimistic, take any other of the nine views* and estimate their weight in the same 100 MARRIAGE. 7 way by the product of two factors representing prevalence and usefulness. How do they work? Wendell Phillips said in my hearing the other day, before the Free Religious Association, “ I am proud to be your lecturer, but your doctrine will not work. Tested by history, tested by philosophy, tested by human nature, you will find that it will not work.” That was his phrase, repeated four times. Facts oblige us to say, concerning these other forms of the doctrine of future punishment, that they do not work. It is historically certain that they have not been effective in obtaining supporters among those who profess to be serious men and women, and to take the Scriptures for their guide. They have ob¬ tained many followers outside those who reverence the Scriptures ; they have obtained many inside the range of the Bohemian and the Sofa theology. But I am now speaking of earnest, serious men, who are about to go hence, and to try the personal experi¬ ment of putting themselves on this or that platform. Where are the figures that represent the true weights of those doctrines, as estimated by their prevalence among serious men, and their effectiveness in mak¬ ing bad men good? With the highest figures my conscience will justify, I cannot raise any one of those doctrines to a position above ten as compared with sixty-four. I do not find that their prevalence in the world, and their power to do good, fits them to be weighed against the more serious view; and so, according merely to the rule of count of heads and clack of tongues, there is really something to be said for the Orthodox position. MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 101 If you were to send out your ballot-box, and take up a vote, I believe that you would find the opinion of the church far less changed as to substance than many of you suppose. One of the religious news¬ papers of this city has shown that more than seventy per cent of the men in the evangelical ministry of my denomination teach the orthodox view in sub¬ stantial unity. The evangelical creeds of the world are practically a unit on the propositions which I have given here as deductions from established ethi¬ cal science. I do not know an evangelical denomina¬ tion on the globe that will deny either of these six assertions. Give me these six propositions, which have thus far seen battle but not defeat, and I am willing to face, any theology which stands simply on the spirit of the time,, and not on the spirit of eter¬ nity. [Applause.] THE LECTURE. You are requested to appear to-day in Pliny’s villa, with the statutes of Connecticut and Indiana under your arms. It will be difficult for you to obtain ad¬ mission, now that the host of the unclean have been sent away behind the Apennines, unless you prove that you are not friends of the loose divorce-laws recorded in these statutes which you bring from America. Cornelia, Pantliea, Pliny, Phocion’s wife, as you open the pages of Connecticut and Indiana legislation, stand aghast at the provisions which make it more easy to protect your property in a horse, or an ox, or in sheep and swine, than to protect your rights in relation to wife and children. 102 MAERIAGE. Before I sit down I shall justify this strong asser¬ tion by citations from statute-books ; and }^et I -would not draw near to this infamy of a part of Ameri¬ can law without a word on the evils of marriage without love, and a fair fronting of any philosophi¬ cal defence that can be attempted for such legisla¬ tion. These evils I might discuss, but everybody knows their terror. The topic of marriage without love discloses to the view of thought a ghastly host of skeletons in cupboards. I should like to have the doors closed here to-day, and all the unhappy mar¬ riages, of which you have ever heard, recorded on scrolls, and the writings unrolled upon the walls of this Temple. [Loud applause from a single individ¬ ual in the body of the hall.] The more scrolls you unroll, the more shy such of you as are yet unmar¬ ried will be of entering into any marriage-contract without a supreme affection. Let the persons who think that the unrolling of all the secrets of unhappy marriages would dissuade any from stern Christian views of divorce remember that a red line runs through every record of a natural marriage, and a black line through every record of an unnatural one. The red line is a supreme affection ; the black line is its absence. Give me the red line unbroken from beginning to end of your parchment, and in spite of all infelicities expressed in words which that line may enclose, I will show you a happy marriage, or, at least, one that can be endured. But give me the black one, and I care not what you write inside such a border : it is all infernal, and the scroll ought never MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 108 to have had the first word written on it. [Applause by hand-clapping from the person in the audience above referred to.] The skeletons in cupboards sometimes clap their hands. [Applause.] Let us hear them all ; and, if you give voice to their tooth¬ less jaws, I care not ; for their shrieks here can be uttered only on the side of that sound doctrine which teaches that marriage is scientifically unnatural, if it exists without a supreme affection. Do you ask whether an affection of the supreme sort changes ; whether it has a quality on the endur¬ ance of which, after it is adequately tested, you can calculate ; whether there is any way of keeping per¬ manently an affection that is really fundamental and overpowering ; whether all the poets have uttered lies when asserting that a supreme love is enduring, and has offices in the world to come ; whether woman’s heart and man’s, so far as pure and lifted into naturalness by purity, are all organized wrongly, when their instincts assert that changelessness be¬ longs to affection adequately tested and found out to be supreme? Panthea and Phocion’s’ wife, Cor¬ nelia, Pliny, and Hampden, do not ask these juvenile questions. The chief remedies for marriage without love are summed up in the provision that you shall not marry a love that can be lost. If no one hereafter learns to be intemperate, intemperance will be cured ; if no man will marry without a supreme affection, judicious marriage will prevent the evils of marriage without love. We might need an ex post facto law for a few 104 MARRIAGE. cases, but death would soon arrange these. As to the scientific future, we need only say that if society will adopt the rule of nature, and justify no marriage without a supreme affection, the evils of marriage without love will be sufficiently cured. Those who marry without the consent of Nature may securely expect trouble. The world is never in order until it is conscientious. If I must put into analytical form the proposi¬ tions which, after much examination, appear to me to be the only ones that represent a system of straightforward thought as to the theme, I will say, — 1. The evils of marriage without love are suscep¬ tible of cure by three methods : — (1) Prevention by judicious marriage ; (2) Endurance by conscientiousness; (3) Termination by divorce. 2. The nature of things requires that there should be no marriage without a supreme affection. 3. The disregard of this natural law by marriages of convenience or heedlessness or hypocrisy does not change the law. 4. In such marriages the nature of things pro¬ duces pain proportioned to their unnaturalness. • 5. The nafiire of things is on the side of those who maijy^only after Providence has given them an adequately tested affection. G. Love which is susceptible of withdrawal is not lave. 7. Genuine love is possible only to the conscien¬ tious or regenerate. MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 105 8. The world is never natural until it is good. 9. Providence sends to most persons who are good the double gift of a supreme affection and a corre¬ sponding opportunity of marriage. 10. If to any this gift is not sent, they are not called to marriage. 11. The care of children may make a loveless mar¬ riage endurable. 12. Divorce must not violate children’s rights. 18. The necessities of children are such that the only grounds of divorce justifiable in the eyes of science are adultery and malicious desertion. I read these propositions slowly one by one in the face of my pagan jury in Pliny’s villa ; and I find no disgust, but only approval, in their countenances. When I open the Connecticut statute-book, how¬ ever, and put before them the articles which that State up to 1875 has indorsed since 1843, the disgust in their faces becomes overpowering as they gaze upon the infamous record. Lest Massachusetts should feel herself elated by the comparison of her divorce-laws with those of Connecticut and Indiana, allow me to read a petition that is now before the honorable body which meets in the State House yonder, and which is to be de¬ bated in private committee in Boston within a very few days. I ask no one’s praise for giving publicity to this petition, which comes from a seaboard county of Massachusetts. It is signed by a Tyoman who calls herself a physician, doctor of medicine. It bears sev¬ eral other names, presumably those of females. I 106 MARRIAGE. shall of course honor them very much by presenting their ladyships here with their petition. “ To the Senate and House of Representatives of Massachusetts in legislature convened : we the un¬ dersigned, members of this community, respectfully petition your honorable bodies to abolish illegiti¬ macy,” — I am obliged to stand at a distance with their ladyships, lest Cornelia leave her seat on the jury, lest Phocion’s wife and Panthea, and that Pompeiian maiden and Pliny, oblige me to leave his threshold with these people whom I would represent. Indeed, I am now required by the jury, speaking by Pliny, who rises yonder, to put their ladyships out of doors. [Applause.] They stay there, peeping through the crevices of the doors and behind the shutters, while I am permitted to read what they have hissed into the ear of Massachusetts, — “We respectfully petition for the abolition of illegitimacy from our midst ; enabling every woman who stands in the connection or relationship of a wife in any respect toward any man to sustain her position re¬ spectably; by acknowledging publicly such relation, and recording her name as a married woman, en¬ dowed with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.” The proposition is, that fallen women and illegiti¬ mate children, if they exist in fact, shall not be allowed to exist in name or in law. “ In this uplifting of ourselves,” the petition con¬ cludes, “ we ask you to legally sustain us, removing every obstacle, and extending every protection.” MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 107 % “ Yes,” Pliny says, “if you will obtain the consent of the Supreme Powers ; never till then. Removing every obstacle to fallen women ! removing every obstacle to illegitimate children ! making no distinc¬ tion between honor and dishonor, the right hand and the left ! ” Pliny calls for the thunders of Vesuvius to bury under their ashes a proposition that would have incurred scorn in the city where infamy was sometimes found even in the temples of the gods ! [Applause.] Will Massachusetts, sufficiently moved, I hope, by .the fact that petitions of that sort can obtain a public place on her records, listen while I cite the Connecti¬ cut law ? In late years the ratio of divorces to mar¬ riages in Connecticut is twice what it is in Vermont, nearly fourfold what it is in Massachusetts, and more than double what it is in Prussia. On the aver¬ age, one hundred and eight more persons are there divorced annuallv than in Massachusetts, a State with two and a half times as many inhabitants. In 1866 more than half as many were divorced in Con¬ necticut as in Ohio, a State with almost five times the population. These facts are discussed in many a document, and especially by the revered ex-President Woolsey of Yale College. ( Divorce , pp. 179-233.) * But his book was published some years ago, and my purpose this morning is to bring the discussion up to dates. I have here an elaborate examination of the very latest statistics, made for me by authority ; and I am giving you here a lawyer’s interpretation of the present legislation of the great Commonwealth lying 108 MARRIAGE. yonder on the Sound. Here are the conditions of divorce which have remained up to 1875: “Adul¬ tery ; fraudulent contract ; wilful desertion for three years, with neglect of duty; seven years’ absence, not heard of; habitual intemperance ; intolerable cruelty ; sentence to imprisonment for life ; any in¬ famous crime involving a violation of conjugal duty, and punishable by imprisonment in the State prison ; and, lastly,” — this is the famous clause, this is the ground of divorce which amazes Panthea and Pho- cion’s wife and Pliny, — “ any such misconduct as per¬ manently destroys the happiness of the petitioner , and , defeats the purpose of the marriage relation .” Notice the vagueness of that law, and how much it leaves to the discretion of the courts. What has been the legal practice under loose divorce-laws? Why, the evidence, ex parte in nine cases out of ten, has been inadequately tested ; for the lawyer on the side of the opponent to the peti¬ tioner has rarely had the advice of his client. Di¬ vorce suits have been pushed through on the rush, between the morning session of the court and the time for dinner. Over and over, most important cases have been decided on wholly ex parte evidence. In the law I have cited, a nearly unlimited power over the most sacred relations of life is given to the discretion of the court. Operative force is acquired by the higher causes of divorce through the lower. Very often the higher are put into a legal complaint only to make a noise, when there are no facts behind them ; and finally a divorce is decreed on the lower MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 109 when the charges on the higher have failed. Presi¬ dent Woolsey says (. Divorce , p. 223), “Connecticut is at the bottom of the list. The ratio of divorces to marriage is nearly fourfold that in Massachusetts, and much more than double that in Prussia,” which has had the armies of Europe storming over her for the last century, and French fashions polluting her ever since Rousseau’s day. What are we to say, when before our pagan jury we can bring up only regulations of that sort to show the tendency of divorce-legislation in this country ? I have no time to go into details of the Indiana legis¬ lation. They are not quite as bad as those of the Connecticut law. Are we to affirm that the Biblical ideals can no longer be enforced ? Are we to say that they are not scientific ? What are they ? Here is the next to the most important question to be discussed under the topic of marriage without love : For what reasons may marriage be ended? I suppose that the scriptural doctrine on this point is very well settled. One cause of divorce there is no debate about. We all know that a certain crime can make those who have been one two, and that, in the eyes of Him who spake as never man spake, there is, in that, case, justification for divorce. Yes, but you say Paul was ascetic, he differed from the law of his Master; but, on the basis of Paul’s writings, it is taught that malicious desertion is another ground of divorce justified by the Scriptures. I know that there is a debate on this point ;• but it must be af¬ firmed, I think, that the two grounds of adultery and 110 MARRIAGE. malicious desertion are recognized as a sufficient occasion for divorce, and that Christian scholarship will not debate with legislation, even if malicious desertion be interpreted to mean ten years’ desertion without being heard from. Of course there would be a debate with legislation if any trumpery period of absence were called malicious desertion. There are many definitions of that phrase ; but if you really prove malicious desertion, you prove that there exists a Christian ground for divorce. So that, on the' basis of these two propositions, there might be a harmony of sentiment between Christian scholarship and secular legislation. Nevertheless we find secu¬ lar legislation running on till it makes divorce easy, and against which all standard writers on social law have warned us — not excepting even David Hume. What di d he say ? Hume was as ascetic in relation to divorce-law as Paul. I know what loose opinions Hume had of crime outside of marriage. You must not suppose I am contradicting what I cited from Hume the other day ; but Hume knew what law is, and yet he was without Christian prejudices as to marriage. Al¬ though I have denounced some of Hume’s views as infamous, I must be permitted, to show you that other views of his are sound. When men stand up, and call Paul ascetic, when Strauss attacks the New Testament for ascetic ideas on the topic of divorce, I would like to call Hume to the lattice-work here, and let him look to the faces of our pagan jury, while I read his opinion : u We need not, there- MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. Ill fore, be afraid of drawing the marriage-knot , which chiefly subsists by friendship , the closest possible. The amity between the persons, where it is solid and sincere, will rather gain by it ; and, where it is wa¬ vering and uncertain, that is the best expedient for fixing it. How many frivolous quarrels and dis¬ gusts are there which people of common prudence endeavor to forget when they lie under the neces¬ sity of passing their lives together, but which would Soon be inflamed into the most deadly hatred were they pursued to the utmost under the prospect of an easy separation ! W e must consider that noth¬ ing is more dangerous than to unite two persons so closely in all their interests and concerns as man and wife without rendering the union entire and total. The least possibility of a separate interest must be the source of endless quarrels and suspi¬ cions. The wife , not secure of her establishment , will still be driving some separate end or project; and the husband’s selfishness , being accompanied with more power , may be still more dangerous .” (Hume’s Phil¬ osophical Works , vol. iii. pp. 208, 209. American edi¬ tion, Boston, 1854.) Pliny rises, and reads proudly the definition of marriage as given by Modestinus, the eminent scholar of Ulpian, at the beginning of the third century. A similar one in the Institutes has passed into canonical law. The celebrated words which Pliny emphasizes contemplate the perpetuity of the marriage union of one man and one woman, as essential to the nature of the institution. They are: “Nuptiae sunt con- 112 MARRIAGE. junctio maris et foeminse et consortium omnis vitae, divini et humani juris communicatio.” (Compare Institutes of Justinian , 1-9, §2.) Panthea, Phocion’s wife, all this jury, indorse Hume ; and when the petitioners to the Massachusetts legislature, when the Indiana legislators, when the loose sentiments that have justified these lax divorce- laws, come before our pagan tribunal, the only reply they meet is a prolonged hiss and curse. Experience writes once more across the wall, Mene , mene , tekel , upharsin ; and these petitioners, gazing upon the Hand that comes forth from the Unseen, see that they, in the scales of the scientific method, are weighed in the balances, and found wanting. [Ap¬ plause.] V. OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. THE ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, MARCH 18. For myself, I believe that permanent union of the sexes should be early encouraged ; nor do I conceive that general happiness can ever flourish but in societies where it is the custom for all the males to marry at eighteen. — Lord Beaconsfield: Contarini Fleming. When it shall please God to bring thee to man’s estate, use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife. For from thence will spring all thy future good or evil; and it is an action of life like unto a stratagem of war, wherein a man can err but once. — Sir Philip Sidney. V. OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. PEELUDE ON CUEEENT EVENTS. When I rode to Tivoli I saw cripples walking on all-fours through the dust of Italy, and men with unreportable hereditary diseases publicly clamoring for alms. The beggars go free in Italy. They ask for food at the doors of convents. You see the lazar- house on crutches. Skeletons in closets walk abroad under that southern sun. Society here shuts up its offensive diseases in hospitals and asylums. Closed doors lessen the publicity, but not the real terrible¬ ness, of the exhibitions of human wrecks under the stern action of irreversible natural laws. Bring all these wrecks before your thoughts. Shutting your eyes to their existence will not cause them to cease to exist. Infidelity, with gnashing teeth, may pro¬ claim that it hates the fact that human wrecks exist ; but they exist nevertheless. Rolling up the long slopes of Tivoli, I happened to be conversing with several gentlemen on the inexplicableness of the laws of hereditary descent. These cripples, all their lives, suffer for no crime of their own. Were I to 115 116 MARRIAGE. s follow my sentiment, I should affirm that God is doing at least a small evil to such miserable beings. You say they may be rewarded hereafter; but that will not change the record of their los^ in this life. Without any fault of their own, they have suffered pain. If God does that , and if our mere sentiment , looking on it, would call it a small evil, which must we dis¬ trust, God or this sentiment? I suppose that the universe is larger than our outlook upon it. I dare not undertake to affirm that God does not do right every time, or that he ever does a little evil. It is as impossible for Infinite Holiness to do a small evil as a large one. But I find what is called liberal sentiment, taken as a guide, misleading me as to the idiot and the cripple, and the man who is born with a disease. I find mere sentiment saying that no uni¬ verse ever would be created by a Being of infinite holiness and power, and evil of that sort allowed to exist in it'. But that state of things does exist. We must face the facts of experience. There are moral cripples and moral diseases incalculably more fearful than the physical. In short, sin has begun, and con¬ tinued for ages, under the government of Infinite Holiness and Power. The supreme difficulty is to explain the commencement of evil, rather than its continuance. We are all agreed, however, that, in spite of any appearances which sentiment would take as evidence to the contrary, God can no more do a little wrong than a great one. We must give up mere sentimeyit , therefore , as a guide ; for, otherwise, we must OBSTACLES TO MABBIAGE. 117 assert that Crod is unjust on a small scale. I do not believe that he is; and hence I distrust profoundly following a light as to the next ivorld , which I see mis¬ leads me here into a denial of the Divine goodness. Accordingly I believe that this topic is larger than the outlook of sentimental views, and that we . can have no adequate, final authority but the Scriptures on a theme so vast. Reason shows that character tends to final permanence ; that, while sin continues, it will be justly punished ; and that, when character becomes fixed, it must draw upon itself the effects of its own voluntary moral remoteness from God. These are severe and serene truths, utterly unassaila¬ ble by the scientific method. But, as to the ultimate effect of them in the universe, we must seek light from another source of illumination. It is, however, a common misconception of the Scriptural doctrine of future retribution, that it teaches the eternal punishment of a majority of all created beings. I hold the doctrine of future pun¬ ishment; but it is by no means clear to me, that a majority of all who have lived on our earth hitherto are lost. It is one of the roughest and most ghastly misrepresentations of current orthodoxy to assert that infants are lost. A majority of all who have gone from this globe into the unseen in past time have been infants. Who knows what the moral future of this planet may be ? Who can assert that the ages to come will not so improve as to shed into the invisible world such a number of saved spirits, that in the final picture of the globe she will be spir- 118 MARRIAGE. itually what she is physically, enswathed with light, although casting the conical shadow called night to the vanishing point beyond the moon ? This is the view of the Tholucks, Mullers, and Dorners. It is the view of the Parks and Hodges. (See Hodge’s Systematic Theology , vol. iii. p. 880.) We must lift up our thoughts to all other worlds. You may say that those planets which accompany us about the sun are not at present inhabited ! How do you know that ? Even if I were to grant the absurd proposition that Mercury is too hot, and Neptune too cold, for it to be possible for Omnipotence to make creatures that can live in those spheres, how could you know but that Mercury is becoming ready to be inhabited, or that Neptune may not have been inhabited in past time? We cannot affirm that the worlds are not inhabited now, or that they have not been, or that they will not be. Who will undertake to assert that evil exists in every planet in the same virulence with which it appears here? We must regard all other finite creatures in the universe when we discuss the doctrine of future punishment. I do not speak of the present ages. Save yourselves from an untow¬ ard generation. But, for one, I always think of the number of the finally lost out of all ages and worlds as bearing no greater proportion to all the inhabit¬ ants of the intelligent universe than the number in the prisons and penitentiaries in well-ordered socie¬ ties now bears to the whole population. I know that men are in prison yonder in the Charlestown wards. I know, too, that the unrepentant murderer, OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. 119 adulterer, and forger are in prison behind the bars of the very nature of things. I think they ought to be. At the bottom of our souls we feel that the sane, unrelenting, intelligent murderer ought to be treated differently by the universe from the innocent man. The unreformed leper, and the forger, ought not to have peace. We feel that the universe, if managed as it ought to be, will always affix penalty to wil¬ ful transgression against light. If the universe were not to do that, I should wish to emigrate to some other parish. It is certain that Infinite Holiness will re-act against unrighteousness as long as the unright¬ eousness endures ; and that what ought to be done while the rebellion continues will be done. I am glad that what ought to be, is. [Applause.] Allow me to call a hush here, for I am to open the Scriptures. It is not my office to act as exegete in this place. But in giving three addresses, one on the definition, one on the proof, and one on the reply to objections to the doctrine of future punish¬ ment, I must refer to the Scriptural proof. In doing so, of course I can say nothing new, and I do not speak for others. Perhaps the best one can do, to secure freshness of treatment and befitting serious¬ ness on this theme, is to recite his own reasons for his personal convictions. If it can be shown from the Scriptures that sin in any case is punished endlessly, we cannot be Univer- salists. Accepting the Scriptures as authority, why am I not a Universalist ? 1. There are six universals in the Bible, and these J* 120 laM^ t-Skr*^ MARRIAGE. have been mistaken for a seventh universal which is not there. Universal atonement, universal benevo¬ lence of God, universal providential care of God, universal prevalence of the gospel, universal resur¬ rection, and universal reign of Christ, — these six universals are in the Bible. They have been mis¬ taken for a seventh universal, namely, universal salvation, which is not there. ' There is no time to enter into detail on this point. When I read that there was One “ who gave his life a ransom for all ” (1 Tim. ii. 6), and “ tasted death for every man ” (Heb. ii. 9), I find a statement of the universality of the atonement. When I am shown that it is written that “ God is not willing that any should perish,” but desires that “ all should come to repentance ” (2 Pet. iii. 9), when I am told that “he will have all men to be saved, and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. ii. 4), I find in these passages an assertion of the universal benevo¬ lence of God. When I read that “we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe ” (1 Tim. iv. 10), I understand this language to refer to God’s universal providential care. When I find it affirmed in the Scriptures that “ all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds and nations shall worship before him ” (Ps. 22, 27), I find an assertion of the universal prevalence of the gospel on the earth. The same is taught in the passage which says, “ I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me” (John xii. 32). I read “that all they that are OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. 121 *? in the graves shall hear his voice, and come forth ; some to eternal life, and some to shame and everlast¬ ing contempt.” Canon Farrar’s proof-texts ( Eternal Hope, appen¬ dix), as I find on examination, are proofs of the six universals, but not of the seventh. Julius Muller remarks, with great pertinency, that universal restoration cannot occur before the general judgment; for, if it did, the parting of men into two classes would be unnecessary and impossible. The famous passage in the fifteenth of First Corinthians, and the similar one in the fifth of Romans, asserting that, “ as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive,” Julius Muller affirms does not prove universal restoration, for it refers to a time before the general judgment. There is probably no passage that has caused more debate than this ; but, for one, I am unable to overlook the date of the period to which the language alludes, since the scope of it refers to duration previous to the general judgment. General restoration cannot occur before then ; for, if it were thus to occur, there could be no division of men into lost and saved. 2. It is historically incontrovertible, that eighty out of a hundred, or certainly the overwhelming major¬ ity, of the most acute and learned, the most serious and saintly people, who have studied the Bible under the microscope, and upon their knees, and have acted it out, have understood it to teach the .endlessness of future punishment, in some cases. For eighteen hundred years this interpretation has seen attack but 122 MARRIAGE. not defeat, and has kept its place under the law of the survival of the fittest. There is almost nothing more worthy of attention among the proofs of soundness of opinion than the fair voice of the law of the survival of the fittest. The fact is worth study when an unpopular cause has been appealed through court after court, and yet decided the same way, — that is, against unreflecting sentiment, again and again and again. There are three generations in every century, and there are three times eighteen centuries in which this question as to the meaning of the Scriptures has been appealed from court to court. Acute learning has giving judgment. So has the general popular sense of the Christian world. Saintly readers without partisan prejudice in private life have agreed with scholars competing with rivals. The vast majorities have been forced to agree in the repetition of previous decisions. Eighteen centuries, three times each, have repeated this decision, and no new evidence has come before the courts. In cases where no new evi¬ dence is obtained, I am not one of those who think that in the twentieth century any guillotine stands ready for a doctrine that nineteen centuries have attempted, but have been unable, to guillotine. [Ap¬ plause.] The historical sense is necessary to true exegesis. I do not respect any doctrine because it is old, or in the mouths of majorities, but I do respect propositions that have seen honest and protracted battle but not defeat. I do respect decisions which have been appealed from, through court after court, OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. 123 more than fifty times, but in all kinds of discussion, every style of lawyer acting as a special pleader, have been re-affirmed by the immense majority age after age. That fortress has seen attack but not defeat ; and therefore I think the cannonading of its walls will yet be harmless. 3. Rationalistic commentators generally affirm with Theodore Parker and Ernest Renan that Christ did indeed teach the doctrine of endless punish¬ ment, although they do not feel bound to accept his authority. 4. One particular sin, the Scriptures teach, “ has never forgiveness, neither in this world nor in the world to come” (Mark iii. 29). Several particular sins are threatened with eternal punishment (Matt. xii. 31, 32 ; Pleb. yi. 4, 8, x. 26, 27 ; 2 Pet. ii. 20, 22 ; 1 John v. 16, 17). Tholuck, wandering through his earlier studies, came upon the text that one particular sin will not be pardoned in this life or the next ; and he gave up restorationism, face to face with it, although he had been inclined to that doctrine previously. Julius Muller stands on that passage, and affirms that it is sure that one sin at least has never forgiveness in this state of existence or in the next. (. Doctrine of Sin , book v. chap, v.) I do not know how Canon Farrar can reconcile his scholarship with that of the mass of accredited discussion in the world, when he says that “ neither in this yforld, nor. in the next,” may mean “neither in the Jewish nor Christian dis¬ pensations,” {Eternal Mope, appendix.) Surely, if 124 MARRIAGE. my will were to be interpreted by a lawyer as arbi¬ trary as Canon Farrar is in his interpretation of that passage, I should-wish to be alive to execute it. 5. Whatever ambiguity or uncertainty there may be in the use of the words “ eternal ” and “ everlast¬ ing,” the negative particle “ not” is unambiguous, and is repeatedly used in the Scriptural assertions that the wicked shall not see life. 6. It is certain that the English words “forever,” “eternal,” and “everlasting,” have as much ambiguity as the corresponding Greek terms, and yet so does their meaning become clear from their context, that no one thinks of disputing their significance. The Greek words ought to be treated in a similar manner. Sometimes in English the word “ everlasting ” does not mean literally “endless;” even the word “for¬ ever ” does not. “ I assign this property to my heirs forever ” ! There may be no heirs to-morrow morning ! “ He is forever meddling ” ! That ex¬ pression does not mean that one is “ endlessly ” meddling. It is the colloquial use of the word. Six times out of a hundred, perhaps, our own terms “eternal,” “forever,” and even “everlasting,” are ambiguous, and we must decide the meaning by the context. Now, if an ,old Greek were to come for¬ ward here, with as little knowledge of the English language as the average modern citizen has of the Greek in which the New Testament is written, I could confuse him with the question, Is eternal pun¬ ishment endless? I could tell him that six times out of a hundred the word “ eternal ” in the subtle OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. 125 English language does not mean literally endless. Were he a modest Greek, a mere average citizen, willing to confess his ignorance of the intricacies of the English language, I could puzzle him. I could throw him into great unrest on this point, by show¬ ing, through the dictionaries, that these words “ eter¬ nal ” and “forever” have not a fixed meaning, and must be examined with keen caution by any man who has not high scholarship. Well, now, just as I should in that case, be throwing nothing but dust into the eyes of the old Greek, so I think those scholars who would have us fall into unrest because the Greek words are under the same mental laws with the English, and, occasionally, are in the same way ambiguous in meaning, are throwing nothing but dust into our eyes. There is an immense amount of this dust thrown into the eyes of the average citizen as to the meaning of these Greek terms. Languages have behind them the same mental and logical laws. Common words are no more ambiguous in Greek than they are in English. Just as in English, so in Greek, the context determines their meaning. There is no more need of a man falling into doubt as to what the words mean in Greek than in English. The argument from the explicitness of the language in which the eternity of future punishment is asserted in the Greek New Testament , is not outgrown , and never will be. A . (1) Aionios is used sixty-six times in the New Tes¬ tament. In fifty-one cases it is used to express the happiness of the righteous; twice, to express the 126 MARRIAGE. duration of God’s attributes ; six, where it certainly denotes eternal duration. In the remaining seven instances it refers to the death of the wicked. It should be interpreted in the seven instances as it is in the fifty-nine. (2) Aion is used ninety-five times in the New Testament; fifty-five, to denote unlimited duration, doubtless ; thirty-one, to denote a duration which has a limit ; nine, to indicate the duration of future pun¬ ishment. (3) The phrase “for ever and ever” is used more than twenty times in the New Testament, and always in the same signification. It is used fourteen times in the Apocalypse, and always in the same sense. It is there employed to set forth the duration of the future punishment of the lost. (Rev. xiv. 11, xix. 3, xx. 10. See Professor Stuart, President Bartlett, Professor Tyler, Alford, Lange, Dorner, Tholuck, Bleek, and Julius Muller, in loco.') 7. The translation of the words “eternal,” “hell,” and^ “damnation,” by “aionion,” “gehenna,” and “ condemnation,” would not alter the context, nor / the essential meaning of the passages commonly used to disprove Universalism. Dr. Angus told England the other day, that when the new translation of the Scriptures appears, the changes in sense will be so trifling that only scholars will notice them. The contrast between the _ eternal condition of the righteous and the wicked , as represented in Scripture, is not likely to be erased in your day or mine. (Matt. vii. OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. 127 13, 14; Mark. xvi. 16; John iii. 36; John v. 28, 29; Luke xvi. 24, 26 ; Matt. xxv. 46. See also, John iii. 36; Heb. xii. 14; John iii. 3; 2 Thess. i. 9; Phil, iii. 19; Heb. vi. 8; Matt. xiii. 37, 43; Matt. iii. 12; Mark ix. 42, 48.) How does it change the meaning of “ everlasting ” to translate it by that awkward term “ aionion,” which it is said Tennyson has once used in a poem ? Canon Farrar is probably right in saying that the old Saxon word “hell” means more, in its present acceptance, than the Greek “ gehenna,” but the context is the great matter to be considered. I want every doctrine confirmed by what I call a “proof-trend,” as distinguished from a “proof-text.” Not the Biblical ripple, but the Biblical gulf current ! He who stands above the Biblical text is standing above the Biblical ripple. It may be as deep as the ocean ; but one had better lift up his eyes and study the Gulf Stream in revelation, the great gulf cur¬ rents, that is, the analogies of doctrines that run through revealed truth ; and they are not universal- istic or optimistic. [Applause.] 8. "Certain individuals, according to the Scriptures, will never be saved. (Mark xiv. 21; John xvii. W2.) It is said of one individual that it had been better for him if he had never been born. Does this war¬ rant us in accepting Canon Farrar’s suggestion, that this famous phrase refers only to the remorse which Judas will feel even after he has freely chosen right¬ eousness? It were. not better for him that he had never been born, if he ever chooses righteousness. 128 MARRIAGE. 9. Tlie Scriptures teach that the judgment consists largely in the proclamation and law that he that is unholy is to be unholy still, and that he that is right¬ eous is to be righteous still, or that character tends to a final permanence, and that sin from being pro¬ longed and inveterate may become eternal. A final permanence of character can be attained but once. The true translation of Mark iii. 29 includes the far-reaching phrase “ eternal sin.” “ To assert that sin is eternal,” says Alford, “is a legitimate inference from the words ‘hath never forgiveness.’ ” 10. The Scriptures teach that there may be such sin against light as to admit of no atonement, (hum. xv. 22-81 ; Heb. vi. 4, 9, and x. 26-81 ; Mark iii. 29.) It resists from the very nature of things that those who do that for which they cannot forgive themselves never cease to hear the laughter of the soul at itself. 11. The analogy of doctrine in the Scriptures pre¬ supposes a permanent distinction between the lost and the saved. _ 12. The Scriptures everywhere insist that now is the time of repentance, and they everywhere make the impression that it is immeasurably unsafe to de¬ pend on a chance for repentance after death. [Ap¬ plause.] OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. 129 THE LECTURE. If there is any unmarried person in this assembly who is yet to be married to one of his own age, she who is to become his wife is now living on the earth. * Approaching once more Pliny’s villa, we find Corne¬ lia, mother of the Gracchi, advising her sons to keep themselves pure, so that all the blessings of a virtu¬ ous home may be theirs. She asks the 3^ounger Gracchi to remember that their wives are now living on the earth, and to pray for their weal, although as yet they have not been seen by their future hus¬ bands ; and to pray for the weal of those husbands, although as yet they have never been seen by their future wives. “ Your best preservative,” you over¬ hear Cornelia say to the Roman Gracchi, “ is antici¬ pation. Think that you wish to win a white soul, and you will be unwilling to give less than you bar¬ gain for. In the midst of the corruptions of Rome, remember that she who is to be to you what I have been to Titus Gracchus will require, if she is what I am, that you should be to her what Titus Gracchus was to me. These Greek tutors whom I have em¬ ployed,” continues Cornelia, addressing her sons, “ have been instructed by Plato and by Socrates, and they have taught you reverence for natural law. When a supreme affection is given us we are to take it as a divine sign that God intends a certain course in life for us. Anticipate that God will be as good to you as he is to most men. In due time he will open a home for you. In due time you will come to 130 MARRIAGE. x the hearthstone, which even now he is putting to¬ gether, piece by piece. In due time there will be for you an opening of the gates which enter the most sacred temple in which man can worship. Prepare afar off for the event which Providence prepares for you afar off. If the Sirens sing, take them to your future hearthstone ; and, looking on it, turn your back upon what will be no temptation, as long as your heart is warmed by this anticipated family fire.” [Applause.] You agree with Cornelia that anticipation is a preservative in the social life. You will have her sympathy if you examine with unconcealed indigna¬ tion whatever unnecessarily prevents this healthful anticipation. I am to discuss the Modern Obstacles to Marriage, or Hinderances to the Formation of New Homes. I come once more before my jury, contain¬ ing Pliny and Cornelia and Phocion’s wife, and these are the propositions upon which to-day I ask their opinion : — 1. God, William Shakspeare says, is the best maker of all marriages. 2. With relatively few exceptions, he sends to every man and woman the double gift of a supreme permanent affection, and of opportunity to follow it in marriage. 3. Were all conscientious, and were health univer¬ sal, these exceptions would be fewer. 4. Natural law requires that, where this double gift is sent, it should be respected as a divine indica¬ tion that a new home ought to be founded. OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. 131 In a natural world a supreme will be a permanent affection. But a supreme and permanent affection of this sort arises only between two. God does not send this double gift at haphazard. Behind every supreme affection there are forces of the most terrific potency, and they are all natural forces. They are actually divine. Whoever utters the phrase “ natu¬ ral law,” without understanding that he is speaking of God’s will, is yet unscientific. Therefore we may assert, without danger of disloyalty to the scientific method, that natural divine law requires that, where this double gift is sent, it should be respected as a divine indication that a new home should be founded. 5. But the self-support of homes is also a natural law. You think that I am incautious ; but I remember that I am in the presence of Pliny, who is a states¬ man, and that he will listen to no mere sentiment on this topic. I keep in mind the fact that we must have a fire before we set upon it the viands to be prepared for the family meal. The rudest proverbs of the rudest nations proclaim that we must have a fire before we buy the kettle. 6. Obstacles to marriage, or hinderances to the formation of self-supporting new homes, are obstacles to the free course of divine natural law. Keep your faces upon this jury. T. The unit of society is the family. 8. The strength of a nation is in proportion to the number of its virtuous, that is, of its natural homes, founded upon supreme affections. 132 MARRIAGE. 9. Society, as organized at present, throws many inexcusable and even blasphemous obstacles into the course of divine natural law as to the formation of new homes. 10. Among these natural and removable hinder- ances are : — (1) Absurd expensiveness of living. (2) Mistaken social pride. (3) Low salaries. (4) Unwise parental interference. (5) Poor opportunities for acquaintance between marriageable persons. (6) The corruption of portions of society. Pliny bows his head at the proposition that virtu¬ ous homes are the foundation of the State. We need power to throttle communism ; the State needs loyalty to just legislation ; we want protection for property and for life ! Let us follow Emerson’s ad¬ vice, and attach our chariots to the stars. Civil society needs the terrific forces which lie behind the supreme affections to guarantee the execution of law. Let civil society, therefore, foster family life, and frown on its enemies. We know that, as Shakspeare has said, “even a bad man in love becomes better than his wont.” We know that it is impossible to pass even that tomb in the Pere la Chaise in Paris, of Abelard and Heloise, without a certain solemnity; for it is possible that there was a supreme affection there, although no opportunity of marriage, and so no divine sanction for what happened. There is a solemnity in the undying force of virtuous passions. OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. 133 Attach your civil and social chariots to the stars in the azure of pure love. Let the transforming power which makes a man or a woman new, which gives to a man the womanly traits, and to a woman the manly, which is the only builder of permanence in any social arrangement, •*— let this virtuous supreme affection, let family life, be the foremost chariot- horse for the State ! I see no fair hope of guidance for the future, unless this double gift of God by which he indicates his will that new homes should be founded, is made one of the chief steeds of celes¬ tial fire to draw legislation, property, life, through what have been dark ways of history in time past, and are likely to be dark ways in time to come, if the home be undermined. Communism asks for the abolition of property. Socialism demands the abolition of the family. If it is not your duty to put your ear upon the surface of the ground and listen to the communistic specu¬ lations in the slums of our cities, you will hardly credit me when I say that the surface discussions on these topics are only the outcropping edges of great bowlders that run down beneath society. Along the sterile hill-slopes of New England you pass the plough through the soil, but you get no crop. Why? There are hidden stones beneath the sod. Just so the churches, good literature, whatever there is noble in human society, plough the surface of some sections of our municipalities, and get no crop. You say that the outside of the sod is decorous. I tell you that just beneath lie various forms of infidelity to 134 MARRIAGE. the family, and that while these bowlders are close under the sod you must expect nothing but barren¬ ness, even after ploughing and rain. But Pliny is of opinion, also, that I am not senti¬ mental in saying that God does give to most men and women, not only a mate, but a mate obtainable. The definition of this double gift, which I call a divine indication that a new home ought to be founded, is a mate, and a mate obtainable. I keep in mind all the collisions of the passions. I have brooded over many points on this topic which cannot be discussed here even in whispers; but I see no objections to the propositions I have read to this jury. In the name of natural law it cannot be denied that, when this double gift is given, there ought to be a new home founded. I am supposing that the double gift rests upon virtue. I am presuming that the supreme affection is permanent, because it admires that which does not change. I have no faith at all in underrating the natural laws when they require conscientiousness. We en¬ deavor to heal society without making it good. The world is a complex scheme, and the first tutoring it needs is that which will induce it to surrender to moral law. After that surrender, how reform will swim! We try to set our ships afloat in the sand; we try to reform marriage, and push our vessels off the strand, when as yet they are not off the rocks. As long as they lie there, they must expect , disaster. Nevertheless marriage may float in a smooth sea. OBSTACLES TO MAKRIAGE. 135 Until we have a natural, that is, a conscientious world, it cannot be known by experience what natu¬ ral law will do for the gratification of a supreme affection ; but, if you will give me that world, there will be in it very few not called to marriage, pro¬ vided society allows proper opportunities for ac¬ quaintance between marriageable persons. Do not smile, my friends, if I ask you to remember that Horace Bushnell, writing his book on the reform against nature, and with all his saintliness, with all his marvellous knowledge of the human heart, was willing to stand up before the world and suggest that the churches themselves should study oppor¬ tunities of increasing virtuous acquaintance among marriageable persons. * “ Can the Christian pulpit itself,” says Horace Bushnell, “be true to its office, without applying itself, as things are now going, to the correction of our false views of marriage, and the consequently diminishing frequency of marriages? If there is a postponing on one side, instigated by a pompous and hollow ambition, utterly wide of the beautiful mean¬ ing of the family state, — if on the other, where the poison of the same ambition also works, there is a consequent loss of hope and a turning away to go into fight with men in the rougher terms of equality, is it not time for the teachers of religion, the true guardians of society, to ask what duties may now be incumbent on them? And is there not, besides, a possibility of accomplishing something in this matter by organization, and so of doing more, a hundred- 136 MARRIAGE. fold, to relieve the oppressive over-stock, under which so many fine women are stifled, than will ever be done by all the office rights and voting privileges they are now so eager to obtain? Such an organization, working only for names that are given, or by friends suggested, and presuming only, under strictest bonds of secrecy, to suggest, com¬ mend, and prepare acquaintance in ways of proper delicacy, might bridge a great many gulfs of false modesty, perhaps, that will otherwise be forever impassably. In this kind of reform there is noth¬ ing unhopeful or impossible ; for it is according to nature, and not a reform against nature.” (Bush- nell, Women’s Suffrage , p. 95.) I suppose that I shall bS accused, even under the shadow of Horace Bushnell’s name, of lack of cau¬ tion in mentioning this theme. But who does not know that in the more luxurious portions of society, and in those parts that call themselves the most highly cultured, it is almost impossible to obtain the truth as to the character of one who may be the weal or woe of a new home ? It is a matter which has had curious treatment in many a nation — this absence of opportunities for acquaintance. When I was in London, I took up one day a respectable newspaper, managed by a man who gave his name, and who had the indorsement of members of the nobility and of one or two of the clergy; I had every reason to believe, from what I heard, that the newspaper was a respectable one. It was devoted wholly to the multiplication of opportunities of ac- OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. 137 quaintance between marriageable persons. I am willing yon should smile at such a means of increas¬ ing the opportunities of acquaintance between the members of this class, but nobody knows what worse straits we shall be forced to if there is not a little more attention paid to that part of natural law. Co¬ education of the sexes ! I am not discussing that topic. How many sociables shall there be in a church? I do not discuss that theme. What use we shall make of our parlors in a social way, I do not volunteer to affirm. But this I do say, that in a haughty, exclusive aristocratic world, it is pretty hard for a man to know a few things he would be very glad to learn. [Applause.] How shall I blazon here with proper vividness the infamy of a mistaken social pride which will not marry until it can equal the display of some parent who has had a life in which to accumulate a fortune ? How shall I set the proper stamp of scorn upon that class of young men who are too full of poltroonery — I am not speaking now of those who are full of pu¬ tridity, and who are beneath our attention here [Applause], and who have been sent beyond the Apennines by Pliny himself, but of those men who live a pure life, and who are too full of pol¬ troonery to take each a better than himself and found a new home? Why do they delay? They have income enough. Why are they so tardy? They are in the thirties. They could found a new home. It may be that God has sent them his double gift. But they cannot drive a coach-and-four quite 138 s MARKIAGE. yet. They can drive a coach-and-two ; but, waiting for a coach-and-six, they finally are carried into their forties, and sometimes into the desolations of con¬ firmed bachelorism. I dare not assert that a single life is desolate, if a supreme affection has been sent to it. Science has sometimes affirmed that a man to whom a supreme affection has been sent is married. Under the dy¬ ing pillow of Washington Irving there were found a lock of hair and a miniature. Who will say that he led a lonely life? It is taught by some that the whole physical form is changed by a supreme affec¬ tion. If a mate is sent, but taken hence, one is in Washington Irving’s position, and never lonely. Such persons are married ; and God is the maker of such marriages ; and the breaker of them up ; and the re-uniter of them, let us hope, in another state of existence ! When both these gifts are sent — a supreme affec¬ tion and an opportunity to found a new home — it is dastardly, it is a flat defiance of the instincts of the soul, it is a deep infamy upon manhood, not to be willing to dare something for the love that one dares call supreme. Is it too much to assert that modern society de¬ serves, perhaps, as much censure as infidelity itself, for its hinderances to marriage ? You have heard me, on other occasions here, assailing infidels for their attack on the family; but what shall I say of this mistaken social pride, this absurd expensiveness of living, which in many ways are more mischievous in OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE. 139 preventing the founding of new homes than the voices of infamous social theories themselves ? Poor Richter was always poor ; and he married when he had hardly .more than one room in a German cottage in which to live. Richter affirms that “ no man can live piously or die righteously without a wife,” — a sentiment which I cannot say that I think science indorses. Some men can. But I must affirm with Richter that the man who, when a supreme affection has been sent him, and an opportunity to found a new, self-supporting home, is yet determined to live alone, is living neither happily nor righteously. The man who does not look forward with Cornelia’s pre¬ science and endeavor to form his own hearthstone by anticipating what he will be by and by, is a man likely to fall into temptation easily, and to be drawn away from virtue. Dip the soul in the seas of ink, and it ceases to be really marriageable. Put out the tire of honor in the heart, and it cannot be made warm at a blazing family fireside. These men who shiver through the ways of vice, their skeleton souls without trust, how shall they be warm before their future hearthstones ? The leper puts out his own family fire. Treat one human being in an infamous manner, and you never will treat another human being in the manner pro¬ vided by natural law. [Applause.] Only he who will look onward and afar, and keep the family fire, or the opportunity to kindle it, bright, is likely to keep out of the pits of perdition. Pointing to these rifts of Gehenna ; showing you the blue flames pro- 140 MARRIAGE. trading themselves every now and then through these volcanic crevices; exhibiting to you, as you come to their ashen, treacherous edges, how destruc¬ tion blazes in the lower throat of the chasms, — I beg leave to arraign this absurd expensiveness, this mistaken social pride, low salaries, unwise parental interference, and poor opportunities of acquaintance between the marriageable classes. So far as they violate natural law, the coolest science must con¬ demn all these social forces as guilty of pushing men toward the Pit of blue fire. [Applause.] VI 10 VE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. THE ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, MARCH 25. If it be true that any beauteous thing Raises the pure and just desire of man From earth to God, the eternal fount of all, Such I believe my love; for as in her So fair, in whom I all besides forget, I view the gentle work of her Creator, I have no care for any other thing, Whilst thus T love. Nor is it marvellous, Since the effect is not of my own power, If the soul doth, by nature tempted forth, Enamoured through the eyes, Repose upon the eyes which it resembleth, And through them riseth to the Primal Love, As to its end, and honors in admiring; For who adores the Maker needs must love His work. Michael Angelo: Translation by Taylor. Wer nicht die Frauen ehrt, kennt er die Liebe ? Wer nicht die Liebe kennt, kennt er die Ehre ? Wer nicht die Ehre kennt, was hat er noch ? Schefeh: Laienbrevier. VI. LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. Even God cannot make sin happy. The question as to the possible future duration of punishment is, therefore, of altogether secondary interest compared with that concerning the possible duration of sin. Will any souls be punished forever ? Are there any reasons for believing that some may fall into final permanence of evil character, or confirmed voluntary moral remoteness from God, and so sin forever ? The latter is the inquiry which causes the cheeks of science to grow pale. It knows that if the second question is answered in the affirmative the first must be also. Seriously ask whether character ever attaint in human experience an apparent final permanence on the side of evil. The eyes of straightforward candor fastened upon the laws of habit and the natu¬ ral operations of conscience in this life, are in pres¬ ence of ranges of terrible and incontrovertible facts, from whose summits the scientific method sees enough to blanch the cheeks. A few days ago, in an attic about twelve feet 143 144 MARRIAGE. square, in New York City, and without any light, an agent of a newspaper stooped down in the darkness and put his hand into a gaping razor-wound in the neck of a murdered woman. Recoiling in horror, he ventured after a moment to put his hand down again, and found it bathed in a pool of blood on the floor of the attic. On thrusting once more his fingers into the darkness, he found them enclosed by the open and yet warm gashes in the neck of a second corpse. Light was obtained. Eighteen stabs by a dirk, be¬ sides razor-gashes and the marks of four pistol-shots, were found in the body of the woman ; several stabs in the body of her murderer, and the pistol-shot and razor-gashes which took the man out of this state of existence. Six or eight reporters on our metropolitan press described the smearing of the walls of this room with the blood of the two human beings who had struggled there in their last hour. You say there is no hell in the next world ! There are hells in this world. That is our common speech. Who was this woman? A person who was not known to be of infamous character, although sus¬ pected to be of that description. Who was this man ? A citizen formerly prominent in business in Chicago and New York, a broker once possessed of great wealth, and who, sinking little by little, had come into the mood in which an observer of this murder saw him. It appeared from the evidence given before a jury that a little girl, as this man was stabbing his victim, looked in at a crevice and rushed away in fright. The testimony was that the man’s LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 145 eyes, as he bent over the body and thrust his dirk again and again into the flesh, looked like tennis- balls. “ Such another face,” said the poor girl, “ I hope never to see in this world or the next.” This is not a picture drawn by Dickens. This is no fear¬ ful scene out of Dante’s Inferno. This is average life in the hells of this world. I read in a report, written probably by a Bohe¬ mian theologian, that a young man the other day met a fair young woman at Coney Island. She was the delight of a household. She loved this dashing new acquaintance. He led her slowly toward the brink of infamy, and finally pushed her off the precipice ; and when, bruised and bleeding, and in despair, she turned to him for assistance, he told her to plunge into the seas of ink and be out of his sight and the world’s. She brought a legal complaint against him, but by the trickery of lawyers she was put in peril of being sent to prison, while the monster who had given her this cool advice, after murdering her peace, was allowed to go free. He was one of the dapper little smirks and sneaks, with not enough soul in him to be worth saving. [Applause.] At any rate, it is doubtful whether he had not passed into that mood of induration, that judicial blindness, which precedes final permanence of character on the evil side. According to the report of half a dozen New-York papers, he came into the court-room, and after listen¬ ing to the evidence, and finding that the judge was inclined to leniency, he stood up in presence of the lawyers, brushing his coat and rubbing his gloved 146 MARRIAGE. hands : “ Send her up, judge ; send her up. It will do her good.” — “ Great heavens,” said the judge, “ how I wish I could send you up, or down, rather ! Get out of this court ! ” [Applause.] You should not approve a sentiment so severe ! That judge was not sufficiently liberal ! Great Nature spoke in him ; and if, by and by, the same volcanic nature shall speak in a voice from a flaming White Throne, you will find no principles involved in that final sentence which are not involved in the sentence we pass here upon the adulterer, and the seducer and the murderer. Law is a unit through out the uni¬ verse and precisely that recoil of the depths of human nature, that recoil of the innermost portion of conscience against wilful crime, which here makes a distinction between the sheep and the goats, and, in spite of all attack from Bohemian and Sofa the¬ ology, in spite of every theological blatherskite, is insisted on here, — that distinction will endure ! It is a part of the nature of things. A stern, serene morning is rising on the whole topic of final per¬ manence of character, and it comes from the up- bursting dawn of a better knowledge of conscience. Allow me to ask any who make objections to the theory of future punishment, where the problems in¬ volved in cases like these two will obtain solution ? Why, better light beyond the grave, no doubt, will teach these persons what they should do ! They had light here ; they did not follow it. Light was poured upon them here in deluges. Did they see it? Or, if they did, did they love it ? There is the interior LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 147 question on all this matter of future light. We must love the light as well as see it. When his violation of natural law here brings a man into such a state that he is callous to all the loftier impulses of man¬ hood, when his nature is inverted and he makes evil his delight, I find no scientific reason for predicating that light beyond the tomb will have a greater effect than deluges of light on this side have had. He has here been enswathed in light; he has, it may be, been put at the focus of light. These two cases represent two kinds of evil, — one bold, audacious sinning against illumination ; the other judicial blindness to light. These two kinds of hells we see on this globe. If law is a unit, who can say that those who go out of life thus sinning against illumination, are to change in the next world at once ? They go like arrows with the points bent to the left. It may be the bending is not irreversible. Retaining personality in the next life, of course the soul retains its freedom. But go into that life as an arrow bent to the left, and when you strike the bosses of God's buckler, you are glanced to the left. It may be that your predominant choice as you enter the next life is turned only .a little to the left. I do not need extreme cases to illustrate the law. As you have hated the last light here, you will hate the first light there. In sinning against it there will be pro¬ duced a new reaction, itself a cause of further re¬ action against the light. Thus, from a little bending of the predominant choice, you m^y go into the next life hating the first light you meet, and from the re- 148 MARRIAGE. action of sin against that, you may hate the second, and the third, and the fourth mass of light you meet. There is no scientific ground for predicting that the arrow bent to the left will glance to the right. You are turned to the right only a little ; but when you strike yonder, you glance in the direction toward which you are bent. The law of cause and effect, I believe, rules over the whole theme of future reward and punishment as thoroughly as over the physical universe. I do not assert that our souls are under any necessity ; but the operation of cause and effect, although per¬ suasion be the connection between the two in the region of the will, is just as certain in that region, as in the range of physical gravitation. Certainty and necessity are two things. Fastening your eyes upon these typical burning spots of human experience this side the veil, will you hear Whittier’s words, which are so often quoted as a justification of universal hope ? In 1867 Whittier wrote his famous poem on “The Eternal Good¬ ness : ” — - “I know not where His islands lift Their f ronded palms in air ; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. “ And so beside the silent sea I wait the muffled oar; No harm from Him can come to me, On ocean or on shore." LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 149 Put these words in the lips of the man who went hence with that murder and suicide on his soul ! That man might better have sung : — “And so beside the silent sea I wait the muffled oar, No good from Him can come to me, On ocean or on shore,” while I am myself, or what I now am. Whittier adds : — “ O brothers ! if my faith is vain, If hopes like these betray, Pray for me that my feet may gain The sure and safer way.” So he sang ; but it is significant that when we turn on a year, in the mellowing ripeness of this poet’s wisdom, we find a later production which is as yet only rarely quoted, bat which seems to be the deepest voice of his final philosophy : — “ Though God be good, and free be heaven, No force divine can love compel ; And, though the song of sins forgiven May sound through lowest hell, “ The sweet persuasion of His voice Respects thy sanctity of will. He giveth day : thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still. “ No word of doom may shut thee out, No wind of wrath may downward whirl, No swords of fire keep watch about The open gates of pearl ; 150 MARRIAGE. “ A tenderer light than moon or sun, Than song of earth a sweeter hymn, May shine and sound forever on And thou be deaf and dim. “ Forever round the Mercy-seat The guiding lights of Love shall burn : But what if, habit-bound, thy feet Shall lack the will to turn ? “ What if thind eye refuse to see, Thine ear of heaven’s free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thy own dark jail ? ” Whittier : The Answer. I recognize in that poem a correct statement of the doctrine of future retribution. These details of definition I have given because the best reply to the objections to this doctrine is a correct statement of what the doctrine is. Face to face with the facts of life and with Whittier’s poem, how all the ordinary objections fall to dust ! 1. It is objected that infinite punishment is inflicted for finite sin. This is a misstatement of the doctrine. The true statement is, that eternal punishment is the necessary accompaniment of eternal sin. While sin continues, its effects will follow. God is of such a nature that what ought not to be, he must regard with displacency. He is under no obligation not to express that displacency. If a sin be unrepented, it is continued ; and so final impenitence is only another phrase for continued sin. There are reasons for believing that some men may fall into permanent LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 151 dissimilarity of feeling with God and its conse¬ quences. That is my definition of perdition. It is also Whittier’s. 2. It is objected that albility to repent continues forever in every free agent. Whittier admits this, but is not puzzled by the fact. The reply to this objection is, that the ability to repent does continue ; but that ability and willingness are two things, and that the latter is not proved by proving the former. Pardon me if I say that I have taken much pains to read whatever is said on the other side, and that I do not know where any writer in favor of restora- tionism meets the argument from the tendency of character to become permanent under the law that repeated sin impairs the judgment, and that he whose judgment is impaired sins repeatedly. Whenever that point is touched by writers on the Restorationist and Universalist side, it is dropped like hot iron. Of course it is futile to sav that law is not a unit, and that beyond the grave this tendency to permanence will not exist as well as here. Cases are brought * forward of persons reforming in old age. These are thought remarkable, chiefly because they are varia¬ tions from an admitted tendency. The exceptions only prove the rule. 3. It is objected that the doctrine of future punish¬ ment teaches that a majority of the human race is lost. This is a misconception. (Hodge, Theology, vol. iii. p. 880.) 4. It is objected that the torments of the lost are physical. This again is a misconception. 152 MARRIAGE. 5. It is objected that the Scriptures teach universal restoration. The American Unitarian Association, in their an¬ nual report, in 1853, affirmed before the world : “ It is our firm conviction that the final restoration of all men is not revealed in the Scriptures.” They go on to assert that the matter is left there in darkness, and they found a hope of such restoration on philo¬ sophical grounds. It is becoming more and more unusual for the shrewdest scholars to attempt to defend universal hope as to the finally impenitent by Scriptural texts. Canon Farrar himself affirms that, if the Scriptures were to teach the usual doc¬ trine on this theme, he, should reject the Scriptures and accept philosophy as his guide. Are you in doubt as to the meaning of what is said in the Scriptures concerning preaching to spirits in prison? Certainly you will find commentators divided as to who these spirits in prison were, whether they were those who lived before the flood, or those who have passed out of this life. My own feeling about that passage is that it means only that light is kept before the lost. It does not necessarily mean that they love the light. Whittier’s poem shows why light kept before the lost is ineffectual. 6. It is objected that temporary evil is, but that eternal evil is not, consistent with the Divine Good¬ ness. This objection brings up, of course, the whole topic of the origin of evil. Archbishop Whately was accustomed to say : “ The LOYE WITHOUT MARRIAGE, 153 main difficulty is not the amount of evil that exists, but the existence of any at all. I will undertake to explain to any one the final condemnation of the wicked, if he will explain to me the existence of the wicked.” There is no justification of the Divine Goodness possible on the ground of a philosophy which asserts that God must bring evil to an end, because he is infinitely good and powerful'. On the ground of that same philosophy, he ought never to have permitted evil to begin. He is infinitely good and powerful now, and cannot by this philosophy be excused for allowing evil to continue. But scenes like these I have outlined are beheld by the moon only too often, and sometimes by the sun. An infi¬ nitely powerful and good Being can no more do a little wrong than a great one. Personally, I give up the hope that I can construct a consistent theodicy upon the ground of a demand on God to put an end to evil, if he is to prove his own goodness. We believe in his goodness on the ground of the perfect tion of the moral law. But we know that he has permitted evil, and we believe he could not wisely have prevented it. If that be true of the past, who shall say that the future will not exhibit the same phenomena under the unity and universality of law which the present exhibits ? I could not believe God to be good in the present, if I held the fundamental propositions which underlie the philosophy of res- torationism. It is beyond question that in this life a momentary act may bring life-long penalty. That is the way 154 MARRIAGE. the world is made. I believe that the universe is all of a piece. It is not necessary to assert that men are punished forever for the sins of the hand’s breadth of duration we call time, except they are unrepented, and so continued ; but it would be according to analogy if character freely formed and brought into operation here were allowed to produce effects per¬ manently. The law of the Persistence of Force has great, and as yet unfathomed, applications to the whole theme of future rewards and punishment. Balfour Stewart and Professor Tait most sugges¬ tively apply to the topic of retribution the principle of Continuity, which they have learned to reverence •in physical science. They speak with no theological bias, but their language will be apt to hush into awe any reader who reveres the scientific method : — “ To some extent, no doubt, Christ’s description of the Uni¬ versal Gehenna must be regarded as figurative, but yet we do not think that the sayings of Christ with regard to the Unseen World ought to be looked upon as nothing more than pure figures of speech. We feel assured that the principle of Con¬ tinuity cries out against such an interpretation : may they not rather be descriptions of what takes place in the unseen uni¬ verse, brought home to our minds by means of perfectly true comparisons with the processes and things of this present uni¬ verse which they most resemble? And just as, in the visible universe, there is apparently an enormous and inexplicable waste of germs, seeds, and eggs of all kinds, which die simply because they are useless, — analogy would lead us to conclude that something similar, and to at least as enormous an extent, happens in the Unseen with the germs of spiritual frames. Thus the Christian Gehenna bears to the Unseen Universe pre- LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 155 cisely the same relation as the Gehenna of the Jews did to the city of Jerusalem; and just as the fire was always kept up and the worm ever active in the one, so are we forced to contem¬ plate an enduring process in the other. “ For we cannot easily agree with those who would limit the existence of evil to the present world. We are drawn, if not absolutely forced, to surmise that the dark thread known as evil is one which is very deeply wToven into that garment of God which is called the Universe. We are led to regard evil as eternal, and therefore wre cannot easily imagine the universe without its Gehenna, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. The process at all events would seem to be most probably an enduring one.” ( The Unseen Universe , pp. 265, 266.) Against light, and in the teeth of all opposing dis- suasions, a man may rush into murder, into leprosy, into suicide, and so sin that he cannot forgive him¬ self. That is a possibility which replies to every objection, not grounded on the very structure of the human spirit. God has not so made us that our natures are an organized lie. In the incontrovertible fact, that a man may so sin against light that he can¬ not forgive himself, the human soul, by its revela¬ tory structure, proclaims that there may easily be eternal penalty for sin. The deepest laughter of the soul at itself it cannot hear more than once without hearing forever. THE LECTURE. John Milton, Michel Angelo, Goethe, and Byron are at the door of Pliny’s villa, and ask to be received as guests. There is with them Elizabeth Barrett 156 MARRIAGE. Browning. Goethe and Byron desire to be received to the hospitalities of the villa, and on terms of social equality with their fellow-travellers. The Pagan jury ask who these people are. In reply I request Pliny to listen to a statement in his own language of John Milton’s experience when a young man in Italy : “ Deum hie rursus testern in vocem me his omnibus in locis ubi turn multa licent , ah omni flaquitio ac probo , integrum atque intactum vixisse , illud perpetuo cogitan - tern si hominum latere oculos possem , Dei certe non posse” In other words, John Milton affirms that, when a young man in the midst of the temptations of Italian cities, he lived, as he can call God to witness, a life perfectly fleckless, and that he did this because he constantly thought that, although he might escape the eyes of men, assuredly he could not those of God. Panthea and Phocion’s wife and Pliny are further informed that John Milton deserves to be credited when he says this ; and he is admitted to the guest- chambers. Who is Michel Angelo? There was a Vittoria Colonna, and this Angelo was her friend. With Renata of Ferrara and Margaret of Navarre, she made up a triumvirate which led the culture of all Italy when there was a hope that Italians, under the inspiration of O chino, might have a political as well as a religious Renaissance. Pliny is told that among the seven hills of Rome this Michel Angelo lifted up another hill, — the dome of St. Peter’s. “ I will hang the Pantheon in the air,” was his phrase before he LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 157 began work on that structure. Pliny is also informed that in the city of London, in Hyde Park, where men of our day have erected a monument to Prince Albert and have chiselled upon it the figures of the great of all the centuries, the only man whose figure is repeated twice is this same Angelo. Raphael sits in the panel which celebrates the history of painting, and this Angelo leans upon his chair. Then on the panel which celebrates the history of architecture and sculpture, Angelo is repeated in the centre of the group. But more noble than the best achievement of Michel Angelo in architecture, more touching than any thing he did in marble, more majestic than that dome of St. Peter’s, is this sonnet of his written to Vittoria Colonna. As I am able to assure Pliny, it is worthy of being trusted as a transcript of personal experience. Condivi says, in his Life of Angelo, that the man was almost insane at the death of this Vittoria Colonna. We have all heard how Angelo went into her room when life had left her body, and how he stood there, strong man as he was, and ventured to kiss the back of her hand. He said to Condivi, that he never blamed himself for any one omission quite so much as for his having thought it best not to kiss her cheeks and her forehead in that last farewell. This mighty sculptor and architect was a singer also. Perhaps of all sonnets addressed by man to woman, this by Michel Angelo to Vittoria Colonna is the best : — 158 MARRIAGE. “ The might of one fair face sublimes my love, For it hath weaned my heart from low desires; Nor death I heed, nor purgatorial fires. Thy beauty, antepast of joys above, Instructs me in the bliss that saints approve ; For, oh ! how good, how beautiful, must be The God that made so good a thing as thee, So fair an image of the heavenly dove. Forgive me if I cannot turn away From those sweet eyes that are my earthly heaven ; For they are guiding stars, benignly given To tempt my footsteps to the upward way ; And if I dwell too fondly in thy sight, I live and love in God’s peculiar light.” Michel Angelo, translation of J. E. Taylor . This man is admitted to the guest-chambers of Pliny’s villa. But who is Mrs. Browning? Worthy to be read next after Angelo’s words is many a phrase of the famous Portuguese Sonnets, — the best expressions of love ever addressed in literature by woman to man. Pliny will allow me to read only one short statement of the mood of this woman’s heart : — “Yet love, mere love, is beautiful indeed, And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax ! An equaldight Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed. And love is fire ; and when I say at need, I love thee . . . mark ... I love thee ! in thy sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright, With conscience of the new rays that proceed Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low In love, when love the lowest ; meanest creatures LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 159 Who love God, God accepts while loving so ; And what I feel across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show IIow that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.” This woman is admitted to a guest-chamber. Who is Goethe ? Can he be received on terms of equality with Milton and Angelo and this woman? When I was in Weimar, I looked two days to find the grave of the wife of Goethe, and looked in vain. No one reveres more than I do this man’s intellectual record ; but will the brilliancy of his career in that particular admit him here to gaze on Panthea’s eyes and those of Phoeion’s wife ? A pagan jury is now acting as a host, and is not willing to mix moral opposites under the same roof. Goethe’s biographer says that nobody knows where his wife is buried. Who was his wife? Mrs. Browning must hear the record. Milton must, and Angelo. On one of his visits to Italy, Goethe left his child in the care of Her¬ der. Eight years passed afterwards before Goethe’s marriage to the mother of this child. You feel your flesh creeping upon your bones, when, in Germany, which loves the home life so profoundly, you stand, as I stood once, at the heads of the cenotaphs of Goethe and Schiller, in that cemetery at Weimar, and find Schiller’s coffin covered over with silver leaves by the mothers and daughters of Germany, and Goethe’s bare. No doubt more lectures are delivered in the universities on Goethe than on Schiller; but it is the latter poet, with the really German domes¬ tic record, who expressed the heart of the Teutonic 160 MARRIAGE, land. His tomb is wet with tears ten times where Goethe’s is once. I dare predict, that, in time to come, the emotional side of the domestic portion of the German nature will have Schiller with his German ideals for its representative, and not Goethe with his French ideals. Remember how the evils of the court life of Versailles had corrupted Germany, how little Weimar aped French fashions; and yet you cannot excuse this man for his record. All that his best biographers claim is that the evil in his life has been exaggerated in popular judgment. Under the natural laws reverenced by Angelo and Mrs. Browning and Milton, it is certain that he was guilty. He- was so guilty that his own nation at this moment stands with blushing cheeks to apologize for his record. Whatever Goethe may have become in his later years, whatever Goethe may be now, we must say of him, as he stands here just returning from Italy, his child living north of the Alps, and he an unmarried man, that he is not a fit companion for John Milton and Mrs. Browning. [Applause.] This Pagan jury are of that opinion, and I read to them Emerson’s saying, that Goethe was “incapable of surrender to the moral sentiment,” and so we “ can¬ not really love him.” He is not admitted to these chambers. But will Byron be ? What is his record? Walk backward, and conceal the shame. A brilliant intel¬ lect, assuredly ! But can he go in here to face Pan- thea and Phocion’s wife? Can he be admitted on terms of social equality to this villa which has only LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 161 pagan guidance? We are consulting great nature in looking into the faces of this jury. I speak in meta¬ phor. This is only one way of presenting a very dry and intricate theme; twenty ways might be chosen. Goethe and Byron stand there, and plead for them¬ selves. They now look through the lattice-work, and they demand why Mrs. Browning and Milton and Angelo are received, and they shut out. Acting as interpreter of nature, I risk the reputation of science upon these propositions, which I read to the jury, while I ask you to watch the faces of Pliny and Phocion’s wife and Panthea : — , 1. General society now is thought to be lax in regard to the execution of the penalties of seduction and adultery. 2. If, however, a brother or a husband detects a leper in either of these crimes, and shoots him dead, not one jury in ten will inflict any penalty upon the outraged avenger. That is a modern fact, and a pretty large one from the scientific point of view. 3. Social life and law thus proclaim their opinion that death should be the penalty of seduction and adultery. 4. This penalty was actually required by the Puritan civil enactments. 5. If modern law is more lax, the rule of excusing private revenge justifies the principle involved in the Puritan legislation. 6. Great Nature speaks in all this volcanic justifi¬ cation of purity. 162 MARRIAGE. These men at the lattice-work have been guilty of the things for which, when avenged, murder itself is condoned. Both of them have been guilty. Pliny’s face is that of nature ; it has in it only manliness. Panthea’s face is that of Nature ; it has in it only womanliness. But under the rays of the eyes of* these two representatives of Paganism, Goethe’s eyes go down, and Byron’s quail. You know that that is the way these forces are balanced. You are yourselves a part of this jury. You are the hosts in this villa. I venture to affirm that the free leper’s theories cannot begin a detected execu¬ tion of themselves, in practice, without the risk of his being shot dead by many a man here and many a Ik woman. T. There is nothing which quails so quickly before outraged purity as outraging impurity. Whoever knew a man guilty, as these petitioners at the lattice-work have been, that could meet the eyes of a Milton, or an Angelo, or a Mrs. Browning ? Undoubtedly, if persons far their inferiors in intellec¬ tual power stand up for the heart of great Nature in their presence, the former can be cowed. But other things being equal, who ever saw an adulterer, or a seducer, that could look into the face of a man his equal in other respects and pure, and not quail? That is the scale in which Nature weighs men. Whoever thinks it safe to stand in the lighter scale to be weighed by the judgment of ages to come, had better look backward, and see how every great repu¬ tation that has had this infamy in it has little by LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 163 little lost its place. We were reading Byron a few years ago as if he were inspired. Woman is giving the world a new literature. Mrs. Browning is here, and knows how poetry has been purified* Where will be the place for the Byrons a century hence? The trend of the central currents of literature prophe¬ sies a better social world than any in the past. These experiences of Angelo and Milton and Mrs. Browning indicate what the race is capable of, and what is the best possible to man. Ultimately you will find the race pressing toward the best possible. We are very careless when we allow social lepers to use sacred words to cover infamous things. “ Love ! ” Pliny says, rising here. “ These men have not loved. Did not poor, guileless Margaret, in Faust, written by this Goethe beyond the Alps, stand up and look upon the forehead of Mephis- topheles, and say, 4 It is written on his brow that he never loved a living soul ’ ? This which is true of Mephistopheles is true of all his children. The lepers’ league of cancer-planters ! Neither he nor they ever loved a human soul. Let us not call a free-fancier’s contract, marriage. All accepted defi¬ nitions make marriage a union of one man and woman for life. It is mischievous to allow the friends of loose divorce to call by the sacred name of marriage, what, correctly described, is only a free- fancier’s contract, or free leper’s contract. Free lover ! Free leper is the better name.” [A voice, “ Amen.” Applause.] In Pliny’s countenance there is a thought which 164 MARRIAGE. we must interpret, though he cannot whisper it. Pliny is instructed in modern investigations. He lifts up before his jury, though he cannot open the books, the suggestive name of Acton, who says that no man can claim that Nature forced him into vice. He lifts up here Bourgeois, laureate of the Academy of Medicine of Paris, and might cite a score of names proclaiming that Goethe and Byron, when they as¬ sert that Nature is on their side, go beyond the dic¬ tates of modern science. He quotes Max Simon, Duffieux, Diday, Mayer, Briguet, and Fredault, all Frenchmen and men of science writing in the heart of Paris against all the excuses of Sardanapalus. The jury are now agreed. I do not find that Pliny and Panthea and Cornelia and Phocion’s wife and Hampden are unworthy to receive Milton and Angelo and Mrs. Browning as guests. While the high greet¬ ings pass between these elect souls in Pliny’s villa, how shall we interpret the secret thoughts which flame in the sacred lights in all their countenances ? Thomas Carlyle’s words shall close my plea to this jury : — “ To burn away, in mad waste, the divine aromas and plainly celestial elements from our existence ; to change our holy of holies into a place of riot ; to make the soul itself hard, im¬ pious, barren ! Surely a day is coming when it will be known again what virtue is in purity and continence of life ; how di¬ vine is the blush of young human cheeks ; how high, benefi¬ cent, sternly inexorable if forgotten, is the duty laid, not on women only, but on every creature, in regard to these particu¬ lars ! Well, if such a day never come again, then I perceive much else will never come. Magnanimity and depth of insight LOYE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 165 will never come ; heroic purity of heart and of eye ; noble pious valor, to amend us and the age of bronze and lacker, how can they ever come? The scandalous bronze-lacker age of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotencies and mendacities, will have to run its course till Pit swallow it.” (Carlyle, History of Frederick II., vol. ii. pp. 29, 30.) Goethe and Byron have slunk out of sight before the face of Carlyle. [Applause.] VII ELECTIVE AFFINITIES; OR, WHO SHOULD MARRY WHOM ? THE ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, APRIL 1. In that great square of the Santissima, There drifted past him (scarcely marked enough To move his comfortable island-scorn), A train of priestly banners, cross and psalm. The white-veiled rose-crowned maidens holding up Tall tapers, weighty for such mists, aslant To the blue luminous tremor of the air, And letting drop the white wax as they went To eat the bishop’s wafer at the church ; From which long trail of chanting priests and girls A face flashed like a cymbal on his face, And shook with silent clangor brain and heart, Transfiguring him to music. Thus, even thus He too received his sacramental gift With eucharistic meanings ; for he loved. Mrs. Browning : Avrora Leigh . He is the half part of a blessed man Left to be finished by such as she ; And she a fair divided excellence, Whose fulness of perfection lies in him. Shakspkare : King John , Act II., Scene II. VII. ELECTIVE AFFINITIES; OR, WHO SHOULD MARRY WHOM? PRELUDE ON CUKRENT EVENTS. While we recognize the fact that the sword is sheathed, and that the bayonet has gone back to the armory, let us remember that the only salvation now for the South is the uprooting of the spirit of caste, and the opening to the black man as well to the white any career for which he possesses or may acquire fit¬ ness. Why does not the South see that in holding down one class of her population, and refusing it opportunities of education, which she is so willing to give generously to the white race, she is repressing emigration? The Upper Mississippi Valley is begin¬ ning to send in large numbers a new population into Northern Texas. They very soon will be clamoring for admission into the Union as a separate State. The North can easily have a swarm of colonies of its own in the South. Where are our land-ownership committees ? Where are the American Hengist and Horsa to lead the perishing and dangerous classes out of Northern cities into unoccupied land ? Is not 169 V* 170 MARRIAGE. the South as attractive as the West * for coloniza¬ tion? Where are the manufacturers of the South? Where are the people who should fill her rivers and her mountain-sides with industries more fruitful of wealth and more stimulative to patriotism than any work into which she has hitherto entered? The flaming heart of the South does not know how it might draw the world to itself, and prosperity to now desolate quarters, if only it would adopt the prin¬ ciples of its own Washington, and guard the rights which the sword of the United States has perma¬ nently established in law, and discussion will see executed in practice, and give everywhere to talent, under a black skin or white, what Napoleon called free course. [Applause.] Four large portents hang over the Southern hori¬ zon, — two of them cheerful, two of them threaten¬ ing. The cheerful portents are : — 1. Peace for both the white and the black race ; and, 2. Education for the whites. The threatening portents are : — 1. An attack on the common-school system by a determined minority, influenced chiefly by race preju¬ dice and proclaiming its unwillingness to employ State funds to support high schools for freedmen. 2. A swarm of bills at Washington for the payment of Southern war debts by Congress. On the lower courses of the Brazos, the Red River, and the Mississippi, and in the middle regions of . Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, the ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 171 census maps of illiteracy show dark shadows. The contrast of these quarters with the white spaces of New England, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa is one of the most impressive passages in the great pictured poem of the national Statistical Atlas. (See Walker’s Statistical Atlas of the United States, compiled under the authority of Congress.) It is a highly suggestive fact, how¬ ever, that the South claims that it has a greater number of pupils in classical, professional, and tech¬ nical schools than New England in proportion to its population. In the six New England States there is a white population of 3,455,000. In Tennessee, Ala¬ bama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and North Carolina there is a white population of 3,476,000. But, although possessing nearly the same number of inhabitants, this group of Northern States has only 23,000 pupils in classical, professional, and technical schools, while the Southern group has 47,000, or more than twice as many. Of course I recollect the fact, which can hardly be whispered here without a certain infelicity, espe¬ cially as Boston has no reputation for humility, that New England schools are not as easily called profes¬ sional, and classical, and technical, as some in the Western and in the Southern States. If we were to diminish the list of institutions bearing these titles in Tennessee, by applying to their classification the stern rules adopted by the census-takers in New England, because adopted here by her population, the contrast might not be so wide between the num* 172 MAURI AGE. ber of pupils in such institutions in the South and in similar schools in New England. Nevertheless, it is beyond all question that the white population of the Southern States has always been willing to pay well for high schools for the whites. However much illiteracy may exist in the masses of the average population at the South, public funds have always been spent freely there for the higher education of the ruling class. In a paper read before the scientific conference at Saratoga last summer, a Southern scholar makes a plea for the lower, but indirectly and cautiously against the higher, education of the freedmen. On his authority, and on that of a large mass of South¬ ern evidence which has come before me from other sources, it appears, — 1. That the freedmen are now demanding high schools wherever such schools are provided for the whites ; 2. That a vigilant minority are eager to destroy the entire system of public instruction ; 8. That opposition to public instruction in the South prevails mostly in country districts, where the school system is inefficient ; 4. That, as the opposition to the free-school sys¬ tem in the South is due principally to the presence of the freedman, so the objections advanced derive their influence chiefly from race prejudice ; 5. That instruction unsuived to the condition of the race only strengthens the opposition to their education. \Journal of Social Science , containing the ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 173 Transactions of the American Association. No. IX., January, 1878. Paper on “The Opposition in the South to the Free-School System,” pp. 92-100.) So speaks Gen. Logan of Richmond, Va., before the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Even in that presence, he does not forget the word caste. “ As the freedman,”' continues this authority, “raises, his position in the industrial scale, — thus further relieving the whites from the lower grades of labor , — the average occupation of the white race will be higher in proportion. And thus the whites constituting the upper, the blacks the lower, social strata, the white strata might be ele¬ vated by raising the colored strata below ” (p. 97). “ Practically there are two classes in the South, as clearly defined as if established and rigidly preserved *>y caste laws. The whites, in effect, constitute an upper caste, without the existence of laws giving caste privilege, while race prejudice prevents amal¬ gamation and preserves the class separation into two distinct social strata ” (p. 96). A block of black marble, a block of white ! They lie on the earth, the white upon the black. The best argument of the friends of the freedmen in the South now is, that, if you raise the block of black marble above the mire, you will lift the white into greater prominence. The North had an opinion in the civil w*ar that blocks of marble, black and white, should not be built on each other, but on their ends, each upon the earth, and each allowed to take the height God gave it. [Applause.] Raise the black 174 MARRIAGE. marble and you will raise the white ! This is an ar¬ gument which can be addressed with effect only to a society saturated with the spirit of caste. The belief in the ethnological inferiority of the black man insists that he shall be subjected to an educational inferiority in the opportunities afforded him for self- improvement. It is proclaimed that the unwillingness of a black man educated at a high school to accept manual labor, is a sufficient reason why a higher education should not be provided for freedmen by the State. Does this unwillingness arise from a high-school education, or in large part from the contagious ex¬ ample of traditional and fashionable unwillingness of the same sort among educated and even unedu¬ cated Southern whites ? That the better educated of the freedmen are as anxious as the better educated of the whites to be relieved of the lower grades of manual labor, is the fact which excites the greatest alarm as to the future of the free-school system of the South. The anxiety of the black man for relief from man¬ ual labor will continue as long as a similar anxiety is a fashion with the white society in which he is educated. The uneducated white man is no more to be excused from manual labor than the unedu¬ cated black man. The spirit of caste, and not the high-school system, is what needs change in the South. There is a por¬ tion of the North only too much under the power of a spirit of caste as to the freedman’s minor social ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 175 rights, although here his educational and political rights are conceded. If the anxiety of the educated freedman to avoid the lower grades of labor is such a sin that the State should break up his common schools, or, at least, deprive him of higher education, why is not a similar anxiety to be ranked as a similar sin and a reason for a similar deprivation on the part of the uneducated poor white ? Political rights have been made equal in spite of color. Let educational rights be made equal also. Let a career be open to talent in the black popula¬ tion as well as in the white. In these positions I am only supporting what I suppose to be a majority in the South against an active minority there. The rural populations of portions of the South clamor for the abolition of public instruction of blacks in the primary schools, and especially in high schools. The cities do not do this. I am not criticising the higher portions of Southern society ; but in the rural districts, sparsely populated and filled with wide plantations, poor teachers are often found in the Southern public schools. The instruction given in the freedman’s lonely schoolhouse at the edge of the Dismal Swamp amounts to little. It suffers by comparison with that given in villages and cities. There is a penuri¬ ous diminution of teachers’ salaries in the South, as well as in the North. The paring down of salaries in public schools, sends, of course, the best teachers to the rich, who 176 MARRIAGE. can pay well for good instruction in private schools. As William Cullen Bryant has said, if we reduce the salaries of our teachers below a certain point, the result is sure to be the turning of all good instruc¬ tion into rich society. Those who can pay well for excellent teachers will have them, and the poor man will be left without adequate instruction. The dif¬ ference between the rich and poor will grow wider and deeper by all penuriousness in regard to school salaries. In the South, in the rural districts, geographical reasons cause even good teachers to be sometimes inefficient, and there is a clamor against common schools, when serious attempt is made to give in¬ struction to white and black children under one roof. Indeed, government has given up trying to mass together the children in these sparsely popu¬ lated districts. If we had endeavored to mass the two classes, we should probably have broken up the entire system of governmental instruction in the South. Northern sentiment, in favor of equal educational rights for the black and white race, is called on now to put itself side by side with the better sentiment of the South itself, or with the higher opinions of the cities and large towns, and against the pinched ideas of the sparsely populated rural Southern dis¬ tricts. This clamor for the putting down of higher education for the blacks ought to be met with stern criticism. So ought the action of South Carolina — of which I have all the details before me — in redu- ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 177 cing disastrously her appropriations for the common- school funds. There are two parties on this topic in the States on the Gulf. Southern taxation for colored schools amounts to eight hundred thousand dollars. Georgia has for years appropriated eight thousand dollars to the negro university at Atlanta, and Virginia ten thousand dollars to the Hampton Institute, both of them officered and controlled by Northern teachers, and filled with students, all of whom vote in opposition to the party that aids their education. It was my fortune on this platform some time ago to call attention to what is yet the fact, that Northern support is indispensable to Southern colleges for freedmen. A significant number of let¬ ters from teachers of the Southern schools for the colored race has reached me, with thanks for all that was said here on their behalf. But the Secretary of State in Mississippi writes that he has no evidence that more than one schoolhouse used by the freed- men wasvburned in Mississippi. It is important not to overlook the circumstance, on which Gen. Arm¬ strong has lately insisted, that teachers of colored schools are often sustained largely by ex-rebel offi¬ cers and soldiers. Of the hundreds of applications for teachers which he has had in the past seven years, nineteen out of twenty have come from that class, with offers of salaries in all cases. I find that the State of Virginia, staggering under her enor¬ mous debt, appropriates three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for maintaining eleven hundred colored schools, and two hundred and eighty thou- 178 MARRIAGE. sand dollars of this sum comes from the pockets of her impoverished and war-peeled white citizens. (. Letter from the Rev. J. W. Pratt, D.D., President of the Central University of Kentucky.) Let not the North diminish her vigilance and liberality as to the education of freedmen. But let us not-underrate the vigor of the better Southern sentiment as it sup¬ ports the same sacred cause. This determined minority, which would break up all governmental instruction, and which assails the high schools, has only too much support from cer¬ tain parties in the North, who would pare down teachers’ salaries, and have already attacked the high schools even here in Massachusetts. This attack on the high-school system is by no means exclusively a Southern matter. In the South it is connected with prejudices arising from caste, and may easily become a most mischievous influence in the North from the re-enforcements which class-prejudices will give to the wave in the South. Such is, I suppose, the most threatening of the clouds lying along the Southern sky. What patriot likes the looks of the more than two hundred and fifty bills lately introduced into our house of misrepresentatives for the payment of Southern war debts? James Russell Lowell called the United States, years ago, what, since the passage of the - Silver Bill, they are, and what they will be doubly if they pay Southern debts incurred for the demoli¬ tion of the LTnion, — “the land of broken promise.” But while there are fears there are also exhilarate ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 1T9 ing hopes. When in the history of the world have we seen a great population, after protracted war, brought so soon to at least outward loyalty ? A prominent Northern lecturer, returned from large travel and a considerable residence in the South, affirms that you cannot eulogize the Union any¬ where on the platform south of the Potomac with¬ out bringing out the cheers of the audience. To outward appearance there is as little need of Federal soldiers in New Orleans as in Boston. The persons who from the heart of the President’s own party make political war on the Executive of the United States are reaching the conclusion at last that it is the better part of valor to retire from their attack upon his Southern policy, to which Massachusetts has in substance given approval from the first. I am not here assailing any man’s political prejudices, but I think it high time that we should learn that the war is over. [Applause.] “ Like to a mustard-seed God’s kingdom grows ; And high and higher yet this portion towers, This province of his realm, this land of ours! For think you to its North and West there flows The sap of all God’s purpose ? Or suppose The South shall, stayed from growth, forever wilt, While West and North, bough-bent with fruit and flowers, Shall flourish on its halted life upbuilt? Not so ; henceforth and purged its tropic blood Shall flow as hot, but with the health of law ; And so this many-petaled plant shall draw East, West, South, North, an even masterhood : In fruitfulness for all, each State the chief ; Earth’s grandest growth, and green in every leaf.” Author ofu Col. Dunwoddie 180 MARRIAGE. THE LECTURE. The celebrated Frenchman Bernardin de St. Pierre once visited a friend who had a sister greatly ad¬ mired in society, but whom he had never previously seen. “ Shall I tell you,” said the author of “ Paul and Virginia ” to this tall, blonde lady, of slow move¬ ments, of flaxen hair and blue eyes, u which one of your many admirers finds the most favor with your¬ self?” The maiden blushed; but, knowing that St. Pierre was without information as to her social circle, gave him opportunity to answer his own question. “ He whom you most admire,” was the reply, “ is a brunette, active, of quick movements, your opposite, with dark hair and dark eyes.” The maiden turned to her brother with a look of rage, and said, “ Why did you reveal my secret?” But the man of science and letters replied, uNo revelation was made to me except through my knowledge of elective affinities.” You say that the topic I am to present this morn¬ ing is one of the most explosive, dangerous, and infernal that could possibly be brought forward here. For that reason I like to take it up. [Applause.] It is one object of discussion here to examine freely difficulties which cannot very well be brought before the people on the Sabbath days. The explosive force of many themes, when their discussion is .avoided by 'the friends of sound thought, is used with all the more effect on the side of evil. If it can be shown that the terrific power which lies behind some of these so-called affinities, through which the black ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 181 angels lead so many men and women into destruc¬ tion, may be employed on the side of virtue, perhaps as much danger is avoided as incurred by not skip¬ ping the topic. Even Goethe’s book entitled “Elective Affinities” is not a plea for easy divorce. It is a record of his own experience. Every one remembers that when far advanced in life he had a fancy, I do not say love, for Mina von Herzlieb, a marvellous creature in a friend’s family at Jena. Goethe was a great fancier rather than a lover. I doubt whether he was ever in love ; he was an immense fancier. It was only when Mina was sent away out of Goethe’s circles to school that he obtained the power of self-control. Had that measure not been taken, his friends think that disaster might have been the consequence. Goethe has assured us that, in his book entitled “ Elective Affinities,” he records his own experi¬ ences. He does not say in what case, but every¬ body knows that by the character called “ Edward,” in this celebrated work of fiction, Goethe represents the impulsive side of his own nature ; and by the character called the “ Captain,” the calmer philoso¬ phic portion of his own being. Notice what a writer of fiction or drama makes you love if you would know what he intends to teach. I can only speak from personal experi¬ ences ; but, for one, I come out of the heart of Goethe’s volume on marriage with a respect for the conservative characters delineated there, and with an admiration for their philosophy, but with distrust 182 MARRIAGE. of the justifier of fancy, and the apologist of loose opinions. I have an interest in Edward, but no respect for him. Ottilie, at the last, the person to whom Edward, in spite of a previous marriage, was inclined to marry himself, retains the respect of the reader, and even of the author, only by re¬ nouncing utterly every opportunity that might have led to such a marriage. She forgives herself, and has dignity in life and peace in death only on that condition. Charlotte in the secret tempest of her spirit kneels down in solitude in the night, and surrenders utterly to conscience, and at the instant of this act, Goethe says, attained peace of soul. In passage after passage of his best productions Goethe seems to behold the moral law in its majesty. He sees that it has lawful, because natural, authority over the most powerful passions, and that in the last analysis we must give conscience supremacy even over that affection which is said to have more might than death. But he does not always appear to love the moral law. Closing the “ Elective Affini¬ ties ” in the middle of New Hampshire, as my railway car rolled under Moosilauke, I happened to glance up at the mountain height just after a glo¬ rious sunset had completely left the western clouds. There was majesty in the elevation. I felt overawed, but not attracted as I had been when the colors stood above it. A mighty mountain height, with a cold sky behind it, symbolizes Goethe. In Richter you see the same mountain with the morning radiance and color behind its summits. There is all the majesty of ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 183 the moral law, all the elevation of the mountain, and beyond it you have the roseate tints of the coming day. Richter is glad that this majesty should be hon¬ ored. Open the New Testament, and you find in the sky behind the mountain, not merely roseate clouds, but the rejoicing and overpowering effulgence of the sun itself. Indeed, I suppose that my criticism of Goethe must amount simply to the utterance of the word coldness. There is no passion in him in favor of the moral law in marriage. There is no rising sun in him, there are no sunrise tints, there is only a leaden, cold sky ; but there is enough reverence of the majesty of natural law, there is enough of the mountain height to make his Alpine scenery impres¬ sive, even if not alluring. The most explosive opin¬ ions, of which he felt the power, and which he has himself discussed, he condemns by making his reader on the whole prefer their opposites. The book is a cold one. It does not command the soul’s reverence as does Richter’s, or Mrs. Browning’s, or Tennyson’s, or Carlyle’s roseate, high, entrancing dawn. It does not prompt one to rejoicing as do the beams of the morning shot through the earth, and filling it with gladness. But Goethe himself acknowledged in practice the authority of opinions which he is often supposed to have rejected. He refused to allow his own name to be dishonored by any yielding to what he calls the almost omnipotent force of elective affin¬ ities. Who Goethe was you know. He is not here in Pliny’s villa, because he was what he was. If elective affinities have power to dissolve mar- 184 MARRIAGE. riage, ought they not to have power to cement mar¬ riage ? If the explosive force of affinities be such as to wreck many a marriage, ought not that force, enlisted on the right *side, to be as efficient in con¬ struction as it is in destruction ? How difficult this topic is no man knows until he has brooded over it years and years ; perhaps no man knows until he has passed through experiences like Goethe’s. Although the married two in Goethe’s book have friendship for each other, yet, when a real love springs up with each for another, there is no peace except the one party to it is in the presence of the other. There is perfect quiet of heart, there is exaltation of soul, whenever the supreme affection is gratified only by conversation, or by the ordinary social intercourse of cultivated society. But even that cannot be lawfully granted, and this explosive power rends the castle of the home, from turret to foundation-stone. I find Goethe narrating, with none too much detail, the circumstances that show the power of elective affini¬ ties. I thank God for every word literature, or even erratic discussion, has given us to show how powerful these forces are. I want no diminution of the vivid¬ ness of the light which comes to us through science itself, to prove that a supreme affection, founded on affinity of soul, is, next to the moral law in the Uni¬ verse, the most powerful of all the influences felt by human nature. Call that power stronger than death. Let it rise in all its majesty to the heights of a moun¬ tain range. Science puts behind that majesty, not only the dawn and the cold sky, but the colors of ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 185 morning. Watch these long enough, and there will shoot from behind that very height the sunrise at last, and you will love the mountain all the more for its height when once it is deluged by the direct beams of da}^ I plunge now into a sea of difficulties, too deep, you may think, for our venturing into it ; and I shall ask you not to regard the discussion as really com¬ menced until it is closed. 1. The word “ temperament ” is to be defined. It is a very vague term, and has been employed most loosely, even by respectable writers. For the pur¬ poses of this discussion, you will understand me to mean by “ temperament ” the physical, mental, and moral result of the predominance in size and activity of any one class of the physical organs over the rest. A man may have a cephalic, a thoracic, or a muscular temperament, according as the head or chest or muscles may predominate in size and activity over the other portions of the physical system. 2. To use as nearly accepted phraseology as possi¬ ble, or that which is employed by Carpenter, Draper, and many physiologists of good position, there may be a predominance of the nervous, or of the muscu¬ lar, or of the arterial, or of the lymphatic apparatus over the other apparatus of the body. 3. These different forms of predominance produce results which are called the nervous, bilious, san¬ guine, and lymphatic temperaments. Do not think that I insist upon careful definitions of these latter phrases. I have defined only the 186 MARRIAGE. word “temperament.” I have not undertaken to de¬ fine the double appellation, “nervous temperament.” We know it at sight, perhaps, but it is very difficult to describe it in language ; and so of each of the other temperaments. Of course, there are not only four, but eight, and sixteen, and thirty-two tempera¬ ments, according as the four and their derivatives are mixed with each other. 4. The ideal condition of the body is, however, a balance of all its apparatus ; and hence the ideal temperament is the balanced temperament, combin¬ ing the lymphatic, the sanguine, the bilious, and the nervous. 5. Nature ever strives to realize this ideal, that is, to produce the perfect temperament, which holds all the organs in equilibrium. 6. Hence, because seeking the perfection of all the faculties which are called human, because seeking the ideal condition represented by an equilibrium, she instils in the nervous temperament a preference for the lymphatic ; and in the sanguine, a liking for the bilious constitution ; in opposite, for opposite ; in any temperament, a liking for that which comple¬ ments or supplements it; and this on the law that she seeks an equilibrium, or the perfection of the entire set of faculties, physical and spiritual, belong¬ ing to man. 7. Elective affinities are tendencies to an equilib¬ rium, or perfection of physical and spiritual qualities. 8. Elective affinities, therefore, between persons of opposite temperaments, often arise from physical dissimilarity. ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 187 9. Between persons of balanced temperaments these affinities may arise from similarity. 10. Between persons of mixed temperaments they may arise from both similarity and dissimilarity. 11. It is sometimes asserted that the adaptation of two persons to marriage consists in their mental and moral similarity and their physical dissimilarity. This is a useful but an inexact statement. 12. It follows from the definition of elective affini¬ ties as tendencies to an equilibrium, or perfection in all the human qualities, that the adaptation of two persons to marriage — here is another definition — - consists in their possession of physical and mental traits which make equilibrium or perfection when matched. The good traits which the one does not possess should be found in the other; but, if the same good traits are possessed by both, the parallel¬ ism is not an inadaptation, but an attraction, so far as it tends to produce an equilibrium or perfection of all the faculties, physical and spiritual. 13. The existence of mental and moral adaptation, as thus defined, is capable of ascertainment by science and social experience. 14. Marriages without such adaptation must, in the face of the scientific method, whatever fashion may say to the contrary, be proclaimed to be, not only mistakes under, but crimes against natural law, and ought, therefore, to be regarded as crimes against social law. 15. All social customs which make marriage a lot¬ tery on account of the difficulty of ascertaining the 188 MAERIAGE. truth as to the existence of this adaptation, are con¬ demned by the immeasurable mischief to which they necessarily lead. In Goethe’s book we have a marriage of friend¬ ship, following a marriage of convenience in the experience of each of the principal characters. Seve¬ ral kinds of marriage are discussed in that volume, but the solution of the knot which choked Edward is, I believe, nowhere frankly given. Goethe did not proclaim that , instead of making an ex post facto affinity law for those who would cancel their mar¬ riage , there should be made an anticipatory affinity law with the same provisions for those who are about to contract marriage. Does the clamor for loose divorce laws bring before us the infelicities of ill- assorted unions ? The more that topic is discussed, the better. The forces which make marriages unhappy are adequate to make marriages happy. The more you clamor for an inadmissible ex post facto law in these cases, the more reason I see for men and women exercising caution before they cause themselves to need an ex post facto law. 16. The existence of this adaptation is best proved by the existence of an adequately tested supreme affection. Here, then, we unite the present course of thought with the past discussion of the topic of marriage. Thus far I have been endeavoring to show that an adequately tested supreme affection should be the basis of every marriage, but now we come face to face with a central question : — ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 189 IT. What are adequate tests of the existence of a supreme affection? Assuredly, this is as practical an inquiry as can be raised on the topic, especially for those who are yet to have experience on this theme. I would put aside here all unscientific sensitiveness. I would face the holy of holies of society, however, with a becoming awe. If I were not in the presence of this Pagan jury in Pliny’s villa ; if there were not here Cornelia and Phocion’s wife and Panthea, as well as Mrs. Browning ; if I could not gaze into the countenances of Hampden and Michel Angelo and Milton, as well as into that of Pliny, I might be unwilling to insist upon some of these tests. But when I conjoin the ful¬ ness of life in modern time with the best elevation of it in antiquity, and when I take into view the human faculties in their whole natural range, assuredly the majority of these tests can be insisted on in the name of experience. There is nothing new under the sun. When these tests are read, Cornelia bows her head ; so does Phocion’s wife; so does Panthea. Every one of the tests they are willing to apply to their own supreme affections. Watch this Pagan jury for the verdict of nature as to what are adequate tests of the existence of a supreme affection. Let me read ten. I do not presume to say that these are all, but these are some of the tests which should be applied by every person who is to enter into an arrangement that law and custom make indissoluble. Among the tests which can be called adequate as to the existence of a supreme affection are these : — 190 MARRIAGE. (1) Willingness to renew an engagement if it be supposed to be broken off. (2) Unforced tendency to form a resolution never to belong to another. We must make a distinction between fancy and love ; but one of the most infamous things in modern society is a constant overriding of this distinction, — - tampering, dallying, without serious intentions. I have spoken of the importance of opportunities of acquaintance, such as Horace Bushnell wanted, be¬ tween the marriageable classes ; but you must not suppose that I am forgetting the wisdom of the usual precautions of society. Experience lies behind them. If a man cannot solemnlv, in the court of his inner nature, answer in the affirmative when he is asked whether these tests can be borne successfully by his alleged affection, let him remember that he is young yet. He needs guardians. The precautions of so¬ ciety are none too serious in his case. (3) The transmutation of selfishness into delight in self-sacrifice for the person loved. (4) The interchange of eyes in many moods. How the poets have sung on the great themes suggested here ! Tennyson regards it as the only salvation of human life from selfishness to have the soul educated by a really supreme affection. # “Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might, Smote the chord of self, which, trembling, passed in music out of sight.” ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 191 In no animal on the globe is there the capacity to have that chord smitten out of sight, whether the animal walk on four feet or on two. The supreme distinction between leprosy and love, the supreme contrast between that Urania who is reverenced in the symposium of Plato as of celestial origin, and that Polyhymnia, a terrestrial goddess, who comes up from the clay and the foam of the sea, is that in the heavenly affection there is a loss of selfishness, and in the earthly, at the last analysis, the gratification of self is the supreme motive. Murder lies close to lust, because in the latter there are no forces which can smite the chord of self into music or trembling, much less, into invisibility. Shakspeare says of two of his characters that at their first meeting they changed eyes. Perhaps at the second there might have been less perfect interchange. The changing of eyes is a proof of the existence of a supreme affection, but it must be an interchange in many moods. (5) The opinion of friends who know the whole case. Unwise parental interference is to be denounced ; but wise is, of course, to be praised. Who should know, if parents do not, — provided they are serious students of experience, — what may posssibly be the outcome of years of growth on both sides? Will there be a growing together, or a growing apart? Who can answer that question so well as the persons who have grown already through similar experiences, and who have sent down, by the laws of hereditary 192 MARRIAGE, descent, the spiritual and physical germs which are to grow ? (6) The effect of absence, rivalry, and time. (7) The advice of science as to mental and physi¬ cal adaptation.' No man should be above giving himself informa¬ tion concerning the acutest and soundest thought as to the family. There is nothing I am so anxious to have persons do who are thrown into unrest by loose theories of social life, presented only too frequently in modern times, as that they should study natural law, and venture to obtain clear ideas on marriage. There is such a thing as elective affinity, you say. It is, as you affirm, one of the most powerful forces known toman. Very well; a marriage cemented by that powerful force would be the highest kind of mar¬ riage, would it not? You will, of course, admit that. But you want the highest kind of marriage for your¬ self, do you not ? Why allow a free-fancier’ s contract to make unattainable any part of the bliss that might come to you through a perfect marriage under the power of real elective affinity exercised on both sides ? Take all that you affirm as to this force, and use it to give yourself caution in your selection. Let there be science in your prescience. Use all your boasted light, lest its disuse blister your mem¬ ory by and by. Ascertain, what are the indications of adaptation in marriage. Some men have gone so far as to proclaim that there ought to be advisory boards on this subject. I am not of their opinion ; but there ought to be advisory light on the topic ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 193 filling all families, and especially the giddier circles of the young. (8) A knowledge of what position in life one wishes or is likely to fill ; or a choice of occupation. Goethe, among those for whom he had not love but fancy, once reverenced greatly in the groves of Ses- senheim a certain Frederika, to whom, under other circumstances, he could have proposed marriage. The record of his life says, however, that in the groves of Sessenheim she was a wood-nymph, but in Strasbourg salons he found that the wood-nymph • seemed a peasant. Choose your place in life before you choose a wife. (9) Assent of the other powerful passions. Until you have chosen your occupation, there is no knowing what your most powferful passions may be. Until you ascertain what the currents of the ocean are outside the Gulf Stream, you are not perfectly sure that they will not interfere with the course of that stream itself. Find out which way the trade- winds will blow ; ascertain something of the config¬ uration of the great ocean of your future ; and you will know through the assent of the other powerful passions wdiether you may expect permanence in what you call a supreme affection. (10) Opportunity to know the worst of each other. [Applause.] How long one must wait for such an opportunity in the present evil world, let circumstances decide. But let the experience of George Herbert in marry¬ ing after an acquaintance of three days tell us how 194 MARRIAGE. long it would be necessary to wait in a natural, that is, in a conscientious, faorld. There resided near Dauntsey a gentleman named Danvers, a near kin¬ dred of Herbert’s friend, Lord Danby. Mr. Danvers had a family of nine daughters, and had often and publicly expressed a wish that Herbert would marry one of them, “but rather his daughter Jane than any other, because his daughter Jane was his favorite daughter.” “ And he had often said the same to Mr. Herbert himself ; and that if he would like her for a wife, and she him for a husband, Jane should have a double blessing ; and Mr. Danvers had often said the - like to Jane.” “This,” adds Walton, the biogra¬ pher of Herbert, “ was a fair preparation for a marriage ; but, alas ! her father died before Mr. Her¬ bert’s retirement to Dauntsey; yet some friends to both parties procured their meeting; at which time a mutual affection entered into both of their hearts, as a conqueror enters into a surprised city^ ; and love having got such possession, governed and made there such laws and resolutions as neither party was able to resist ; insomuch that she changed her name into Herbert the third day after this first interview.” The marriage proved eminently happy; for, as Wal¬ ton beautifully says, “ the Eternal Lover of mankind made them happy in each other’s mutual and equal affections and compliance; indeed, so happy, that there never was any opposition betwixt them, unless it was a contest which should most incline to a com¬ pliance with the other’s desires. And though this ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 195 begot, and continued in them, such a mutual love and joy and content as was no way defective; yet this 'mutual content and love and joy did receive a daily augmentation by such daily obligingness to each other, as still added new affluences to the former fulness of these divine souls, as was only improvable in heaven, where they now enjoy it.” 18. Only those who have for each other an affec¬ tion which will bear these, or equivalent tests, are authorized by natural law to marry. 19. Those whose affection will bear these tests will know the difference between love and fancy ; will not ask for opportunities of easy divorce ; and will not need them. 20. When society and law give warning that mar¬ riage is indissoluble, and when science proclaims that only a union which desires to be for life is nat¬ ural, those who rush into marriages of convenience, hypocrisy, and heedlessness, and ascertain their mis¬ take afterward, must in justice be required to bear the weight of their own folly, and not throw the bur¬ den of it upon society. [Applause.] Such are the twenty propositions, or submerged stepping-stones, on which I would set foot in fording any deep waters in the central stream of this topic of Elective Affinities. There came to me two days ago a letter from a public man, saying that Connecticut has repealed, in a discussion which included the reading of a part of the attack made on the law here, the omnibus clause 196 MARRIAGE. in her infamous divorce enactments, so that on this point she stands clear from all the charges we have brought against her, and not we only, but natural laws. [Applause.] VIII GOETHE AND SHAKSPEAEE ON MAEEIAGE. THE ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, APRIL 8. Ich habe genossen das irdische Gluck Ich habe geleht und geliebet. Schiller : Piccol., iii. Love of love, so vast its grasp, Only God can round it clasp; Only he can still us quite, Hungering for the Infinite. VIII. GOETHE AND SHAKSPEARE ON MARRIAGE. PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. Thucydides, a young man, stood in the great audiences at the Olympic Games of Greece, and heard Herodotus read his immortal narrative. The listener was inspired to emulate the Father of His¬ tory in recording the great deeds of his nation. The Olympic Games began as a foot-race. In the classical period, however, they always included lit¬ erary contests. The river Alpheus rolls toward the Adriatic, out of the sunset slope of the Pelopon¬ nesus; and near this amber stream, on a beautiful plain surrounded by solemn groves, was erected a temple resembling the Parthenon. In it was placed the matchless work of Phidias, representing the Olym¬ pic Jove. The world has not forgotten how the games on this plain ran through a longer period than that which has passed since William of Orange set foot in England. Germany sends Curtius to the shore of the Alpheus to-day to uncover reverently the Olympic marbles. There were two hundred 199 200 MAKKIAGE and ninety-three Olympiads, and the games occurred every fifth year. Ultimately, although only the Hel¬ lenic race took part in them at first, the Roman conquerors were proud to enter into the contests. Tiberius and Nero carried away crowns from the Olympic festivals. Politics bowed at last to the desire to win a Grecian wreath. At the Olympic Games men were crowned simply with sprigs of the wild-olive ; at the Pythian Games, with sprays of laurel; at the Nemean, with branches of ivy; and at the Isthmian, with twigs from the pine-tree. These crowns conferred not a few privileges, and consti¬ tuted the felicity of the highest literary and musi¬ cal, and sometimes of the best oratorical, talent of Greece. There were literary conferences at the ancient Olympic Games. Why should there not be in the modern World’s Exhibitions? Such conferences are now recommended to favorable consideration by Lord Beaconsfield, by more than forty of the fore¬ most men of Oxford and Cambridge, by Lord Dufferin in Canada, by the Lord Mayor of London, and by Lord Sandon, Vice-President of the Privy Council of her Majesty, which has charge of educa¬ tion in Great Britain. Lord Beaconsfield has sent to this country a letter stating that a plan for such conferences has been laid before the British govern¬ ment. Mr. Gladstone has expressed his approval of the conference. But the scheme originated with a Boston scholar, Dr. Humphreys, for whom I ask honor here this morning. [Applause.] GOETHE AND SHAKSPEARE ON MARRIAGE. 201 It is not proposed to bring together, so far as I understand the project, other than English speaking scholars. The hope is, that it would not be impossi¬ ble to assemble a conference of American scholars who are going abroad to the World’s Exhibition at Paris, and English scholars. There is now good reason to anticipate that a cordial welcome and hos¬ pitable entertainment will be offered the American scholars by members of her Majesty’s government, by the Lord Mayor of London, and by other men eminent alike in politics and literature. The Commissioner who has charge of the American contributions to the Parisian Exhibition has issued a circular, in which he states that such favorable representations of the read¬ iness of English scholars to aid the enterprise have come to him from unofficial sources in Great Britain that he has every reason to expect that, if a commit¬ tee of consultation is appointed here among Amer¬ ican scholars, there will be a formal invitation sent to them from the scholars and literary men of Great Britain. “The National Journal of Education” (March 21, 1878) suggests the immediate formation of such a committee. Under date of March 5, Lord Beaconsfield wrote in support of the plan a letter, in which he speaks with the old scholarly enthusiasm of Disraeli, and shows that the heart of the latter has not been quenched under the ermine of the former. Professors Mayer of Cambridge, and Creighton of Oxford, are emphatic in praising the scheme ; and so is Mr. Forster, a leading member of Parliament, well known in the United States, and a son-in-law of Dr. Arnold. 202 MARRIAGE. International copyright, arbitration between Eng¬ lish-speaking nations, a common set of weights and measures, common patent-laws, a codification of in¬ ternational law, plans for common-school instruction and university examinations, and a score of other important themes, might well be discussed by such a conference. In an excellent lecture by the cul¬ tured business manager of one of our newspapers (Mr. E. F. Waters, Lecture of April 6, on the Re¬ form of the English Civil Service, Advertiser , April 8), the question has been raised in Boston whether an American secretary ought to have a place in Congress from which he could explain himself to our senators and representatives as a minister does to the House of Lords and Commons. We have heard much of late of the possibility of arbitration being adopted as the rule between all English-speak¬ ing nations ; and so of the growth, little by little, of a general alliance between all these peoples. What¬ ever topics might come up at this first conference, the looking of scholars into each other’s faces, the putting Thucydides over against Herodotus, would be an inspiring matter. In venturing to advocate this scheme, I have in mind, not only what it is, but what it promises. The world is likely to contain fewer and fewer foreign lands as the ages progress. When by and by a World’s Exhibition shall be brought together at Berlin, why may there not be an Olympic literary conference between all the scholars of all the na¬ tions and all the languages represented in that cos- GOETHE AND SHAKSPEABE ON MABBIAGE. 203 mopolitan gathering? A conference on matters of scholarship and education between representatives of English-speaking nations ought to be only the initiation of a new custom. The time is surely not very far distant when at every one of these great Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, Isthmian gatherings, we shall have, not contests, but conferences, and such a gazing into each other’s faces by leaders in the world’s education as shall quicken all scholarship throughout the globe. A most scholarly Parisian journal of microscopy which I hold in my hands contains an elaborate ac¬ count of microscopical investigations conducted in Massachusetts by two of her experts, — Dr. Cutter of Cambridge and Dr. Harriman of Boston. These gentlemen have made photographs of the healthful and diseased appearances of the disks of the blood. You know that the blood is made up of three ele¬ ments, — a thin fluid, a multitude of red disks, and a few white corpuscles. The red disks and white cor¬ puscles of the human blood, science has put under the microscope, and found that they change their shape in different ways in different diseases. The claim is now made that the character of certain dis¬ eases can be ascertained by a study of the changes which they produce in the shape of the blood cor¬ puscles. The audience sees this handkerchief [hold¬ ing up a handkerchief folded into a flattened ball]. Suppose it to be folded into a round mass, or a disk of symmetrical proportions. Now suppose that there shoots out of it a root at the lower part [changing 204 MARRIAGE. the shape of the folded mass]. The change between the round form and that caudated form is not greater than certain diseases produce in the form of the red blood corpuscle, and especially in the white. This Lectureship has been accused of taking facts at sec¬ ond hand. Next Monday, at eleven o’clock, the great hall at Tremont Temple will be darkened, the best microscope in Boston will be put in that gallery, and representations of these disks will be thrown upon a screen here by the stereopticon. The results of cer¬ tain recent Boston researches, of which this French journal speaks so highly, you will have an opportu¬ nity to see, the first of all audiences in the world. [Applause.] The red blood corpuscle, when properly magnified and thrown upon the screen, will have a diameter of some ten or twelve feet. The gentlemen who have volunteered to assist the Lectureship in putting these facts before the public have given pro¬ longed and minute professional attention to the mat¬ ter, and are commended in the warmest terms in the Journal de Micrographie (November, 187T, pp. 309, 310), both of them by name. A large degree of com¬ mendation is here given to Mr. Tolies, our Boston maker of microscopes, who is regarded as a child of fortune, because he has produced a one seventy-fifth objective. Of this magnificent instrument you will have opportunity to make an inspection. The photo¬ graphs which will be put before you are in large part its work. What may come from the investigation of the changes of shape in the disks in the blood I do not undertake to say, but this I do know, that science GOETHE AND SHAKSPEAEE ON MARRIAGE. 205 at the present moment stands with hushed breath be¬ fore the question whether diseases can be traced by the changes they produce in the shape of the blood corpuscles. The blood is the life, we are told ; and nearer and nearer investigation comes to the heart of biology. Science can show you the blood cor¬ puscle changed by diseases too infamous to be men¬ tioned from the round to a sprouted shape. On the topic of hereditary taints in blood you will need little eloquence on my part, after the facts at first hand, as ascertained by perhaps the best micro¬ scope in the world, have been put before you, first of all audiences on either side of the Atlantic. [Ap¬ plause.] THE LECTURE. The survival of the least unfit will ultimately give the world to the fittest. When music rises in a city street, every man who hears it with his soul forgets the uncouth noises with which it contends, and becomes in some sense a poet and a prophet. When we listen to the melody of what the best writers say concerning woman, and find that among all the barbarous cries of time this lofty anthem rises victoriously, and is remembered age after age, because it possesses inherent * fitness to command, we are made poets and prophets, and naturally anticipate a better world. When I hear great music, I feel sure that the vexed centuries will be put in order at last. In all noble melody there is a suggestion of a melodious final arrangement of 206 MARRIAGE. human events. Goethe said that level roads lead out of music in every direction. So- they do oufc of the love of love. The immense inspirations of woman’s character always elevate us, as music does, to a height from which we anticipate better ages. If I mistake not, the inculcations of the most valued literature as to woman and marriage have been growing higher in the last five hundred years. If I can show that literature is singing a loftier and more inspiring song, or presenting a higher and higher ideal of excellence in woman’s character and of what is best in marriage, perhaps you will ask whether, under the law of the survival of the fittest, there is not ground for hope that the world will, by and by, keep step with its best melody. I shut the Scriptures here, not because they are underrated, and not because it is forgotten for an instant that they have inspired this higher melody' of modern literature. All my inquiry is included in these two questions : — Have the ideals literature presents as to excellence in woman’s character, and as to what is best in mar¬ riage, risen in. the last five hundred years ? Where shall we find room in social custom and public law for that form of womanly character which the most enduring literature makes us love best? 1. The enduring literatures of the world are ap¬ proved by the law of the survival of the fittest. 2. They indicate what is natural to man. 3. What the ideals of enduring literatures teach as to marriage is, therefore, an indication of what is natural in marriage. GOETHE AND SHAKSPEARE ON MARRIAGE. 207 4. The ideal of marriage and the ideal concerning excellence in woman’s character have always risen or fallen together. 5. The latter has risen with the advances of mod¬ ern literature. 6. Shakspeare and Goethe both had unfortunate experiences in marriage, and both depict fully the evils of ill-assorted unions. 7. Shakspeare and Goethe are to be judged by the rule, that we are to notice what an author of fic¬ tion makes us love, if we would know what he intends to teach. 8. The women whom Shakspeare makes us love are Helena, Portia of Belmont, Viola, Portia of Pome, Isabella, Ophelia, Cordelia, Miranda, Hermi- one, Perdita, Desdemona, Imogen, Katharine of Ara¬ gon, Juliet. 9. It has often been asserted that, next to the Christian religion, humanity has no other so precious inheritance as Shakspeare’s divine gallery of woman¬ hood. (Hudson, Gervinus, Mrs. Jameson.) Were it policy here to go into unessential detail, I might fill up an hour with the illustration of that single proposition ; but in this presence one can put foot only on mountain-tops. The difference between an essay and an oration is, that the essay goes into the valley and lingers in the nooks and corners ; the oration puts foot only on summits. You never have been able here to bear that I should deliver an essay. 10. But Goethe, three hundred years later than Shakspeare, advances beyond even Shakspeare’s ideals, 208 MARRIAGE. by making his best female characters yet more thought¬ ful, religious, far-seeing, educative, and more nearly the equal intellectual companions of men. Natalia and the Fair Saint in “Wilhelm Meister’s Appren¬ ticeship and Travels ” are loftier, or at least more per¬ fectly developed, female characters than any which Shakspeare has drawn. Here, of course, I must pause to justify these propositions face to face with the record of these two writers. I am now answering the question, Who are the women that enduring literature makes us love best? We know what literature has escaped obliv¬ ion ; and the ideals of that literature are surely a phenomenon on which science ought to cast a glance. If I am to ascertain in what direction the great gulf- current of human aspiration tends, show me what literature is selected out of the mass which perishes, and allowed to continue its power in the world. This Shakspeare, you say, was a roisterer. He was the master of the amusement of the globe. Do you think that a free-fancier’s contract might have pleased him, and that he is not to be taken as an authority • against loose ideas of marriage ? How does he make Juliet speak on the point of a free-fancier’s contract? “ Oh, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower; Or walk in thievish ways ; or bid me lurk Where serpents are ; chain me with roaring bears ; Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house, O’er-covered quite with dead men’s rattling bones, With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; GOETHE AND SHAKSPEARE ON MARRIAGE. 209 Or bid me go into a new-made grave And hide me with a dead man in his shroud; Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble ; And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstained wife to my sweet love.” Romeo and Juliet, act iv. sc. 1. This is the roisterer Shakspeare. This is the woman whose character he makes us love. We must suppose that he admired what his subtle power over dramatic forms causes us to admire. Is Shakspeare to be called on to answer the question whether there is a difference between love and fancy ? If a fancy be coarse, we have a frank name for it; if it be infamous, we have a yet franker name, which had not dropped out of use in Shakspeare’s time, thank God ! It is a great infelicity in the French language, that there are not two words for the activity of heav¬ enly passion and of earthy. It is an infelicity in the English language, that there are two words for the two things, and that we often allow the white word to be used for the black object. Shakspeare, how¬ ever, wishing to draw a distinction which ought to be burned into the thought of civilization, does not hesitate to say, in language more exact than much of ours : — “ Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But lust’s effect is tempest after sun ; Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain ; Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done ; Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies ; Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies ! ” Venus and Adonis. 2.10 MARRIAGE. This Shakspeare was master of the world’s revels, you said ; but in emphasizing that distinction, he is master of the world’s social philosophy. Turn back from these words of his youth to a play written in his age, and you find the distinction between fancy and love drawn with equally unwavering lines : — “ For several virtues Have I liked several women ; never any With so full soul, but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed And put it to the foil ; but you, O you, So perfect and so peerless, are created Of every creature’s best! Do you love me ? ” The Tempest , act iii. sc. i. To like and to love are thus with Shakspeare two things. When you insist, as he does, on this distinc¬ tion, you will not be surprised to hear his answer to the question, whether love of the genuine kind is fickle, or whether, when the adequate tests of a supreme affection have all been borne by the passion called supreme, that passion is likely to change. This roisterer, this master of the world’s revels, undertakes to assure the ages that love is not fickle, if it be worthy of that name : — “ Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. Oh, no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken ; It is the star to every wandering bark Whose worth’s unknown, although its height be taken. GOETHE AND SHAKSPEARE ON MARRIAGE. 211 Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks. But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.” Sonnet cxvi. Did Goethe rise higher than that? Returning from Italy as a young man, he was refused admit¬ tance to Pliny’s villa on terms of equality with Milton, Angelo, Mrs. Browning, Phocion’s wife, and Panthea. I look into the faces of my jury after they have heard these sublime passages from Shakspeare. Although they have no doubt that the younger Goethe should have been excluded, they have some doubt whether ’it would not be injustice to exclude this older and final Goethe. What did he teach in his age? Goethe’s sun rose behind murky vapors, which steamed upward, and spread over Central Europe from many a French morass in the fashions of court life. Far on through his forenoon these vapors clung to his chariot. But when, in his ad¬ vanced life, Goethe neared the western horizon, and came to his last farewell, he hung there, like the broad, trembling sun over the western pines, almost cloudless. He suffered much. That trembling light of the great disk, near its adieu, is to me quite as impressive as any thing that burst down upon us from out of the period of Werther, or out of the Italian journey, streaked through and through, as I suppose, with infamy. Goethe came to the battle of Jena, and 212 MARRIAGE. married the woman whose child he had left in Her¬ der’s care before his marriage. From the battle of Jena on, Goethe tried to do his best socially. What¬ ever he did, certainly he taught high things. I hold in my hand his latest German words, and wish I had time to cite something adequate concerning Natalia and the Fair Saint, and the Three Reverences, and the style of education which Natalia approved. Riding from our metropolitan city through the highlands of the Hudson, I opened Goethe’s chapter on “The Confessions of a Fair Saint” ( Wilhelm Meis- ters Apprenticeship , book vi.). The river gleamed, the Palisades looked down on me, the great historic heights of West Point flashed out in the noon upon the page I was studyiqg. I found the current of the river in the book more entrancing than that of the river outside my swift window. I did not care to see Storm-King, or any other height, for I was pass¬ ing, in 44 The Confessions of a Fair Saint,” for per¬ haps the twentieth time in my reading, over Goethe’s descriptions of those ranges of experience which he thought representative of the innermost in the Chris¬ tian life. Say Goethe wrote that chapter as an ex¬ periment ; nevertheless, the Fair Saint is one of his ideals. She is an ideal female nature delineated in detail on the canvas of modern literature ; and the character includes, as its loftiest virtue, affectionate self-surrender to the moral law, or to what Goethe does not call, after Matthew Arnold’s style, 44 An Invisible Somewhat,” but an Invisible Friend, — that is, a Some One. Goethe represents this woman as GOETHE AND SHAKSPEARE ON MARRIAGE. 213 surrounded by all the temptations of fashion, and as moved by them, indeed ; but as little by little coming into such communion with the Invisible, that she reached those loftier regions of spiritual delight from which what Sardanapalus calls pleasure was seen to be unsatisfactory. When once we have tasted the fruits of the upper Paradise, the lower become ashes to our lips ; or at least they are insipid until they are mingled with those upper fruits. To change the metaphor, when once we have ascertained how glorious the sunset clouds, if irradiated by the light of sun, can be, we shall understand, as never before, that without the light they are only fog. Without lofty affection, without the inspiration of a pure life, whatever Sar¬ danapalus most values is not the gate of the west irradiated by the sunlight and made the very en¬ trance to heaven ; it is vapor of the damp, dark sort, and attractive neither to man nor animal. Make it your business, as I am obliged to make it mine, to listen to the subterranean sounds in American cities, and in some of the higher circles even of our metro¬ politan civilization, and you will be forced to con¬ clude that there are few topics more needing to be discussed than the relations of science to social law. Goethe represents his Fair Saint as ascertaining early the difference between the light and the fog. He lifts her character slowly into the light, until her experience becomes a type of lofty religious culture in woman. The question is discussed in Goethe’s account of 214 MARRIAGE. his Fair Saint, what faith is ; and Goethe, in his old age, gives as a definition very nearly what most scholars here would approve. You say he did not mean all this. You say the account of the Fair Saint was only a sketch of fancy. Well, it is there on Goethe’s canvas as one of the ideals of literature as to excellence in woman. There is nothing as high in Shakspeare. Turn on out of Meister’s Apprenticeship into Meis- ter’s Travels, and enter that land where Three Reve¬ rences were taught. You remember that Wilhelm, giving an account of his experience in that country to Natalia, says the children, when he first saw them, greeted him with three kinds of gestures. One set of children looked into the sky with a cheerful gaze, and laid their arms crosswise over their breasts. Another set looked upon the earth around them, and had a glad look. The eldest stood with a frank and spirited air, their arms stretched downwards, and peered into what was below them. He asked for an explanation of these gestures, and was told that looking into the sky meant reverence for what is above us; looking about upon the world meant reverence for what is around us; and that the gesture toward the centre of . the earth meant rever¬ ence for what is below us. Reverence for what is above us, — this is the ethnic religion. Reverence for what is around us, — this is philosophy. Rever¬ ence for what is below us, or, for the unfortunate, for whatever needs lifting up, for whatever deserves pity, that is Christianity, or the Worship of Sorrow. GOETHE AND SHAKSPEARE ON MARRIAGE. 215 Deep are these symbols ; and so Carlyle, recommend¬ ing Goethe’s “ Wilhelm Meister ” as the book which , best unravels the problems of modern religious dis¬ cussion, has his eye always upon the symbols of the Three Reverences. True religion, as Goethe here teaches, is a union of all these reverences for what is above us, what is around us, and what is below us. Wilhelm is taken into a symbolical palace, and there he finds the religion of reverence for what is above us, symbolized by delineations founded on the Sacred Books of the Israelites. The events of the New Testament 'are pictured in another gallery, and rep¬ resent the Philosophical Religion, or reverence for what is around us. But as Wilhelm moves along the corridors, he comes suddenly to a closed door. “ What is beyond ? ” — - “ All that is in and beyond the crucifixion,” is the reply. “ But you will not admit me to that ? ” — “ No. We hold it an accursed familiarity with sacred- things, to take men, before they are adequately instructed, into the third corri¬ dor, which represents Reverence for what is beneath us. This is the Sanctuary of Sorrow.” Goethe, then, in symbolical language speaks of one who “ in no wise conceals his divine origin; dares to equal himself with God ; and to declare that he himself is God.” Goethe’s final religious belief stands sum¬ marized in the famous sentence which Carlyle has adopted as his own, and to which he has given great prominence in literature, that “the Christian religion, having once appeared, cannot again vanish ; having once assumed its divine shape, can be subject to 216 MARRIAGE. no dissolution.” (Goethe, Meister's Wander jahre, Zweites Buch, Erstes Kapitel. See Carlyle’s Trans¬ lation, Collected Works, vol. xxxii. p. 223. Also * especially Carlyle’s Essay on Goethe , Works, vol. vi. p. 283.) That is the sun near its last adieu. Will you admit this Goethe to Pliny’s villa? Will you admit this Goethe, Pantliea? Will you admit this Goethe, Phocion’s wife ? Will -you admit this Goethe, Pliny? There is no objection ; and Goethe, in his age, has a place in Pliny’s villa. [Applause.] 11. In the best literature of the present generation, especially in Mrs. Browning and Tennyson, the ideals of Shakspeare and Goethe are yet further empha¬ sized and heightened. 12. The permanent place which woman has won in modern literature is an assurance that these ideals will not be lost out of the world. 13. The place she is winning for her educational, * industrial, and political rights is an assurance of the same kind. Do you fear that, when you give woman large political rights, divorces will increase in number? Possibly they may. Even if this occurs, it is likely to be only a temporary effect. I have caused the records of Massachusetts for fifty years to be ex¬ amined, and I do find that as woman’s general rights have been increased in this Commonwealth, divorces have increased. Probably this is only an ex post facto effect. When by and by woman has more power to choose her own position in life, and when GOETHE AND SHAKSPEARE ON MARRIAGE. 217 at last she attains capacity to support herself, per¬ haps there will be fewer marriages of convenience and hypocrisy. [Applause.] Then there will be fewer divorces. Ultimately, therefore, the widening of woman’s rights, within reasonable ranges, may diminish, instead of increasing, the clamor for lax divorce laws. Let us make a broad distinction between woman’s industrial, educational, and politi¬ cal rights. I believe all the scholarship of the world is agreed that woman should have what she calls her educational and industrial rights. Let her be edu¬ cated ; let her be paid as much as man for the same work. [Applause.] And when her educational and industrial rights have been given her, let her political rights be determined by fair discussion. Let woman’s rights come to her, not by revolution, but by evolu¬ tion. [Applause.] 13. But as ideals of womanly excellence and of marriage have risen, the practical observance of those ideals has risen, and is likely to rise. 14. It is Hegel’s explanation of the philosophy of history that the ideals of the race slowly become realities in custom and law. Why do we have a revolution every now and then ? Because we know better than previously how to manage human affairs. We reach by discussion and reflection a higher ideal, and then comes clamor for the crystallization of the ideal into social order and public law. 15. Where is there room for woman’s whole nature, as represented by the ideals of the best literature of 218 MARRIAGE. the last five hundred years ? This surely is the cen¬ tral inquiry, and one that science, strictly so called, has a right to raise, face to face with these records of an increasingly high ideal of woman’s excellence. What arrangement of social custom and law will fit these ideals? Where is there room for Portia and Imogen, and the whole height of Shakspeare’s ideals of excellence in woman ? Where is there room for Natalia and the Fair Saint, and all Goethe’s ideals as to woman’s excellence? Where is there room for Mrs. Browning’s Aurora Leigh ? 16. Not in any palace of Sardanapalus. 17. Not in any fre e-fancier’s contract. Let the man who fancies marriage under a free contract of separation ; let the crawling adder, who hisses in the slime of the pits of dissipation, and thinks, as he never comes out to the light of day, that the whole globe is only an adder’s nest ; let all who have been charmed by the hiss of such an adder come forth and gaze into the face of Goethe’s Natalia, into the face of Shakspeare’s Juliet, into the face of woman’s excellence as delineated by the best litera¬ ture of the last five hundred years. Is there room in the adder’s hole for these women ? [Applause.] That is the central question of science after all. Let me show you what literature proves woman’s nature to be. In the name of social science I have a right O to ask, where is there room for woman’s whole nature ? In no palace of Sardanapalus is there room for Pantliea. In no free-fancier’s contract is there room for Phocion’s wife. In no adder-hole is GOETHE AND SHAKSPEARE ON MARRIAGE. 219 there room for Goethe’s Natalia and Shakspeare’s Portia and Mrs. Browning’s Aurora Leigh. Do you say that these are modern ideals, and the result of a little stress put into social law by Christianity ? There has not been a sufficiently long test of Chris¬ tian ideals, jmu affirm, to make it sure that they are natural. Go back to Hector and Andromache if you must have older literature than any I have cited. Really there is not room in the adder’s hole for Andromache. Go back, if you will, to Plato’s symposium, which is sometimes attacked for its low ideal of woman. Understand the production, and then ask where there is room for the ideal of womanly excellence there depicted. I have stood on the cathedral of Milan, and gazed at Mont Blanc. Around me were the humble shops of the Italians, and from among them rose this pyramid of carved marble. Just so, out of the rude talk of Alcibiades and the foolish chatter of frivolous guests, rose in the symposium of Plato the form of Socrates. When you have studied the con¬ versation you come out of it as one comes from the summit of Milan cathedral. If you have understood the words of Socrates in the symposium, you have heard the bells ring in presence of the Alps, and have been on the turret nearest the sky. The contrast between this turret and the unsightly structures around the base of the cathedral is the striking trait in the plan of the temple which we call the sympo¬ sium. Socrates, however, is not the loftiest character. He stands there as the pupil of a woman, a certain 220 MARRIAGE. Diotima of Mantineia, who taught him the true doc¬ trine r concerning love. “When a man loves any thing,” asks Socrates, “what does he love? Some¬ thing which he has, or something which he has not? ” — “ Something which he has not.” Question succeeds question, and, finally, the answer given to the inquiry what love is, affirms that love is “ the desire of the eternal possession of the good.” Little by little the range of thought is lifted, until Socrates tells the astonished audience what Diotima, in her final dis¬ courses, taught him. This is the loftiest idea of Pla¬ to’s philosophy. I repel with indignation all attempts to accuse Plato of teaching low ideals in this great production. He means to shame them by contrasting Socrates with the lower natures around him. Un¬ doubtedly he does not reprimand, as we should, some of the unspeakable vices of the Greeks. It is amazing that Plato did not feel that they ought not to have been discussed. Finally Diotima^tells Socrates that this is the secret of love : First we are to love one beautiful form, then many beautiful forms, then all • beautiful forms. Then, from a love of beautiful forms, we are to rise to the love of beautiful prac¬ tices. One fair form, two fair forms, many fair forms, all fair forms, we are to love ; and then from fair forms we are to rise to the love of fair practices ; and from the love of fair practices to the love of fair ideas ; and from the love of fair ideas to the love of Him who thinks them ; and from that into friendship with God. That is love. [Applause.] That is woman’s idea of love, as presented by Plato and by Socrates. GOETHE AND SHAKSPEARE ON MARRIAGE. 221 “ All things transitory But as Symbols are sent ; Earth’s insufficiency Here grows to Event ; The Indescribable Here it is done, The Ever-womanly leadeth us Upward and on.” So Go e the sings at the conclusion of Faust, and the words well fit the lips of science face to face with Diotima’s philosophy. Let Tennyson express his best hope for the future, and you will find it high, but not so high as Plato’s. “ The woman’s cause is man’s : they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or God-like, bond or free. If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, How shall men grow ? but work no more alone ! Let man be more of woman, she of man ; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto noble words ; And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, Self-reverent each and reverencing each. Distinct in individualities, But like each other, even as those who love. Then comes the statelier Eden back to men ; Then reign the world’s great bridals, chaste and calm; Then springs the crowning race of human kind. May these things be ! ” [Applause.] Tennyson : The Princess. IX. INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. THE ONE HUNDRED AND NINTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, APRIL 15. The child lay in Ottilie’s arms, and, as she was looking affection¬ ately down at it, it opened its eyes, and she was not a little startled when she seemed to see her own eyes looking at her. — Goethe: Elective Affinities, vii. Each becomes a poet when Love touches him, though he was not musical before. — Plato : Symposium, 19. IX. INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. At the fiftieth anniversary of the German Associa¬ tion of Naturalists and Physicians at Munich, Pro¬ fessor Virchow of Berlin University replied to Ernst Hackel’s latest defence of Materialism. An author¬ ized copy of Virchow’s celebrated address on this occasion has been translated in England, published by Murray, corrected by Virchow himself, and has just reached this country. Germany has discussed the collision of Virchow and Hackel ; England begins to discuss it. But the long lash of criticism which Virchow is winding in steady blows about the dimin¬ utive limbs of the small philosophers of advanced Darwinism has yet received far less attention than it deserves in America. I propose to show to-day that it is a lash which really means business, and within its present range is not likely soon to cease to be wielded. “ The Popular Science Monthly ” has, in¬ deed, published an imperfect report of this great address, but it has failed, as has also Asa Gray of Cambridge (in an article in the Independent ),’ to bring out the breadth of the collision between Vir- 225 226 MARKIAGE. chow and Hackel. The latter represents what is called advanced Darwinism or Monism, or material¬ istic as opposed to theistic views of evolution. Virchow, although holding to one form of the development theory, is so conservative as to affirm that no one has the right to teach that man is derived from the ape or any other animal. He affirms that the central tenet of Darwinism is as yet only an hy¬ pothesis, and that all who teach it as an established fact are going far beyond the permission of the sci¬ entific method. My purpose now is to give emphasis to the collision between Hackel and Virchow, or to the conflict between materialistic and theistic forms of the evolution philosophy. Hackel in the first and second sessions of this fifti¬ eth conference of the German naturalists maintained a large number of his characteristic propositions, in an address which I may summarize fairly by these statements : — 1. The Biblical account of the planet’s creation has been demolished by geology. 2. The two principles of inheritance and adapta¬ tion explain the derivation of the manifold existing organisms from a single cell. 3. Were any further argument needed to disprove supernatural intervention, we have only to notice the frequent occurrence of undeveloped and useless organs in many types of the animal world. 4. Perception and will are possessed by primary organisms consisting of but a single cell. 5. The cell consists of matter called protoplasm, INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 227 composed chiefly of carbon with an admixture of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur. 6. These elements properly united constitute the body and soul of the animal, and, suitably nursed, become man. 7. In this way the Creator is disposed of, the mys¬ tery of the universe explained by the mechanical theory of life, the Divinity annulled, and a new era of infinite knowledge ushered in. 8. These views should be taught in every school in the land. (See article in Quarterly Review for January, 1878, on “ The Use and Abuse of Scientific Lectures ; ” and also the London Times of Nov. 30, 1877, on “ Darwinism in Germany.”) This is the revolutionary form in which the materi¬ alistic or Hackelian school of evolutionists presents its conclusions to Germany. These are the views which Virchow calls “ wilful and despotic.” These are the propositions against which Virchow, in pres¬ ence of the German naturalists, lifted up his emphatic protest, — one likely to be long remembered, for it is now proved to have behind it the support of the best science of Germany. As Virchow himself says in his preface to the English edition of his speech, “ With a few individual exceptions, this protest has met with cordial assent from German naturalists. They feel themselves set free again from the tyranny of dogmatism.” But now, over against these propositions of Hack- el’s, what are the central propositions of Virchow ? I do not follow his order of statement, but of course you will expect me to give exactly his language. 228 MARRIAGE. 1. “As a matter of fact, we must positively recognize that there exists as yet a sharp line of demarcation between man and the ape. We cannot teach, we cannot pronounce it to be a conquest of science, that man descends from the ape or from any other animal.” 2. “ As recently as ten years ago, whenever a skull was found in a peat-bog, or in pile dwellings, or in ancient caves, people fancied they saw in it a wonderful token of an inferior state, still quite undeveloped. They smelt out the very scent of the ape ; only this has continually been more and more lost. The old troglodytes, pile-villagers, and bog-people, prove to be quite a respectable society. They have heads so large that many a living person would be only too happy to possess such.” 3. “ There is something soothing in being able to say that the group of atoms, Carbon and Company — (this phrase is, perhaps, rather too brief, but still correct, inasmuch as carbon is probably the essential element) — that this firm of Carbon and Company has at some time or other dissolved partnership from the common carbon, and founded under special conditions the first plastidule, and that they still continue to establish new branch companies. But in opposition to this it must be em¬ phatically stated, that all really scientific knowledge respecting the beginning of life has followed a course exactly contrary.” 4. “ Whoever will have a formula , whoever says, ‘I have ab¬ solute need of a formula ; I must make all clear to myself ; I am resolved to have a consistent view of the universe; ’ — he must assume either a generatio cequivoca or creation : there remains for him nothing else. If we would speak frankly, we must admit that naturalists may well have some little sympathy for the generatio cequivoca. If it were capable of proof, it would indeed be beautiful ! But, we must acknowledge, it has not yet been proved.” 5. “I have no objection to your saying that atoms of carbon also possess mind, or that in their connection with the plasti¬ dule company they acquire mind ; only I do not know how I am to perceive this. It is a mere playing with words. If I explain attraction and repulsion as exhibitions of mind, as physical INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 229 phenomena, I simply throw the Psyche out of the window, and the Psyche ceases to be Psyche. 6. “I have all along laid stress upon this, — that we should not seek, in the first place, the transition of the inorganic into the organic, but rather first fix the contrast between the inor¬ ganic and the organic, and direct our studies to this contrast, — so do I also maintain that this is the only way of progress ; and 1 have the firmest conviction that we shall make no advance, unless we fix the province of mental processes at those limits within which mental phenomena actually present themselves to us, and unless we refrain from supposing mental phenomena where they may indeed possibly take place, but where we per¬ ceive no visible , audible, tangible, in a word, no sensible phenom¬ ena, which could be designated as intellectual.” 7. “ So long as no one can define for me the properties of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in such a way that I can conceive how from the sum of them a soul arises, so long am I unable to admit that we should be at all justified in im¬ porting the ‘plastidulic soul’ into the course of our education, or in requiring every educated man to receive it as scientific truth, so as to argue from it as a logical premise, and to found his whole view of the world upon it. This we really cannot demand. On the contrary, I am of opinion that, before we des¬ ignate such hypotheses as the voice of science, before we say, ‘This is modern science,’ — we should first have to conduct a long series of elaborate investigations. We must therefore say to the teachers in schools, Do not teach it. We must draw a strict distinction between what we wish to teach, and what we wish to search for.” 8. “ Whoever recalls to mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts made recently to discover a decided support for the generatio cequivoca in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world, will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any way accepted as the basis of all our views of life. I may assume that the history of the Batliybius is pretty well known to all educated persons : and with the Batliybius the hope has once more subsided, that the generatio cequivoca may be capable of proof ’ 280 MARRIAGE. Batliybius is spoken of as slightingly by Virchow as it has been on this platform. It was my fortune two years ago to recite here the history of the downfall of Huxley’s and Hackel’s Batliybius. ( Biology , Lectures I. and II.) It is affirmed by the useful but crudely edited “ Popular Science Monthly ” that Hackel has defended successfully the theory he puts forth as to this alleged life in bioplasmic matter at the bottom of the sea. Virchow does not agree with this Amer¬ ican authority. He speaks as seriously of the prob¬ lem of the origin of life as does Lionel Beale or Hein¬ rich Frey or Hermann Lotze. The central character of Hackel’s and Huxley’s mistake as to the Bathy- bius is being shown in the course of this discussion. Strauss’s admission that miracle must have occurred once at least at the introduction of life, unless spon¬ taneous generation has occurred, proceeds upon prin¬ ciples to which Virchow’s views add commanding emphasis. Thus far extends the collision between Virchow and Hackel. But allow me to close this too rapid summary of German news by showing you the col¬ lision between the highest authorities on philosophy and Virchow. This famous professor of Berlin is a naturalist. He concedes too much in his attack on Hackel. He affirms by implication that if spontane¬ ous generation is ever proved, Hackel will be shown to have been right in saying that a Creator is not necessary to the explanation of the universe. I hold in my hand here the best philosophical magazine in the world, Die Zeitschrift fur Philosophic , edited by INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 231 Fichte, Ulrici, and Wirth, and published at Halle. In it I find Virchow’s address discussed at length, but the position is taken, as it has been again and again on this platform, that, even if you prove spontaneous generation, you do not disprove the need of a Crea¬ tor. Behind spontaneous generation there are curi¬ ous affinities, chemical properties, and the ultimate constitution of matter ; but the question still arises, Where did these properties originate? This philo¬ sophical journal (p. 123, first number for 1878) affirms with justice : “ Were the organic derived from the inorganic, and the mental from the organic, the question would always remain, Whence the Inor¬ ganic?” Affinities of matter explain all. Whence come the affinities ? [Applause.] This philosophic magazine gives you the right presentation of Vir¬ chow’s propositions. He opposes materialism with entire success, but he defends theism with a slight unskilfulness. He does not see that atheism can be answered, even if spontaneous generation be proved. But, putting together all the German views, our conclusion from the outlook all along the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Oder must be that there is not a little fog on the Thames. Virchow, in one of the learned quarterlies he edits, has lately attacked the extravagances of advanced Darwinians more vigorously than even in the Munich address. He affirms that Hackel follows Lamarck more than Darwin. He styles the circles of materi¬ alistic evolutionists “ bubble companies.” Language like this from perhaps the foremost chemist on the globe is a sign of the times. 232 MARRIAGE. So far as I care to draw personal support from this news, I have a right to affirm that Hackel has been attacked here, as every one knows, and for precisely the things for which Virchow now attacks him. But for attacking Hackel, and for opposing materialistic views of evolution, I have been attacked from end to end of the land by Spencerians, and materialistic evolutionists, and Darwinians advanced further than Darwin himself, although my propositions were en¬ tirely parallel with those now put forward by Vir¬ chow. The speech of the Berlin professor is, if you please, called timely and judicious at last by a learned professor of Harvard yonder, who was slow to recog¬ nize the* soundness of similar opinions when, two years ago, they were defended here. [Applause.] THE LECTURE. Confucius taught the Chinese to call a child a year old on the day of its birth. Plato represents * every human being as standing in a winged chariot and driving a black and a white horse (. Phcedrus ). The white is the symbol of the moral emotions in their just supremacy ; the black is animal passion. The charioteer has conscience and reason as right and left hands, which grasp the reins of the bitted steeds. The immortals, Plato says, drive white horses. All mortals were once in their train ; but, for reasons known to the Supreme Powers, human souls sank into their present low estate, and now have much trouble with their ill-matched coursers. These steeds, according to Plato, come from the pas- INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 233 tures of the Unseen, over which the animals roamed before man’s birth. Especially does the black horse love to feed in that dark region which lies between this life and the invisible world on the side of birth. He comes from the nebulous quarter where the soul first dips into matter. The white horse is from the loftier pastures belonging to the celestial region. The problem of life is how to drive the two abreast, and up the slope of the azure. While I am of course not here to defend Plato’s theory of the pre-existence of souls, I am here face to face with the magnificent exhibition with which you have been favored, to de¬ fend the scientific idea of the pre-existence of bodies. You have seen the white horse and the black; you have seen the chariot-wheels of life ; you know what disease can do for the innermost ingredients of the blood; and now, having had the white courser and the dark put before you, the chariot of life behind the two, why will you not allow me, in spite of all the sensitiveness of delicacy, to deal as frankly as these photographs have done with certain unspeakabilities of hereditary descent? 1. Minute alterations in the blood determine mi¬ nute alterations in local nutrition. (Carpenter’s Physiology , eighth ed., sect. 726.) Every one has noticed in the stereopticon illustra¬ tions of this lecture that the blood consists of three different elements ; a multitude of red disks, a much smaller number of white corpuscles, and a fluid, which when in the veins we call plasma, and which we call the serum after coagulation has set in, on the 234 MARRIAGE. blood being removed from the body. But for my purpose it is necessary to look a little more narrowly into the composition of this mysterious current of the circulating fluid. In the blood of the healthful man the normal range of variation for the principal constituents is as follows : — Fibrin . Red corpuscles .... Solids of serum .... W ater . (Carpenter’s Physiology , Parts per 1,000. 2 to 110 to 152 72 to 88 . _ 760 to 815 eighth ed., sect. 199.) Within the limits of these variations, health, ac¬ cording to Dr. Carpenter, may be preserved ; but if you produce wider variations either way, if you change the proportion of these ingredients, if you cause a deterioration of the quality in any one of these elements, disease is the result. Here is a most delicately balanced machine ; this chariot of Plato is wheeled; and you cannot injure one of its wheels without injuring the opposite one. You cannot break one of the fastenings by which the coursers are attached to the chariot, without giving increased wildness to the coursers. You cannot injure any part of their harness without imperilling the whole, for no strap is stronger than its weakest part. Thus it results that minute alterations in the blood may produce extraordinary changes in the whole system. The effect of morbid alterations in the blood has been so brilliantly illustrated before you by the elo¬ quent, original photographs of Dr. Cutter and Dr. INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 235 Harriman, to whom we are so greatly indebted to¬ day, that I need take no time in reciting the facts of research. Allow me to say, however, that small, moving, thread-like bodies have been observed by Obermeyer in the blood of patients suffering from fever, shortly before or during the crisis. ( Central - blatt, 1873, p. 145.) Their nature is unknown. In the blood of patients afflicted with the cholera Nedvetski has seen exceedingly minute, rod-like bod¬ ies, and also moving particles apparently derived from the white corpuscles. (Ibid., 1872, p. 234.) Nepveu has noticed in the blood of those afflicted with erysipelas similar minute, rod-like bodies. Riess has observed granules in the blood in scarlet-fever. (Reichert’s Archiv., 1872, p. 237.) There have been noticed also small, round, black bodies in the blood in puerperal fever, and similar forms in diph- theritis. Great interest centres in the theories regarding the morbid alterations of the blood. Dr. Carpenter, an authority whom I have before me, says that a consid¬ erable importance attaches to the statement made by Lostorfer and confirmed by the great histologist Strieker, that the blood of patients suffering from the nameless disease — to use a most delicate but awful phrase by which it is commonly designated — can be recognized by the presence of small, bright bodies, which present various forms of movement, and in the course of a week after removal from the body enlarge, sprout, become marked with pits, and die. Lostorfer’s statements are corroborated by the facts 286 MARRIAGE. shown in the photographs exhibited here to-day. Halford has proved that there are peculiar nucleated cells in the blood after snake-bite, and he believes these are derived from germinal matter in the poison of the snake, and have grown at the expense of the blood. (See Carpenter, Physiology , note to sect. 204.) You stand hushed before the recital of these searching recent conclusions of exact investigation, because at last you have fastened your attention on the Holy of holies, to which an outgrown book, as some call it, the Bible, called your attention three thousand years ago. “ The blood is the life.” 2. Minute alterations in the blood, that is, in the quality or quantity of its several ingredients, are produced by many physical causes. (Ibid., sect. 208, 204.) 3. They may be produced also by purely mental causes. (Ibid., sect. T21-726.) 4. The white blood corpuscles are peculiarly sensi¬ tive to both physical and mental influences. 5. At an early period of development, before the heart and lungs are fully formed, the circulating fluid contains only white blood corpuscles. (Beale, Dis¬ ease Germs , p. 104.) Had I time to put before you under the microscope the tissues figured in the great work of Lionel Beale on “ Disease Germs,” the volume which I now hold in my hand, you would see that all the blood corpuscles in the young tissues, when the heart and lungs are not yet fully formed, take the carmine stain. This shows that they are made up of the INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 237 germinal matter, or bioplasm, discussed here at such length previously. It is a very striking fact, the proof of which we owe, in large part, to Lionel Beale, that in the early stage of life the young blood con¬ tains only white corpuscles. These are more sensi¬ tive than any other part of the body to the changes produced by mental and physical impressions. 6. Hence physical and mental causes may exert powerful modifying influences at this stage of the life of animals, not excepting man. There is a mother at a window. Suddenly she sees at another window the sash fall upon the fingers of her own infant. Three fingers drop. Three stumps are left. They bleed before her eyes. She cannot assist the child. I am telling a story out of Dr. Carpenter (. Physiology , sect. 724), and not out of the newspapers. A surgeon is called in ; he attends to the infant ; binds up its wounds, and then turns to the mother, who sits moaning and complaining of a pain in her fingers. Within twenty-four hours three of her fingers, corresponding to those cut off from the hand of the infant, begin to swell, become inflamed, and need to be lanced. They go through the whole process of wounds, although perfectly un¬ hurt except by imagination. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. But that infant was farther off from the mother than it once was. Here is a carpenter in a peasant’s house, and he is set upon by a soldier. I tell this story out of Yon Amtiion. (. Die Ersten Mutterpflichten und die Erste Kindespflege, See also Carpenter, sect. 723.) The 238 MARRIAGE. mother’s babe lies in the cradle playing during the fight. It understands nothing of the fracas ; laughs, crows, while its father is in the peril of death. The mother at first stands petrified with terror. At last she rushes between the combatants, seizes the sword of the soldier, and breaks it in pieces across her knee. The neighbors rush in, take the soldier into custody, and the mother, in her excitement, snatches up her healthful child and gives it natural food. In five minutes the child dies of poison, although previously perfectly well. What originated the poison? Under temporary and purely mental forces, the blood disks change, and the secreted food of the infant becomes poison. God knows how the immaterial part of us domi¬ nates over the flesh, has lordship over matter, can cut into fingers, can transmute, as Lady Macbeth once invoked the evil spirits to do, the sweetness of the natural food of the child into a deadly fluid. This is not imagination, but established science. It is a cool statement of what, under the influence of powerful emotion, may happen to the natural food of the infant. But that child once was more in danger of being poisoned than it was when in its cradle. [Applause.] Unspeakable thoughts rise here, but we are in Pliny’s villa. Nay, we are on the heights of the Apennines, with Michel Angelo and Goethe, who have walked forth together from the villa to look on the earth and sky ; and the thoughts I have raised in INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 239 your minds these men dare to continue to discuss in frank conversation with each other. Panthea, Pho- cion’s wife, Cornelia, are discussing the same topics in one of the chambers of the villa ; but Goethe little suspects that their thoughts are as serious and in¬ cisive as his. We will listen to the conversation of this poet and this sculptor. There is an east wind resounding in the grove. A serene, solemn anthem fills the temple of the Apennine forest. It dies away to sacred silence now, and we hear Goethe saying, as he paces to and fro with Angelo among the purple trunks and on the brown sheddings of the pines : “Well-authenticated cases are on record in which the natural food of an infant has been rendered poisonous by the effect of fear, anger, or other violent and painful emotion, on the part of the mother.” Michel Angelo says, “You must not tell that to the world.” “ Why not ? ” asks this poet, who was also a man of science. “ You must not tell that to the world,” says An¬ gelo ; “ you may prepare the ages little by little for these topics ; but you must not speak too frankly at once.” Goethe replies, the pine groves sounding over him again, and the ocean waves of the Mediter¬ ranean flashing in the distance to the west, and the Adriatic in the east : “ Why should not the morning rise on our suffering centuries ? Why have we not the right, looking down upon Plato’s Academy in Greece, and upon that land* in which it was taught that the blood is the life, and that to the third and 240 MARRIAGE. fourth generations God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children,” — and here Goethe’s voice rises to the solemnity of the winds in the pines, — “ why have we not the right to spread abroad the knowl¬ edge of whatever God has made important ? ” 7. Hideous physical impressions on the mother are capable of producing deformity and monstrosity in the offspring. The keen sensitiveness of the mother to such impressions is a teaching of ancient, as well as of modern times. 8. It seems to have been forgotten that the con¬ verse is equally true, or that this sensitiveness is equal to the creation of symmetry and beauty. 9. Strong and persistent evil passions exercised in certain circumstances by the mother reproduce them¬ selves in the constitutional and unchangeable tend¬ encies of offspring. 10. The converse is equally true. 11. It follows that a child may be worse than its mother. 12. It follows also that a child may be better. 18. The qualities actively exercised by the mother, rather than those possessed, are those which descend to offspring by the laws of heredity. 14. These facts of biology make possible a large improvement of individuals through variation of character induced by inherited educational forces. Goethe and Michel Angelo pace to and fro, and converse concerning the operation of these laws. While they are thus entering the heart of nature, in their grove on the Apennine heights, Cornelia, INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 241 Phocion’s wife, and Panthea, in the marble corridors of the villa yonder, walk alone, discussing these same problems. “There was,” Goethe says to Angelo, “in our modern time, a Flaxman, a boy who loved the forms that you have represented in marble ; and I have heard that his mother loved similar works of art, and occupied herself for months in the study of them, and that she was surprised to find her moods reproduced in the organic constitution of her child.” “I have read,” says Goethe, “of a Kingsley, whose mother loved the scenery of one part of green. Eng¬ land, and who was so fascinated by the outlook at her home, that she made herself an artist in putting upon canvas the outlines of the hills ; threw herself into communion with nature ; and I am told,” con¬ tinues this poet, “ that Charles Kingsley had through¬ out life, as an organic permanent passion, that which was a temporary passion with his mother.” “These are fearful facts,” says Angelo, “but can you prove that these laws operate in men of coarser organizations ? Do they rule in the lower ranks of society? Can they lift,” asks Angelo, kindling, “the lowest into something noble ? Can there be such an improvement in individuals that from the angular and coarse may rise the symmetrical and refined ? ” “Listen,” says Goethe, “and let me imitate the speech of the poor. I have heard of an Irish mother who had a malicious child and a kind child.. She was asked to account for the difference of dis¬ position between the two. 4 1 know nothing of the cause,’ she said, 4 only this little Kate will strike her 242 MARRIAGE. knife into the shoulder of my little Mary. I know nothing of the cause. The good God gave me both of them. How should I know the source of her dis¬ position ? Look into hen brown eyes ; there is a leer of malice in them.’ ” Goethe says he studied this case, and finally the poor Irishwoman explained it unconsciously. He asked her a question, — “Were you happy in the summer and winter and spring before this child’s first summer?” — “Happy, is it you say, sir? An’ shure, whin me husband was tuk up wid another woman, how could I be happy? An’ he a-spending his money on her, too, an’ the wages got lower ; an’ it’s not the money that riled me neither, it’s me as was but a few months married, an’ in a strange coun- thrie, and he a-riding more nor three times wid her in a chaise, it is. Och ! but he’d been over and larnt the wicked ways before iver he brought me here. Faith, me heart was broken, it was, an’ I hated that woman so, I was longing all the time to lay me hands on her. I’d like to have murthered the old fiend, an’ I wanted to go to the factory an’ inform on her ; but me husband cursed me, and threatened to kill me if I did.” “Pardon this rude language of the poor,” Goethe says to Angelo, who loves the soft Italian speech. “ And was he still behaving so badly in the summer before Mary’s first summer ? ” Goethe asked her. “ The saints be praised, no. The woman moved away. Bad ’cess to her ! and Patrick gave up his bad ways afther, and trated me rale well, too. The baste of a woman niver came back, and I tuk no more trouble consarning her.” INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 243 Children are mysteries, it is said ; but this is not Goethe’s opinion. Angelo smiles, and looks with a soft pensiveness at both the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, and asks Goethe if this is not an exceptional case, or if he has other facts like these. u Why,” answers Goethe, “ I knew a family of coarse, and thoroughly common¬ place people, but there was in it a single daughter, about nineteen years old, who was so evidently and remarkably superior, both in personal appearance and nature, that it did not seem possible she could be¬ long to the same family. There was no explanation of her differing from her brothers and sisters, and I thought the mystery was one impossible to solve. Conversing with her mother, she said, 4 No, this girl was not born in that low dwelling under the shadow of the catalpas, but in a poorer shed in Northern Tennessee. We were very poor about those times, and there was no look-out for any thing better. Some of the boys had come up here to see if they could not get better land. But we had no money to buy it with, if there was. There was a book I must tell you about, — a book that lifted me right out of myself. There came along a peddler, — ’twas a won¬ der how he ever got to such an out-of-the-way place, — well, he unpacked his traps, and among them was a little book with a lovely green and gold cover. ’Twas the sweetest little thing you ever saw, and there was just the nicest picture in the front. I saw it was po¬ etry, and on the first page it said “ The Lady of the Lake ; ” that was all. I did want that book ; and I 244 MARRIAGE. had a couple of dollars in a stocking-foot on the chim¬ ney-shelf ; but a dollar was a big thing then, and I did not feel as if I ought to indulge myself, so I said no, and saw him pack up his things and travel. Then I could think of nothing but that book the rest of the day, I wanted it so ; and at night I could not sleep for thinking of it. At last I got up, and without making a bit of noise dressed myself, and walked four miles to a village where the peddler had told me * he should stay that night — at the Browns — friends of ours they were ; and I got him up and bought the book, and brought it back with me just as contented and satisfied as you can believe. I looked it over and through; put it under my pillow, and slept soundly till morning. The next day I began to read the beautiful story. Every page took that hold of me that I forgot all about the pretty cover, and per¬ haps you would not believe it,* but before Nellie ar¬ rived in the world, if you would but give me a word here and there, I could begin at the beginning and say it clear through to the end. It appeared to me I was there with those people by the lakes in the moun¬ tains , — ^uith Allan-Bane and his harp , Ellen Douglas , Malcolm Graeme , Fitz-James , and the others . I saw Ellen’s picture before me when I was milking the cow, or cooking on the hearth, or weeding the little garden. There she was, stepping about so sweetly in the rhyme, that I felt it to be all true as the day, — more true after I could repeat it to myself. And then when I found the baby grew into such a pretty girl, and so smart, too, it seemed as if Providence INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 245 had been ever so good to me again. But children are mysteries any way. I have wondered a thousand times why Nellie was such a lady, and why she loved to learn so much more than the other children.’ ’ (This and the previous illustration are adapted from the personal narratives included in the interesting work of Mrs. G. B. Kirby, New York, 18T7, on Transmission , or Variation of Character , &c.) Children are mysteries ! Michel Angelo and Goethe are plainly not of that opinion. You say that I must not rest this case upon anecdote ; but I would ask, on what shall I rest it if it be not on sci¬ entific, ascertained fact. Let Professor Dalton be cited here by Goethe, on the Apennine height, under the solemn pines. This professor, than whom there is no more conservative, sound American teacher of scientific fact, utterly divorced from theory, states that the wife of the janitor of the College of Physi¬ cians and Surgeons dreamed that she saw a man who had lost a part of the ear. The dream made a great impression on her mind, and she mentioned it to her husband. A child appeared in the world with a por¬ tion of one ear deficient, and the organ was like the defective ear she had seen in her dream. When Professor Dalton was lecturing on these topics, the janitor called his attention to this instance. The ear, says Professor Dalton, looks exactly as if a por¬ tion had been cut off by a sharp knife. The superiority of mind to matter ! How the im¬ material portion of us dominates the material ! And how slowly are we getting rid of the materialism 246 MARRIAGE. * which depends on matter more than on sonl for beauty. There is no beauty except in this white horse that comes down from the heavenly pastures. There is no safe driving except in the perfect match¬ ing of the white horse and the black. I find here Professor Lewis, of Bellevue Hospital, making some most astounding assertions. I should not believe him, were he not a scientific expert. A mother longed to see a watch, and a child arrived in the world with the figures that belonged on the dial of the watch formed on the white of its eyeball. Professor Dalton affirms in language before me ( Hu¬ man Physiology ), that there can no longer be any serious doubt “ that various deformities and defi¬ ciencies originate in certain cases from nervous im¬ pressions, such as disgust, fear, or anger, experienced by the mother.” The purpose of Goethe, here on this height, is to turn that proposition over into its converse. The purpose of Angelo is to make it clear that, as a child can be worse than its mother, so it may be better. The world has listened long enough to the facts of science as to monstrosities and deformities. Why should we not listen to the possibilities of using this two-edged sword of heredity on the useful side ? It has mown down the race ; it has opened a wide path for vice through the world ; it has given to the centu¬ ries their accursed and dolorous traits. Why should not the sword be reversed ? Why should the black horse not be made to keep company with the white, and the chariot be held to its grooves ? The other INHERITED EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 247 edge of the sword may clear the way for the happi¬ ness of the ages. [Applause.] Goethe and Angelo walk down the heights to Pliny’s villa. They stand in the marble corridors, and their eyes are like stars ; for they have listened to the suggestions of every secret of science. Goethe will not allow himself to be as frank in the villa as on the heights. He is amazed to find, however, although little is said, that all there are as well informed as he. Cornelia no less than Pliny, Pan- thea no less than Milton, Mrs. Browning no less than Michel Angelo, unite in reciting to the four winds and the two seas, to the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, this sonnet : — “ O star of morning and of liberty! O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines Above the darkness of the Apennines, Forerunner of the day that is to be ! The voices of the city and the sea, The voices of the mountains and the pines, Repeat our song, till the familiar lines Are footpaths for the thought heredity ! Its fame is blown abroad from all the heights, Through all the nations ; and a sound is heard As of a mighty wind ; and men devout, Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes, In their own language hear its wondrous word ; And many are amazed, and many doubt.” Adapted from Longfellow. X. HEREDITARY TAINTS IN BLOOD. THE ONE HUNDRED AND TENTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE, APRIL 22. Born into life! — man grows Forth from his parents' stem, And blends their bloods, as those Of theirs are blent in them; So each new man strikes root into a far fore-time. Matthew Arnold: Empedocles on Etna. Wahrlich, ein Mann musz nie iiber die mit einer Ewigkeit bedeckte Schopfungminute der Welt nachgesonnen haben, der nicht eine Frau, deren Lebensfaden eine verhiillte unendliclie Hand zu einem zweiten spinnt, und die den Uebergang vom Nichts zum Seyn, von der Ewigkeit in die Zeit verkiillt, mit philosophischer Yerehrung an- blickt, — aber noch weniger musz ein Mann je empfunden haben, dessen Seele vor einer Frau in einem Zustande, wo sie einem unbekannten ungesehenen Wesen noch mehr aufopfert als wir dem bekannten, namlich Nachte, Freuden und oft das Leben, sich nicht . tiefer und mit groszerer Riihrung biickt als vor einem ganzen singenden Nonnen-Orchester, auf ihrer Sarawiiste; und schlimmer als beide ist einer, dem nicht seine Mutter alle anderen Mutter verehrungwiirdig macht. — Richter: Quintus Fixleiiu X. HEREDITARY TAINTS IN BLOOD. PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. Professor Tyndall, on the Alps, in company with one of his friends, was requested by the latter to tell him what is behind the keyboard of the nerves in man ; or, in other words, what causes in the sub¬ stance of the brain the molecular motions which are supposed to be the basis of thought, choice, and emotion. Pushed from point to point, and failing to give a satisfactory answer, the author of the Belfast Address at last burst out with these incisively frank words : “ I view nature, existence, the universe, as the keyboard of a pianoforte. What came before the bass I do not know and do not care. What comes after the treble I equally little know or care. The keyboard, with its black and white keys, is mine to study.” The conversation has been reported to the world (Scribner s Monthly') by the student who received this remarkable reply to his inquiries. It illustrates the willingness of certain physical philosophers to limit the field of outlook in researches into mental physiology. 251 252 MARRIAGE. It is conceded that neither electricity, nor magnet¬ ism, nor heat, nor any physical force with which we are acquainted, explains what we call the soul. But we are conscious of our existence. We know that if from the mass of the body we dissolve out the nerves as a white ghost, there is something finer than they behind them; namely, the nervous influ¬ ence. If we dissolve out all the bioplasts, and hold them up here in their natural positions, there is certainly something finer yet behind them all, namely, the force which co-ordinates them. If we were to take all the bioplasts there are in the body, and hold them up here, the cluster of germinal points would have, in some sense, the human form ; but it would not be the finest thing in man. There is an influence behind the bioplasm, a co-ordinating power, arranging the growth of the whole body. I have asked you, on a former occasion, to take a leaf from the tree Igdrasil, and dissolve out the finer from the coarser portions. I have asked you to imagine standing here a skeleton ; then next a man made of muscles ; another of veins ; another of nerves ; another of bioplasts. You know that behind the nerves there is a force which you may conceive to be taken out. If it were here in the air, you could not touch it ; you could pass your hand through it ; you would not feel it ; and yet you know it is there. But these nerves themselves were woven by the bioplasts. Take out the bioplasts. Let them retain their co-ordination. There is something behind them, — the co-ordinating power. You know such a power HEREDITARY TAINTS IN BLOOD. 253 is there. Take that co-ordinating power out. Hold it up here. You cannot see it ; you cannot touch it ; but it is there. When Professor Tyndall says we must not ask what is behind the keyboard, I find that he is re¬ pressing investigation ; and, very contrary to his nobility of character, is limiting research. Precisely at the point where he says he does not care what comes before the bass or treble in the mvsterious 4 / anthem of the molecular motions which are associ¬ ated with life and thought, I must say that I care ; and on this Easter morning I have a double right to say so. [Applause.] It is an accepted conclusion with Julius Muller, that this finest thing of all, or the co-ordinating force which we know exists in the physical organism, is the true body. Through capacities peculiar to it¬ self, it has taken on this poor fleshly envelope. What if, by and by, through the aid of the same capacities, it shall put on a resurrection-body ? It is no more wonderful that the organic principle within us should clothe itself a second time, than that it has clothed itself a first time. It is no more wonderful that we should live again , than that we should live at all. It is less wonderful that we should continue to live , than that we have begun to live. Julius Muller, in a passage of great incisiveness in a volume now before me, says, “ It is not the sarx , the mass of earthy material, but the soma , the organic whole, to which the Scriptures prom¬ ise a resurrection. The organism, as the living form which appropriates matter to itself, is the true body, 254 MARRIAGE. which in its glorification becomes the soma pneumatic con . The Scriptures teach that the soul, between death and the resurrection, remains unclothed.” (, Studien und Kritiken , 1835, pp. 777, 785.) This is language forty years old, and represents the truly orthodox view of the resurrection. This is the morning after Easter, and what topic could have greater timeliness or impressiveness than that which is suggested by these three questions : — 1. From the point of view of theology, what is the standard orthodox, scholarly opinion as to the man¬ ner of the resurrection ? 2. From the point of view of biology, what is the best opinion as to the same point? 3. Is there any conflict between the two views ? If I am to follow Julius M tiller, I must regard the true body and the resurrection body as two things. But they are related to each other much as the true body and the body of flesh now are. The true body is the organic force which correlates all the parts of the flesh. It assumes here the clothing of the physi¬ cal tissues. We drop at death all that is corruptible or gross, but the soma , the organic whole, as Julius Muller calls the correlating force, continues to exist. In these positions Julius Muller is not denying at all the Scriptural assertion that there will be perfect identity between the resurrection body and the body laid down at death. The Scriptures assert that there is sameness between the body which we bury and the body which is to be raised. They do not teach in what the sameness consists. Open Professor Hodge of HEREDITARY TAINTS IN BLOOD. 255 Princeton ( Systematic Theology , vol. iii. pp. TT8, 779), and you will find him citing Julius Muller’s views with approval ; hut he is careful to say that neither the Church nor the Scripture undertakes to determine in what the sameness consists between the buried and the resurrection body. We must be very careful not to know too much on this topic. What Julius Muller teaches is, that in the resur¬ rection body the organic principle of the present body clothes itself again. It is unnecessary to go back, with some mediaeval teachers, to ask whether any part of the body that is buried is preserved, and is used in that glorified clothing. It is not necessary for us to shock ourselves by any long citation of Jerome, in the passage where he says that, unless there be physical bodies, the wicked cannot gnash their.teeth in the next life. Neither need we remem¬ ber that it has been said that cripples rise as cripples, and that those who were variously deformed have the same deformity in the resurrection body. All these mediaeval ideas are rejected by scholarly theol¬ ogy ; they hardly belonged to a serious popular pre¬ sentation of this truth £even in the dark ages. The scholarly presentation of the manner of the resurrection asserts sameness between our present body and the resurrection body, much in the sense in which it asserts sameness between this present body which I now possess, and the body I had when I was five or ten years old. Every particle of that earlier body has been changed, but the organic principle is unchanged. The man who committed forgery twenty 256 MARRIAGE. years ago is responsible, on account of the identity of his body, for the crime of that date ; but you know he has changed every particle in his body since that time. And so, when we lay down the fleshly body at death, we retain the organic principle which has already assumed several bodies. At the Resurrection day it will assume a glorified body, of which the capacities, according to J ulius Miiller, were taught at the Transfiguration, and in the forty days after the Resurrection. There are two defini¬ tions of sameness, — chemical identity and organic identity. Julius Muller does not assert chemical identity between the present body and the resur¬ rection body. He asserts organic identity. Three things are to be distinguished from each other, — the present body of flesh, the present organic principle or spiritual body, if we please to use that phrase, and the resurrection body. Consider these apart from each other, and you will not be confused when you read Ulrici’s views of the spiritual body in connec¬ tion with Julius Muller’s views. The organizing principle and the resurrection body are not the same thing, any more than the hand and the glove are the same, or any more than the sarx and the soma are the same. Julius Muller’s teaching is far from being that of Swedenborg. There is nothing in the creeds of the Church against the doctrine of a spiritual body as now existing in us, and as an organic principle which will ultimately assume a resurrection body. This is the doctrine which Julius Miiller derives from HEREDITARY TAINTS IN BLOOD. 257 the Scriptural assurance that there is a spiritual body, and there is a natural body, — that is, that now and here we have a natural body, and now and here we have a spiritual body. Go with Julius Muller to the highest outlook of biological science, and compare his view of the organizing principle in man with the biological view of an invisible force or co-ordinating power behind bioplasm. Put with Julius Muller your hand through the spaces which that force may be supposed to occupy. Study this co-ordinating power with Ulrici and Lionel Beale and Hermann Lotze. Take your biological authorities and confront them with your theological ; and surely no one who understands biological science on the one hand, and theological science on the .other, will find any conflict between the latter and the latest results of researches into the tissues, leading us up to the certainty that there is a co-ordinating, invisible somewhat behind the finest fibres. I defy any man to show that there is not harmony between the scientific doctrine of the spiritual body, and the Biblical on the same point. [Applause.] THE LECTURE. When Faust signs the compact with Mephistophe- les in Goethe’s immortal poem, the ink used is the red fluid of life ; and Goethe makes Mephistopheles say, with mystic emphasis, — “ Blut ist ein ganz besonderer Saft,” — “ Blood is a very peculiar sort of juice.” The com- 258 MARRIAGE. pact which sealed the fate of Faust was drawn up outwardly in blood. The compact which I suppose seals the fate of every Faust and of every Margaret in this assembly is drawn up inwardly in blood. The superstitions of the Middle Ages as to the compacts with evil spirits are by no means too suggestive symbols of the truths of modern science. We know now that the compact can be made with white spirits as well as with black. The former bargain as well as the latter may be drawn up in words written with this very peculiar fluid. Hereditary corruption ! Do you wish to know what it is ? The black wheels on which its chariot rolls through the world have been put before you here in photographic views of the morbid alterations in the blood disks. Responsibility in spite of inherited tendencies ! Do you wish to know what that is ? The white wheels on which its chariot rolls across all our corruption, ploughing their way through the mire of our depravities, and victoriously ascending the azure at last, have been outlined here before you by science. Let no man think that I forget the opportunities which I cannot occupy, but which now lie invitingly before us, to consider the nature of inborn evil propensities. He¬ reditary depravity is a fact of science, for there can be no doubt that corrupt propensity is stimulated by inherited morbid blood. But if any one doubts that above the grade of experiences which we call insan¬ ity there is moral responsibility, let him look into the depths of conscience. Not without a plan have I discussed this year, first conscience, and then HER EDIT ARY TAINTS IN BLOOD. 259 heredity; for I wished in subsequent Lectures to make inferences from both topics that will blanch the cheeks. In this place, and now, howfever, as thousands of miles of travel and many strange events probably lie between this hour and that com¬ ing one, in which, if at all, I shall see the faces of this assembly once more, I beg leave to point out the fact that we have ascended heights from which loftier pinnacles are visible. From the posi¬ tion where we now stand, we may behold, above the truth of man’s inherited evil propensities, the cer¬ tainty of his power of victorious self-amelioration under the impulse of a Spirit that is in him, but not of him. Heredity suggests fate. Conscience teaches freedom. Even Plato taught that the black horse before our chariots may be controlled by the white horse with which he is mated, and by the chariot¬ eer. An Arabian chief was once brought before a ty¬ rant, and told that he must kiss his tormentor. “ I will do it very gladly,” said he ; for he was suffer¬ ing from the leprosy, but the disease was not visible. He kissed the tyrant, and the latter became a leper. This, you say, is unjust on the part of Nature. But the possibility of the occurrence of facts like these is Nature’s proclamation of the breadth of the dis¬ tance at which the unclean should be made to stand apart from the clean. We read that men were once obliged, when lepers, to fall down with their faces to the ground, and call out “unclean,” “unclean,” when in the presence of the healthful. This was Nature’s 260 MARRIAGE. law, and she adheres to it to-day, and when it is vio¬ lated exacts fearful penalty. Can Nature be justified for the sternness of her rules as to contagious and hereditary diseases ? What do the Supreme Powers mean by the ma¬ jestic, irreversible laws of transmitted morbid condi¬ tions? In the carmine growths of disease there is fastened upon certain vices the great red seal of God Almighty’s wrath. Evil sometimes falls on the inno¬ cent. What does Nature mean by the terrific straight¬ forwardness of heredity? If the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had the power, which Nature has, to alter the blood-corpuscles, and to cause the ingre¬ dients of the blood to deteriorate, as great Nature does on certain occasions, and were to make laws as to the morbid alteration of the life-fluid, such as Nature has made, and were to execute them every time, it would be certain that Massachusetts is fear¬ fully in earnest. We have seen that Almighty God executes these laws, which he has himself ordained, and executes them every time, and makes no apology. I had read much of leprosy, and had heard fearful stories of the East ; but I was never impressed by any -presentation of the theme of Eastern diseases as I once was, five years ago to-morrow, on Zion’s hill in Jerusalem. I had seen lepers without fingers, and had helped scatter alms to them at the gates of several Eastern towns. As many here must remember, there is on Zion’s hill in Jerusalem, close to the wall, a set of hovels, their doors opening toward the wall. There is a broad space of ruined buildings between HEREDITARY TAINTS IN’ BLOOD. 261 that set of hovels and the city ; and the lepers who are not too far gone are allowed to live for a while in these hovels. Food is thrown to them over certain barriers. No touch of any vessels used by them is permitted to the healthful. I rode past that spot on horseback, and my guide said, “ Turn your face the other way : do not breathe too deeply the wind from those hovels.” Fascinating me as I looked, there stood a Syrian young woman, perhaps twenty or twenty-five years of age, inside the fatal barrier. She was dressed as any Syrian female, except that her face was uncovered. I saw no evidence of disease, but was told by my guide that a single finger had been attacked, and that the trouble was wholly hereditary. She had been carried by the stern laws of the land over the fatal line. It was her duty to feed the aged and the infirm there ; and to wait for the time when the white leprosy, coming out upon her hands, should cause joint to drop from joint. Finally her limbs were to totter, and she was at last to be in need of food from others like herself. I looked into her face. There was an inexpressible sadness in her counte¬ nance, and yet a certain serenity. God is in blood, and do you say that Satan is in it too ? Satan is a minister of God. I went from that scene resolved that, if ever opportunity came to me, I would woo the light of science to blaze before any audience it might be my fortune to hold up a rushlight before ; and to blaze in the name not only of the dark things that may come to man through the law of hereditary descent, but of the white things also. Was I not 262 MARRIAGE. wandering over ground which had been trodden by feet inheriting human conditions, and through a long line of ancestry lifted, until the brain of Him who spoke as never man spoke, although a human brain, was fit to be an abode of Almighty God? From those poor lepers, up to that brain of the Son of God, extends the breadth of emphasis which great Nature gives to the theme of morbid alterations in the vital fluid. [Applause.] What are the relations of the white to the red blood corpuscles? 1. The numbers of the white blood corpuscles and of the red disks in the blood are to each other as about one to three hundred. 2. The red disks are believed to be as inanimate while in the body as they are after the blood has been withdrawn from the vessels. (Beale, Disease Gcerms , p. 409.) Of course I know that they are first formed by the bioplasm, but the red blood disk is a piece of formed material when it is finished. Each red corpuscle tends to assume a crystalline form when its movement ceases. Living matter does not crystallize. ( Ibid ., p. 409.) 3. The white blood corpuscle is a bioplast. 4. The whole organism at an early period consists of bioplasts. 5. These were the descendants of previously ex¬ isting germinal matter. 6. All the bioplasts grow and subdivide them¬ selves in the embryo. 7. In the adult many bioplasts cease to grow in the older tissues. HEREDITARY TAINTS IN BLOOD. 263 8. The white blood corpuscles, however, are bio¬ plasts which grow and subdivide themselves in the blood of the adult, just as all the bioplasts did in the embryo. (Ibid., p. 112.) 9. The white blood corpuscles possess formative power. 10. They possess this power, even in the age of the adult, in a higher degree than any other form of bioplasm in the adult. This formative power in the white blood corpuscle is of a more general character than is possessed by the bioplasts in the general tissues. When we wound ourselves, the white blood bioplasts are instrumental in effecting a cure. The bioplasts that lie on the opposite sides of the gash are concerned also, but without the aid of the white blood corpuscles would not be effective. 11. The ancestral white blood bioplasts from which all have directly descended were developed at a time anterior to that when the various bioplasts taking part in the formation of the tissues diverged from that common progenitor. (Ibid., p. 109.) 12. Thus formative power of a more general char¬ acter than is possessed by the bioplasts of the tissues belongs to the white blood bioplasts. 13. The reproduction of lost parts or organs in some of the lower animals is probably to be ex¬ plained as the effect of this action of bodies re¬ sembling the blood bioplasts. 14. At an early period of development only white blood corpuscles exist in the blood. (Frey, Corn- ,perndium of Histology, p. 26.) 264 MARRIAGE. 15. When the circulation is carried on slowly, these corpuscles grow and multiply. 16. The number of white blood corpuscles in the blood increases after a plentiful meal. (Frey, Com¬ pendium of Histology , p. 24.) 17. The blood flowing into the spleen has only one, two, or three colorless blood-cells to one thou¬ sand red ones: in the blood of the splenic vein five, seven, twelve, fifteen, and more of them, occur. (. Ibid ., p. 24.) As physicians here know, this pecu¬ liar organ called the spleen has long been a mystery ; but it now appears that one of its offices is to in¬ crease the number of white blood corpuscles. 18. White blood bioplasts become in part trans¬ formed into red blood corpuscles and cover the loss of the latter. 19. All the masses of bioplasm in the body have descended from one in a regular, definite, and pre¬ arranged order. 20. If from any circumstance the bioplasm that is to form a part of the eye, or brain, or any other organ, is not produced, that part of the eye, brain, or other organ will be wanting in the particular organ¬ ism. (Beale, Disease Germs , p. 93.) Such is a rapid summary of the latest research in regard to the relations of the red and white blood corpuscles. We are now ready to face a yet more central ques¬ tion : What are the laws of the origin and growth of morbid bioplasm ? Allow me to state Dr. Beale’s theory of the nature HEREDITARY TAINTS IN BLOOD. 265 of disease germs. I know how I may shock some who think that all diseases have an origin in vegeta¬ ble growths, hut I must claim that some diseases have a distinct origin in morbid bioplasm. I under¬ stand Lionel Beale’s theory to go farther than the one I am to put before you. In the use of numerals, I seek to save time, and give conspicuousness to governing propositions, and this in their consecutive and logical order. 1. Morbid bioplasm originating in one animal may multiply in another. 2. Regular, orderly, and comparatively slow growth characterizes the multiplication of healthful bioplasm, capable of forming lasting structures and elaborate organs. 3. Rapid multiplication of bioplasm, on the other hand, involves degradation in its formative power. 4. The formative power may be at length entirely lost never to be re-acquired. 5. Degradation in power is commonly associated with increased rate of growth and increased facility of resisting adverse conditions. 6. With this increased vitality in morbid bioplasm, it takes up more than the nourishment that should be appropriated by the healthy parts. 7. The latter are consequently starved, deterio¬ rated, and at last completely destroyed. 8. Disease germs are sometimes particles of living matter derived by direct descent from the living matter of man’s organization. The too rapid mul¬ tiplication of bioplasm may give rise to diseased bio 266 MARRIAGE. plasts which may be direct descendants of white blood corpuscles as well as of other germinal matter. 9. By the multiplication of morbid bioplasts in the capillaries, local congestions are caused, and in this way peculiar eruptions and rashes result. The congestion sometimes ends in complete stagnation, and the death, destruction, and removal of the portion of the tissue affected. 10. The microscope shows that the blood in disease contains a large number of minute masses of morbid bioplasm, and products resulting from their death and decay, which are not present in healthy blood. (Lionel Beale, The Microscope in Medicine , 1878, p. 264, and Disease Germs , pp. 94-127. On the whole subject of blood corpuscles see Professor Arthur Bottcher, in vol. xxxvi. of Virchow’s Archiv ., p. 342.) So fully have these points been illustrated by the elaborate microscopical exhibitions put before you, that I shall not pause to enumerate in detail the con¬ clusions supported by the photographs. You saw a sprout bursting from a corpuscle. There lies on that chair Lionel Beale’s freshest work on “ Microscopy in Medicine, ” and he recites (p. 260) the experiments of Lastorfer, in which, after the blood had been allowed to remain several days in a certain tempera¬ ture, these sprouting fibrils appeared. Several phy¬ sicians, who challenged Lastorfer ’s assertions, put before him blood, some of it healthful, some of it mor¬ bid, and in every case, so the record runs, on which Lionel Beale relies, he distinguished the blood of a HEREDITARY TAINTS IN BLOOD. 267 man suffering from the nameless disease from that of the man who was in health. Suppose that you call up to this stand some phy¬ sician, and open his note-books. “ I reside in the country, ten leagues from Paris,” one of the revela¬ tory confessions of a patient reads. “I have four children, all of whom, together with their father and myself, have always enjoyed excellent health. Eight months since I took a foundling child to nurse, two years of age. It was a wretched-looking child, and had pimples on its body, and sore throat. We per¬ mitted it to take soup with the same spoon as our¬ selves, and to drink from the same glass. Soon one of my girls complained of a severe sore throat ; this increased, and she died in about six weeks. The foundling also died. Soon after this I began to suf¬ fer frofri an affection of the throat, as did these two children.” This woman and the children died of a disease which cannot be described in mixed company. (See Westminster Review , July, 1869, p. 213, and scores of similar cases in the report of the select committee of the House of Lords on the Contagious Diseases Act, 1868.) Open again the records of authentic physical re¬ search. I find that a military officer on bidding fare¬ well to his niece kissed her. Not the slightest unhealthful look existed on the face of the officer, but it appears that one of the formations which will soon be thrown on this screen before the eyes of you all had become diseased. Within a few weeks that niece was taken over the fatal line between health and corruption. She died of a single kiss. ' 268 MARRIAGE. Glance once more at these authentic records. We find an infant in the cradle. It has a sore mouth ; it complains of a sore throat; but it is full of glee. It has attractive, affectionate ways. A cousin and a sister are here. They bend down and kiss the young human being. It is ten weeks old. Strange rashes and eruptions appear in its face. It is twenty-five weeks old. The sister and the cousin begin to be afflicted with the same eruptions and rashes. The mother says, u You must not kiss that infant again.” But the mischief is done. At thirty-six weeks the babe dies, but the cousin lingers through ten years of nameless tortures. Shut out from all society, unfit, of course, for the offices most sacred in life, she dies. In 1849, the sister, who had married, al¬ though she had had eruptions on the face, and al¬ though maternal advice was against her marriage, brings into the world a child, strangely blotched at birth. It lingers on two years, three, four. By and by the nasal bone drops. Other bones in the face drop. It grows emaciated. It is a mass of corrup¬ tion, and the mother soon follows it into a loathsome grave. (See Whitehead, Dr. James, On Hereditary Diseases , London, 1857, for this case and a great number of similar cases in detail.) Who did all that? You, dissipated young man, very possibly! What was the name of this officer? No matter. His name may be yours to-morrow. [Applause.] There lies before me a book on the J ukes, a single family who, in forty-five years, have cost the State HEREDITARY TAINTS IN BLOOD. 269 of New York a million and a quarter of dollars. We have heard of Maria, the mother of criminals ; and know how inherited bad blood need not be such as to produce loathsome physical corruption, and yet may produce moral corruption. The Jukes family shows what belongs to the moral forms of inherited evil, as leprosy what belongs to the physical. In contrast with the Jukes, remember the Pitcairn Islanders. In the Southern seas, on the sunrise side of Australia, a company of rude mutineers landed on an island ; and, after the native males had fallen in war, the sailors were suddenly sobered by their lone¬ liness and their need, and under some stimulation of memory thought it best to be Christians. They adopted for the government of the island the best laws known to them. A new and noble population has come into existence. At this hour it is said that a. Pitcairn Island woman needs only to wave her hand royally toward a sailor to make him a man, if he has been previously a beast. While in her presence he can only worship. White blood descends as well as black ; that is, good blood as well as morbid. (See Prosper Lucas’s celebrated Traite cV Heredite.') You have seen here, both in its clear and in its turbid con¬ dition, the fluid in which the blood disks and corpus¬ cles float. Lionel Beale says that the adulteration of that fluid is the most interesting and the most fatal of all the' morbid alterations of the blood. You have seen this deterioration marked by physical signs exhibited to you at first hand in some sixty or a hun¬ dred photographic specimens. As surely, however, 270 MARRIAGE. as this turbidness and deterioration may produce depravity, so surely pure blood, on the other hand, gives instinctive impulses as capable of lifting us as the others are of dragging us down. God is in blood ; He is the charioteer of our black horses as well as of our white ; and up the slope of the azure the stern reins and lash of His laws seek to drive both of them, the white no whiter than the black may be at last, -under God’s training when it is permitted by our free will to be complete. [Applause.] Stereotyped and Printed by Rand , Avery , tfc Co., Boston. BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES By JOSEPH COOK. - ♦ - HISTORY OF THE LECTURES . The Bibliotheca Sacra , January , 1878. Mr. Joseph Cook was invited, early in September, 1875, by the Young Men’s Christian Association of Boston, to lead the noon prayer-meeting in the Meionaon daily for a week, and to make on each occasion an address of half an hour in length. After four ot these services, it was found that the audience had quadrupled in size. Mr. Cook was requested to continue his addresses daily through another week. On Monday noon, Sept. 23, the subject was “ Final Permanence of Moral Character; or, The Doctrine of Future Pun¬ ishment,” and it was noticed that a hundred ministers were in the audience. Mr. Cook was then requested to speak on the Atonement, on a Sabbath evening, in Park-street Church. lie complied with this request, and spoke to an audience filling the house to its utmost capacity. He was then invited by the Young Men’s Christian Asso¬ ciation to speak every Monday noon, in the Meionaon, for twelve weeks. Oct. 25 his subject was “ Boston Sceptical Cliques.” “ The Daily Advertiser ” had a reporter present, who reproduced a part of the address. “ The Springfield Republican ” began to call attention to the large number of ministers and scholars who were present at the Monday Lectures. It was suggested, in many quarters, that these lectures should be continued regularly through the winter. Meantime, Mr. Cook was delivering one course of lectures at Am¬ herst College, and another at Mount Holyoke Seminary, largely on Materialism, Evolution, and various biological topics. The Meio- naou Hall seats about eight hundred persons, and in January, 1876, was completely filled by Mr. Cook’s hearers. After four months had passed, the assemblies were occasionally gathered in Bromfield- street Church. The lectures continued to be under the auspices of the Young Men’s Christian Association, until May, 1876, when, at a meeting in Bromfield-street Church, resolutions were passed found¬ ing the Boston Monday Lectureship, and placing it, for the next season, under the care of a committee, consisting of Prof. E. P. Gould of the Newton Theological Institute, the Rev. Dr. E. B. Webb of Boston, the Rev. Dr. McKeown, the Rev. Samuel Cutler, the Rev. Mr. Deming, the Rev. Edward Edmunds, and the Rev. W. M. Baker, — men of different evangelical denominations. The lectures for 1875-76 continued eight months, and closed, with the forty-fifth of the course, on the last Monday in May, in Bromfield- street Church. In October, 1876, the lectures were resumed in the Meionaon; but the hall was found to be too small for the audience. It was, 2 BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. therefore, soon transferred to Park-street Church. Two lectures were given in this large auditorium, when it was found to he much too small, and the audiences were crowded out into Tremont Tem¬ ple. The first lecture there was given Nov. 13, 1876. This hall will contain from twenty-five hundred to three thousand people, and was often more than full in the winter of 1876-77. During the delivery of a course of thirteen lectures on “ Biology,” and of eleven on “Transcendentalism,” and of eleven on “Orthodoxy,” it was often necessary to turn hearers away, as they could not obtain standing-room. From the forty- fifth lecture “The Boston Daily Advertiser” published full stenographic reports of the lectures. The reporter’s manuscript was revised by the lecturer. “ The New- York Independent ” regularly republished the lectures from Feb¬ ruary, 1876. “ The Cincinnati Gazette” did the same; and a large number of newspapers throughout the country published extracts from them. In the course of the winter a few replies to certain statements in the lectures were made by Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke and other Unitarians, by Rev. Dr. Miner and other Univer- salist ministers. From February, 1876, most of the Boston Monday Lectures were republished in London by the firm of R. D. Dickinson, Farringdon Street. Individual lectures were republished in “The Christian World Pulpit,” and other theological serials of Great Britain. At the close of the course for 1876-77, in May, eighty lectures had been given, of which all from the forty-fifth had been published. In September, 1877, James R. Osgood and Company issued “Biology, with Preludes on Current Events,” a collection of thirteen Boston Monday Lectures. This volume, at the beginning of December, 1877, was in its twelfth edition. In November the same house issued another course of Mr. Cook’s lectures, entitled “ Transcenden¬ talism,” and announced still another course, entitled “ Orthodoxy.” Oct. 1, a course of ten lectures on “Conscience” was opened, and, Dec. 10, a course of ten on “ Hereditary Descent.” Full steno¬ graphic reports, revised by Mr. Cook, are now published in “ The Boston Daily Advertiser,” “The New-York Independent,” “The Cincinnati Gazette,” and “ The New-York Advocate.” Very num¬ erous other papers publish large extracts from them. At least a hundred thousand copies appear weekly. The lectures are regularly republished in London. It ought to be added, that since the close of his lectures in May, 1877, Mr. Cook has delivered several of them in New-York city, Rochester and Syracuse, N.Y., Princeton, N.J., and various other places; has also supplied various pulpits in Boston and other cities. Before a critic passes any severe criticism on these lectures, he may wisely ask himself whether, without having a previously established reputation, he would be able for two years to interest congregations containing sometimes fifteen hundred hearers, of whom sometimes five hundred are liberally educated men, assembled in the midst of pressing engagements, and in the whirl of a great city; and whether, in addition to his Monday-noon exercises, lie would be able to super¬ intend the printing of three volumes of his lectures on abstruse and complicated themes, to preach frequently on the sabbath, and occasionally to deliver sermons, each one of which is from one to two hours in length. BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES , 3 BIOLOGY. WITH PRELUDES ON CURRENT EVENTS. Three Colored Illustrations. 12mo. $1.50. CONTENTS. LECTURES. I. Huxley and Tyxdall on Evolution. II. The Concessions of Evolutionists. III. The Concessions of Evolutionists. IV. The Microscope and Materialism. V. Lotze, Beale, and Huxley on Living Tissues. VI. Life or Mechanism — Which? VII. Does Death end All ? Involution and Evolution. VIII. Does Death end All? The Nerves and the Soul. IX. Does Death end All ? Is Instinct Immortal ? X. Does Death end All? Bain’s Materialism. XI. Automatic and Influential Nerves. XII. Emerson’s Views on Immortality. XIII. Ulrici on the Spiritual Body. PRELUDES. I. Gift-Enterprises in Politics. II. Safe Popular Freedom. III. Daniel Webster’s Death. % IV. Civil-Service Reform. V. Authorities on Biology. VI. Boston and Edinburgh. VII. The Gulf-Current in History. TRANSCENDENTALISM. WITH PRELUDES ON CURRENT EVENTS. 12mo. $1.50. CONTENTS. LECTURES. I. Intuition, Instinct, Experiment, Syllogism, as Tests of Truth. II. Transcendentalism in New England. III. Theodore Parker’s Absolute Religion. IV. Caricatured Definitions in Religious Science. V. Theodore Pariser on the Guilt of Sin. 4 BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. VI. Final Permanence of Moral, Character. VII. Can a Perfect Being permit Evil? VIII. The Religion required by the Nature of Things. IX. Theodore Parker on Communion with God as Personal. X. The Trinity and Tritheism. XI. Fragmentariness of Outlook upon the Divine Nature. PRELUDES. I. The Children of the Perishing Poor. II. The F ailure of Strauss’s Mythical Theory. III. Chalmers’s Remedy for the Evils of Cities. IV. Mexicanized Politics. V. Yale, Harvard, and Boston. VI. The Right Direction of the Religiously Irresolute. VII. Religious Conversation. VIII. George Whitefield in Boston. IX. Circe’s Cup in Cities. X. Civil-Service Reform. XI. Plymouth Rock as the Corner-Stone of a Factory. CRITICAL ESTIMATES {AMERICAN). Rev. Prof. A. P. Peabody of Harvard University , in The Independent. Joseph Cook is a phenomenon to he accounted for. No other American orator has done what he has done, or any thing like it, and, prior tg the experiment, no voice would have been bold enough to predict its success. We reviewed Mr. Cook’s “ Lectures on Biology ” with unqualified praise. In the present volume we find tokens of the same genius, the same intensity of feeling, the same lightning flashes of impas¬ sioned eloquence, the same viselike hold on the rapt attention and absorbing interest of his hearers and readers. We are sure that we are unbiassed by the change of subject; for, though we dissent from some of the dogmas which the author recognizes in passing, there is hardly one of his consecutive trains of thought in which we are not in harmony with him, or one of his skirmishes in which our sympathies are not wholly on his side. Rev. Dr. Thomas Hill , Ex-President of Harvard University , in the Christian Register. The attempt of sundry critics to depreciate Mr. Cook’s science, because he is a minister, is very ill judged. These Lectures are crowded so full of knowledge, of thought, of argument, illumined with such passages of eloquence and power, spiced so frequently with deep-cutting though good-natured irony, that I could make no abstract from them, without utterly mutilating them. The Princeton Review. Mr. Cook has already become famous; and these Lectures are amomj the chief works that have, and we may say justly, made him »o. Their celebrity is due partly to the place and circumstances oi BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. 5 their delivery, but still more to tlieir inherent power, without which no adventitious aids could have lifted them into the deserved promi¬ nence they have attained. . . . Mr. Cook is a great master of analy¬ sis. . . . The Lecture on the Atonement is generally just, able, and unanswerable. ... We think, on the whole, that Mr. Cook shows singular justness of view in his manner of treating the most difficult and perplexing themes, for example, God in Natural Law, and the Trinity. Springfield Republican. This now preacher of modern Orthodoxy delivered his Fifty-first Monday Lecture under the caption “ Life or Mechanism — Which ? ” this week in the Boston Park-street Church, which was crowded — even to the galleries, aisles, and pulpit-stairs — with an audience mostly composed of men, and representing, to a large degree, the culture and intellect of Boston and vicinity. This Monday Lecture¬ ship is now an established institution, and in its growing popularity will tax pretty severely the quality of Mr. Cook. He has so far, however, met the issue squarely, and shows no signs pf emptiness or flagging. . . . Mr. Cook has in liis favor a happy combination of per¬ sonal advantages, — a good presence, mental grasp considerable per¬ sonal magnetism, logical alertness and acuteness; a habit of minute and precise analysis, with sufficient repetition of important details; a poetic and dramatic gift, lighting up what might else be dry and heavy with frequent flashes of wit and fancy, and literary and his¬ torical illustration; a restless fervor, the outcome of an excess of physical nervousness, which, however, is never disconcerted; and withal, a fine mastery of good, copious Saxon English. Boston Daily Advertiser. At high noon on Monday, Tremont Temple was packed to suffo¬ cation and overflowing, although five thousand people were in the Tabernacle at the same hour. The Temple audience consisted chiefly of men, and was of distinguished quality, containing hun¬ dreds of persons well known in the learned professions. Wendell Phillips, Edward Everett Hale, Bronson Alcott, and many other citizens of eminence, sat on the platform. No better proof than the character of the audience could have been desired to show that Mr. Cook’s popularity as a lecturer is not confined to the evangelical denominations. (Feb. 7.) It is not often that Boston people honor a public lecturer so much as to crowd to hear him at the noontide of a week-day; and when it does this month after month, the fact is proof positive that his sub¬ ject is one of engrossing interest. Mr. Cook, perhaps more than any gentleman in the lecture-field the past few years, has been so honored. (Feb. 14.) The Independent. We know of no man that is doing more to-day to show the rea¬ sonableness of Christianity, and the unreasonableness of unbelief; nor do we know of any one who is doing it with such admirable tolerance, yet dramatic intensity. George M. Beard , M.D.> in the New- York Graphic. It is said that Mr. Cook misrepresents modern science. This criti¬ cism is made mostly by those who do not read all his books; or judge by the original reports at the beginning of the series, or by floating 6 BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. fragments in the papers, or by general hearsay; or very likely by those who themselves know little of science, or at least who are not versed on all sides of his subjects. His work, as it now stands, aftel many and careful revisions, represents fairly the present state of science on the subject of which he treats, — of the very latest and best researches. Indeed inquirers who will read all of his work, and not part of it, and who are sufficiently endowed with the scientific sense to separate the philosophical reasonings from the facts on which the reasonings are based, will find therein the clearest and most compact statements of the theories and difficulties of evolution, of the movements of bioplasm, and of physiological experimenls on decapitated animals and on the electrical irritation of the brain, that ax>pear in x>opular literature. Professor John McCrady, in The Literary World. Mr. Cook’s Lectures upon Biology have done good service in making known to a Boston audience the researches of such men as Lionel Beale in England, and the thoughts of such men as Hermann Lotze in Germany, besides the admissions and inconsistencies of the practical materialists, and a valuable review of the whole state of the battle by an able and fearless theological observer like himself. The publication of these Lectures cannot fail to be of service to the extra-scientific world in general. The book well x>resents to out¬ siders a certain little-known stage of conservative scientific thought, which they cannot reach anywhere else in so accessible and compact a form. Its extremely pox>ular form, though quite disturbing to the nervous equilibrium of a confirmed man of science, is, nevertheless, well fitted for those it aims to inform, — the great free, intelligent, and religious-minded public, who have not had their heads squeezed by specialistic boards and bandages into strange and fantastic models of approved scientific monstrosity; the peojde, in short, who have not made philosophical Flatheads of themselves for the sake of some narrow mole’s track of scientific investigation known as a “ specialty.” This specialism, indeed, is aiming to destroy all freedom of thought and speech, and, by consequence, all philosophic thought whatsoever, by forbidding every man to exx>ress an opinion on any subject save his own sx>ecialty. It has all the narrow intolerance of Comte’s Positivism; and I, for one, honor Mr. Cook for his courage in taking it by the beard, and defying it. I heartily recommend his book to the careful reading of eA'erybody who lias the interest of scientific conservative thought at heart. Such an one will, at the least, rise from its perusal with a conception of the existing state of the great battle between spirit and matter, very different from that which Mr. Huxley, with the voice of a dragon, lays down in his “ Physical Basis of Life;” and, instead of “matter and law devouring spirit and spontaneity,” he will see how great cause there is for anticipating the ox>posite result. Indeed, the progress of science means, to my apprehension, the very oiqiosite of all that Mr. Huxley contends for in that essay. Sx>irit and spontaneity are slowly indeed, but surely, advancing along a path which will end in their completely devouring matte'" and law. The reality of the universe will iwoveto be the sx>irit : the illusion of it, the matter ; while natural law will declare itself nothing more than the self-consistency of untrammelled spontaneity. BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. 7 Professor Borden P. Bowne of Boston University , in the Sunday Afternoon. In the chapters on the Theories of Life, these discussions are, in many respects, models of argument; and the descriptions of the facts under discussion are often unrivalled for both scientific exact¬ ness, and rhetorical adequacy of language. In the present state of the debate there is no better manual of the argument than the work in hand. The emptiness of the mechanical explanation of Life was never more clearly shown. Appletons' Journal. It may be said that the distinguishing and striking characteristic of Mr. Cook’s work is, that he pours out the treasures of the latest German thought before audiences and readers whose ideas of sci¬ ence and philosophy have been moulded almost exclusively by that English school, which, as Taine says, tends naturally (by racial in¬ heritance) to materialistic viewrs of life. Our knowledge of the author is confined to what we can obtain from his book ; but this is amply sufficient to show that his intellectual equipment has been obtained in Germany, and is truly German in its comprehensiveness and pre¬ cision. . . . Aside from the rhetorical brilliancy of his style, and the aptness and fertility of his illustrations, Mr. Cook’s method of ex¬ position is remarkably effective. By numbering his propositions, and stating them in the concisest possible phrase, he secures a clear¬ ness and intelligibility that are seldom so well maintained in a long and complicated argument; and the epigrammatic guise in which most of his principles and conclusions are presented impresses them with peculiar vividness upon the mind of the reader or hearer. The Eclectic Magazine. Mr. Cook’s rhetorical and literary skill would obtain him a hear¬ ing on any subject he chose to discuss; but it is very soon seen, that, beneath the glowing and almost too fervidly eloquent language, there is a force of logic, a breadth of intellectual culture, and a mastery of all the issues involved, such as are seldom exhibited by partici¬ pants on either side in the great controversy between religion and science. It may be said unqualifiedly that the pulpit lias never brought such comprehensiveness and precision of knowledge, cqm- bined with such logical and literary skill, to the discussion of the questions raised by the supposed tendency of biological discovery. International Review. The lecture-form is retained, and the implied comments of the audience, as given by the reporters, are furnished us, — a feature which will strike readers favorably or otherwise, as their ideas are more or less severe on the composition and make-up of a book. For our part, we like this feature. The Advance {Chicago). The reasons given for retaining the responses of the audience, applause, &c., seem to us in this case satisfactory. It is frequently as much a matter of significant interest to know how statements were received by such an audience as to know what the one indi¬ vidual said. This Boston Lectureship is altogether unique in 8 BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. the recent history of popular exposition of abstruse themes. C ue has to go back to the time of Peter Abelard of the University of Paris for a parallel to it. The Interior ( Chicago ). These Lectures are full of hard thought and eloquent exj ses¬ sion. They dwell on the profoundest religious themes, and in the most incisive way. The same power of analysis, sharpness and precision of statement, and gorgeous rhetoric, which characte? izi d the volume on “ Biology,” are conspicuous here. In these two vol¬ umes Mr. Cook has given us the most forcible and readable of all modern defences of essential Christian truth against the scientific and philosophic heresies of the day. The Standard ( Chicago). The incisive, trenchant style of Mr. Cook has, perhaps, no* more admirable adaptation and application than to the demolition of the glittering but specious logic of materialistic philosophy. It i3 a pleasure to the intellect, as well as to the conscience, to follow M^. Cook in his irresistible iconoclasm among the images of the theo¬ rists who substitute evolution for God in the grand pi ocess of cosmogony. Cincinnati Gazette. It must be admitted by the most captious critic, that Mr. Cook states his positions with wonderful grace and clearness, fr&d that he fortifies what may appear most paradoxical by a remarkable array of illustration and argument. Boston Traveller. There is no denying the fact that Mr. Cook is a born orator. As a popular platform speaker, he has few rivals, and, broadly speaking, we might say no superiors. Boston Journal. These Discourses relate to the great problems of life most at issue between science and religion. They were received witn eager inter¬ est when delivered; and, being republished in whole or in part by the American and English papers, they were, in effect, spoken to an audience on both sides of the sea. Mr. Cook’s eloquent and pic¬ turesque style — which has in it a touch of Emerson and a touch of Carlyle, as well as qualities peculiarly its own — loses little by trans¬ ference from the platform to the printed page; and, indeed, the lat¬ ter form of joresentation has its advantages, as being more conducive to the calm and leisure which subjects of so much importance require for their adequate consideration. New- York Christihn Intelligencer. "We believe this book ought to stand and will stand among the very first of the Apologies of the last quarter of this century. . The Christian Union. Mr. Cook is profoundly interested in his themes. Indeed, he never fails to be kindled into enthusiasm by tlie.r transcendent BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. 9 Importance. He understands the reach of the physiological ques¬ tions which he discusses, and the philosophical problems which he essays to solve. His mind is penetrating and subtle. He delights in an argument, and is the last man to fear an antagonist. It would not be easy to decide whether he possesses the logical or the imagina¬ tive powers in excess. Illustrated Christian Weekly. "We enjoy the splendor of Mr. Cook’s rhetoric and the brilliancy of his imagination, as in reading a poem. Church Journal (New York). His style is peculiar. It is clear, abounding in most expressive figure.. with perhaps a slight shading of Carlyleism. But we do not now recall a more forcible writer of "the day. His blows at Parker- ism, Huxleyism, and Darwinism, come down with sledge-hammer force. He is no mere declaimer. He speaks with the authority of a man who has studied and mastered his subject, and who has fairly dissected the fallacies which he so ably exposes. The Christian at Work. Mr. Cook has taken his place as one of the ablest controversial¬ ists of the day. His logic is remorseless. He lays every thing under tribute, and drives every nail home. Worcester Spy. As a thinker he has notable clearness and strength. His style is full of life and vigor; and he has an admirable mastery of the power of expression; but these alone would not sufficiently ex¬ plain the great success of his Monday Lectures. The true explana¬ tion is, that he selected, live questions for discussion, after having studied them, and taken pains to understand them thoroughly. He can meet the most perfectly furnished materialistic speculators on their own ground; is familiar with all the outs and ins of their methods of reasoning; and is able to match their knowledge of the studies and discoveries in physical science, which they use in support oi the positions they endeavor to maintain. Hartford Courant. The volumes containing his metaphysical speculations and scien¬ tific treatment of the problem of religion sell like novels. Mr. Cook is not only a master of the art of putting things, but he is a wit. It is wit none the less because it is used for a serious purpose. Presbyterian Banner. The folly of materialistic philosophers has only been exceeded by their arrogance ; and it is truly refreshing to find their inflated bubbles so completely punctured and dissipated by the keen thrusts of Mr. Cook’s unanswerable logic. The Penn. Monthly (Philadelphia). His addresses have been well called prose poems. Nothing could •eem less poetical to the eye than his numbered paragraphs. They « 10 BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. look like a series of theses set up for the defiance of all comers. But ear and sense alike are captivated as we read, and we are forced, to recognize a master of English prose. Religious Herald ( Richmond , Va.). No man in America is just now attracting more attention than Joseph Cook, and his Titanic blows are telling on the materialistic scepticism of the day. . . . He is clear, axiomatic, and irresistible through all his arguments, and, while always courteous to opponents, is often keenly satirical. The Theological Medium , Nashville , Tenn. His learning is immense, his faculty of order eminent, his imagi¬ nation very brilliant, and his logic strong and close. New Orleans Times. The Lectures are crowded with eloquent passages, telling satire, and keen, critical, and precise reasoning. San Francisco Evening Bulletin. The style is peculiarly vivid, presenting occasionally some of the characteristics of Carlyle. The book, in consequence of its scope and general attractiveness, is destined to become very popular. San Frmncisco Bancroft's Messenger. Possessed of a calm, critical, and methodical mind, Mr. Cook has constructed, from the material at his disposal, about a dozen of the most interesting essays that have yet appeared on the relation of religion and science. On almost every page of the volume, elo¬ quence leaves its mark. , San Francisco Evening Post. Emotion, clearness, and sound sense are the weapons with which he produces conviction. The Congregational Quarterly. » "We can most heartily commend fhe work on Orthodoxy for its graphic power, for its bold and manly exhibitions of truth, for the carefulness in general of its distinctions, for the magnetic quality of its style, for its clear aim and direction; in short, for a portrayal of orthodoxy such as is reasonable and defensible. The Bibliotheca Sacra. There is no other work on biology, there is no other work on the¬ ology, with which this volume of lectures can well be compared. It is a book that no biologist, whether an originator or a mere middle¬ man in science, would ever have written. Traversing a very wide field, cutting right across the territories of rival specialists, it con¬ tains not one important scientific misstatement, either of fact or theory. Not only the propositions, but the dates, the references, the names, and the histories of scientific discoveries and speculations, aro presented as they are found in the sources whence they are taken, 02 at least with only verbal and minor changes. BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. 11 CRITICAL ESTIMATES (FOREIGN). Rev. R. Payne Smith , Dean of Canterbury. The lectures are remarkably eloquent, vigorous, and powerful, and no one could read them without great benefit. They deal with very important questions, and are a valuable contribution towards solv* ing many of the difficulties which at this time trouble many minds. Rev . Dr. Angus , the College , Regent's Park. These Lectures discuss some of the most vital questions of theol¬ ogy, and examine the views or writings of Emerson, Theodore Parker, and others. They are creating a great sensation in Boston, where they have been delivered, and are wonderful specimens of shrewd, clear, and vigorous thinking. They are, moreover, largely illustrative, and have a fine vein of poetry running through them. The Lectures on the Trinity are capitally written; and, though we are not prepared to accept all Mr. Cook’s statements, the Lectures, as a whole, are admirable. A dozen such lectures have , not been Dublished for many a day. Rev. Alexander Raleigh , D.D., of London. The Lectures are in every way of a high order. They are profound and yet clear, extremely forcible in some of their parts, yet, I think, always fair, and as full of sympathy with what is properly and purely human as of reverence for what is undoubtedly divine. Rev. John Ker , D.D., of Glasgow. My conviction is, that they are specially fitted for the time, and likely above all to be useful to thoughtful minds engaged in seek¬ ing a footing amid the quicksands of doubt. There is a freshness, a power, and a felt sincerity, in the way in which they deal with the engrossing questions of our time, and, indeed, of all time, which should commend them to earnest spirits which feel that there must be a God and a soul, and some way of bringing them together, and which yet have got confused amid the negations of the dogmatic scepticism of our day. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cook four years ago, when he was visiting Europe to make himself acquainted with different forms of thought, and I could see in him a power and resolution which foretold the mark he is now making on public opinion. Rev. C. IT. Spurgeon. These are very wonderful Lectures. We bless God for raising up such a champion for his truth as J oseph Cook. Few could hunt down Theodore Parker, and all that race of misbelievers, as Mr. Cook has done. He has strong convictions, the courage of his con¬ victions, and force to support his courage. In reasoning, the infidel Earty have here met their match. We know of no other man one- alf so well qualified for the peculiar sendee of exploding the pro- 12 BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. tensions of modern science as this great preacher in whom Boston is rejoicing. Some men shrink from this spiritual wild-boar hunting, biit Mr. Cook is as happy in it as he is expert. May his arm he strengthened by the Lord of hosts! London Quarterly Review. For searching philosophical analysis, for keen and merciless logic, for dogmatic assertion of eternal truth in the august name of science mch as thrills the soul to its foundations, for widely diversified and most apt illustrations drawn from a wide field of reading and obser¬ vation, for true poetic feeling, for a pathos without any mixture of sentimentality, for candor, for moral elevation, and for noble loyalty to those great Christian verities which the author affirms and vindi¬ cates, these wonderful Lectures stand forth alone amidst the contem¬ porary literature of the class to which they belong. London Baptist Magazine. Mr. Cook’s “Monday Lectures ” have already become one of the most popular and useful institutions of America; and on this side the Atlantic we know of no author, either British or American, who is just now so widely read. Rev. A. Melville , Glasgow. It is because Mr. Cook refuses no real help that offers itself to him from any quarter, that he finds firm footing on the heights to which he climbs. His lectures present most valuable training for dealing with all such questions, from the fact that they take so wide a range, and combine so skilfully all departments of truth. — Intro¬ duction to Glasgow edition of Boston Monday Lectures. The British Quarterly Review. Mr. Cook is a man of wide reading, tenacious memory, acute discrimination, and great power of popular exposition. Nothing deters him. He plunges in medias res, however abstruse the specu¬ lation, and his vigor and fire carry all before them. He has intui¬ tive genius for pricking wind-bags, and for reducing over-sanguine and exaggerated hypotheses to their exact value. He has called a halt in many an impetuous march of science, and exposed a funda¬ mental fallacy in many a triumphant argument. The London Spectator. The incisiveness and raciness of their style make the lectures decidedly worthy of attention. The discussions of the permanence of moral character and the self-propagating power of sin are striking and forcible in no small degree. The lectures on the barrenness of ethics without a personal God, and on “ Trinity and Tritheism,’’ are full of true and elevating thoughts, and genuine and wholesome sentiment. *** For sale by all booksellers. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of the price , by the Publishers, HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO., Boston. ■ 'f*rv Princeton leological Seminary Libraries 012 01184 9884 DATE DUE GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. V ' ■ . t ' . •> I • i ’ /