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Title: A Century of Science, and Other Essays

Author: John Fiske

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CENTURY OF
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A CENTURY OF SCIENCE

And Other Essays
BY

JOHN FISKE
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light:
It is daybreak everywhere.
Longfellow.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1899

COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY JOHN FISKE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

DEDICATORY EPISTLE TO THOMAS
SERGEANT PERRY,
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE KEIO
GIJUKU, AT TOKYO.

Dear Tom,—It has long been my wish to make you the patron saint or
tutelar divinity of some book of mine, and it has lately occurred to me that
it ought to be a book of the desultory and chatty sort that would remind you,
in your present exile at the world's eastern rim, of the many quiet evenings
of old, when, over a tankard of mellow October and pipe of fragrant
Virginia, while Yule logs crackled blithely and the music of pattering sleet
was upon the window-pane, we used to roam in fancy through the universe
and give free utterance to such thoughts, sedate or frivolous, as seemed to
us good. I dare say the present volume may serve as an epitome of many
such old-time sessions of sweet discourse, which I trust we shall by and by
repeat and renew.
But there is one link of association which in my mind especially connects
you with the present occasion. My theory of the causes and effects of the
prolongation of human infancy, with reference to the evolution of man, was
first published in the "North American Review" for October, 1873, when
you were the editor of that periodical. The article, which was entitled "The
Progress from Brute to Man," was made up of two chapters of my "Outlines
of Cosmic Philosophy" (part ii. chaps, xxi., xxii.), which was published a
year later, in October, 1874. The value of the theory therein set forth was at
once recognized by many leading naturalists. In the address of Vice-
President Edward Morse, before the American Association, at its meeting at
Buffalo in 1876, my theory receives extended notice as one of the most
important contributions yet made to the Doctrine of Evolution; and it is
declared that I have given "for the first time a rational explanation of the
origin and persistence of family relations, and thence communal [i. e., clan]
relations, and, finally, of society."[1]

Uncontrollable circumstances have prevented my giving to the further
elaboration of this infancy theory the time and attention which it deserves
and demands; but in my little book, "The Destiny of Man," published in
1884, I gave a popular exposition of it which has made it widely known in
all English-speaking countries and on the continent of Europe, as well as
among your worthy Japanese neighbours, Tom, who have done me the
honour to translate some of my books into their vernacular. The theory has
become still further popularized through having furnished the starting-point
for some of the most characteristic speculations of the late Henry
Drummond. In these and other ways my infancy theory has so far entered
into the current thoughts of the present age that people have (naturally
enough) begun to forget with whom it originated. For example, in the recent
book, "Through Nature to God," while criticising a remark of Huxley's, I
found it desirable to make a restatement of the infancy theory; whereupon a
friendly reviewer, referring to that particular part of the book, observes that
"of course" it makes no pretensions to originality, but is simply my lucid
summary of speculations with which every reader of Darwin, Spencer,
Huxley, Romanes, and Drummond is familiar! In point of fact, not the
faintest suggestion of this infancy theory can be found in all the writings of
Darwin, Huxley, and Romanes. In Spencer's "Sociology," vol. i. p. 630, it is
briefly mentioned with approval as an important contribution originating
with me; and in Drummond's "Ascent of Man," which is really built upon it,
credit is cordially given me.[2]
Indeed, down to the present time, I have been left almost in exclusive
possession of that area of speculation which is occupied with the genesis of
Man as connected with that prolongation of infancy which first began to
become conspicuous in the manlike apes. There are many who assent to
what I have put forth, but few who seem inclined to enter that difficult field
on the marchland between biology, psychology, and sociology. Doubtless
this is because the attention of the scientific world has for forty years been
absorbed in the more general questions concerning the competency of
natural selection, the causes of variation, the agencies alleged by Lamarck,
and in these latter days Weismannism, etc. In course of time, however, the
more special problems connected with man's genesis will surely come
uppermost, and then we may hope to see the causes of the lengthening of
infancy investigated by thinkers duly conversant alike with psychology and
embryology.

Questions of priority in originating new theories may not greatly interest the
general reader, but you and I feel interested in preventing any
misconception in the present case; and it was thus that the careless remark
of the friendly reviewer led me to insert in the present volume the shorthand
report of some autobiographical remarks on the infancy theory. In reading
the proof-sheets I have noticed that the book contains elsewhere many
allusions to personal experiences. This feature, which was quite unforeseen,
will not fail to commend it all the more strongly to you, my ancient friend
and comrade. As for readers in general, I may best conclude in the words of
old Aaron Rathbone, whose book entitled "The Surveyor" was dated "from
my lodging at the house of M. Roger Bvrgis, against Salisburie-house-gate,
in the Strand, this sixt of Nouember, 1616." This wise and placid
philosopher saith: "To perswade the courteous were causelesse, for they are
naturally kind; and to diswade the captious were bootless, for they will not
be diverted. Let the first make true vse of these my labours, and they shall
find pleasure and profit therein; let the last (if they like not) leave it, and it
shall not offend them."
Wherefore let me, without further ado, subscribe myself,
E
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y
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s
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.

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8
9
9
.

CONTENTS
PAGE

I. A Century of Science 1

II. The Doctrine of Evolution: its Scope and Purport 39

III. Edward Livingston Youmans 64

IV. The Part played by Infancy in the Evolution of Man 100

V. The Origins of Liberal Thought in America 122

VI. Sir Harry Vane 154

VII. The Arbitration Treaty 166

VIII. Francis Parkman 194

IX. Edward Augustus Freeman 265

X. Cambridge as Village and City 286

XI. A Harvest of Irish Folk-Lore 319

XII. Guessing at Half and Multiplying by Two 333

XIII. Forty Years of Bacon-Shakespeare Folly 350

XIV. Some Cranks and their Crotchets 405

Note 461

Index 467

A CENTURY OF SCIENCE

I

A CENTURY OF SCIENCE[3]

In the course of the year 1774 Dr. Priestley found that by heating red
precipitate, or what we now call red oxide of mercury, a gas was obtained,
which he called "dephlogisticated air," or, in other words, air deprived of
phlogiston, and therefore incombustible. This incombustible air was
oxygen, and such was man's first introduction to the mighty element that
makes one fifth of the atmosphere in volume and eight ninths of the ocean
by weight, besides forming one half of the earth's solid crust, and
supporting all fire and all life. I know of nothing which can reveal to us
with such startling vividness the extent of the gulf which the human mind
has traversed within little more than a hundred years. It is scarcely possible
to put ourselves back into the frame of mind in which oxygen was
unknown, and no man could tell what takes place when a log of wood is
burned on the hearth. The language employed by Dr. Priestley carries us
back to the time when chemistry was beginning to emerge from alchemy. It
was Newton's contemporary, Stahl, who invented the doctrine of phlogiston
in order to account for combustion. Stahl supposed that all combustible
substances contain a common element, or fire principle, which he called
phlogiston, and which escapes in the process of combustion. Indeed, the act
of combustion was supposed to consist in the escape of phlogiston. Whither
this mysterious fire principle betook itself, after severing its connection
with visible matter, was not too clearly indicated, but of course it was to
that limbo far larger than purgatory, the oubliette wherein have perished
men's unsuccessful guesses at truth. Stahl's theory, however, marked a great
advance upon what had gone before, inasmuch as it stated the case in such a
way as to admit of direct refutation. Little use was made of the balance in
those days, but when it was observed that zinc and lead and sundry other
substances grow heavier in burning, it seemed hardly correct to suppose
that anything had escaped from these substances. To this objection the
friends of the fire principle replied that phlogiston might weigh less than
nothing, or, in other words, might be endowed with a positive attribute of

levity, so that to subtract it from a body would increase the weight of the
body. This was a truly shifty method of reasoning, in which your
phlogiston, with its plus sign to-day and its minus sign to-morrow, exhibited
a skill in facing both ways like that of an American candidate for public
office.
Into the structure of false science that had been reared upon these
misconceptions Dr. Priestley's discovery of oxygen came like a bombshell.
As in so many other like cases, the discovery was destined to come at about
that time; it was made again three years afterward by the Swedish chemist
Scheele, without knowing what Priestley had done. The study of oxygen
soon pointed to the conclusion that, whatever may escape during
combustion, oxygen is always united with the burning substance. Then
came Lavoisier with his balance, and proved that whenever a thing burns it
combines with Priestley's oxygen, and the weight of the resulting product is
equal to the weight of the substance burned plus the weight of oxygen
abstracted from the air. Thus combustion is simply union with oxygen, and
nothing escapes. No room was left for phlogiston. Men's thoughts were
dephlogisticated from that time forth. The balance became the ruling
instrument of chemistry. One further step led to the generalization that in all
chemical changes there is no such thing as increase or diminution, but only
substitution, and upon this fundamental truth of the indestructibility of
matter all modern chemistry rests.
When we look at the stupendous edifice of science that has been reared
upon this basis, when we consider the almost limitless sweep of inorganic
and organic chemistry, the myriad applications to the arts, the depth to
which we have been enabled to penetrate into the innermost proclivities of
matter, it seems almost incredible that a single century can have witnessed
so much achievement. We must admit the fact, but our minds cannot take it
in; we are staggered by it. One thing stands out prominently, as we contrast
this rapid and coherent progress with the barrenness of ancient alchemy and
the chaotic fumbling of the Stahl period: we see the importance of
untrammelled inquiry, and of sound methods of investigation which admit
of verification at every step. That humble instrument the balance, working
in the service of sovereign law, has been a beneficent Jinni unlocking the
portals of many a chamber wherein may be heard the secret harmonies of
the world.

It is not only in chemistry, however, that the marvellous advance of science
has been exhibited. In all directions the quantity of achievement has been so
marked that it is worth our while to take a brief general survey of the whole,
to see if haply we may seize upon the fundamental characteristics of this
great progress. In the first place, a glance at astronomy will show us how
much our knowledge of the world has enlarged in space since the day when
Priestley set free his dephlogisticated air.
The known solar system then consisted of sun, moon, earth, and the five
planets visible to the naked eye. Since the days of the Chaldæan shepherds
there had been no additions except the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Herschel's telescope was to win its first triumph in the detection of Uranus
in 1781. The Newtonian theory, promulgated in 1687, had come to be
generally accepted, but there were difficulties remaining, connected with
the planetary perturbations and the inequalities in the moon's motion, which
the glorious labours of Lagrange and Laplace were presently to explain and
remove,—labours which bore their full fruition two generations later, in
1845, when the discovery of the planet Neptune, by purely mathematical
reasoning from the observed effects of its gravitation, furnished for the
Newtonian theory the grandest confirmation known in the whole history of
science. In Priestley's time, sidereal astronomy was little more than the
cataloguing of such stars and nebulæ as could be seen with the telescopes
then at command. Sixty years after the discovery of oxygen the distance of
no star had been measured. In 1836, Auguste Comte assured his readers that
such a feat was impossible, that the Newtonian theory could never be
proved to extend through the interstellar spaces, and that the matter of
which stars are composed may be entirely different in its properties from
the matter with which we are familiar. Within three years the first part of
this prophecy was disproved when Bessel measured the distance of the star
61 Cygni; since then the study of the movements of double and multiple
stars has shown them conforming to Newton's law; and as for the matter of
which they are composed, we are introduced to a chapter in science which
even the boldest speculator of half a century ago would have derided as a
baseless dream. The discovery of spectrum analysis and the invention of the
spectroscope, completed in 1861 by Kirchhoff and Bunsen, have supplied
data for the creation of a stellar chemistry; showing us, for example,
hydrogen in Sirius and the nebula of Orion, sodium and potassium, calcium
and iron, in the sun; demonstrating the gaseous character of nebulæ; and

revealing chemical elements hitherto unknown, such as helium, a mineral
first detected in the sun's atmosphere, and afterward found in Norway. A
still more wonderful result of spectrum analysis is our ability to measure the
motion of a star through a slight shifting in the wave-lengths of the light
which it emits. In this way we can measure, in the absence of all parallax,
the direct approach or recession of a star; and in somewhat similar wise has
been discovered the cause of the long-observed variations of brilliancy in
Algol. That star, which is about the size of our sun, has a dark companion
not much smaller, and the twain are moving around a third body, also dark:
the result is an irregular series of eclipses of Algol, and the gravitative
forces exerted by the two invisible stars are estimated through their effects
upon the spectrum of the bright star. In no department of science has a
region of inference been reached more remote than this. From such a flight
one may come back gently to more familiar regions while remarking upon
the manifold results that have begun to be attained from the application of a
sensitive photograph plate to the telescope in place of the human eye. It
may suffice to observe that we thus catch the fleeting aspects of sun-spots
and preserve them for study; we detect the feeble self-luminosity still left in
such a slowly cooling planet as Jupiter; and since the metallic plate does not
quickly weary, like the human retina, the cumulative effects of its long
exposure reveal the existence of countless stars and nebulæ too remote to be
otherwise reached by any visual process. By such photographic methods
George Darwin has caught an equatorial ring in the act of detachment from
its parent nebula, and the successive phases of the slow process may be
watched and recorded by generations of mortals yet to come.
To appreciate the philosophic bearings of this vast enlargement of the
mental horizon, let us recall just what happened when Newton first took the
leap from earth into the celestial spaces by establishing a law of physics to
which moon and apple alike conform. It was the first step, and a very long
one, toward proving that the terrestrial and celestial worlds are dynamically
akin, that the same kind of order prevails through both alike, that both are
parts of one cosmic whole. So late as Kepler's time, it was possible to argue
that the planets are propelled in their elliptic orbits by forces quite unlike
any that are disclosed by purely terrestrial experience, and therefore perhaps
inaccessible to any rational interpretation. Such imaginary lines of
demarcation between earth and heavens were forever swept away by
Newton, and the recent work of spectrum analysis simply completes the

demonstration that the remotest bodies which the photographic telescope
can disclose are truly part and parcel of the dynamic world in which we
live.
All this enlargement of the mental horizon, from Newton to Kirchhoff, had
reference to space. The nineteenth century has witnessed an equally notable
enlargement with reference to time. The beginnings of scientific geology
were much later than those of astronomy. The phenomena were less striking
and far more complicated; it took longer, therefore, to bring men's minds to
bear upon them. Antagonism on the part of theologians was also slower in
dying out. The complaint against Newton, that he substituted Blind
Gravitation for an Intelligent Deity, was nothing compared to the abuse that
was afterwards lavished upon geologists for disturbing the accepted Biblical
chronology. At the time when Priestley discovered oxygen, educated men
were still to be found who could maintain with a sober face that fossils had
been created already dead and petrified, just for the fun of the thing. The
writings of Buffon were preparing men's minds for the belief that the earth's
crust has witnessed many and important changes, but there could be no
scientific geology until further progress was made in physics and chemistry.
It was only in 1763 that Joseph Black discovered latent heat, and thus gave
us a clue to what happens when water freezes and melts, or when it is
turned into steam. It was in 1786 that the publication of James Hutton's
"Theory of the Earth" ushered in the great battle between Neptunians and
Plutonists which prepared the way for scientific geology. When the new
science won its first great triumph with Lyell in 1830, the philosophic
purport of the event was the same that was being proclaimed by the
progress of astronomy. Newton proved that the forces which keep the
planets in their orbits are not strange or supernatural forces, but just such as
we see in operation upon this earth every moment of our lives. Geologists
before Lyell had been led to the conclusion that the general aspect of the
earth's surface with which we are familiar is by no means its primitive or its
permanent aspect, but that there has been a succession of ages, in which the
relations of land and water, of mountain and plain, have varied to a very
considerable extent; in which soils and climates have undergone most
complicated vicissitudes; and in which the earth's vegetable products and its
animal populations have again and again assumed new forms, while the old
forms have passed away. In order to account for such wholesale changes,
geologists were at first disposed to imagine violent catastrophes brought

about by strange agencies,—agencies which were perhaps not exactly
supernatural, but were in some vague, unspecified way different from those
which are now at work in the visible and familiar order of nature. But Lyell
proved that the very same kind of physical processes which are now going
on about us would suffice, during a long period of time, to produce the
changes in the inorganic world which distinguish one geological period
from another. Here, in Lyell's geological investigations, there was for the
first time due attention paid to the immense importance of the prolonged
and cumulative action of slight and unobtrusive causes. The continual
dropping that wears away stones might have served as a text for the whole
series of beautiful researches of which he first summed up the results in
1830. As astronomy was steadily advancing toward the proof that in the
abysses of space the physical forces at work are the same as our terrestrial
forces, so geology, in carrying us back to enormously remote periods of
time, began to teach that the forces at work have all along been the same
forces that are operative now. Of course, in that early stage when the earth's
crust was in process of formation, when the temperature was excessively
high, there were phenomena here such as can no longer be witnessed, but
for which we must look to big planets like Jupiter; in that intensely hot
atmosphere violent disturbances occur, and chemical elements are
dissociated which we are accustomed to find in close combination here. But
ever since our earth cooled to a point at which its solid crust acquired
stability, since the earliest mollusks and vertebrates began to swim in the
seas and worms to crawl in the damp ground, if at almost any time we could
have come here on a visit, we should doubtless have found things going on
at measured pace very much as at present,—here and there earthquake and
avalanche, fire and flood, but generally rain falling, sunshine quickening,
herbage sprouting, creatures of some sort browsing, all as quiet and
peaceful as a daisied field in June, without the slightest visible presage of
the continuous series of minute secular changes that were gradually to
transform a Carboniferous world into what was by and by to be a Jurassic
world, and that again into what was after a while to be an Eocene world,
and so on, until the aspect of the world that we know to-day should
noiselessly steal upon us.
When once the truth of Lyell's conclusions began to be distinctly realized,
their influence upon men's habits of thought and upon the drift of
philosophic speculation was profound. The conception of Evolution was

irresistibly forced upon men's attention. It was proved beyond question that
the world was not created in the form in which we find it to-day, but has
gone through many phases, of which the later are very different from the
earlier; and it was shown that, so far as the inorganic world is concerned,
the changes can be much more satisfactorily explained by a reference to the
ceaseless, all-pervading activity of gentle, unobtrusive causes such as we
know than by an appeal to imaginary catastrophes such as we have no
means of verifying. It began to appear, also, that the facts which form the
subject-matter of different departments of science are not detached and
independent groups of facts, but that all are intimately related one with
another, and that all may be brought under contribution in illustrating the
history of cosmic events. It was a sense of this interdependence of different
departments that led Auguste Comte to write his "Philosophie Positive," the
first volume of which appeared in 1830, in which he sought to point out the
methods which each science has at command for discovering truth, and the
manner in which each might be made to contribute toward a sound body of
philosophic doctrine. The attempt had a charm and a stimulus for many
minds, but failed by being enlisted in the service of sundry sociological
vagaries upon which the author's mind was completely wrecked.
"Positivism," from being the name of a potent scientific method, became
the name of one more among the myriad ways of having a church and
regulating the details of life.
While the ponderous mechanical intellect of Comte was striving to elicit the
truth from themes beyond its grasp, one of the world's supreme poets had
already discerned some of the deeper aspects of science presently to be set
forth. By temperament and by training, Goethe was one of the first among
evolutionists. The belief in an evolution of higher from lower organisms
could not fail to be strongly suggested to a mind like his as soon as the
classification of plants and animals had begun to be conducted upon
scientific principles. It is not for nothing that a table of classes, orders,
families, genera, and species, when graphically laid out, resembles a family
tree. It was not long after Linnæus that believers in some sort of a
development theory, often fantastic enough, began to be met with. The facts
of morphology gave further suggestions in the same direction. Such facts
were first generalized on a grand scale by Goethe in his beautiful little essay
on "The Metamorphoses of Plants," written in 1790, and his "Introduction
to Morphology," written in 1795, but not published until 1807. In these

profound treatises, which were too far in advance of their age to exert much
influence at first, Goethe laid the philosophic foundations of comparative
anatomy in both vegetal and animal worlds. The conceptions of
metamorphosis and of homology, which were thus brought forward, tended
powerfully toward a recognition of the process of evolution. It was shown
that what under some circumstances grows into a stem with a whorl of
leaves, under other circumstances grows into a flower; it was shown that in
the general scheme of the vertebrate skeleton a pectoral fin, a fore leg, and a
wing occupy the same positions: thus was strongly suggested the idea that
what under some circumstances developed into a fin might under other
circumstances develop into a leg or a wing. The revelations of
palæontology, showing various extinct adult forms, with corresponding
organs in various degrees of development, went far to strengthen this
suggestion, until an unanswerable argument was reached with the study of
rudimentary organs, which have no meaning except as remnants of a
vanished past during which the organism has been changing. The study of
comparative embryology pointed in the same direction; for it was soon
observed that the embryos and larvæ of the higher forms of each group of
animals pass, "in the course of their development, through a series of stages
in which they more or less completely resemble the lower forms of the
group."[4]
Before the full significance of such facts of embryology and morphology
could be felt, it was necessary that the work of classification should be
carried far beyond the point at which it had been left by Linnæus. In
mapping out the relationships in the animal kingdom, the great Swedish
naturalist had relied less than his predecessors upon external or superficial
characteristics; the time was arriving when classification should be based
upon a thorough study of internal structure, and this was done by a noble
company of French anatomists, among whom Cuvier was chief. It was
about 1817 that Cuvier's gigantic work reached its climax in bringing
palæontology into alliance with systematic zoölogy, and effecting that grand
classification of animals in space and time which at once cast into the shade
all that had gone before it. During the past fifty years there have been great
changes made in Cuvier's classification, especially in the case of the lower
forms of animal life. His class of Radiata has been broken up, other
divisions in his invertebrate world have been modified beyond recognition,
his vertebrate scheme has been overhauled in many quarters, his attempt to

erect a distinct order for Man has been overthrown. Among the great
anatomists concerned in this work the greatest name is that of Huxley. The
classification most generally adopted to-day is Huxley's, but it is rather a
modification of Cuvier's than a new development. So enduring has been the
work of the great Frenchman.
With Cuvier the analysis of the animal organism made some progress in
such wise that anatomists began to concentrate their attention upon the
study of the development and characteristic functions of organs.
Philosophically, this was a long step in advance, but a still longer one was
taken at about the same time by that astonishing youth whose career has no
parallel in the history of science. When Xavier Bichat died in 1802, in his
thirty-first year, he left behind him a treatise on comparative anatomy in
which the subject was worked up from the study of the tissues and their
properties. The path thus broken by Bichat led to the cell doctrine of
Schleiden and Schwann, matured about 1840, which remains, with some
modifications, the basis of modern biology. The advance along these lines
contributed signally to the advancement of embryology, which reached a
startling height in 1829 with the publication of Baer's memorable treatise, in
which the development of an ovum is shown to consist in a change from
homogeneity to heterogeneity through successive differentiations. But while
Baer thus arrived at the very threshold of the law of evolution, he was not in
the true sense an evolutionist; he had nothing to say to phylogenetic
evolution, or the derivation of the higher forms of life from lower forms
through physical descent with modifications. Just so with Cuvier. When he
effected his grand classification, he prepared the way most thoroughly for a
general theory of evolution, but he always resisted any such inference from
his work. He was building better than he knew.
The hesitancy of such men as Cuvier and Baer was no doubt due partly to
the apparent absence of any true cause for physical modifications in
species, partly to the completeness with which their own great work
absorbed their minds. Often in the history of science we witness the
spectacle of a brilliant discoverer travelling in triumph along some new
path, but stopping just short of the goal which subsequent exploration has
revealed. There it stands looming up before his face, but he is blind to its
presence through the excess of light which he has already taken in. The
intellectual effort already put forth has left no surplus for any further sweep

of comprehension, so that further advance requires a fresher mind and a
new start with faculties unjaded and unwarped. To discover a great truth
usually requires a succession of thinkers. Among the eminent anatomists
who in the earlier part of our century were occupied with the classification
of animals, there were some who found themselves compelled to believe in
phylogenetic evolution, although they could frame no satisfactory theory to
account for it. The weight of evidence was already in favour of such
evolution, and these men could not fail to see it. Foremost among them was
Jean Baptiste Lamarck, whose work was of supreme importance. His views
were stated in 1809 in his "Philosophic Zoölogique," and further illustrated
in 1815, in his voluminous treatise on invertebrate animals. Lamarck
entirely rejected the notion of special creations, and he pointed out some of
the important factors in evolution, especially the law that organs and
faculties tend to increase with exercise, and to diminish with disuse. His
weakest point was the disposition to imagine some inherent and ubiquitous
tendency toward evolution, whereas a closer study of nature has taught us
that evolution occurs only where there is a concurrence of favourable
conditions. Among others who maintained some theory of evolution were
the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires, father and son, and the two great botanists,
Naudin in France and Hooker in England. In 1852 the case of evolution as
against special creations was argued by Herbert Spencer with convincing
force, and in 1855 appeared "The Principles of Psychology," by the same
author, a book which is from beginning to end an elaborate illustration of
the process of evolution, and is divided from everything that came before it
by a gulf as wide as that which divides the Copernican astronomy from the
Ptolemaic.
The followers of Cuvier regarded the methods and results of these
evolutionists with strong disapproval. In the excess of such a feeling, they
even went so far as to condemn all philosophic thinking on subjects within
the scope of natural history as visionary and unscientific. Why seek for any
especial significance in the fact that every spider and every lobster is made
up of just twenty segments? Is it not enough to know the fact? Children
must not ask too many questions. It is the business of science to gather
facts, not to seek for hidden implications. Such was the mental attitude into
which men of science were quite commonly driven, between 1830 and
1860, by their desire to blink the question of evolution. A feeling grew up
that the true glory of a scientific career was to detect for the two hundredth

time an asteroid, or to stick a pin through a beetle with a label attached
bearing your own latinized name, Browni, or Jonesii, or Robinsoniense.
This feeling was especially strong in France, and was not confined to
physical science. It was exhibited a few years later in the election of some
Swedish or Norwegian naturalist (whose name I forget) to the French
Academy of Science instead of Charles Darwin: the former had described
some new kind of fly, the latter was only a theorizer! The study of origins in
particular was to be frowned upon. In 1863 the Linguistic Society of Paris
passed a by-law that no communications bearing upon the origin of
language would be received. In the same mood, Sir Henry Maine's treatise
on "Ancient Law" was condemned at a leading American university: it was
enough for us to know our own laws; those of India might interest British
students who might have occasion to go there, but not Americans. Such
crude notions, utterly hostile to the spirit of science, were unduly favoured
fifty years ago by the persistent unwillingness to submit the phenomena of
organic nature to the kind of scientific explanation which facts from all
quarters were urging upon us.
During the period from 1830 to 1860, the factor in evolution which had
hitherto escaped detection was gradually laid hold of and elaborately
studied by Charles Darwin. In the nature of his speculations, and the
occasion that called them forth, he was a true disciple of Lyell. The work of
that great geologist led directly up to Darwinism. As long as it was
supposed that each geologic period was separated from the periods before
and after it by Titanic convulsions which revolutionized the face of the
globe, it was possible for men to acquiesce in the supposition that these
convulsions wrought an abrupt and a wholesale destruction of organic life,
and that the lost forms were replaced by an equally abrupt and wholesale
supernatural creation of new forms at the beginning of each new period.
But, as people ceased to believe in the convulsions, such an explanation
began to seem improbable, and it was completely discredited by the fact
that many kinds of plants and animals have persisted with little or no
change during several successive periods, side by side with other kinds in
which there have been extensive variation and extinction.
In connection with this a fact of great significance was elicited. Between the
fauna and flora of successive periods in the same geographical region there
is apt to be a manifest family likeness, indicating that the later are

connected with the earlier through the bonds of physical descent. It was a
case of this sort that attracted Darwin's attention in 1835. The plants and
animals of the Galapagos Islands are either descended, with specific
modifications, from those of the mainland of Ecuador, or else there must
have been an enormous number of special creations. The case is one which
at a glance presents the notion of special creations in an absurd light. But
what could have caused the modification? What was wanted was, to be able
to point to some agency, similar to agencies now in operation, and therefore
intelligible, which could be proved to be capable of making specific
changes in plants and animals. Darwin's solution of the problem was so
beautiful, it seems now so natural and inevitable, that we may be in danger
of forgetting how complicated and abstruse the problem really was. Starting
from the known experiences of breeders of domestic animals and cultivated
plants, and duly considering the remarkable and sometimes astonishing
changes that are wrought by simple selection, the problem was to detect
among the multifarious phenomena of organic nature any agency capable of
accomplishing what man thus accomplishes by selection. In detecting the
agency of natural selection, working perpetually through the preservation of
favoured individuals and races in the struggle for existence, Darwin found
the true cause for which men were waiting. With infinite patience and
caution, he applied his method of explanation to one group of organic
phenomena after another, meeting in every quarter with fresh and often
unexpected verification. After more than twenty years, a singular
circumstance led him to publish an account of his researches. The same
group of facts had set a younger naturalist to work upon the same problem,
and a similar process of thought had led to the same solution. Without
knowing what Darwin had done, Alfred Russel Wallace made the same
discovery, and sent from the East Indies, in 1858, his statement of it to
Darwin as to the man whose judgment upon it he should most highly prize.
This made publication necessary for Darwin. The vast treasures of theory
and example which he had accumulated were given to the world, the notion
of special creations was exploded, and the facts of phylogenetic evolution
won general acceptance.
Under the influence of this great achievement, men in every department of
science began to work in a more philosophical spirit. Naturalists,
abandoning the mood of the stamp collectors, saw in every nook and corner
some fresh illustration of Darwin's views. One serious obstacle to any

general statement of the doctrine of evolution was removed. It was in 1861
that Herbert Spencer began to publish such a general systematic statement.
His point of departure was the point reached by Baer in 1829, the change
from homogeneity to heterogeneity. The theory of evolution had already
received in Spencer's hands a far more complete and philosophical
treatment than ever before, when the discovery of natural selection came to
supply the one feature which it lacked. Spencer's thought is often more
profound than Darwin's, but he would be the first to admit the
indispensableness of natural selection to the successful working-out of his
own theory.
The work of Spencer is beyond precedent for comprehensiveness and depth.
He began by showing that as a generalization of embryology Baer's law
needs important emendations, and he went on to prove that, as thus
rectified, the law of the development of an ovum is the law which covers
the evolution of our planetary system, and of life upon the earth's surface in
all its myriad manifestations. In Spencer's hands, the time-honoured
Nebular Theory propounded by Immanuel Kant in 1755, the earliest of all
scientific theories of evolution, took on fresh life and meaning; and at the
same time the theories of Lamarck and Darwin as to organic evolution were
worked up along with his own profound generalization of the evolution of
mind into one coherent and majestic whole. Mankind have reason to be
grateful that the promise of that daring prospectus which so charmed and
dazzled us in 1860 is at last fulfilled; that after six-and-thirty years, despite
all obstacles and discouragements, the Master's work is virtually done.
Such a synthesis could not have been achieved, nor even attempted, without
the extraordinary expansion of molecular physics that marked the first half
of the nineteenth century. When Priestley discovered oxygen, the
undulatory theory of light, the basis of all modern physics, had not been
established. It had indeed been propounded as long ago as 1678 by the
illustrious Christian Huyghens, whom we should also remember as the
discoverer of Saturn's rings and the inventor of the pendulum clock. But
Huyghens was in advance of his age, and the overshadowing authority of
Newton, who maintained a rival hypothesis, prevented due attention being
paid to the undulatory theory until the beginning of the present century,
when it was again taken up and demonstrated by Fresnel and Thomas
Young. About the same time, our fellow countryman, Count Rumford, was

taking the lead in that series of researches which culminated in the
discovery of the mechanical equivalent of heat by Dr. Joule in 1843. One of
Priestley's earliest books, the one which made him a doctor of laws and a
fellow of the Royal Society, was a treatise on electricity, published in 1767.
It was a long step from that book to the one in which the Danish physicist
Oersted, in 1820, demonstrated the intimate correlation between electricity
and magnetism, thus preparing the way for Faraday's great discovery of
magneto-electric induction in 1831. By the middle of our century the work
in these various departments of physics had led to the detection of the
deepest truth in science,—the law of correlation and conservation, which
we owe chiefly to Helmholtz, Mayer, and Grove. It was proved that light
and heat, and the manifestations of force which we group together under the
name of electricity, are various modes of undulatory motion transformable
one into another; and that, in the operations of nature, energy is never
annihilated, but only changed from one form into another. This
generalization includes the indestructibility of matter, and thus lies at the
bottom of all chemistry and physics and of all science.
Returning to that chemistry with which we started, we may recall two laws
that were propounded early in the century, one of which was instantly
adopted, while the other had to wait for its day. Dalton's law of definite and
multiple proportions has been ever since 1808 the corner stone of chemical
science, and the atomic theory by which he sought to explain the law has
exercised a profound influence upon all modern speculation. The other law,
announced by Avogadro in 1811, that, "under the same conditions of
pressure and temperature, equal volumes of all gaseous substances, whether
elementary or compound, contain the same number of molecules," was
neglected for nearly fifty years, and then, when it was taken up and applied,
it remodelled the whole science of chemistry, and threw a flood of light
upon the internal constitution of matter. In this direction a new world of
speculation is opening up before us, full of wondrous charm. The amazing
progress made since Priestley's day may be summed up in a single contrast.
In 1781 Cavendish ascertained the bare fact that water is made up of
oxygen and hydrogen; within ninety years from that time Sir William
Thomson was able to tell us that "if the drop of water were magnified to the
size of the earth, the constituent atoms would be larger than peas, but not so
large as billiard balls." Such a statement is confessedly provisional, but,
allowing for this, the contrast is no less striking.

Concerning the various and complicated applications of physical science to
the arts, by which human life has been so profoundly affected in the present
century, a mere catalogue of them would tax our attention to little purpose.
As my object in the present sketch is simply to trace the broad outlines of
advance in pure science, I pass over these applications, merely observing
that the perpetual interaction between theory and practice is such that each
new invention is liable to modify the science in which it originated, either
by encountering fresh questions or by suggesting new methods, or in both
these ways. The work of men like Pasteur and Koch cannot fail to influence
biological theory as much as medical practice. The practical uses of
electricity are introducing new features into the whole subject of molecular
physics, and in this region, I suspect, we are to look for some of the most
striking disclosures of the immediate future.
A word must be said of the historical sciences, which have witnessed as
great changes as any others, mainly through the introduction of the
comparative method of inquiry. The first two great triumphs of the
comparative method were achieved contemporaneously in two fields of
inquiry very remote from one another: the one was the work of Cuvier,
above mentioned; the other was the founding of the comparative philology
of the Aryan languages by Franz Bopp, in 1816. The work of Bopp exerted
as powerful an influence throughout all the historical fields of study as
Cuvier exerted in biology. The young men whose minds were receiving
their formative impulses between 1825 and 1840, under the various
influences of Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire, Lyell, Goethe, Bopp, and other such
great leaders, began themselves to come to the foreground as leaders of
thought about 1860: on the one hand, such men as Darwin, Gray, Huxley,
and Wallace; on the other hand, such as Kuhn and Schleicher, Maine,
Maurer, Mommsen, Freeman, and Tylor. The point of the comparative
method, in whatever field it may be applied, is that it brings before us a
great number of objects so nearly alike that we are bound to assume for
them an origin and general history in common, while at the same time they
present such differences in detail as to suggest that some have advanced
further than others in the direction in which all are travelling; some, again,
have been abruptly arrested, others perhaps even turned aside from the path.
In the attempt to classify such phenomena, whether in the historical or in
the physical sciences, the conception of development is presented to the
student with irresistible force. In the case of the Aryan languages, no one

would think of doubting their descent from a common original: just side by
side is the parallel case of one sub-group of the Aryan languages, namely,
the seven Romance languages which we know to have been developed out
of Latin since the Christian era. In these cases we can study the process of
change resulting in forms that are more or less divergent from their
originals. In one quarter a form is retained with little modification; in
another it is completely blurred, as the Latin metipsissimus becomes
medesimo in Italian, but mismo in Spanish, while in modern French there is
nothing left of it but même. So in Sanskrit and in Lithuanian we find a most
ingenious and elaborate system of conjugation and declension, which in
such languages as Greek and Latin is more or less curtailed and altered, and
which in English is almost completely lost. Yet in Old English there are
quite enough vestiges of the system to enable us to identify it with the
Lithuanian and Sanskrit.
So the student who applies the comparative method to the study of human
customs and institutions is continually finding usages, beliefs, or laws
existing in one part of the world that have long since ceased to exist in
another part; yet where they have ceased to exist they have often left
unmistakable traces of their former existence. In Australasia we find types
of savagery ignorant of the bow and arrow; in aboriginal North America, a
type of barbarism familiar with the art of pottery, but ignorant of domestic
animals or of the use of metals; among the earliest Romans, a higher type of
barbarism, familiar with iron and cattle, but ignorant of the alphabet. Along
with such gradations in material culture we find associated gradations in
ideas, in social structure, and in deep-seated customs. Thus, some kind of
fetishism is apt to prevail in the lower stages of barbarism, and some form
of polytheism in the higher stages. The units of composition in savage and
barbarous societies are always the clan, the phratry, and the tribe. In the
lower stages of barbarism we see such confederacies as those of the
Iroquois; in the highest stage, at the dawn of civilization, we begin to find
nations imperfectly formed by conquest without incorporation, like
aboriginal Peru or ancient Assyria. In the lower stages we see captives
tortured to death, then at a later stage sacrificed to the tutelar deities, then
later on enslaved and compelled to till the soil. Through the earlier stages of
culture, as in Australasia and aboriginal America, we find the marriage tie
so loose and paternity so uncertain that kinship is reckoned only through the
mother; but in the highest stage of barbarism, as among the earliest Greeks,

Romans, and Jews, the more definite patriarchal family is developed, and
kinship begins to be reckoned through the father. It is only after that stage is
reached that inheritance of property becomes fully developed, with the
substitution of individual ownership for clan ownership, and so on to the
development of testamentary succession, individual responsibility for delict
and crime, and the substitution of contract for status. In all such instances—
and countless others might be cited—we see the marks of an intelligible
progression, a line of development which human ideas and institutions have
followed. But in the most advanced societies we find numerous traces of
such states of things as now exist only among savage or barbarous societies.
Our own ancestors were once polytheists, with plenty of traces of fetishism.
They were organized in clans, phratries, and tribes. There was a time when
they used none but stone tools and weapons; when there was no private
property in land, and no political structure higher than the tribe. Among the
forefathers of the present civilized inhabitants of Europe are unmistakable
traces of human sacrifices, and of the reckoning of kinship through the
mother only. When we have come to survey large groups of facts of this
sort, the conclusion is irresistibly driven home to us that the more advanced
societies have gone through various stages now represented here and there
by less advanced societies; that there is a general path of social
development, along which, owing to special circumstances, some peoples
have advanced a great way, some a less way, some but a very little way; and
that by studying existing savages and barbarians we get a valuable clue to
the interpretation of prehistoric times. All these things are to-day
commonplaces among students of history and archæology; sixty years ago
they would have been scouted as idle vagaries. It is the introduction of such
methods of study that is making history scientific. It is enabling us to digest
the huge masses of facts that are daily poured in upon us by decipherers of
the past,—monuments, inscriptions, pottery, weapons, ethnological reports,
and all that sort of thing,—and to make all contribute toward a coherent
theory of the career of mankind upon the earth.
In the course of the foregoing survey one fact stands out with especial
prominence: it appears that about half a century ago the foremost minds of
the world, with whatever group of phenomena they were occupied, had
fallen, and were more and more falling, into a habit of regarding things, not
as having originated in the shape in which we now find them, but as having
been slowly metamorphosed from some other shape through the agency of

forces similar in nature to forces now at work. Whether planets, or
mountains, or mollusks, or subjunctive moods, or tribal confederacies were
the things studied, the scholars who studied them most deeply and most
fruitfully were those who studied them as phases in a process of
development. The work of such scholars has formed the strong current of
thought in our time, while the work of those who did not catch these new
methods has been dropped by the way and forgotten; and as we look back to
Newton's time we can see that ever since then the drift of scientific thought
has been setting in this direction, and with increasing steadiness and force.
Now, what does all this drift of scientific opinion during more than two
centuries mean? It can, of course, have but one meaning. It means that the
world is in a process of development, and that gradually, as advancing
knowledge has enabled us to take a sufficiently wide view of the world, we
have come to see that it is so. The old statical conception of a world created
all at once in its present shape was the result of very narrow experience; it
was entertained when we knew only an extremely small segment of the
world. Now that our experience has widened, it is outgrown and set aside
forever; it is replaced by the dynamical conception of a world in a perpetual
process of evolution from one state into another state. This dynamical
conception has come to stay with us. Our theories as to what the process of
evolution is may be more or less wrong and are confessedly tentative, as
scientific theories should be. But the dynamical conception, which is not the
work of any one man, be he Darwin or Spencer or any one else, but the
result of the cumulative experience of the last two centuries,—this is a
permanent acquisition. We can no more revert to the statical conception
than we can turn back the sun in his course. Whatever else the philosophy
of future generations may be, it must be some kind of a philosophy of
evolution.
Such is the scientific conquest achieved by the nineteenth century, a
marvellous story without any parallel in the history of human achievement.
The swiftness of the advance has been due partly to the removal of the
ancient legal and social trammels that beset free thinking in every
conceivable direction. It is largely due also to the use of correct methods of
research. The waste of intellectual effort has been less than in former ages.
The substitution of Lavoisier's balance for Stahl's a priori reasoning is one
among countless instances of this. Sound scientific method is a slow

acquisition of the human mind, and for its more rapid introduction, in
Priestley's time and since, we have largely to thank the example set by those
giants of a former age, Galileo and Kepler, Descartes and Newton.
The lessons that might be derived from our story are many. But one that we
may especially emphasize is the dignity of Man whose persistent seeking
for truth is rewarded by such fruits. We may be sure that the creature whose
intelligence measures the pulsations of molecules and unravels the secret of
the whirling nebula is no creature of a day, but the child of the universe, the
heir of all the ages, in whose making and perfecting is to be found the
consummation of God's creative work.
May, 1896.

II
THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION: ITS SCOPE AND
PURPORT[5]

It was not strange that among the younger men whose opinions were
moulded between 1830 and 1840 there should have been one of organizing
genius, with a mind inexhaustibly fertile in suggestions, who should
undertake to elaborate a general doctrine of evolution, to embrace in one
grand coherent system of generalizations all the minor generalizations
which workers in different departments of science were establishing. It is
this prodigious work of construction that we owe to Herbert Spencer. He is
the originator and author of what we know to-day as the doctrine of
evolution, the doctrine which undertakes to formulate and put into scientific
shape the conception of evolution toward which scientific investigation had
so long been tending. In the mind of the general public there seems to be
dire confusion with regard to Mr. Spencer and his relations to evolution and
to Darwinism. Sometimes, I believe, he is even supposed to be chiefly a
follower and expounder of Mr. Darwin! No doubt this is because so many
people mix up Darwinism with the doctrine of evolution, and have but the
vaguest and haziest notions as to what it is all about. As I explained above,
Mr. Darwin's great work was the discovery of natural selection, and the
demonstration of its agency in effecting specific changes in plants and
animals; and in that work he was completely original. But plants and
animals are only a part of the universe, though an important part, and with
regard to universal evolution or any universal formula for evolution
Darwinism had nothing to say. Such problems were beyond its scope.
The discovery of a universal formula for evolution, and the application of
this formula to many diverse groups of phenomena, have been the great
work of Mr. Spencer, and in this he has had no predecessor. His wealth of
originality is immense, and it is unquestionable. But as the most original
thinker must take his start from the general stock of ideas accumulated at
his epoch, and more often than not begins by following a clue given him by

somebody else, so it was with Mr. Spencer when, about forty years ago, he
was working out his doctrine of evolution. The clue was not given by Mr.
Darwin. Darwinism was not yet born. Mr. Spencer's theory was worked out
in all its parts, and many parts of it had been expounded in various
published volumes and essays before the publication of the "Origin of
Species."
The clue which Mr. Spencer followed was given him by the great
embryologist, Karl Ernst von Baer, and an adumbration of it may perhaps
be traced back through Kaspar Friedrich Wolf to Linnæus. Hints of it may
be found, too, in Goethe and in Schelling. The advance from simplicity to
complexity in the development of an egg is too obvious to be overlooked by
any one, and was remarked upon, I believe, by Harvey; but the analysis of
what that advance consists in was a wonderfully suggestive piece of work.
Baer's great book was published in 1829, just at the time when so many
stimulating ideas were being enunciated, and its significant title was
Entwickelungsgeschichte, or "History of Evolution." It was well known
that, so far as the senses can tell us, one ovum is indistinguishable from
another, whether it be that of a man, a fish, or a parrot. The ovum is a
structureless bit of organic matter, and, in acquiring structure along with its
growth in volume and mass, it proceeds through a series of differentiations,
and the result is a change from homogeneity to heterogeneity. Such was
Baer's conclusion, to which scanty justice is done by such a brief statement.
As all know, his work marked an epoch in the study of embryology; for to
mark the successive differentiations in the embryos of a thousand animals
was to write a thousand life histories upon correct principles.
Here it was that Mr. Spencer started. As a young man, he was chiefly
interested in the study of political government and in history so far as it
helps the study of politics. A philosophical student of such subjects must
naturally seek for a theory of evolution. If I may cite my own experience, it
was largely the absorbing and overmastering passion for the study of
history that first led me to study evolution in order to obtain a correct
method. When one has frequent occasion to refer to the political and social
progress of the human race, one likes to know what one is talking about.
Mr. Spencer needed a theory of progress. He could see that the civilized
part of mankind has undergone some change from a bestial, unsocial,
perpetually fighting stage of savagery into a partially peaceful and

comparatively humane and social stage, and that we may reasonably hope
that the change in this direction will go on. He could see, too, that along
with this change there has been a building-up of tribes into nations, a
division of labour, a differentiation of governmental functions, a series of
changes in the relations of the individual to the community. To see so much
as this is to whet one's craving for enlarged resources wherewith to study
human progress. Mr. Spencer had a wide, accurate, and often profound
acquaintance with botany, zoölogy, and allied studies. The question
naturally occurred to him, Where do we find the process of development
most completely exemplified from beginning to end, so that we can follow
and exhaustively describe its consecutive phases? Obviously in the
development of the ovum. There, and only there, do we get the whole
process under our eyes from the first segmentation of the yolk to the death
of the matured individual. In other groups of phenomena we can only see a
small part of what is going on; they are too vast for us, as in astronomy, or
too complicated, as in sociology. Elsewhere our evidences of development
are more or less piecemeal and scattered, but in embryology we do get, at
any rate, a connected story.
So Mr. Spencer took up Baer's problem, and carried the solution of it much
further than the great Esthonian naturalist. He showed that in the
development of the ovum the change from homogeneity to heterogeneity is
accompanied by a change from indefiniteness to definiteness; there are
segregations of similarly differentiated units resulting in the formation of
definite organs. He further showed that there is a parallel and equally
important change from incoherence to coherence; along with the division of
labour among the units there is an organization of labour: at first, among the
homogeneous units there is no subordination,—to subtract one would not
alter the general aspect; but at last, among the heterogeneous organs there is
such subordination and interdependence that to subtract any one is liable to
undo the whole process and destroy the organism. In other words,
integration is as much a feature of development as differentiation; the
change is not simply from a structureless whole into parts, but it is from a
structureless whole into an organized whole with a consensus of different
functions, and that is what we call an organism. So while Baer said that the
evolution of the chick is a change from homogeneity to heterogeneity
through successive differentiations, Mr. Spencer said that the evolution of
the chick is a continuous change from indefinite incoherent homogeneity to

definite coherent heterogeneity through successive differentiations and
integrations.
But Mr. Spencer had now done something more than describe exhaustively
the evolution of an individual organism. He had got a standard of high and
low degrees of organization; and the next thing in order was to apply this
standard to the whole hierarchy of animals and plants according to their
classified relationships and their succession in geological time. This was
done with most brilliant success. From the earliest records in the rocks, the
general advance in types of organization has been an advance in
definiteness, coherence, and heterogeneity. The method of evolution in the
life history of the animal and vegetal kingdoms has been like the method of
evolution in the life history of the individual.
To go into the inorganic world with such a formula might seem rash. But as
the growth of organization is essentially a particular kind of redistribution
of matter and motion, and as redistribution of matter and motion is going on
universally in the inorganic world, it is interesting to inquire whether, in
such simple approaches toward organization as we find, there is any
approach toward the characteristics of organic evolution as above described.
It was easy for Mr. Spencer to show that the change from a nebula into a
planetary system conforms to the definition of evolution in a way that is
most striking and suggestive. But in studying the inorganic world Mr.
Spencer was led to modify his formula in a way that vastly increased its
scope. He came to see that the primary feature of evolution is an integration
of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion. According to
circumstances, this process may or not be attended with extensive internal
rearrangements and development of organization. The continuous internal
rearrangement implied in the development of organization is possible only
where there is a medium degree of mobility among the particles, a plasticity
such as is secured only by those peculiar chemical combinations which
make up what we call organic matter. In the inorganic world, where there is
an approach to organization there is an adumbration of the law as realized
in the organic world. But in the former, what strikes us most is the
concentration of the mass with the retention of but little internal mobility; in
the latter, what strikes us most is the wonderful complication of the
transformations wrought by the immense amount of internal mobility

retained. These transformations are to us the mark, the distinguishing
feature, of life.
Having thus got the nature of the differences between the organic and
inorganic worlds into a series of suggestive formulas, the next thing to be
done was to inquire into the applicability of the law of evolution to the
higher manifestations of vital activity,—in other words, to psychical and
social life. Here it was easy to point out analogies between the development
of society and the development of an organism. Between a savage state of
society and a civilized state, it is easy to see the contrasts in complexity of
life, in division of labour, in interdependence and coherence of operations
and of interests. The difference resembles that between a vertebrate animal
and a worm.
Such analogies are instructive, because at the bottom of the phenomena
there is a certain amount of real identity. But Mr. Spencer did not stop with
analogies; he pursued his problem into much deeper regions. There is one
manifest distinction between a society and an organism. In the organism,
the conscious life, the psychical life, is not in the parts, but in the whole; but
in a society, there is no such thing as corporate consciousness: the psychical
life is all in the individual men and women. The highest development of this
psychical life is the end for which the world exists. The object of social life
is the highest spiritual welfare of the individual members of society. The
individual human soul thus comes to be as much the centre of the
Spencerian world as it was the centre of the world of mediæval theology;
and the history of the evolution of conscious intelligence becomes a theme
of surpassing interest.
This is the part of his subject which Mr. Spencer has handled in the most
masterly manner. Nothing in the literature of psychology is more
remarkable than the long-sustained analysis in which he starts with
complicated acts of quantitative reasoning and resolves them into their
elementary processes, and then goes on to simpler acts of judgment and
perception, and then down to sensation, and so on resolving and resolving,
until he gets down to the simple homogeneous psychical shocks or pulses in
the manifold compounding and recompounding of which all mental action
consists. Then, starting afresh from that conception of life as the continuous
adjustment of inner relations within the organism to outer relations in the
environment,—a conception of which he made such brilliant use in his

"Principles of Biology,"—he shows how the psychical life gradually
becomes specialized in certain classes of adjustments or correspondences,
and how the development of psychical life consists in a progressive
differentiation and integration of such correspondences. Intellectual life is
shown to have arisen by slow gradations, and the special interpretations of
reflex action, instinct, memory, reason, emotion, and will are such as to
make the "Principles of Psychology" indubitably the most suggestive book
upon mental phenomena that was ever written.
Toward the end of the first edition of the "Origin of Species," published in
1859, Mr. Darwin looked forward to a distant future when the conception of
gradual development might be applied to the phenomena of intelligence.
But the first edition of the "Principles of Psychology," in which this was so
successfully done, had already been published four years before,—in 1855,
—so that Mr. Darwin in later editions was obliged to modify his statement,
and confess that, instead of looking so far forward, he had better have
looked about him. I remember hearing Mr. Darwin laugh merrily over this
at his own expense.
This extension of the doctrine of evolution to psychical phenomena was
what made it a universal doctrine, an account of the way in which the
world, as we know it, has been evolved. There is no subject, great or small,
that has not come to be affected by the doctrine, and, whether men realize it
or not, there is no nook or corner in speculative science where they can get
away from the sweep of Mr. Spencer's thought.
This extension of the doctrine to psychical phenomena is by many people
misunderstood. The "Principles of Psychology" is a marvel of
straightforward and lucid statement; but, from its immense reach and from
the abstruseness of the subject, it is not easy reading. It requires a sustained
attention such as few people can command, except on subjects with which
they are already familiar. Hence few people read it in comparison with the
number who have somehow got it into their heads that Mr. Spencer tries to
explain mind as evolved out of matter, and is therefore a materialist. How
many worthy critics have been heard to object to the doctrine of evolution
that you cannot deduce mind from the primeval nebula, unless the germs of
mind were present already! But that is just what Mr. Spencer says himself. I
have heard him say it more than once, and his books contain many passages
of equivalent import.[6] He never misses an opportunity for attacking the

doctrine that mind can be explained as evolved from matter. But, in spite of
this, a great many people suppose that the gradual evolution of mind must
mean its evolution out of matter, and are deaf to arguments of which they
do not perceive the bearing. Hence Mr. Spencer is so commonly accredited
with the doctrine which he so earnestly repudiates.
But there is another reason why people are apt to suppose the doctrine of
evolution to be materialistic in its implications. There are able writers who
have done good service in illustrating portions of the general doctrine, and
are at the same time avowed materialists. One may be a materialist,
whatever his scientific theory of things; and to such a person the
materialism naturally seems to be a logical consequence from the scientific
theory. We have received this evening a communication from Professor
Ernst Haeckel, of Jena, in which he lays down five theses regarding the
doctrine of evolution:—
1. "The general doctrine appears to be already unassailably founded;
2. "Thereby every supernatural creation is completely excluded;
3. "Transformism and the theory of descent are inseparable constituent parts
of the doctrine of evolution;
4. "The necessary consequence of this last conclusion is the descent of man
from a series of vertebrates."
So far, very good; we are within the limits of scientific competence, where
Professor Haeckel is strong. But now, in his fifth thesis, he enters the region
of metaphysics,—the transcendental region, which science has no
competent methods of exploring,—and commits himself to a dogmatic
assertion:
5. "The beliefs in an 'immortal soul' and in 'a personal God' are therewith"
(i. e., with the four preceding statements) "completely ununitable (völlig
unvereinbar)."
Now, if Professor Haeckel had contented himself with asserting that these
two beliefs are not susceptible of scientific demonstration; if he had simply
said that they are beliefs concerning which a scientific man, in his scientific
capacity, ought to refrain from making assertions, because Science knows
nothing whatever about the subject, he would have occupied an
impregnable position. His fifth thesis would have been as indisputable as

his first four. But Professor Haeckel does not stop here. He declares
virtually that if an evolutionist is found entertaining the beliefs in a personal
God and an immortal soul, nevertheless these beliefs are not philosophically
reconcilable with his scientific theory of things, but are mere remnants of an
old-fashioned superstition from which he has not succeeded in freeing
himself.
Here one must pause to inquire what Professor Haeckel means by "a
personal God." If he refers to the Latin conception of a God remote from
the world of phenomena, and manifested only through occasional
interference,—the conception that has until lately prevailed in the Western
world since the time of St. Augustine,—then we may agree with him; the
practical effect of the doctrine of evolution is to abolish such a conception.
But with regard to the Greek conception entertained by St. Athanasius; the
conception of God as immanent in the world of phenomena and manifested
in every throb of its mighty rhythmical life; the deity that Richard Hooker,
prince of English churchmen, had in mind when he wrote of Natural Law
that "her seat is the bosom of God, and her voice the harmony of the
world,"—with regard to this conception the practical effect of the doctrine
of evolution is not to abolish, but to strengthen and confirm it. For, into
whatever province of Nature we carry our researches, the more deeply we
penetrate into its laws and methods of action, the more clearly do we see
that all provinces of Nature are parts of an organic whole animated by a
single principle of life that is infinite and eternal. I have no doubt Professor
Haeckel would not only admit this, but would scout any other view as
inconsistent with the monism which he professes. But he would say that this
infinite and eternal principle of life is not psychical, and therefore cannot be
called in any sense "a personal God." In an ultimate analysis, I suspect
Professor Haeckel's ubiquitous monistic principle would turn out to be
neither more nor less than Dr. Büchner's mechanical force (Kraft). On the
other hand, I have sought to show—in my little book "The Idea of God"—
that the Infinite and Eternal Power that animates the universe must be
psychical in its nature, that any attempt to reduce it to mechanical force
must end in absurdity, and that the only kind of monism which will stand
the test of an ultimate analysis is monotheism. While in the chapter on
Anthropomorphic Theism, in my "Cosmic Philosophy," I have taken great
pains to point out the difficulties in which (as finite thinkers) we are
involved when we try to conceive the Infinite and Eternal Power as

psychical in his nature, I have in the chapter on Matter and Spirit, in that
same book, taken equal pains to show that we are logically compelled thus
to conceive Him.
One's attitude toward such problems is likely to be determined by one's
fundamental conception of psychical life. To a materialist the ultimate
power is mechanical force, and psychical life is nothing but the temporary
and local result of fleeting collocations of material elements in the shape of
nervous systems. Into the endless circuit of transformations of molecular
motion, says the materialist, there enter certain phases which we call
feelings and thoughts; they are part of the circuit; they arise out of motions
of material molecules, and disappear by being retransformed into such
motions: hence, with the death of the organism in which such motions have
been temporarily gathered into a kind of unity, all psychical activity and all
personality are ipso facto abolished. Such is the materialistic doctrine, and
such, I presume, is what Professor Haeckel has in mind when he asserts that
the belief in an immortal soul is incompatible with the doctrine of
evolution. The theory commonly called that of the correlation of forces, and
which might equally well or better be called the theory of the
metamorphosis of motions, is indispensable to the doctrine of evolution.
But for the theory that light, heat, electricity, and nerve-action are different
modes of undulatory motion transformable one into another, and that
similar modes of motion are liberated by the chemical processes going on
within the animal or vegetal organism, Mr. Spencer's work could never have
been done. That theory of correlation and transformation is now generally
accepted, and is often appealed to by materialists. A century ago Cabanis
said that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. If he were alive
to-day, he would doubtless smile at this old form of expression as crude,
and would adopt a more subtle phrase; he would say that "thought is
transformed motion."
Against this interpretation I have maintained that the theory of correlation
not only fails to support it, but actually overthrows it. The arguments may
be found in the chapter on Matter and Spirit, in my "Cosmic Philosophy,"
published in 1874, and in the essay entitled "A Crumb for the Modern
Symposium," written in 1877, and reprinted in "Darwinism and Other
Essays."[7] Their purport is, that in tracing the correlation of motions into
the organism through the nervous system and out again, we are bound to get

an account of each step in terms of motion. Unless we can show that every
unit of motion that disappears is transformed into an exact quantitative
equivalent, our theory of correlation breaks down; but when we have shown
this we shall have given a complete account of the whole affair without
taking any heed whatever of thought, feeling, or consciousness. In other
words, these psychical activities do not enter into the circuit, but stand
outside of it, as a segment of a circle may stand outside a portion of an
entire circumference with which it is concentric. Motion is never
transformed into thought, but only into some other form of measurable (in
fact, or at any rate in theory, measurable) motion that takes place in nerve-
threads and ganglia. It is not the thought, but the nerve-action that
accompanies the thought, that is really "transformed motion." I say that if
we are going to verify the theory of correlation, it must be done (actually or
theoretically) by measurement; quantitative equivalence must be proved at
every step; and hence we must not change our unit of measurement; from
first to last it must be a unit of motion: if we change it for a moment, our
theory of correlation that moment collapses. I say, therefore, that the theory
of correlation and equivalence of forces lends no support whatever to
materialism. On the contrary, its manifest implication is that psychical life
cannot be a mere product of temporary collocations of matter.
The argument here set forth is my own. When I first used it, I had never met
with it anywhere in books or conversation. Whether it has since been
employed by other writers I do not know, for during the past fifteen years I
have read very few books on such subjects. At all events, it is an argument
for which I am ready to bear the full responsibility. Some doubt has recently
been expressed whether Mr. Spencer would admit the force of this
argument. It has been urged by Mr. S. H. Wilder, in two able papers
published in the "New York Daily Tribune," June 13 and July 4, 1890, that
the use of this argument marks a radical divergence on my part from Mr.
Spencer's own position.
It is true that in several passages of "First Principles" there are statements
which either imply or distinctly assert that motion can be transformed into
feeling and thought,—e. g.: "Those modes of the Unknowable which we
call heat, light, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transformable into each
other, and into those modes of the Unknowable which we distinguish as
sensation, emotion, thought; these, in their turns, being directly or indirectly

retransformable into the original shapes;"[8] and again, it is said "to be a
necessary deduction from the law of correlation that what exists in
consciousness under the form of feeling is transformable into an equivalent
of mechanical motion," etc.[9] Now, if this, as literally interpreted, be Mr.
Spencer's deliberate opinion, I entirely dissent from it. To speak of
quantitative equivalence between a unit of feeling and a unit of motion
seems to me to be talking nonsense,—to be combining terms which
severally possess a meaning into a phrase which has no meaning. I am
therefore inclined to think that the above sentences, literally interpreted, do
not really convey Mr. Spencer's opinion. They appear manifestly
inconsistent, moreover, with other passages in which he has taken much
more pains to explain his position.[10] In the sentence from page 558 of
"First Principles," Mr. Spencer appears to me to mean that the nerve-action,
which is the objective concomitant of what is subjectively known as
feeling, is transformable into an equivalent of mechanical motion. When he
wrote that sentence perhaps he had not shaped the case quite so distinctly in
his own mind as he had a few years later, when he made the more elaborate
statements in the second edition of the Psychology. Though in these more
elaborate statements he does not assert the doctrine I have here maintained,
yet they seem consistent with it. When I was finishing the chapter on Matter
and Spirit, in my room in London, one afternoon in February, 1874, Mr.
Spencer came in, and I read to him nearly the whole chapter, including my
argument from correlation above mentioned. He expressed warm approval
of the chapter, without making any specific qualifications. In the course of
the chapter I had occasion to quote a passage from the Psychology,[11] in
which Mr. Spencer twice inadvertently used the phrase "nervous shock"
where he meant "psychical shock." As his object was to keep the psychical
phenomena and their cerebral concomitants distinct in his argument, this
colloquial use of the word "nervous" was liable to puzzle the reader, and
give querulous critics a chance to charge Mr. Spencer with the materialistic
implications which it was his express purpose to avoid. Accordingly, in my
quotation I changed the word "nervous" to "psychical," using brackets and
explaining my reasons. On showing all this to Mr. Spencer, he desired me to
add in a footnote that he thoroughly approved the emendation.
I mention this incident because our common, every-day speech abounds in
expressions that have a materialistic flavour; and sometimes in serious

writing an author's sheer intentness upon his main argument may lead him
to overlook some familiar form of expression which, when thrown into a
precise and formal context, will strike the reader in a very different way
from what the author intended. I am inclined to explain in this way the
passages in "First Principles" which are perhaps chiefly responsible for the
charge of materialism that has so often and so wrongly been brought up
against the doctrine of evolution.
As regards the theological implications of the doctrine of evolution, I have
never undertaken to speak for Mr. Spencer; on such transcendental subjects
it is quite enough if one speaks for one's self. It is told of Diogenes that, on
listening one day to a sophistical argument against the possibility of motion,
he grimly got up out of his tub and walked across the street. Whether his
adversaries were convinced or not, we are not told. Probably not; it is but
seldom that adversaries are convinced. So, when Professor Haeckel declares
that belief in a "personal God" and an "immortal soul" is incompatible with
acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, I can only say, for myself—
however much or little the personal experience may be worth—I find that
the beliefs in the psychical nature of God and in the immortality of the
human soul seem to harmonize infinitely better with my general system of
cosmic philosophy than the negation of these beliefs. If Professor Haeckel,
or any other writer, prefers a materialistic interpretation, very well. I neither
quarrel with him nor seek to convert him; but I do not agree with him. I do
not pretend that my opinion on these matters is susceptible of scientific
demonstration. Neither is his. I say, then, that his fifth thesis has no business
in a series of scientific generalizations about the doctrine of evolution.
Far beyond the limits of what scientific methods, based upon our brief
terrestrial experience, can demonstrate, there lies on every side a region
with regard to which Science can only suggest questions. As Goethe so
profoundly says:—

"Willst du ins Unendliche streiten,
Geh' nur im Endlichen nach allen Seiten."[12]

It is of surpassing interest that the particular generalization which has been
extended into a universal formula of evolution should have been the
generalization of the development of an ovum. In enlarging the sphere of

life in such wise as to make the whole universe seem actuated by a single
principle of life, we are introduced to regions of sublime speculation. The
doctrine of evolution, which affects our thought about all things, brings
before us with vividness the conception of an ever present God,—not an
absentee God who once manufactured a cosmic machine capable of running
itself, except for a little jog or poke here and there in the shape of a special
providence. The doctrine of evolution destroys the conception of the world
as a machine. It makes God our constant refuge and support, and Nature his
true revelation; and when all its religious implications shall have been set
forth, it will be seen to be the most potent ally that Christianity has ever had
in elevating mankind.
March, 1890.

III

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS[13]

In one of the most beautiful of all the shining pages of his "History of the
Spanish Conquest in America," Sir Arthur Helps describes the way in
which, through "some fitness of the season, whether in great scientific
discoveries or in the breaking into light of some great moral cause, the same
processes are going on in many minds, and it seems as if they
communicated with each other invisibly. We may imagine that all good
powers aid the 'new light,' and brave and wise thoughts about it float aloft
in the atmosphere of thought as downy seeds are borne over the fruitful face
of the earth."[14] The thinker who elaborates a new system of philosophy,
deeper and more comprehensive than any yet known to mankind, though he
may work in solitude, nevertheless does not work alone. The very fact
which makes his great scheme of thought a success, and not a failure, is the
fact that it puts into definite and coherent shape the ideas which many
people are more or less vaguely and loosely entertaining, and that it carries
to a grand and triumphant conclusion processes of reasoning in which many
persons have already begun taking the earlier steps. This community in
mental trend between the immortal discoverer and many of the brightest
contemporary minds, far from diminishing the originality of his work,
constitutes the feature of it which makes it a permanent acquisition for
mankind, and distinguishes it from the eccentric philosophies which now
and then come up to startle the world for a while, and are presently
discarded and forgotten. The history of modern physics—as in the case of
the correlation of forces and the undulatory theory of light—furnishes us
with many instances of wise thoughts floating like downy seeds in the
atmosphere until the moment has come for them to take root. And so it has
been with the greatest achievement of modern thinking,—the doctrine of
evolution. Students and investigators in all departments, alike in the
physical and in the historical sciences, were fairly driven by the nature of
the phenomena before them into some hypothesis, more or less vague, of
gradual and orderly change or development. The world was ready and

waiting for Herbert Spencer's mighty work when it came, and it was for that
reason that it was so quickly triumphant over the old order of thought. The
victory has been so thorough, swift, and decisive that it will take another
generation to narrate the story of it so as to do it full justice. Meanwhile,
people's minds are apt to be somewhat dazed with the rapidity and
wholesale character of the change; and nothing is more common than to see
them adopting Mr. Spencer's ideas without recognizing them as his or
knowing whence they got them. As fast as Mr. Spencer could set forth his
generalizations they were taken hold of here and there by special workers,
each in his own department, and utilized therein. His general system was at
once seized, assimilated, and set forth with new illustrations by serious
thinkers who were already groping in the regions of abstruse thought which
the master's vision pierced so clearly. And thus the doctrine of evolution has
come to be inseparably interfused with the whole mass of thinking in our
day and generation. I do not mean to imply that people commonly entertain
very clear ideas about it, for clear ideas are not altogether common. I
suspect that a good many people would hesitate if asked to state exactly
what Newton's law of gravitation is.
Among the men in America whose minds, between thirty and forty years
ago, were feeling their way toward some such unified conception of nature
as Mr. Spencer was about to set forth in all its dazzling glory,—among the
men who were thus prepared to grasp the doctrine of evolution at once and
expound it with fresh illustrations,—the first in the field was the man to
whose memory we have met here this evening to pay a brief word of
tribute. It is but a little while since that noble face was here with us, and the
tones of that kindly voice were fraught with good cheer for us. To most of
you, I presume, the man Edward Livingston Youmans is still a familiar
presence. There must be many here this evening who listened to the tidings
of his death three years ago with a sense of personal bereavement. No one
who knew him is likely ever to forget him. But for those who remember
distinctly the man it may not be superfluous to recount the principal
incidents of his life and work. It is desirable that the story should be set
forth concisely, so as to be remembered; for the work was like the man,
unselfish and unobtrusive, and in the hurry and complication of modern life
such work is liable to be lost from sight, so that people profit by it without
knowing that it was ever done. So genuinely modest, so utterly destitute of
self-regarding impulses, was our friend, that I believe it would be quite like

him to chide us for thus drawing public attention to him, as he would think,
with too much emphasis. But such mild reproof it is right that we should
disregard; for the memory of a life so beautiful and useful is a precious
possession of which mankind ought not to be deprived.
Edward Livingston Youmans was born in the town of Coeymans, Albany
County, N.Y., on the 3d of June, 1821. From his father and mother, both of
whom survived him, he inherited strong traits of character as well as an
immense fund of vital energy, such that the failure of health a few years ago
seemed (to me, at least) surprising. His father, Vincent Youmans, was a man
of independent character, strong convictions, and perfect moral courage,
with a quick and ready tongue, in the use of which earnestness and
frankness perhaps sometimes prevailed over prudence. The mother,
Catherine Scofield, was notable for balance of judgment, prudence, and
tact. The mother's grandfather was Irish; and while I very much doubt the
soundness of the generalizations we are so prone to make about race
characteristics, I cannot but feel that for the impulsive—one had almost said
explosive—warmth of sympathy, the enchanting grace and vivacity of
manner, in Edward Youmans, this strain of Irish blood may have been to
some extent accountable. Both father and mother belonged to the old
Puritan stock of New England, and the father's ancestry was doubtless
purely English. Nothing could be more honourably or characteristically
English than the name. In the old feudal society, the yeoman, like the
franklin, was the small freeholder, owning a modest estate, yet holding it by
no servile tenure; a man of the common people, yet no churl; a member of
the state who "knew his rights, and knowing dared maintain." Few indeed
were the nooks and corners outside of merry England where such men
flourished as the yeomen and franklins who founded democratic New
England. It has often been remarked how the most illustrious of Franklins
exemplified the typical virtues of his class. There was much that was
similar in the temperament and disposition of Edward Youmans,—the
sagacity and penetration, the broad common sense, the earnest purpose
veiled but not hidden by the blithe humour, the devotion to ends of wide
practical value, the habit of making in the best sense the most out of life.
When Edward was but six months old, his parents moved to Greenfield,
near Saratoga Springs. With a comfortable house and three acres of land,
his father kept a wagon shop and smithy. In those days, while it was hard

work to wring a subsistence out of the soil or to prosper upon any of the
vocations which rural life permitted, there was doubtless more
independence of character and real thriftiness than in our time, when cities
and tariffs have so sapped the strength of the farming country. In the family
of Vincent Youmans, though rigid economy was practised, books were
reckoned to a certain extent among the necessaries of life, and the house
was one in which neighbours were fond of gathering to discuss questions of
politics or theology, social reform or improvements in agriculture. On all
such questions Vincent Youmans was apt to have ideas of his own; he talked
with enthusiasm, and was also ready to listen; and he evidently supplied an
intellectual stimulus to the whole community. For a boy of bright and
inquisitive mind, listening to such talk is no mean source of education. It
often goes much further than the reading of books. From an early age
Edward Youmans seems to have appropriated all such means of instruction.
He had that insatiable thirst for knowledge which is one of God's best gifts
to man; for he who is born with this appetite must needs be grievously ill
made in other respects if it does not constrain him to lead a happy and
useful life.
After ten years at Greenfield the family moved to a farm at Milton, some
two miles distant. Until his sixteenth year Edward helped his father at farm
work in the summer, and attended the district school in winter. It was his
good fortune at that time to fall into the hands of a teacher who had a genius
for teaching,—a man who in those days of rote-learning did not care to
have things learned by heart, but sought to stimulate the thinking powers of
his pupils, and who in that age of canes and ferules never found it necessary
to use such means of discipline, because the fear of displeasing him was of
itself all-sufficient. Experience of the methods of such a man was enough to
sharpen one's disgust for the excessive mechanism, the rigid and stupid
manner of teaching, which characterize the ordinary school. In after years
Youmans used to say that "Uncle Good"—as this admirable pedagogue was
called—first taught him what his mind was for. Through intercourse and
training of this sort he learned to doubt, to test the soundness of opinions, to
make original inquiries, and to find and follow clues.
But even the best of teachers can effect but little unless he finds a mind
ready of itself to take the initiative. It is doubtful if men of eminent ability
are ever made so by schooling. The school offers opportunities, but in such

men the tendency to the initiative is so strong that if opportunities are not
offered they will somehow contrive to create them. When Edward Youmans
was about thirteen years old he persuaded his father to buy him a copy of
Comstock's Natural Philosophy. This book he studied at home by himself,
and repeated many of the experiments with apparatus of his own contriving.
When he made a centrifugal water wheel, and explained to the men and
boys of the neighbourhood the principle of its revolution in a direction
opposite to that of the stream which moved it, we may regard it as his
earliest attempt at giving scientific lectures. It was natural that one who had
become interested in physics should wish to study chemistry. The teacher
(who was not "Uncle Good") had never so much as laid eyes on a textbook
of chemistry; but Edward was not to be daunted by such trifles. A copy of
Comstock's manual was procured, another pupil was found willing to join
in the study, and this class of two proceeded to learn what they could from
reading the book, while the teacher asked them the printed questions,—
those questions the mere existence of which in textbooks is apt to show
what a low view publishers take of the average intelligence of teachers! It
was not a very hopeful way of studying such a subject as chemistry; but
doubtless the time was not wasted, and the foundations for a future
knowledge of chemistry were laid. The experience of farm work which
accompanied these studies explains the interest which in later years Mr.
Youmans felt in agricultural chemistry. He came to realize how crude and
primitive are our methods of making the earth yield its produce, and it was
his opinion that when men have once learned how to conduct agriculture
upon sound scientific principles, farming will become at once the most
wholesome and the most attractive form of human industry.
Along with the elementary studies in science there went a great deal of
miscellaneous reading, mostly, it would appear, of good solid books.
Apparently there was at that time no study of languages, ancient or modern.
At the age of seventeen the young man had shown so much promise that it
was decided he should study law, and he had already entered upon a more
extensive course of preparation in an academy in Saratoga County when the
event occurred which changed the whole course of his life. He had been
naturally gifted with keen and accurate vision, was a good sports-man and
an excellent shot with a rifle; but at about the age of thirteen there had come
an attack of ophthalmia, which left the eyes weak and sensitive. Perpetual
reading probably increased the difficulty and hindered complete recovery.

At the age of seventeen violent inflammation set in; the sight in one eye
was completely lost, while in the other it grew so dim as to be of little avail.
Sometimes he would be just able to find his way about the streets, at other
times the blindness was almost total; and this state of things lasted for
nearly thirteen years.
This dreadful calamity seemed to make it impossible to continue any
systematic course of study, and the outlook for satisfactory work of any sort
was extremely discouraging. The first necessity was medical assistance, and
in quest of this Mr. Youmans came in the autumn of 1839 to New York,
where for the most part he spent the remainder of his life. Until 1851 he
was under the care of an oculist. Under such circumstances, if a man of
eager energy and boundless intellectual craving were to be overwhelmed
with despondency, we could not call it strange. If he were to become
dependent upon friends for the means of support, it would be ungracious, if
not unjust, to blame him. But Edward Youmans was not made of the stuff
that acquiesces in defeat. He rose superior to calamity; he won the means of
livelihood, and in darkness entered upon the path to an enviable fame. At
first he had to resign himself to spending weary weeks over tasks that with
sound eyesight could have been dispatched in as many days. He invented
some kind of writing machine, which held his paper firmly, and enabled his
pen to follow straight lines at proper distances apart. Long practice of this
sort gave his handwriting a peculiar character which it retained in later
years. When I first saw it in 1863 it seemed almost undecipherable; but that
was far from being the case, and after I had grown used to it I found it but
little less legible than the most beautiful chirography. The strokes, gnarled
and jagged as they were, had a method in their madness, and every pithy
sentence went straight as an arrow to its mark.
While conquering these physical obstacles Mr. Youmans began writing for
the press, and gradually entered into relations with leading newspapers
which became more and more important and useful as years went on. He
became acquainted with Horace Greeley, William Henry Charming, and
other gentlemen who were interested in social reforms. His sympathies
were strongly enlisted with the little party of abolitionists, then held in such
scornful disfavour by all other parties. He was also interested in the party of
temperance, which, as he and others were afterward to learn, compounded
for its essential uprightness of purpose by indulging in very gross

intemperance of speech and action. The disinterestedness which always
characterized him was illustrated by his writing many articles for a
temperance paper which could not afford to pay its contributors, although
he was struggling with such disadvantages in earning his own livelihood
and carrying on his scientific studies. Those were days when leading
reformers believed that by some cunningly contrived alteration of social
arrangements our human nature, with all its inheritance from countless ages
of brutality, can somehow be made over all in a moment, just as one would
go to work with masons and carpenters and revamp a house. There are
many good people who still labour under such a delusion.
Though Mr. Youmans was brought into frequent contact with reformers of
this sort, it does not seem to me that his mind was ever deeply impressed
with such ways of thinking. Science is teaching us that the method of
evolution is that mill of God, of which we have heard, which, while it
grinds with infinite efficacy, yet grinds with wearisome slowness. It was
Mr. Darwin's discovery of natural selection which first brought this truth
home to us; but Sir Charles Lyell had in 1830 shown how enormous effects
are wrought by the cumulative action of slight and unobtrusive causes, and
this had much to do with turning men's minds toward some conception of
evolution. It was about 1847 that Mr. Youmans was deeply interested in the
work of geologists, as well as in the Nebular Theory, to which recent
discoveries were adding fresh confirmation. Some time before this he had
read that famous book "Vestiges of Creation," and although Professor
Agassiz truly declared that it was an unscientific book, crammed with
antiquated and exploded fancies, I suspect that Mr. Youmans felt that amid
all the chaff there was a very sound and sturdy kernel of truth.
Among the books which Mr. Youmans projected at this time, the first was a
compendious history of progress in discovery and invention; but, after he
had made extensive preparations, a book was published so similar in scope
and treatment that he abandoned the undertaking. Another work was a
treatise on arithmetic, on a new and philosophical plan; but, when this was
approaching completion, he again found himself anticipated, this time by
the book of Horace Mann. This was discouraging enough, but a third
venture resulted in a brilliant success. We have observed the eagerness with
which, as a schoolboy, Mr. Youmans entered upon the study of chemistry.
His interest in this science grew with years, and he devoted himself to it so

far as was practicable. For a blind man to carry on the study of a science
which is preëminently one of observation and experiment might seem
hopeless. It was at any rate absolutely necessary to see with the eyes of
others, if not with his own. Here the assistance rendered by his sister was
invaluable. During most of this period she served as amanuensis and reader
for him. But, more than this, she kept up for some time a course of
laboratory work, the results of which were minutely described to her
brother and discussed with him in the evenings. The lectures of Dr. John
William Draper on chemistry were also thoroughly discussed and pondered.
The conditions under which Mr. Youmans worked made it necessary for
him to consider every point with the extreme deliberation involved in
framing distinct mental images of things and processes which he could not
watch with the eye. It was hard discipline, but he doubtless profited from it.
Nature had endowed him with an unusually clear head, but this enforced
method must have made it still clearer. One of the most notable qualities of
his mind was the absolute luminousness with which he saw things and the
relations among things. It was this quality that made him so successful as an
expounder of scientific truths. In the course of his pondering over chemical
facts which he was obliged to take at second hand, it occurred to him that
most of the pupils in common schools who studied chemistry were
practically no better off. It was easy enough for schools to buy textbooks,
but difficult for them to provide laboratories and apparatus; and it was much
easier withal to find teachers who could ask questions out of a book than
those who could use apparatus if provided. It was customary, therefore, to
learn chemistry by rote; or, in other words, pupils' heads were crammed
with unintelligible statements about things with queer names,—such as
manganese or tellurium,—which they had never seen, and would not know
if they were to see them. It occurred to Mr. Youmans that if visible
processes could not be brought before pupils, at any rate the fundamental
conceptions of chemistry might be made clear by means of diagrams. He
began devising diagrams in different colours, to illustrate the diversity in
the atomic weights of the principal elements, and the composition of the
more familiar compounds. At length, by uniting his diagrams, he obtained a
comprehensive chart exhibiting the outlines of the whole scheme of
chemical combination according to the binary or dualist theory then in
vogue. This chart, when published, was a great success. It not only
facilitated the acquirement of clear ideas, but it was suggestive of new

ideas. It proved very popular, and kept the field until the binary theory was
overthrown by the modern doctrine of substitution, which does not lend
itself so readily to graphic treatment.
The success of the chemical chart led to the writing of a textbook of
chemistry. This laborious work was completed in 1851, when Mr. Youmans
was thirty years old. Professor Silliman was then regarded as one of our
foremost authorities in chemistry, but it was at once remarked of the new
book that it showed quite as thorough a mastery of the whole subject of
chemical combination as Silliman's. It was a textbook of a kind far less
common then than now. There was nothing dry about it. The subject was
presented with beautiful clearness, in a most attractive style. There was a
firm grasp of the philosophical principles underlying chemical phenomena,
and the meaning and functions of the science were set forth in such a way
as to charm the student and make him wish for more. The book had an
immediate and signal success; in after years it was twice rewritten by the
author, to accommodate it to the rapid advances made by the science, and it
is still one of our best textbooks of chemistry. It has had a sale of about one
hundred and fifty thousand copies.
The publication of this book at once established its author's reputation as a
scientific writer, and in another way it marked an era in his life. The long,
distressing period of darkness now came to an end. Sight was so far
recovered in one eye that it became possible to go about freely, to read, to
recognize friends, to travel, and make much of life. I am told that his face
had acquired an expression characteristic of the blind, but that expression
was afterward completely lost. When I knew him it would never have
occurred to me that his sight was imperfect, except perhaps as regards
length of range.
Youmans' career as a scientific lecturer now began. His first lecture was the
beginning of a series on the relations of organic life to the atmosphere. It
was illustrated with chemical apparatus, and was given in a private room in
New York to an audience which filled the room. Probably no lecturer ever
faced his first audience without some trepidation, and Youmans had not the
mainstay and refuge afforded by a manuscript, for his sight was never good
enough to make such an aid available for his lectures. At first the right
words were slow in finding their way to those ready lips, and his friends
were beginning to grow anxious, when all at once a happy accident broke

the spell. He was remarking upon the characteristic inertness of nitrogen,
and pointing to a jar of that gas on the table before him, when some fidgety
movement of his knocked the jar off the table. He improved the occasion
with one of his quaint bons mots, and, as there is nothing that greases the
wheels of life like a laugh, the lecture went on to a successful close.
This was the beginning of a busy career of seventeen years of lecturing,
ending in 1868; and I believe it is safe to say that few things were done in
all those years of more vital and lasting benefit to the American people than
this broadcast sowing of the seeds of scientific thought in the lectures of
Edward Youmans. They came just at the time when the world was ripe for
the doctrine of evolution, when all the wondrous significance of the trend of
scientific discovery since Newton's time was beginning to burst upon men's
minds. The work of Lyell in geology, followed at length in 1859 by the
Darwinian theory; the doctrine of the correlation of forces and the
consequent unity of nature; the extension and reformation of chemical
theory; the simultaneous advance made in sociological inquiry, and in the
conception of the true aims and proper methods of education,—all this
made the period a most fruitful one for the peculiar work of such a teacher
as Youmans. The intellectual atmosphere was charged with conceptions of
evolution. Youmans had arrived at such conceptions in the course of his
study of the separate lines of scientific speculation which were now about
to be summed up and organized by Herbert Spencer into that system of
philosophy which marks the highest point to which the progressive
intelligence of mankind has yet attained. In the field of scientific
generalization upon this great scale, Youmans was not an originator; but his
broadly sympathetic and luminous mind moved on a plane so near to that of
the originators that he seized at once upon the grand scheme of thought as it
was developed, made it his own, and brought to its interpretation and
diffusion such a happy combination of qualities as one seldom meets with.
The ordinary popularizer of great and novel truths is a man who
comprehends them but partially, and illustrates them in a lame and
fragmentary way. But it was the peculiarity of Youmans that while on the
one hand he could grasp the newest scientific thought so surely and firmly
that he seemed to have entered into the innermost mind of its author, on the
other hand he could speak to the general public in an extremely convincing
and stimulating way. This was the secret of his power, and there can be no

question that his influence in educating the American people to receive the
doctrine of evolution was great and widespread.
The years when Youmans was travelling and lecturing were the years when
the old lyceum system of popular lectures was still in its vigour. The kind of
life led by the energetic lecturer in those days was not that of a Sybarite, as
may be seen from a passage in one of his letters: "I lectured in Sandusky,
and had to get up at five o'clock to reach Elyria; I had had but very little
sleep. To get from Elyria to Pittsburg I must take the five o'clock morning
train, and the hotel darky said he would try to waken me. I knew what that
meant, and so did not get a single wink of sleep that night. Rode all day to
Pittsburg, and had to lecture in the great Academy of Music over
footlights.... The train that left for Zanesville departed at two in the
morning. I had been assured a hundred times (for I asked everybody I met)
that I could get a sleeping-car to Zanesville, and when I was all ready to
start I was informed that this morning there was no sleeping-car. By the
time I reached here I was pretty completely used up."
Such a fatiguing life, however, has its compensations. It brings the lecturer
into friendly contact with the brightest minds among his fellow countrymen
in many and many places, and enlarges his sphere of influence in a way that
is not easy to estimate. Clearly, an earnest lecturer, of commanding
intelligence and charming manner, with a great subject to teach, must have
an opportunity for sowing seeds that will presently ripen in a change of
opinion or sentiment, in an altered way of looking at things on the part of
whole communities. No lecturer has ever had a better opportunity of this
sort than Edward Youmans, and none ever made a better use of his
opportunity. His gifts as a talker were of the highest order. The commonest
and plainest story, as told by Edward Youmans, had all the breathless
interest of the most thrilling romance. Absolutely unconscious of himself,
simple, straightforward, and vehement, wrapped up in his subject, the very
embodiment of faith and enthusiasm, of heartiness and good cheer, it was
delightful to hear him. And when we join with all this his unfailing common
sense, his broad and kindly view of men and things, and the delicious
humour that kept flashing out in quaint, pithy phrases such as no other man
would have thought of, and such as are the despair of any one trying to
remember and quote them, we can seem to imagine what a power he must
have been with his lectures.

When such a man goes about for seventeen years, teaching scientific truths
for which the world is ripe, we may be sure that his work is great, albeit we
have no standard whereby we can exactly measure it. In hundreds of little
towns with queer names did this strong personality appear and make its way
and leave its effects in the shape of new thoughts, new questions, and
enlarged hospitality of mind, among the inhabitants. The results of all this
are surely visible to-day. In no part of the English world has Herbert
Spencer's philosophy met with such a general and cordial reception as in the
United States. This may no doubt be largely explained by a reference to
general causes; but as it is almost always necessary, along with our general
causes, to take into the account some personal influence, so it is in this case.
It is safe to say that among the agencies which during the past fifty years
have so remarkably broadened the mind of the American people, very few
have been more potent than the gentle and subtle but pervasive work done
by Edward Youmans with his lectures, and to this has been largely due the
hospitable reception of Herbert Spencer's ideas.
It was in 1856 that Youmans fell in with a review of "Spencer's Principles
of Psychology," by Dr. Morell, in "The Medico-Chirurgical Review." This
paper impressed him so deeply that he at once sent to London for a copy of
the book, which had been published in the preceding year. It will be
observed that this was four years before the Darwinian theory was
announced in the first edition of the "Origin of Species."[15]
After struggling for a while with the weighty problems of this book,
Youmans saw that the theory expounded in it was a long stride in the
direction of a general theory of evolution. His interest in this subject
received a new and fresh stimulus. He read "Social Statics," and began to
recognize Spencer's hand in the anonymous articles in the quarterlies in
which he was then announcing and illustrating various portions or segments
of his newly discovered law of evolution. One evening in February, 1860,
as Youmans was calling at a friend's house in Brooklyn, the Rev. Samuel
Johnson, of Salem, handed him the famous prospectus of the great series of
philosophical works which Spencer proposed to issue by subscription. Mr.
Johnson had obtained this from Edward Silsbee, who was one of the very
first Americans to become interested in Spencer. The very next day
Youmans wrote a letter to Spencer, offering his aid in procuring American
subscriptions and otherwise facilitating the enterprise by every means in his

power. With this letter and Spencer's cordial reply began the lifelong
friendship between the two men. It was in that same month that I first
became aware of Spencer's existence, through a single paragraph quoted
from him by Lewes, and in that paragraph there was immense fascination. I
had been steeping myself in the literature of modern philosophy, starting
with Bacon and Descartes, and was then studying Comte's "Philosophie
Positive," which interested me as suggesting that the special doctrines of the
several sciences might be organized into a general body of doctrine of
universal significance. Comte's work was crude and often wildly absurd,
but there was much in it that was very suggestive. In May, 1860, in the Old
Corner Bookstore in Boston, I fell upon a copy of that same prospectus of
Spencer's works, and read it with exulting delight; for clearly there was to
be such an organization of scientific doctrine as the world was waiting for.
It appeared that there was some talk of Ticknor & Fields undertaking to
conduct the series in case subscriptions enough should be received. Spencer
preferred to have his works appear in Boston; but when in the course of
1860 his book on "Education" was offered to Ticknor & Fields, they
declined to publish it,—which was, of course, a grave mistake from the
business point of view. Youmans, however, was not sorry for this, for it
gave him the opportunity to place Spencer's books where he could do most
to forward their success.
Some years before, during his blindness, his sister had led him one day into
the store of Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. in quest of a book, and Mr. William
Appleton had become warmly interested in him. I believe the firm now look
back to this chance visit as one of the most auspicious events in their
annals. Youmans became by degrees a kind of adviser as regarded matters
of publication, and it was largely through his far-sighted advice that the
Appletons entered upon the publication of such books as those of Buckle,
Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Haeckel, and others of like character; always
paying a royalty to the authors, the same as to American authors, in spite of
the absence of an international copyright law. As publishers of books of this
sort the Appletons have come to be preëminent. It is obvious enough
nowadays that such books are profitable from a business point of view; but
thirty years and more ago this was by no means obvious. We Americans
were terribly provincial. Reprints of English books and translations from
French and German were sadly behind the times. In the Connecticut town
where I lived, people would begin to wake up to the existence of some great

European book or system of thought after it had been before the world
anywhere from a dozen to fifty years. In those days, therefore, it required
some boldness to undertake the reprinting of new scientific books; and none
have recognized more freely than the Appletons the importance of the part
played by Youmans in this matter. His work as adviser to a great publishing
house and his work as lecturer reinforced each other, and thus his capacity
for usefulness was much increased.
When Spencer's book on "Education" failed to find favour in Boston the
Appletons took it, and thus presently secured the management of the
philosophical series. This brought Youmans into permanent relations with
Spencer and his work. In 1861 Youmans was married, and in the course of
the following year made a journey in Europe with his wife. It was now that
he became personally acquainted with Spencer, and found him quite as
interesting and admirable as his books. Friendships were also begun with
Huxley and other foremost men of science. From more than one of these
men I have heard the warmest expressions of personal affection for
Youmans, and of keen appreciation of the aid that they have obtained in
innumerable ways from his intelligent and enthusiastic sympathy. But no
one else got so large a measure of this support as Spencer. As fast as his
books were republished Youmans wrote reviews of them, and by no means
in the usual perfunctory way; his reviews and notices were turned out by the
score, and scattered about in the magazines and newspapers where they
would do the most good. Whenever he found another writer who could be
pressed into the service, he would give him Spencer's books, kindle him
with a spark from his own magnificent enthusiasm, and set him to writing
for the press. The most indefatigable vender of wares was never more
ruthlessly persistent in advertising for lucre's sake than Edward Youmans in
preaching in a spirit of the purest disinterestedness the gospel of evolution.
As long as he lived, Spencer had upon this side of the Atlantic an alter ego
ever on the alert with vision like that of a hawk for the slightest chance to
promote his interests and those of his system of thought.
Among the allies thus enlisted at that early time were Mr. George Ripley
and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, both of whom did good service, in their
different ways, in awakening public interest in the doctrine of evolution. In
those days of the Civil War it was especially hard to keep up the list of
subscribers in an abstruse philosophical publication of apparently

interminable length. Youmans now and then found it needful to make a
journey in the interests of the work, and it was on one of these occasions, in
November, 1863, that I made his acquaintance. I had already published, in
1861, an article in one of the quarterly reviews, in which Spencer's work
was referred to; and another in 1863, in which the law of evolution was
illustrated in connection with certain problems of the science of language.
The articles were anonymous, as was then the fashion, and Youmans'
curiosity was aroused. There were so few people then who had any
conception of what Spencer's work meant that they could have been
counted on one's fingers. At that time I knew of only three: the late
Professor Gurney, of Harvard; Mr. George Litch Roberts, now an eminent
patent lawyer in Boston; and Mr. John Spencer Clark, now of the Prang
Educational Company. I have since known that there were at least two or
three others about Boston, among them my learned friend the Rev. William
Rounseville Alger, besides several in other parts of the country. When we
sometimes ventured to observe that Spencer's work was as great as
Newton's, and that his theory of evolution was going to remodel human
thinking upon all subjects whatever, people used to stare at us and take us
for idiots. Any one member of such a small community was easy to find;
and I have always dated a new era in my life from the Sunday afternoon
when Youmans came to my room in Cambridge. It was the beginning of a
friendship such as hardly comes but once to a man. At that first meeting I
knew nothing of him except that he was the author of a textbook of
chemistry which I had found interesting, in spite of its having been
crammed down my throat by an old-fashioned memorizing teacher who, I
am convinced, never really knew so much as the difference between oxygen
and antimony. At first it was a matter of breathless interest to talk with a
man who had seen Herbert Spencer. But one of the immediate results of this
interview was the beginning of my own correspondence and intimate
friendship with Spencer. And from that time forth it always seemed as if,
whenever any of the good or lovely things of life came to my lot, somehow
or other Edward Youmans was either the cause of it, or at any rate
intimately concerned with it. The sphere of his unselfish goodness was so
wide and its quality so potent that one could not come into near relations
with him without becoming in all manner of unsuspected ways strengthened
and enriched.

In the autumn of 1865 we were dismayed by the announcement that
Spencer would no longer be able to go on issuing his works. In London they
were published at his own expense and risk, and those books which now
yield a handsome profit did not then pay the cost of making them. By the
summer of 1865 there was a balance of £1100 against Spencer, and his
property was too small to admit of his going on and losing at such a rate. As
soon as this was known, John Stuart Mill begged to be allowed to assume
the entire pecuniary responsibility of continuing the publication; but this,
Mr. Spencer, while deeply affected by such noble sympathy, would not hear
of. He consented, however, with great reluctance, to the attempt of Huxley
and Lubbock, and other friends, to increase artificially the list of subscribers
by inducing people to take the work just in order to help support it. But
after several months the sudden death of Spencer's father added something
to his means of support, and he thereupon withdrew his consent to this
arrangement, and determined to go on publishing as before, and bearing the
loss.
But as soon as the first evil tidings reached America Youmans made up his
mind that $5500 must be forthwith raised by subscription, in order to make
good the loss already incurred. It is delightful to remember the vigour with
which he took hold of this work. The sum of $7000 was raised and invested
in American securities in Spencer's name. If he did not see fit to accept
these securities, they would go without an owner. The best of Waltham
watches was procured for Spencer by his American friends; a letter, worded
with rare delicacy and tact, was written by the late Robert Minturn; and
Youmans sailed for England to convey the letter and the watch to Spencer.
It was a charming scene on a summer day in an English garden when the
great philosopher was apprised of what had been done. It was so skilfully
managed that he could not refuse the tribute without seeming churlish. He
therefore accepted it, and applied it to extending his researches in
descriptive sociology.
Of the many visits which Youmans made to England, now and then
extending them to the Continent, one of the most important was in 1871, for
the purpose of establishing the International Scientific Series. This was a
favourite scheme of Youmans. He realized that popular scientific books,
adapted to the general reader, are apt to be written by third-rate men who do
not well understand their subject; they are apt to be dry or superficial, or

both. No one can write so good a popular book as the master of a subject, if
he only has a fair gift of expressing himself and keeps in mind the public
for which he is writing. The master knows what to tell and what to omit,
and can thus tell much in a short compass and still make it interesting;
moreover, he avoids the inaccuracies which are sure to occur in second-
hand work. Masters of subjects are apt, however, to be too much occupied
with original research to write popular books. It was Youmans' plan to
induce the leading men of science in Europe and America to contribute
small volumes on their special subjects to a series to be published
simultaneously in several countries and languages. Furthermore, by special
contract with publishing houses of high reputation, the author was to
receive the ordinary royalty on every copy of his book sold in every one of
the countries in question; thus anticipating international copyright upon a
very wide scale, and giving the author a much more adequate compensation
for his labour. To put this scheme into operation was a task of great
difficulty, so many conflicting interests had to be considered. Youmans'
brilliant success is attested by that noble series of more than fifty volumes,
on all sorts of scientific subjects, written by men of real eminence, and
published in England, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, as well as in the
United States.
A word is all that can be spared for other parts of our friend's work, which
deserve many words, and those carefully considered. His book on
"Household Science" is not the usual collection of scrappy comment,
recipe, and apothegm, but a valuable scientific treatise on heat, light, air,
and food in their relations to every-day life. In his "Correlation of Physical
Forces" he brings together the epoch-making essays of the men who have
successively established that doctrine, introducing them with an essay of his
own, in which its history and its philosophical implications are set forth in a
masterly manner. In his book on the "Culture demanded by Modern Life"
we have a similar collection of essays with a similar excellent original
discussion, showing the need for wider and later training in science, and
protesting against the excess of time and energy that is spent in classical
education where it is merely the following of an old tradition.
As a crown to all this useful work, Youmans established, in 1872, "The
Popular Science Monthly," which has unquestionably been of high
educational value to the general public. It was not the aim of this magazine

to give an account of every theory expounded, every fact observed, every
discovery made, from year to year, whether significant or insignificant. The
mind of the people is not educated by dumping a great unshapely mass of
facts into it. It needs to be stimulated rather than crammed. Education in
science should lead one to think for one's self. The scientific magazine,
therefore, should present articles from all quarters that deal with the
essential conceptions of science or discuss problems of real theoretical or
practical interest, no matter whether every particular asteroid or the last new
species of barnacle receives full attention or not. "The Popular Science
Monthly" has now been with us eighteen years; its character has always
been of the highest, and it must have exerted an excellent influence not only
as a diffuser of valuable knowledge, but in training its readers to scientific
habits of thought in so far as mere reading can contribute to such a result.
In concluding our survey of this useful and noble life, what impresses us
most, I think, is the broad democratic spirit and the absolute unselfishness
which it reveals at every moment and in every act. To Edward Youmans the
imperative need for educating the great mass of the people so as to use their
mental powers to the best advantage came home as a living, ever present
fact. He saw all that it meant and means in the raising of mankind to a
higher level of thought and action than that upon which they now live. To
this end he consecrated himself with unalloyed devotion; and we who
mourn his loss look back upon his noble career with a sense of victory,
knowing how the good that such a man does lives after him and can never
die.
March, 1890.

IV
THE PART PLAYED BY INFANCY IN THE EVOLUTION
OF MAN[16]

The remarks which my friend Mr. Clark has made with reference to the
reconciling of science and religion seem to carry me back to the days when
I first became acquainted with the fact that there were such things afloat in
the world as speculations about the origin of man from lower forms of life;
and I can recall step by step various stages in which that old question has
come to have a different look from what it had thirty years ago. One of the
commonest objections we used to hear, from the mouths of persons who
could not very well give voice to any other objection, was that anybody,
whether he knows much or little about evolution, must have the feeling that
there is something degrading about being allied with lower forms of life.
That was, I suppose, owing to the survival of the old feeling that a dignified
product of creation ought to have been produced in some exceptional way.
That which was done in the ordinary way, that which was done through
ordinary processes of causation, seemed to be cheapened and to lose its
value. It was a remnant of the old state of feeling which took pleasure in
miracles, which seemed to think that the object of thought was more
dignified if you could connect it with something supernatural; that state of
culture in which there was an altogether inadequate appreciation of the
amount of grandeur that there might be in the slow creative work that goes
on noiselessly by little minute increments, even as the dropping of the water
that wears away the stone. The general progress of familiarity with the
conception of evolution has done a great deal to change that state of mind.
Even persons who have not much acquaintance with science have at length
caught something of its lesson,—that the infinitely cumulative action of
small causes like those which we know is capable of producing results of
the grandest and most thrilling importance, and that the disposition to recur
to the cataclysmic and miraculous is only a tendency of the childish mind
which we are outgrowing with wider experience.

The whole doctrine of evolution, and in fact the whole advance of modern
science from the days of Copernicus down to the present day, have
consisted in the substitution of processes which are familiar and the
application of those processes, showing how they produce great results.
When Darwin's "Origin of Species" was first published, when it gave us
that wonderful explanation of the origin of forms of life from allied forms
through the operation of natural selection, it must have been like a mental
illumination to every person who comprehended it. But after all it left a
great many questions unexplained, as was natural. It accounted for the
phenomena of organic development in general with wonderful success, but
it must have left a great many minds with the feeling: If man has been
produced in this way, if the mere operation of natural selection has
produced the human race, wherein is the human race anyway essentially
different from lower races? Is not man really dethroned, taken down from
that exceptional position in which we have been accustomed to place him,
and might it not be possible, in the course of the future, for other beings to
come upon the earth as far superior to man as man is superior to the
fossilized dragons of Jurassic antiquity?
Such questions used to be asked, and when they were asked, although one
might have a very strong feeling that it was not so, at the same time one
could not exactly say why. One could not then find any scientific argument
for objections to that point of view. But with the further development of the
question the whole subject began gradually to wear a different appearance;
and I am going to give you a little bit of autobiography, because I think it
may be of some interest in this connection. I am going to mention two or
three of the successive stages which the whole question took in my own
mind as one thing came up after another, and how from time to time it
began to dawn upon me that I had up to that point been looking at the
problem from not exactly the right point of view.
When Darwin's "Descent of Man" was published in 1871, it was of course a
book characterized by all his immense learning, his wonderful fairness of
spirit and fertility of suggestion. Still, one could not but feel that it did not
solve the question of the origin of man. There was one great contrast
between that book and his "Origin of Species." In the earlier treatise he
undertook to point out a vera causa of the origin of species, and he did it. In
his "Descent of Man" he brought together a great many minor

generalizations which facilitated the understanding of man's origin. But he
did not come at all near to solving the central problem, nor did he anywhere
show clearly why natural selection might not have gone on forever
producing one set of beings after another distinguishable chiefly by
physical differences. But Darwin's co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, at
an early stage in his researches, struck out a most brilliant and pregnant
suggestion. In that one respect Wallace went further than ever Darwin did.
It was a point of which, indeed, Darwin admitted the importance. It was a
point of which nobody could fail to understand the importance, that in the
course of the evolution of a very highly organized animal, if there came a
point at which it was of more advantage to that animal to have variations in
his intelligence seized upon and improved by natural selection than to have
physical changes seized upon, then natural selection would begin working
almost exclusively upon that creature's intelligence, and he would develop
in intelligence to a great extent, while his physical organism would change
but slightly. Now, that of course applied to the case of man, who is changed
physically but very slightly from the apes, while he has traversed
intellectually such a stupendous chasm.
As soon as this statement was made by Wallace, it seemed to me to open up
an entirely new world of speculation. There was this enormous antiquity of
man, during the greater part of which he did not know enough to make
history. We see man existing here on the earth, no one can say how long,
but surely many hundreds of thousands of years, yet only during just the
last little fringe of four or five thousand years has he arrived at the point
where he makes history. Before that, something was going on, a great many
things were going on, while his ancestors were slowly growing up to that
point of intelligence where it began to make itself felt in the recording of
events. This agrees with Wallace's suggestion of a long period of psychical
change, accompanied by slight physical change.
Well, in the spring of 1871, when Darwin's "Descent of Man" came out, just
about the same time I happened to be reading Wallace's account of his
experiences in the Malay Archipelago, and how at one time he caught a
female orang-outang with a new-born baby, and the mother died, and
Wallace brought up the baby orang-outang by hand; and this baby orang-
outang had a kind of infancy which was a great deal longer than that of a
cow or a sheep, but it was nothing compared to human infancy in length.

This little orang-outang could not get up and march around, as mammals of
less intelligence do, when he was first born, or within three or four days;
but after three or four weeks or so he would get up, and begin taking hold of
something and pushing it around, just as children push a chair; and he went
through a period of staring at his hands, as human babies do, and altogether
was a good deal slower in getting to the point where he could take care of
himself. And while I was reading of that I thought, Dear me! if there is any
one thing in which the human race is signally distinguished from other
mammals, it is in the enormous duration of their infancy; but it is a point
that I do not recollect ever seeing any naturalist so much as allude to.
It happened at just that time that I was making researches in psychology
about the organization of experiences, the way in which conscious
intelligent action can pass down into quasi-automatic action, the generation
of instincts, and various allied questions; and I thought, Can it be that the
increase of intelligence in an animal, if carried beyond a certain point, must
necessarily result in prolongation of the period of infancy,—must
necessarily result in the birth of the mammal at a less developed stage,
leaving something to be done, leaving a good deal to be done, after birth?
And then the argument seemed to come along very naturally, that for every
action of life, every adjustment which a creature makes in life, whether a
muscular adjustment or an intelligent adjustment, there has got to be some
registration effected in the nervous system, some line of transit worn for
nervous force to follow; there has got to be a connection between certain
nerve-centres before the thing can be done, whether it is the acts of the
viscera or the acts of the limbs, or anything of that sort; and of course it is
obvious that if the creature has not many things to register in his nervous
system, if he has a life which is very simple, consisting of few actions that
are performed with great frequency, that animal becomes almost automatic
in his whole life; and all the nervous connections that need to be made to
enable him to carry on life get made during the fœtal period or during the
egg period, and when he comes to be born, he comes all ready to go to
work. As one result of this, he does not learn from individual experience,
but one generation is like the preceding generations, with here and there
some slight modifications. But when you get the creature that has arrived at
the point where his experience has become varied, he has got to do a good
many things, and there is more or less individuality about them; and many
of them are not performed with the same minuteness and regularity, so that

there does not begin to be that automatism within the period during which
he is being developed and his form is taking on its outlines. During prenatal
life there is not time enough for all these nervous registrations, and so by
degrees it comes about that he is born with his nervous system perfectly
capable only of making him breathe and digest food,—of making him do
the things absolutely requisite for supporting life; instead of being born with
a certain number of definite developed capacities, he has a number of
potentialities which have got to be roused according to his own individual
experience. Pursuing that line of thought, it began after a while to seem
clear to me that the infancy of the animal in a very undeveloped condition,
with the larger part of his faculties in potentiality rather than in actuality,
was a direct result of the increase of intelligence, and I began to see that
now we have two steps: first, natural selection goes on increasing the
intelligence; and secondly, when the intelligence goes far enough, it makes
a longer infancy, a creature is born less developed, and therefore there
comes this plastic period during which he is more teachable. The capacity
for progress begins to come in, and you begin to get at one of the great
points in which man is distinguished from the lower animals, for one of
those points is undoubtedly his progressiveness; and I think that any one
will say, with very little hesitation, that if it were not for our period of
infancy we should not be progressive. If we came into the world with our
capacities all cut and dried, one generation would be very much like
another.
Then, looking round to see what are the other points which are most
important in which man differs from the lower animals, there comes that
matter of the family. The family has adumbrations and foreshadowings
among the lower animal, but in general it may be said that while mammals
lower than man are gregarious, in man have become established those
peculiar relationships which constitute what we know as the family; and it
is easy to see how the existence of helpless infants would bring about just
that state of things. The necessity of caring for the infants would prolong
the period of maternal affection, and would tend to keep the father and
mother and children together, but it would tend especially to keep the
mother and children together. This business of the marital relations was not
really a thing that became adjusted in the primitive ages of man, but it has
become adjusted in the course of civilization. Real monogamy, real
faithfulness of the male parent, belongs to a comparatively advanced stage;

but in the early stages the knitting together of permanent relations between
mother and infant, and the approximation toward steady relations on the
part of the male parent, came to bring the family, and gradually to knit those
organizations which we know as clans.
Here we come to another stage, another step forward. The instant society
becomes organized in clans, natural selection cannot let these clans be
broken up and die out,—the clan becomes the chief object or care of natural
selection, because if you destroy it you retrograde again, you lose all you
have gained; consequently, those clans in which the primeval selfish
instincts were so modified that the individual conduct would be
subordinated to some extent to the needs of the clan,—those are the ones
which would prevail in the struggle for life. In this way you gradually get
an external standard to which man has to conform his conduct, and you get
the germs of altruism and morality; and in the prolonged affectionate
relation between the mother and the infant you get the opportunity for that
development of altruistic feeling which, once started in those relations,
comes into play in the more general relations, and makes more feasible and
more workable the bonds which keep society together, and enable it to unite
on wider and wider terms.
So it seems that from a very small beginning we are reaching a very
considerable result. I had got these facts pretty clearly worked out, and
carried them around with me some years, before a fresh conclusion came
over me one day with a feeling of surprise. In the old days before the
Copernican astronomy was promulgated, man regarded himself as the
centre of the universe. He used to entertain theological systems which
conformed to his limited knowledge of nature. The universe seemed to be
made for his uses, the earth seemed to have been fitted up for his dwelling
place, he occupied the centre of creation, the sun was made to give him
light, etc. When Copernicus overthrew that view, the effect upon theology
was certainly tremendous. I do not believe that justice has ever been done to
the shock that it gave to man when he was made to realize that he occupied
a kind of miserable little clod of dirt in the universe, and that there were so
many other worlds greater than this. It was one of the first great shocks
involved in the change from ancient to modern scientific views, and I do
not doubt it was responsible for a great deal of the pessimistic
philosophizing that came in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Now, it flashed upon me a dozen years or so ago—after thinking about this
manner in which man originated—that man occupies certainly just as
exceptional a position as before, if he is the terminal in a long series of
evolutionary events. If at the end of the long history of evolution comes
man, if this whole secular process has been going on to produce this
supreme object, it does not much matter what kind of a cosmical body he
lives on. He is put back into the old position of theological importance, and
in a much more intelligent way than in the old days when he was supposed
to occupy the centre of the universe. We are enabled to say that while there
is no doubt of the evolutionary process going on throughout countless ages
which we know nothing about, yet in the one case where it is brought home
to us we spell out an intelligible story, and we do find things working along
up to man as a terminal fact in the whole process. This is indeed a
consistent conclusion from Wallace's suggestion that natural selection, in
working toward the genesis of man, began to follow a new path and make
psychical changes instead of physical changes. Obviously, here you are
started upon a new chapter in the history of the universe. It is no longer
going to be necessary to shape new limbs, and to thicken the skin and make
new growths of hair, when man has learned how to build a fire, when he can
take some other animal's hide and make it into clothes. You have got to a
new state of things.
After I had put together all these additional circumstances with regard to the
origination of human society and the development of altruism, I began to
see a little further into the matter. It then began to appear that not only is
man the terminal factor in a long process of evolution, but in the origination
of man there began the development of the higher psychical attributes, and
those attributes are coming to play a greater and greater part in the
development of the human race. Just take this mere matter of "altruism," as
we call it. It is not a pretty word, but must serve for want of a better. In the
development of altruism from the low point, where there was scarcely
enough to hold the clan together, up to the point reached at the present day,
there has been a notable progress, but there is still room for an enormous
amount of improvement. The progress has been all in the direction of
bringing out what we call the higher spiritual attributes. The feeling was
now more strongly impressed upon me than ever, that all these things
tended to set the whole doctrine of evolution into harmony with religion;
that if the past through which man had originated was such as has been

described, then religion was a fit and worthy occupation for man, and some
of the assumptions which underlie every system of religion must be true.
For example, with regard to the assumption that what we see of the present
life is not the whole thing; that there is a spiritual side of the question beside
the material side; that, in short, there is for man a life eternal. When I wrote
the "Destiny of Man," all that I ventured to say was, that it did not seem
quite compatible with ordinary common sense to suppose that so much
pains would have been taken to produce a merely ephemeral result. But
since then another argument has occurred to me: that just at the time when
the human race was beginning to come upon the scene, when the germs of
morality were coming in with the family, when society was taking its first
start, there came into the human mind—how one can hardly say, but there
did come—the beginnings of a groping after something that lies outside and
beyond the world of sense. That groping after a spiritual world has been
going on here for much more than a hundred thousand years, and it has
played an enormous part in the history of mankind, in the whole
development of human society. Nobody can imagine what mankind would
have been without it up to the present time. Either all religion has been a
reaching out for a phantom that does not exist, or a reaching out after
something that does exist, but of which man, with his limited intelligence,
has only been able to gain a crude idea. And the latter seems a far more
probable conclusion, because, if it is not so, it constitutes a unique
exception to all the operations of evolution we know about. As a general
thing in the whole history of evolution, when you see any internal
adjustment reaching out toward something, it is in order to adapt itself to
something that really exists; and if the religious cravings of man constitute
an exception, they are the one thing in the whole process of evolution that is
exceptional and different from all the rest. And this is surely an argument of
stupendous and resistless weight.
I take this autobiographical way of referring to these things, in the order in
which they came before my mind, for the sake of illustration. The net result
of the whole is to put evolution in harmony with religious thought,—not
necessarily in harmony with particular religious dogmas or theories, but in
harmony with the great religious drift, so that the antagonism which used to
appear to exist between religion and science is likely to disappear. So I
think it will before a great while. If you take the case of some evolutionist
like Professor Haeckel, who is perfectly sure that materialism accounts for

everything (he has got it all cut and dried and settled; he knows all about it,
so that there is really no need of discussing the subject!); if you ask the
question whether it was his scientific study of evolution that really led him
to such a dogmatic conclusion, or whether it was that he started from some
purely arbitrary assumption, like the French materialists of the eighteenth
century, I have no doubt the latter would be the true explanation. There are
a good many people who start on their theories of evolution with these
ultimate questions all settled to begin with. It was the most natural thing in
the world that after the first assaults of science upon old beliefs, after a
certain number of Bible stories and a certain number of church doctrines
had been discredited, there should be a school of men who in sheer
weariness should settle down to scientific researches, and say, "We content
ourselves with what we can prove by the methods of physical science, and
we will throw everything else overboard." That was very much the state of
mind of the famous French atheists of the last century. But only think how
chaotic nature was to their minds compared to what she is to our minds to-
day. Just think how we have in the present century arrived where we can see
the bearings of one set of facts in nature as collated with another set of
facts, and contrast it with the view which even the greatest of those
scientific French materialists could take. Consider how fragmentary and
how lacking in arrangement was the universe they saw compared with the
universe we can see to-day, and it is not strange that to them it could be an
atheistic world. That hostility between science and religion continued as
long as religion was linked hand in hand with the ancient doctrine of special
creation. But now that the religious world has unmoored itself, now that it is
beginning to see the truth and beauty of natural science and to look with
friendship upon conceptions of evolution, I suspect that this temporary
antagonism, which we have fallen into a careless way of regarding as an
everlasting antagonism, will come to an end perhaps quicker than we
realize.
There is one point that is of great interest in this connection, although I can
only hint at it. Among the things that happened in that dim past when man
was coming into existence was the increase of his powers of manipulation;
and that was a factor of immense importance. Anaxagoras, it is said, wrote a
treatise in which he maintained that the human race would never have
become human if it had not been for the hand. I do not know that there was
so very much exaggeration about that. It was certainly of great significance

that the particular race of mammals whose intelligence increased far enough
to make it worth while for natural selection to work upon intelligence alone
was the race which had developed hands and could manipulate things. It
was a wonderful era in the history of creation when that creature could take
a club and use it for a hammer, or could pry up a stone with a stake, thus
adding one more lever to the levers that made up his arm. From that day to
this, the career of man has been that of a person who has operated upon his
environment in a different way from any animal before him. An era of
similar importance came probably somewhat later, when man learned how
to build a fire and cook his food; thus initiating that course of culinary
development of which we have seen the climax in our dainty dinner this
evening. Here was another means of acting upon the environment. Here was
the beginning of the working of endless physical and chemical changes
through the application of heat, just as the first use of the club or the
crowbar was the beginning of an enormous development in the mechanical
arts.
Now, at the same time, to go back once more into that dim past, when ethics
and religion, manual art and scientific thought, found expression in the
crudest form of myths, the æsthetic sense was germinating likewise. Away
back in the glacial period you find pictures drawn and scratched upon the
reindeer's antler, portraitures of mammoths and primitive pictures of the
chase; you see the trinkets, the personal decorations, proving beyond
question that the æsthetic sense was there. There has been an immense
æsthetic development since then. And I believe that in the future it is going
to mean far more to us than we have yet begun to realize. I refer to the kind
of training that comes to mankind through direct operation upon his
environment, the incarnation of his thought, the putting of his ideas into
new material relations. This is going to exert powerful effects of a civilizing
kind. There is something strongly educational and disciplinary in the mere
dealing with matter, whether it be in the manual training school, whether it
be in carpentry, in overcoming the inherent and total depravity of inanimate
things, shaping them to your will, and also in learning to subject yourself to
their will (for sometimes you must do that in order to achieve your
conquests; in other words, you must humour their habits and proclivities).
In all this there is a priceless discipline, moral as well as mental, let alone
the fact that, in whatever kind of artistic work a man does, he is doing that
which in the very working has in it an element of something outside of

egoism; even if he is doing it for motives not very altruistic, he is working
toward a result the end of which is the gratification or the benefit of other
persons than himself; he is working toward some result which in a measure
depends upon their approval, and to that extent tends to bring him into
closer relations to his fellow man.
In the future, to an even greater extent than in the recent past, crude labour
will be replaced by mechanical contrivances. The kind of labour which can
command its price is the kind which has trained intelligence behind it. One
of the great needs of our time is the multiplication of skilled and special
labour. The demand for the products of intelligence is far greater than that
for mere crude products of labour, and it will be more and more so. For
there comes a time when the latter products have satisfied the limit to which
a man can consume food and drink and shelter,—those things which merely
keep the animal alive. But to those things which minister to the
requirements of the spiritual side of a man there is almost no limit. The
demand one can conceive is well-nigh infinite. One of the philosophical
things that have been said, in discriminating man from the lower animals, is
that he is the one creature who is never satisfied. It is well for him that he is
so, that there is always something more for which he craves. To my mind,
this fact most strongly hints that man is infinitely more than a mere animate
machine.
May, 1895.

V

THE ORIGINS OF LIBERAL THOUGHT IN AMERICA[17]

In approaching the subject of the origins of liberal thought in America, one
cannot help remembering that the discovery of the new continent was itself
such a stimulus to free thinking as the world had never before witnessed.
From time immemorial, the trade between Europe and the remote parts of
Asia had followed certain customary routes. From ancient days, long before
Olympiads were heard of, when Assyrian kings with curly beards
commemorated their victories in arrow-headed inscriptions, men had used
those same routes. Up the Red Sea, in the early prime of hundred-gated
Thebes, came ships from the Indian Ocean, with gems and spices to
exchange for Egyptian fine linens and amulets of amber from the Baltic;
and five thousand years later Venetian argosies at Alexandria were laden
with just such gems and spices to distribute to the merchants of Augsburg,
the royal household at Paris, the lords and ladies of Haddon Hall. Empires
rose and fell, creeds and pantheons came and went, stately temples reared
their heads for centuries and slowly crumbled in ruins, and still amid all the
secular change the world's great stream of trade flowed through the same
unshifting channels, and there was nothing to show that this state of things,
to which men's ideas and habits had always been adjusted, was not to
endure forever. So it was in that recent time when Henry V. of England was
smiting the French chivalry at Agincourt, and his cousin Prince Henry of
Portugal was beginning the search for an ocean route to the Indies. Never
did the human mind get such a wrench out of its ancient grooves, never
were such vistas of new possibilities laid open, never was beheld such
glorious hardihood, such startling romance, as in the time when Columbus
sailed westward to find the East, and Cortes met warriors of the Stone Age
face to face. The men of Europe suddenly found themselves placed in new
and unsuspected relations to the planet on which they lived; worlds of
barbarism and savagery, unheard of and unspeakably bizarre, were brought
to their notice; strange constellations arose in the firmament; strange beasts
and birds were encountered amid outlandish trees and shrubs in new

climates beyond unknown seas. The old familiarity with nature's aspects
received an abrupt shock. On every side loomed up new questions to be
answered, new practical problems to be solved. All man's inventive faculty,
all his patient inquisitiveness, all the courage he could summon, were
forthwith called into play. The dreams of boundless riches, the eager thirst
for new knowledge, the superhuman bravery, which characterized the epoch
of maritime discovery, are symptoms that reveal to us the highly wrought
condition of the European mind at the time. A study of contemporary
chronicles and letters cannot fail to bring home to us the singular intensity
with which the thrill of venturesome romance was felt in every fibre of
man's being.
The impulse thus given to free thinking must have been extremely
powerful. It is customary to attribute the brilliant efflorescence of the
human mind in the sixteenth century to the revival of Greek learning.
Without seeking to diminish the respect due to that mighty cause, it may be
contended that the influence of maritime discovery was equally important.
While the Greek renaissance brought men into wholesome and stimulating
intercourse with the highest achievements of literature, art, and philosophy,
the discovery of the New World impressed upon them, as nothing had ever
done before, the feasibleness of doing things in novel ways. With the
wholesale displacement of commercial relations, the European mind burst
the bounds of the snug little world to which its habits and theories, its
politics civil and ecclesiastical, its science and its theology, had been
adapted. The sudden and unprecedented widening of the environment soon
set up a general fermentation of ideas. There was nothing accidental in
Martin Luther's coming in the next generation after Columbus. Nor was it
strange that in the following age the English mind, wrought to its highest
tension under the combined influences of Renaissance, Reformation, and
maritime adventure, should have put forth a literature the boldest and
grandest that had ever appeared; that the era of Raleigh and Frobisher and
the early Puritans should have seen even the highest mark of Greek
achievement surpassed by Shakespeare. The gigantic revolution set on foot
by Copernicus was already in full progress, the era of Descartes was just
arriving, and the next century was to see modern scientific method receive
its supreme illustration at the hands of Newton, while the principles of
freedom in thought and speech were to find invincible champions in Milton
and Locke.

Such was the age in which the work of English colonization in America was
beginning. In looking for the origins of liberal thought in America, it is
chiefly with English-speaking America that we are concerned. The Spanish
mind, indeed, felt strongly the stimulus of the maritime discoveries and the
contact with strange races of men, until an age of chivalrous enterprise
bloomed forth in the literature of Calderon and Lope de Vega and
Cervantes; but the new spirit was not strong enough to prevail over an
ecclesiastical organization that had been growing in power since the
Visigothic times. The higher intellectual life of Spain perished in the fires of
the Inquisition, and art and song failed to lead the way to science and free
thought; no Spanish Locke or Newton followed in the train of a Lope and a
Murillo, but so lately as the year 1771 the University of Salamanca
prohibited the teaching of the law of gravitation as discordant with revealed
religion.[18] With such a state of things in the mother country, liberal
thought in the Spanish colonies was a plant of very slow growth. As for
France at the end of the sixteenth century, there was a sturdy intellectual life
there which no efforts of tyranny could more than partially repress; but
circumstances threw the work of colonization into the hands of the Jesuits,
and accordingly the history of New France, while eminent for devoted
bravery and heroic endurance, shows scarcely a trace of liberal thinking
either in politics or in matters pertaining to religion. Not with the French
and Spanish portions of America, therefore, but with the colonies that
developed into the United States, is our inquiry concerned.
The first and most obvious consideration which strikes us is that while the
two centuries following the discovery of America witnessed an
unprecedented awakening of the European mind, yet it was only with those
nations that had retained self-government that this intellectual awakening
was to come to prompt and full fruition. From the British islands and the
Netherlands came the kind of public policy that allowed free thinking to
take deep root and send up a thrifty tree of liberty. The planting of such seed
in the spacious virgin soil of the New World was doubtless the greatest of
all the manifold unforeseen results for which Columbus opened the way. It
made political freedom the strongest power on earth, and thus favoured the
attainment of that equable flexibility of mind which allows the thought to
play freely about the facts which are laid before it. Not in a moment was
such a grand result achieved; its complete realization has not yet come, and
none of us may live to see it, yet toward that goal the whole impetus of

men's civilizing work is tending, and there is no power that can prevent the
consummation. Year by year, no matter how grave the questions with which
we have to deal, we are becoming more and more able to let our minds play
freely with them, to turn them hither and thither till all sides be seen and all
aspects duly considered.
Not all in a moment, I say, has such a desirable result been achieved. So far
is it, moreover, from having been brought about by conscious human effort
that mankind have in general struggled desperately against it. Compared
with the mass of men, it is only a few minds that have learned to regard
absolute freedom of thought as something to be desired. Though the
colonization of America came at a time when men's minds were stirred by
novel ideas as never before, though the men of that generation were moving
irrepressibly toward liberality of thought, yet there were very few who had
any liking for liberal thought, or any good word to bestow upon it. There
were few who doubted that absolute truth was attainable concerning the
most abstruse questions of philosophy and religion, and an exactly true
belief on minute points of theology was deemed necessary for one's
personal salvation. Changes in opinion simply wrought a transfer of
allegiance from one orthodoxy to another, and the new orthodoxy felt
bound as much as the old one to persecute all who refused such allegiance.
From this point of view the history of the progress of liberal thought
becomes curiously interesting, for it shows how one of the most momentous
revolutions in human life has steadily gone on in spite of the inveterate
antagonism of the very men concerned in bringing it about! To a
considerable extent, the history has been the same over a large part of the
globe. The causes which have been at work in America have also been at
work in Europe, and even beyond; and the liberal thought with which we
are familiar is characteristic not so much of America as of the latter part of
the nineteenth century. But along with the general causes there have been
local causes which have especially concerned the New World, and a clear
account of the matter requires us to indicate both the one and the other.
From the revolt of Henry VIII. against the Papacy down to the Revolution
of 1688, there was in England a progressive movement toward liberal
thought. It was at first a crude unconscious movement in the direction of
toleration, which is a necessary condition for the development of free
thinking. When we have arrived at a truly cordial toleration of opinions,

allowing to all free play to stand or fall, just as hypotheses in science are
suffered to stand or fall, then is men's thought for the first time really
untrammelled. Whatever, therefore, tended toward toleration of diverse
forms of creed or worship was a step in the path that led to free thinking;
and whatever tended to democratize the church and relieve it from state
control was a step toward toleration. The revolt of Henry VIII. at first but
realized what the prœmunire statutes of Edward I. and Edward III. had
threatened. But by breaking up the religious orders, expelling abbots from
Parliament, and making the headship of the church a subject of fierce
dispute, it contributed immensely to weaken and relax the bonds of
conservatism, and it afforded a rare opportunity for the thoughts of laymen
and small preachers to assert themselves. Thus the Lollardism which had
been partially suppressed for more than a century now reared its head again
defiantly, and, after learning lessons in democracy from Calvin, came forth
as Puritanism, clad in full panoply for one of the world's most fateful
contests.
In the course of Elizabeth's reign we find this Puritanism taking three
different shapes. There were the moderate reformers, whose wish was
simply to trim and prune the tree of Episcopacy; and secondly, those who
were afterward known as "root and branch" men, whose name is descriptive
enough. Instead of pruning they would uproot the tree and cast it away. To
these Presbyterians the royal supremacy was no more than the papal a part
of the living growth of Christ's church; it was but stubble fit for burning.
Kings looked with horror upon such views, which threatened political
danger no less than ecclesiastical. "A Scottish presbytery," cried James I.,
"agreeth as well with a monarchy as God and the Devil. Then Jack and Tom
and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my
council and all our proceedings." The case could not have been more pithily
stated, yet even Presbyterianism stopped short of full-fledged democracy.
For Jack and his friends, by means of synods and general assemblies, could
create a governing body with power of enforcing conformity upon
unwilling congregations. In protest against this somewhat oligarchical
method, Puritanism assumed its third form, that of Independency. The
beginnings of Independency are to be sought among the Brownists of
Elizabeth's reign, though their day of glory first came with the Civil War. In
the theory of the Independents, as fully developed, any group of persons
wishing to worship God in common might come together and organize

themselves into a Congregational church, existing by as good a warrant as
any other church, and entirely free from the control of any bishop, or synod,
or council. No outside power could prescribe its creed or interfere with its
ceremonial. Each church became, therefore, a little self-governing republic,
as completely autonomous as an ancient Greek city, and the union of such
churches was based solely upon the spirit of spontaneous Christian
fellowship. Such was the theory of Independency.
In these successive stages of Protestantism we may see the preliminary
steps toward general toleration and toward liberal thought. In each stage the
strength of the coercive power that could be exercised over men's opinions
and expressions of opinion was sensibly diminished. From the coercive
power of the universal Church, which had once been able to direct a
crusade against the Albigenses, it was a long step downward to the coercive
power of Queen Elizabeth, whose will to suppress Puritanism was
perpetually held in check by motives of public policy. It was a yet further
step downward from the coercive power of a sovereign to that of a synod,
and thence again to that of a congregation. So striking is the progress that
one who knew nothing of history might easily mistake the theory of
Independency as providing practically for something like complete
toleration. History tells us that this was far from being the case. Heresy, or
dissent from the commonly accepted orthodoxy, has been no more tolerated
in Independent churches than elsewhere; and even in the absence of serious
differences in dogma, persecution has been visited upon divergences from
the customary ritual, as for example in the treatment long accorded to
Baptists. In their militant days, neither Presbyterianism nor Independency
ever professed to be tolerant. The gravest reproach they could imagine was
to be charged with encouraging free thinking. The eminent Scottish divine
Rutherford gave expression to the prevailing sentiment when he declared,
"We regard toleration of all religions as not far removed from blasphemy."
Nevertheless, the movement which gave rise to Presbyterianism and to
Independency was sure to advance to the announcement of the principle of
universal toleration. That movement was itself the expression of a vast
amount of free thinking, and it was not to stop short of recognizing the
claims of free thought. The century that witnessed the beginnings of an
English-speaking America saw also the genuine principles of toleration laid
down by Roger Williams and William Penn, and demonstrated with
resistless wealth of learning and logic by Milton and Locke.

In an account of the origins of liberal thought in America this English
development is all-important, but it does not cover the whole field.
America's inheritance from Europe comes chiefly, but not entirely, from the
British islands. In the early days of the Protestant Reformation, there were
European countries in which religious toleration had advanced practically
much further than in England. The England of Henry VIII. as compared
with the Netherlands was in a crude and backward condition. The contrast
might be likened to that between rural life with its narrow mental horizon
and the varied cosmopolitan life of the city. England politically was a land
of unrivalled promise, but she was not quite abreast with the most advanced
culture of the time. Her government was mainly in the hands of country
gentlemen, who lacked some valuable elements of experience that were
possessed by the burghers of commercial Antwerp and Ghent. A careful
survey of the Middle Ages shows plainly an abiding antagonism between
commerce and the ecclesiastical spirit. A general connection between the
predominance of international trade and the secularization of public life is
distinctly traceable. On the map of mediæval Europe one may point out
peculiar spots where the Papacy never gained complete sway. In some of
these, as in Bohemia and southern Gaul, the resistance was due to
Manichæan heresies brought in from the Eastern Empire, giving rise to a
kind of mediæval Puritanism; in these we do not find a spirit of liberal
thought developed, but rather an anti-Catholic fanaticism. The other
peculiar spots lie in the great pathway of commerce between the Levant and
the northern seas. In the free cities of northern Italy and southern Germany,
in the Hansa towns, and in the Netherlands, priestcraft had less sway than
elsewhere, and the general tone of thought was more liberal and modern.
No city came so completely under the secularizing influences of maritime
commerce as Venice; and it is significant that the Papacy, at the very
pinnacle of its power and arrogance in the thirteenth century, utterly failed
in its attempt to force the Inquisition upon that republic of merchants.
In similar wise, we find the commercial Netherlands in the sixteenth
century exhibiting practically such toleration in matters of religion as the
British islands attained only much later, and after prolonged and distressing
struggle. From the time of Edward III. commercial intercourse with the
great Dutch and Flemish cities was one of the most potent civilizing
influences at work in England. It was a liberalizing influence in religion and
in politics, and must be named among the causes which made the eastern

counties preëminent for heresy. In later days, when the Dutch provinces had
saved their Protestantism and recovered political freedom, they adopted a
policy of toleration so broad as to seem to most contemporaries very
eccentric. Their noble country was stigmatized as "the common harbour of
all heresies" and a "cage of unclean birds." How it harboured heretics
escaping from England is something that no American is ever likely to
forget.
If, after this glance at European conditions, we cross the Atlantic and
observe the group of twelve colonies that were planted during the
seventeenth century, we find that five of them were especially notable for
pursuing from the outset a policy of toleration,—a policy favourable to
liberal thought. These five, naming them in order of seniority, were New
Netherland, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania, with Delaware. In
New Netherland the Dutch simply maintained their traditional secularized
policy. On the hospitable island of Manhattan all the varieties of European
religion met on terms of equality,—Lutherans and Catholics, Quakers[19]
and Puritans, Moravians and Jews. After the English conquest this liberal
policy was continued by the bigoted Duke of York, for reasons similar to
those which made toleration a necessity in the province of the liberal and
sagacious Calverts. The Catholic proprietors of Maryland wished to make
their province a desirable home for Catholics who were inclined to leave
England, and the only possible way of accomplishing this, without
interference from the British government, was to pursue a policy broad
enough to include Catholics along with all other kinds of Christians in its
benefits. A similar necessity confronted Charles II. and James II. In order to
secure as much protection as possible for Catholics without interference
from Parliament, it was necessary to pursue a policy broad enough to
include Quakers along with Catholics. For such reasons James refrained
from disturbing the liberal Dutch policy in New York. For such reasons
both Stuart kings supported the schemes of William Penn, in whose
proprietary colonies of Pennsylvania and Delaware the principles of
toleration were carried out, on the whole, more completely than anywhere
else in English-speaking America. It is interesting in this connection to
observe that the mother of William Penn was a Dutch lady, though perhaps
it is possible to make too much of such a fact. The Quakers, who formed the
strength of the colony, represented a phase of Puritanism more liberal than
Independency. As contrasted with Independency, Quakerism was a notable

advance in the direction of Individualism; it had outgrown the set of notions
according to which a civic community ought to consist of a united body of
believers. Pennsylvania, therefore, and its appendage Delaware, profited by
the late date at which they were founded; they represented a more advanced
stage of opinion than the colonies which started in the time of James I.
Their proprietary government remained undisturbed until the Declaration of
Independence, and in 1776 these two states were the only ones in which all
Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic, stood socially and politically on
an equal footing. For after the accession of William and Mary had made the
Episcopal Church supreme in New York and Maryland, the Catholic
inhabitants of those colonies were disfranchised and made the subject of
various oppressive enactments. Even the laws of Rhode Island, as first
printed, early in the eighteenth century, expressly prohibit Roman Catholics
from voting. The date of this statute is not accurately known, but it was
certainly between 1688 and 1705,[20] and may be due to the strong
antagonism aroused by the conduct of James II. and his Jacobites. However
that may be, the statute was not repealed until 1784.
The disfranchisement of Catholics was contrary to the spirit of the Rhode
Island charter and to the views of Roger Williams, who certainly
understood the rational grounds for religious toleration better than any other
man of his time, save perhaps Milton and Vane. He represents the Protestant
principle of the sacred right of private judgment carried out with
unflinching logical consistency. In him the transition from Independency to
Individualism is completed. The contrast between the two is illustrated in
the controversy between Williams and Cotton which was called forth by the
publication in 1644 of Williams's book entitled "The Bloudy Tenent of
Persecution." John Cotton was a typical Independent, and by no means a
man of persecuting temperament, but his view of the matter is extremely
one-sided. He admits that it is wrong for error to persecute truth, but he
holds it to be the sacred duty of truth to persecute error! Williams, on the
other hand, sees that truth stands in no need of violent or artificial support,
and that error contains within itself the seeds of death. He feels, too, that
when I venture to persecute what I call error in others, I virtually assume
my own infallibility. Thus not until pure Individualism is reached is the
fundamental fallacy of Catholicism escaped. In order to protect this sacred
Individualism, Williams would have a complete separation between church
and state. Under no pretext whatever should the civil government interfere

with religious matters. There should be no more statutes against heresy or
heretics, no enforced attendance upon public worship, no support of
churches by taxation. Roger Williams not only proclaimed such doctrines,
but he lived up to them. He never took pains to conceal his dislike of
Quaker doctrines; in his seventy-third year he once rowed himself in a boat
the whole length of Narragansett Bay, in order to conduct a dispute against
three valiant Quaker champions; yet, in spite of vehement pressure from the
neighbouring colonies, he resolutely refused to allow the civil power of
Rhode Island to be used against Quakers. Massachusetts in fury threatened
to cut off the trade of the weaker colony, but nothing could intimidate
Williams into what he termed "exercising a civil power over men's
consciences." Among the public men of the seventeenth century Roger
Williams deserves a preëminent place; he was the first to conceive
thoroughly and carry out consistently, in the face of strong opposition, a
theory of religious liberty broad enough to win assent and approval from
advanced thinkers of the present day.
The separation of church from state, which was effected with such
remarkable success in the founding of Rhode Island, did not become
general in the United States until after the winning of independence. On this
issue the eighteenth century had its memorable struggle, in which the
protagonist was Virginia, and the victory was achieved under the leadership
of Jefferson and Madison. The early policy of Virginia was to drive out
dissentients, or subject them to civil disabilities; and of the Puritans who
went thither for a while the greater part left the colony, many of them
retreating into tolerant Maryland. After 1660, for three generations the
Episcopal folk had it all their own way. But about 1720 began the wholesale
immigration of Presbyterians and Lutherans into the Shenandoah Valley,
and after the middle of the century trouble began when the tide-water
Cavaliers tried to impose taxes upon these people for the support of the
Established Church. The most numerous and powerful opponents of this
narrow policy were the Presbyterians; and inasmuch as these had come, not
from Scotland where their own church was established, but from Ireland
where it was persecuted, their experience had led them to approve the
separation of church from state. Their political notions were also strongly
democratic, and with the aid of their votes Jefferson's party not only
abolished primogeniture and entail and other old English customs, but also
carried the disestablishment of the Episcopal Church in Virginia. Madison's

Religious Freedom Act of 1785, which not only effected this, but likewise
did away with all religious tests, is a very important event in the history of
the United States. The statute, which declared that "opinion in matters of
religion shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect civil capacities,"
attracted attention far and wide; it was translated into several European
languages, and published with admiring comments; and in the course of the
next forty years it was imitated by one state after another, until all over the
land religious freedom came to be almost as complete as legislation could
make it. The qualifying adverb is still needed; for, by the constitutions of
Pennsylvania and Tennessee, no man can hold office unless he believes in
God and a future state of rewards and punishments; in Texas, Arkansas,
Mississippi, the two Carolinas, and Maryland, belief in God is required; and
in Arkansas and Maryland a man who does not believe in God and a future
state of retribution is deemed incompetent as a witness or juror.[21] Such
curiosities of law-making—survivals from a lower state, like the caudal
vertebra in man and the higher apes—are common enough in history.
The various stages here mentioned in the progress toward religious
toleration, and toward the separation of church and state, are important
symptoms of the progress of liberal thought. Of course Madison's Religious
Freedom Act could not have been proposed by an Endicott, or sustained by
a community that would not endure the presence of Baptists or Quakers.
The sketch here given shows an enormous advance in liberal thought in the
course of two centuries and a half. But such a survey is far from telling us
the whole story. A further inquiry into causal agencies is needed, and the
best field for it is furnished by that theocratic Puritanism which cast out
Roger Williams,—the Puritanism of the four confederated New England
colonies, and especially of Massachusetts. No one can deny that in
Massachusetts, during the nineteenth century, liberal thought has advanced
further and has permeated the community more thoroughly than in any
other state of the American Union. For at least three generations the
intellectual ferment upon which liberal thought in the United States has
thriven has come chiefly from Massachusetts. Yet among our colonies
which attained social maturity during the seventeenth century there was
none which made such emphatic exhibitions of intolerance and bigotry as
Massachusetts. She was as clearly and avowedly founded upon an illiberal
principle as Rhode Island was founded upon a principle of liberality. The
Endicott type of mind is the very antipodes of the Roger Williams type; yet

it was in the land of Endicott, and in a congenial soil, that Theodore Parker
lately flourished. Whence came so great a change? The answer will remind
us that there are two sources from which liberal thought is nourished. The
one is the secularized Gallio spirit that deems it folly to interpose obstacles
in the way of the natural working of reason and common sense; the other is
the intense devotion to spiritual ideals which, in spite of all inherited
encumbrances of bigotry and superstition, never casts off its allegiance to
reason as the final arbiter. The former spirit is of vast use in the world,
although its tendency is to deaden into mere worldliness as typified in a
Franklin; the latter spirit may commit many an error, but its drift is toward
light and stimulus and exaltation of life as typified in an Emerson. In the
darkest days of New England Puritanism the paramount allegiance to
reason was never lost sight of; and out of this fact came the triumph of free
thinking, although no such result was ever intended.
The aims of the Puritans who settled in New England were not all alike, but
one dominant aim with many was the founding of a commonwealth in
which church and state should be identified, somewhat after the pattern of
the old Hebrew theocracy. To this end the suffrage in Massachusetts and
New Haven was limited to persons qualified to receive the sacrament in
Congregational churches. This Massachusetts idea was never adopted by
Plymouth, and the founding of Connecticut was at least in part a liberal
protest against it. In New Haven it was soon suppressed by the act of
Charles II. which put an end to the separate existence of the colony. In
Massachusetts, where this theocratic policy prevailed for half a century, the
result was the growth of an unenfranchised class which came to include
four fifths of the community. During the first generation, when the policy
was administered by broad-minded, sagacious men like Winthrop and
Cotton, its evils were not flagrant. But after 1650, with such fanatics as
Norton and the aged Endicott at the helm, it soon became evident that the
rulers were at variance on many points with the mass of the people. This
was shown with glaring force in the Quaker persecution, when the violence
of Endicott's party produced a popular reaction of feeling, which enabled
the Quakers to carry their point and remain in the colony in defiance of
statutes. It was further shown in the Half-way Covenant and the founding of
the Old South Church in 1669, as parts of a movement toward extending the
suffrage; and again in the rise of the Tory party under the lead of Joseph
Dudley, opposed to the pretensions of the clergy. The magnificent work of

the Massachusetts theocracy in resisting the crown throughout the whole
reign of Charles II. can never be forgotten. Nothing was ever done in
America that contributed more toward the maintenance of political
freedom. But in spite of its merits, the faults of the theocracy were such that
we cannot regret its speedy overthrow. When that overthrow was effected,
by the charter of 1692, there were a great many people in Massachusetts
more or less hostile to the kind of Puritanism entertained by their
grandfathers, and thus prepared for a more liberal mental habit. There was
also a marked secularization of thought, a diminution of interest in
theological problems, and a deadening of religious zeal. A wonderful series
of changes was set on foot by the writings and preaching of Jonathan
Edwards, and the group of revivals between 1735 and 1750 known as "the
Great Awakening." Few figures in history are more pathetic or more
sublime than that of Jonathan Edwards in the lonely woodlands of
Northampton and Stockbridge, a thinker for depth and acuteness surpassed
by not many that have lived, a man with the soul of a poet and prophet,
wrestling with the most terrible problems that humanity has ever
encountered, with more than the courage and candour of Augustine or
Calvin, with all the lofty inspiration of Fichte or Novalis. An interesting
historical essay might be devoted to tracing the effects wrought upon New
England by this giant personality. The Great Awakening, in which he took
part, and to which his preaching powerfully contributed, revived the
popular interest in theological questions, disencumbered of the ever present
political implications of the previous century. In many ways his theories
acted as a disintegrating solvent upon the beliefs of the time. For example,
the prominence which he gave to spiritual conversion, or what was called
"change of heart," brought about the overthrow of the doctrine of the Half-
way Covenant. It also weakened the logical basis of infant baptism, and led
to the winning of hosts of converts by the Baptists. Moreover, the uses to
which Edwards put his doctrine of the will produced a reaction toward
Arminianism, which not only affected the teachings of the Baptists, but
predisposed many persons to join in the wave of Methodism which was just
about to sweep over the country. A similar reaction against Edwards's views
of divine justice, reinforced by some first faint inklings of Biblical
criticism, pointed the way toward Universalism. Still more, the discussions
aroused by Edwards's speculations on original sin and the atonement began
to undermine the doctrine of the Trinity and prepare men's minds for the

Unitarian movement. No such results would have been possible save in a
country where education was universal and the Sunday sermon a favourite
theme of discussion. Sooner or later, the perpetual appeal to reason, with the
familiar use of metaphysical arguments and citations of Scripture, must lead
to novelties of doctrine and to negative criticism; while for the education of
the popular intelligence nothing could be more effective. In seventeenth-
century Puritanism, therefore, in spite of its rigid narrowness, there were
latent the speculations of an Edwards, the further conclusions to which
some of them were pushed, the reactions against them, the keen edge of the
critical faculty in New England, and much of the free thinking of a later
age.
In the course of the eighteenth century some influence was doubtless
exercised in America by the English deists, and at the very end of the
century by Thomas Paine. There is no reason to suppose that any
appreciable effect was produced by the atheism of the French
encyclopædists, which was mainly a reaction, largely emotional and aided
by the shallowest of metaphysics, against the effete ecclesiastical system in
France. It was too remote from American ideas to exert much influence
here. The deism of Voltaire found a few scattered admirers. A quiet religion
of humanity, which set little store by miracles, or abstruse doctrines, or the
divine authority of Scripture, was held by a number of eminent persons of
strong prosaic common sense and feeble spirituality, among whom may be
named Franklin and Jefferson and John Adams. This phase of free thought
was of considerable importance, but the dominant influence in New
England down to the rise of the transcendental movement was that which
could be traced back to Edwards.
In the early part of the present century, the most advanced phase of liberal
thought, represented by the Unitarians in Massachusetts, was trying to hold
an utterly untenable position, halfway between narrow orthodoxy and
untrammelled free thinking, when the ground began to be cut from under it
by the transcendentalists, whose native temperaments, not wanting in
kinship with that of Edwards, were stimulated by a brief contact with
Kantian and post-Kantian speculation in Germany. In Emerson's poetic soul
the result was a seminal influence upon high thinking, in America and in the
Old World, the power of which we cannot but feel, but which it is as yet too
soon to estimate. In the middle of the century some wholesome destructive

work still needed to be done, and it was well done. When German criticism,
with the other weapons in the powerful hands of Theodore Parker, freed us
from the spectre of bibliolatry, it might indeed be said that the promise of
the Protestant Reformation was at length fulfilled. The change wrought in
the Unitarian church since Parker began his preaching has been to some
extent followed by analogous changes in other churches. On every side, the
last quarter of the nineteenth century has been preëminently the age of the
decomposition of orthodoxies. Here and there and everywhere they are
crumbling into ruins; and as the world has long since left behind the age of
trilobites and the age of dinosaurs, so in the world to which we are coming
there will be neither a place nor a use for orthodoxies.
For, as I must observe in conclusion, there is all about us a resistless and
world-wide influence at work, to which all the temporary and local causes I
have mentioned have been but the ministering servants. From age to age,
our knowledge is growing from more to more. From the discovery of
America, from the astronomy of Copernicus and the physics of Galileo,
down to the universal doctrine of evolution in our own time, there has been
one grand coherent and consecutive tale of ever enlarging, ever more
organized knowledge of the world in which we live. By this enlarged
experience our minds are affected, from day to day and from year to year, in
more ways than we can detect or enumerate. It opens our minds to some
notions, and makes them incurably hostile to others; so that, for example,
new truths well-nigh beyond comprehension, like some of those connected
with the luminiferous ether, are accepted, and old beliefs once universal,
like witchcraft, are scornfully rejected. Vast changes in mental attitude are
thus wrought before it is generally realized. Into the new scheme of things
old beliefs no longer fit, and are therefore thrown aside and forgotten. Now
our orthodoxies are of older date than the goodly fabric of modern
knowledge. They are the outcome of more primitive and childlike thinking,
they have ceased to fit the world as we know it, and therefore they fade and
fall away from us, in spite of all our efforts to retain undisturbed the
venerable and hallowed associations. In this inevitable struggle there has
always been more or less pain, and hence free thought has not usually been
popular. It has come to our life feast as a guest unbidden and unwelcome;
but it has come to stay with us, and already proves more genial than was
expected. Deadening, cramping finality has lost its charm for him who has
tasted of the ripe fruit of the tree of knowledge. In this broad universe of

God's wisdom and love, not leashes to restrain us are needed, but wings to
sustain our flight. Let bold but reverent thought go on and probe creation's
mysteries, till faith and knowledge "make one music as before, but vaster."
October, 1895.

VI

SIR HARRY VANE[22]

With the single exception of Cromwell, the greatest statesman of the heroic
age of Puritanism was unquestionably the younger Henry Vane. He did as
much as any one to compass the downfall of Strafford; he brought the
military strength of Scotland to the aid of the hard-pressed Parliament; he
administered the navy with which Blake won his astonishing victories; he
dared even withstand Cromwell at the height of his power, when his
measures savoured too much of violence. After the death of Pym in 1643,
Sir Henry Vane, then thirty-one years of age, was the foremost man in the
Long Parliament, and so remained as long as that Parliament controlled the
march of events. As Baxter said, "he was that within the House that
Cromwell was without." Yet before the beginning of his brilliant career in
England, this young man had written his name indelibly upon one of the
earliest pages in the history of the American people. It is pleasant to
remember that this admirable man was once the chief magistrate of an
American commonwealth. Thorough republican and enthusiastic lover of
liberty, he was spiritually akin to Jefferson and to Samuel Adams. His
career furnishes an excellent illustration of Mr. Doyle's remark, that "by
looking at the colony of Massachusetts, we can see what sort of a
commonwealth was constructed by the best men of the Puritan party, and to
some extent what they would have made of the government of England if
they could have had their way unchecked."
An adequate biography of this great statesman was a thing much to be
desired. Half a century ago Mr. C. W. Upham contributed to Sparks's
"American Biography" an interesting life of Vane; and about the same time
Mr. John Forster, in his "Statesmen of the Commonwealth," made a sketch
characterized by his usual brilliancy. But both these writers indulged
themselves in that kind of indiscriminate eulogy which used in those days
to be thought necessary for biographers; and by way of foil to their hero
they seemed to feel bound to underrate and misinterpret Cromwell, even as

Carlyle seemed to think he was exalting the great, Protector in belittling
Vane. The remarkable advance in fairness and breadth of view which
historical studies have made within the last fifty years is nowhere better
illustrated than in the spirit in which the seventeenth century in England is
treated by Masson and Gardiner as contrasted with Macaulay. It is no longer
the fashion to depict individuals or parties as wholly saintlike or quite the
reverse, and it is beginning to be practically recognized that there are two
sides to almost every question.
The need for an adequate life of Sir Harry Vane has been most thoroughly
and admirably satisfied by Mr. Hosmer. As a biography and as a historical
monograph, it deserves to be ranked among the best books of the day. It
paints a lifelike picture of the man, and it describes, in a broad, generous
spirit and with keen philosophical insight, the causal succession of events in
one of the most momentous political contests the world has ever seen. We
are getting far enough away from the seventeenth century to realize the
critical importance of the struggle in which kingship was struck down in
England just as it was attaining unchecked supremacy in all the other great
nations of Europe. We can put the Great Rebellion into its proper place in
the series of conflicts which have so far resulted in spreading constitutional
government far and wide over two hemispheres; and we can begin to see
how disastrous in its consequences would have been the victory of the
Cavaliers, true and gallant men as most of them doubtless were. Without
dealing too much in generalities, Mr. Hosmer's narrative keeps before us the
gravity of the issues at stake, while our attention is seldom drawn away
from the powerful but quiet and gracious personality that occupies the
centre of the canvas. It is customary for great eras to live in the twilight of
popular memory in association with some one surpassing name, while other
heroes of the time are dimly remembered or quite forgotten. The work of
these other men gets unconsciously transferred to the credit of the most
brilliant or striking hero, as Hamilton, for example, is apt to get associated
not merely with his own all-important achievements, but likewise with
those of Madison and the Federal Convention generally. In accordance with
this labour-saving habit of mind, the Great Rebellion in popular memory
means Oliver Cromwell, while such men as Eliot and Pym, Fairfax and
Ireton, are passed over; and if Hampden stays, it is partly due to the often-
quoted line of the poet Gray. So there are many who know Vane only
through Milton's sonnet,—itself perhaps the noblest literary tribute ever

paid to a statesman. In Mr. Hosmer's pages Sir Harry lives again, one of the
brightest figures of the Puritan age, cheerful and affectionate, full of sacred
enthusiasm, yet shrewd and self-contained. "He was indeed a man of
extraordinary parts, a pleasant wit, a great understanding which pierced into
and discerned the purposes of men with wonderful sagacity, whilst he had
himself vultum clausum, that no man could make a guess of what he
intended." So says Clarendon, who loved him not, but could not help
admiring the skill which, at the most critical moment of the war, when
many stout adherents of the parliamentary cause were inclined to abandon it
as lost, all at once brought light out of darkness, as the signing of the
Solemn League and Covenant summoned Alexander Leslie and twenty
thousand brawny Scots across the border to stand side by side with
Cromwell and Fairfax at Marston Moor. In later days it became matter of
common report that the northern Covenanters had fallen a prey to the wiles
of "that sweet youth," and allowed themselves to be hoodwinked and
cozened by "sly Sir Harry," until, in the hope of establishing
Presbyterianism south of the Tweed, they lent themselves to the work of
setting the monster Independency upon its feet. Mr. Hosmer carefully
examines this charge, and, we think, successfully refutes it. It was neither
the first nor the last contract on record which has afterward come to receive
conflicting interpretations from the two parties without any tricksome intent
on either side. "The Scots," says Mr. Hosmer, "understood that England
assumed their own narrow Presbyterianism, with its complete intolerance;
Vane and his friends gave the instrument a different interpretation, which
they honestly felt it would bear." The amendments which Vane partly
succeeded in engrafting upon the Scottish proposals at Edinburgh are
sufficient evidence of his straightforwardness. It was plain enough that, in
making a league to overcome the King, the Scots wanted one thing, while
the English wanted another. Vane did not hide this fact; to have emphasized
it would have been to forfeit all claim to diplomatic tact. His part in the
memorable negotiation is tersely summed up by Clarendon: "Sir Harry
Vane was one of the commissioners, and therefore the others need not be
named, since he was all in any business where others were joined with
him." In the Committee of Both Kingdoms which the league created he was
equally effective, and it was mainly through his persistent dexterity that the
committee acquired the control of military affairs, and thus gave to the

operations of the parliamentary army that unity which they had hitherto
lacked.
The firstfruits of Vane's diplomacy were Marston Moor and Naseby, and it
would be unreasonable to find fault with Mr. Hosmer for pausing to
describe those battles. They are brilliant episodes in his narrative. We have
nowhere seen the two battles more lucidly explained. The author has been
himself a soldier, and has looked at the ground with a military eye. One
quite envies him the pleasant journey, as on his tricycle he follows the route
of the Ironsides over the smooth roads and smiling fields of Merry England.
His pages are redolent of the mellow cheer and fragrance of the summer
day under that mild northern sun. One catches, with the author, the spirit of
the deadly fight, and realizes, as Naseby spire fades away in the distance,
the gravity of the crisis and the completeness of the victory. Said stout old
Sir Jacob Astley, when the Roundheads took him captive a few months
afterward, "Gentlemen, ye may now sit down and play, for you have done
all your work, if you fall not out among yourselves."
They were already falling out among themselves; how seriously, Dunbar
and Worcester were by and by to show. "Their own generation," says Mr.
Hosmer, "believed that the Independents drew their origin from America."
Certainly there had been witnessed in Boston, in the year when Harvard
College was founded, some noteworthy manifestations of Independency,
and scenes had been enacted which had left a deep impress upon Sir Harry's
youthful mind. In 1635 the gossips wrote: "Sir Henry Vane hath as good as
lost his eldest son, who is gone into New England for conscience' sake; he
likes not the discipline of the Church of England;... no persuasions of our
bishops nor authority of his parents could prevail with him: let him go." The
fascinating boy arrived in Boston in October, 1635, and in the following
March, having won all hearts, was elected governor of Massachusetts. He
witnessed the Pequot war, the beautiful heroism and rare diplomacy of
Roger Williams, and the bitter strife which ensued upon the teachings of
Mrs. Hutchinson. Mr. Hosmer gives a vivid picture of the life in the little
colony, the theological warfare, and the passionate tears of the young man
as the difficulties thickened around him. Perhaps his indiscreet threat of an
appeal to the throne in favour of the Antinomians, as he sailed for England
in the summer of 1637, may have served to hasten the banishment of Mrs.
Hutchinson; but the lesson of toleration was already taking shape in his

mind, as was clearly shown in his controversy with Winthrop. His friendly
relations with Roger Williams began at the time of the Pequot war; and in
1643, when Williams visited England in quest of a charter for Rhode Island,
he was Vane's guest at his house in London, and also at his country seat in
Lincolnshire. It was then that Williams wrote that noble book, "The Bloudy
Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience," in the preface to which he
thus refers to his friend: "Mine ears were glad and late witnesses of an
heavenly speech of one of the most eminent of that High Assembly of
Parliament: Why should the labours of any be suppressed, if sober, though
never so different? We now profess to seek God, we desire to see light!"[23]
Mr. Hosmer gives in facsimile a touching letter from Vane to Winthrop in
1645, in which he urges his friends in New England to respect the liberty of
conscience.
In 1648, in order to save the cause of liberty from losing to intrigue and
chicanery all the ground it had won by the sword, the Ironsides felt
themselves called upon to take things into their own hands. This period of
the story, extending to the forcible dissolution of the Rump Parliament in
1653, Mr. Hosmer treats under the rubric of American England. For the
moment, the spirit of Independency, which reigned supreme in
Massachusetts, asserted itself in England in the temporary overthrow of the
crown and the aristocracy. In this period Sir Harry appears as the opponent
of the extreme measures of his party. He heartily disapproves of such
irregular proceedings as Pride's Purge and the execution of the King. Here
is shown the strong conservatism of temperament of this law-abiding
American-Englishman. He had all the ingrained reverence of our sturdy
practical race for constitutional methods, and withal a far-sighted
intelligence that could discern ways of settling the difficulty which were for
the moment impracticable, because his contemporaries had not grown up to
them. In his mind were the rudiments of the idea of a written constitution,
upon which a new government for England might be built, with powers
neatly defined and limited. One fancies that in some respects he would have
felt himself more at home if he could have been suddenly translated from
the Rump Parliament of 1653 to the Federal Convention of 1787, in which
immortal assembly there sat perhaps no man of loftier spirit than his. It was
natural enough that Cromwell, whose stern common sense discerned the
practical need of the moment and reluctantly fulfilled it, should cry, "The
Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" In spite of this antagonism at the

supreme crisis, however, the Protector recognized the worth of his
opponent, and seems to have borne him no deep-seated ill will. There was
no downright break between them until the Healing Question came up, in
1656.
In Vane's last years there seemed to be some good reasons for distrusting his
judgment on practical questions. The element of dreamy enthusiasm always
present in him began to come into the foreground as his more sober ideas
and plans were thwarted. Some of his latest utterances are like the
rhapsodies of the Fifth Monarchists. Herein again appears his spiritual
kinship with his friends in Massachusetts. The theocratic ideal of the
founders of Massachusetts, as developed freely in the American wilderness,
was kept within rational bounds; but if hemmed in by such inexorable
circumstances as checked the early growth of republicanism in England, it
would very likely have flowered grotesquely enough in Fifth Monarchist
vagaries. From Edward Johnson, of Woburn, author of the "Wonder-
Working Providence," there often came the dithyrambic utterances of an
extreme Fifth Monarchy man.
When Charles II. came back to his father's throne, there was but one thing
to be done with such a representative republican as Sir Harry Vane. His
head must come off, for there was not room enough in England to hold him
and the son of Charles I. at the same time. He died on Tower Hill, with all
the fearlessness and charming sweetness that had always marked his life.
His memory is a precious possession for all coming generations; and the
book in which Mr. Hosmer has told the story of his life, with such warm
sympathy and such broad intelligence, is worthy of its subject.
January, 1889.

VII
THE ARBITRATION TREATY

After negotiations which had been pending for nearly two years, the general
Arbitration Treaty between the United States and Great Britain was signed
on the 11th of January [1897] by Mr. Richard Olney and Sir Julian
Pauncefote, representing the two countries concerned; and on the following
day the document was sent by President Cleveland to the Senate for
ratification. The provisions of this important treaty may be summarized as
follows:—
It is expected that differences arising between the two countries will
ordinarily admit of settlement by the customary methods of diplomacy. It is
only with cases where such customary methods fail that the provisions of
the present treaty are concerned; and the parties hereby agree to submit all
such cases to arbitration after the manner herein provided.
The "questions in difference" that are liable to arise are arranged in three
grades or classes: (1) small pecuniary claims; (2) large pecuniary claims,
and others not involving questions of territory; (3) territorial claims. For
each of these grades there is to be a special method of settlement.
First, "all pecuniary claims or groups of claims, which in the aggregate do
not exceed $500,000 in amount and do not involve the determination of
territorial claims," shall be decided by a tribunal constituted as follows:
"Each party shall nominate one arbitrator, who shall be a jurist of repute,
and the two arbitrators so nominated shall, within two months of their
nomination, select an umpire. In the event of their failing to do so within
the limit of time, the umpire shall be appointed by agreement between the
members of the Supreme Court of the United States and the members of the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Great Britain." In case these
persons fail to agree upon an umpire within three months, the King of
Sweden and Norway shall appoint one. Among public personages of
unquestionable dignity and importance, this sovereign is as likely as any to
be free from bias against either the United States of Great Britain; but

should either party object to him, they may adopt a substitute, if they can
agree upon one. It does not seem likely that the failure to select an umpire
would often reach the stage where an appeal to the Swedish King would be
necessary. The umpire, when and however appointed, shall be president of
the tribunal of three, and the award of a majority of the members shall be
final. Under these provisions, it may be expected that all petty claims can be
disposed of without unreasonable delay, and with as little risk of unfairness
as one would find in any court whatever.
Secondly, "all pecuniary claims or groups of claims exceeding $500,000,
and all other matters in respect whereof either of the parties shall have
rights against the other, under the treaty or otherwise, provided they do not
involve territorial claims," shall be dealt with as follows: Such claims must
be submitted to the tribunal of three, as above described, and its award, if
unanimous, shall be final. If the award is not unanimous, either party may
demand a review of it, but such demand must be made within six months
from the date of the award. In such case, the appellate tribunal shall consist
of five jurists of repute, no one of whom has been a member of the tribunal
of three whose award is to be reviewed. Of these five jurists, two shall be
selected by each party, and these four shall agree upon their umpire within
three months after their nomination. In case of their failure, the umpire shall
be selected (as in the former case) by the members of the Supreme Court
and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; and if these do not agree
within three months, the selection shall be left (as before) to the King of
Sweden and Norway. The umpire, when selected, shall preside. The award
of the tribunal of three shall be reviewed by this tribunal of five, and the
award of a majority of the five shall be final.
Thirdly, "any controversy involving the determination of territorial claims
shall be submitted to a tribunal of six members," three of whom shall be
judges of the Supreme Court or of Circuit Courts, to be nominated by the
President of the United States. The other three shall be members of the
highest British court or members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council, to be nominated by the Queen. "Their award by a majority of not
less than five to one shall be final. If there is less than the prescribed
majority, the award shall also be final, unless either party within three
months protests that the award is erroneous. If the award is protested, or if
the members of the tribunal are equally divided, there shall be no recourse

to hostile measures of any description until the mediation of one or more
friendly powers shall have been invited by one or the other party." It is also
provided that "where one of the United States or a British colony is
specially concerned, the President or Queen may make a judicial officer of
the state or colony an arbitrator."
In some cases, a question may be removed from the jurisdiction of the
tribunal of three or the tribunal of five, and transferred to that of the tribunal
of six. If, prior to the close of the hearing of the claim before the lower
tribunal, it shall be decided by the tribunal, upon the motion of either party,
that the determination of the claim necessarily involves a decision of some
"disputed question of principle of grave general importance, affecting the
national rights of such party as distinct from its private rights, of which it is
merely an international representative," then the jurisdiction of the lower
tribunal over the claim shall at once cease, and it shall be dealt with by the
tribunal of six.
With regard to territorial claims, a special article defines them as including
not only all claims to territory, but also "all other claims involving questions
of servitude, rights of navigation, access to fisheries, and all rights and
interests necessary to control the enjoyment of either's territory."
The treaty is to remain in force for five years from the date at which it
becomes operative, and "until a year after either party shall have notified
the other of its wish to terminate it."
The first impression which one gets from reading the treaty is that it is
strictly defined and limited in its application. Yet, when duly considered, it
seems to cover all chances of controversy that are likely to arise between
the United States and Great Britain. Under such a treaty as this, nearly all
the questions at issue between the two countries since 1783 might have
been satisfactorily adjusted,—the payment of private debts to British
creditors, the relinquishment of the frontier posts by British garrisons, the
northeastern boundary, the partition of the Oregon territory, the questions
concerning the Newfoundland fisheries, the navigation of the Great Lakes,
the catching of seals in Bering Sea, the difference of opinion over the San
Juan boundary, etc. Possibly some of the old questions growing out of the
African slave trade might have been brought within its purview, but that is
now of small consequence, since no issues of that sort are likely ever to rise

again. Differences attending the future construction of a Nicaragua canal,
regarded as an easement or a servitude possibly affecting vested rights,
might, under a liberal interpretation, be dealt with; and one may suppose
that the Venezuela question is meant to be covered, since it relates to
territorial claims in which, though they may not obviously concern the
United States either immediately or remotely, our government has with
unexpected emphasis declared itself interested.
On the other hand, one does not seem to find in the treaty any provision
which would have covered two or three of the most serious questions that
have ever been in dispute between the United States and Great Britain. One
of these questions, concerning the right of search and the impressment of
seamen, was conspicuous among the causes of the ill-considered and
deplorable War of 1812. But it may be presumed, with strong probability,
that no difficulty of that kind can again arise between these two powers.
The affair of the Trent in 1861 seems also to be a kind of case not provided
for. But that affair, most creditably settled at a moment of fierce irritation
and under aggravating circumstances, was settled in such wise as to
establish a great principle which will make it extremely difficult for such a
case to occur again. As for the Alabama Claims, they could apparently have
been adjusted under the present treaty, as large pecuniary claims involving
international principles of grave general importance.
On the whole, there seems to be small likelihood of any dispute arising
between this country and Great Britain which cannot be amicably settled,
with reasonable promptness, under the provisions of this new Arbitration
Treaty. Once chief desideratum in any such instrument is to secure
impartiality in the arbitrating tribunals, and here the arrangements made in
our treaty will doubtless yield as good results as can ever be achieved
through mere arrangements. In such matters, the best of machinery is of less
consequence than the human nature by which the machinery is to be
worked. Impartiality, not only real, but conspicuous and unmistakable, is
the prime requisite in a court of arbitration. Its life and health can be
sustained only in an atmosphere of untainted and unsuspected integrity. But
in an age which does not yet fully comprehend the damnable villainy of
such maxims as "Our country, right or wrong," gross partisanship is not
easy to eliminate from human nature. Even austere judges, taken from a
Supreme Court, have sometimes shown themselves to be men of like

passions with ourselves. It would need but few awards made on the "eight
to seven" principle, as in the Electoral Commission of 1877, to make our
arbitrating tribunal the laughing-stock of the world, and to set back for a
generation or two the hand upon the timepiece of civilization.
A general experience, however, justifies us in hoping much better things
from the group of international tribunals contemplated in our present treaty.
There is no doubt that the good work is undertaken in entire good faith by
both nations; both earnestly wish to make international arbitration
successful, and there is little fear that the importance of fair dealing will be
overlooked or undervalued. If the present proceedings result in the
establishment of a tribunal whose integrity and impartiality shall win the
permanent confidence of British and Americans alike, it will be an immense
achievement, fraught with incalculable benefit to mankind. For the first
time, the substitution of international lawsuits for warfare will have been
systematically begun by two of the leading nations of the world; and an
event which admits of such a description cannot be without many
consequences, enduring and profound.
For observe that the interest of the present treaty lies not so much in the fact
that it provides for arbitration as in the fact that it aims at making arbitration
the regular and permanent method of settling international disputes. In due
proportion to the gravity of the problem is the modest caution with which it
is approached. The treaty merely asks to be tried on its merits, and only for
five years at that. Only for such a brief period is the most vociferous Jingo
in the United States Senate or elsewhere asked to put a curb upon his
sanguinary propensities and see what will happen. Nay, if we really prefer
war to peace; if, like the giant in the nursery tale, we are thirsting for a
draught of British blood, neither this nor any other treaty could long restrain
us. As Hosea Biglow truly observes,—

"The right to be a cussed fool
Is safe from all devices human."

It has been rumoured that some Senators will vote against the treaty, in
order to show their spite against President Cleveland and Mr. Olney. If the
treaty should fail of confirmation through such a cause, it would be no more
than has happened before. Members of the Sapsea family have sat in other

chambers than those of the Capitol at Washington. But, as a rule, good
causes have not long been hindered through such pettiness, and should the
treaty thus fail for the moment, it would not be ruined, but only delayed. In
any event, it is not likely to be long in acquiring its five years' lease of life.
If during that time nothing should occur to discredit it, even should no cases
arise to call it into operation, its purpose is so much in harmony with the
most enlightened spirit of the age that it is pretty sure to be renewed. Should
cases arise under it, the machinery which it provides is confessedly
provisional and tentative, and upon renewal can be modified in such wise as
may seem desirable. Other human institutions have been moulded by
experience, and so, doubtless, it will be with international courts of
arbitration.
The working of the tribunals created by the present treaty will be carefully
watched by other nations than the two parties directly concerned, and
should it achieve any notable success it will furnish a precedent likely to be
imitated. The removal of any source of irritation at all comparable to the
Alabama Claims would be, of course, a success of the first magnitude; great
good, with far-reaching consequences, might be wrought by a much smaller
one. Probably few readers are aware of the extent to which the arbitration at
Geneva in 1872 has already served as a precedent for the peaceful solution
of international difficulties.[24] Already the moral effect of that event has
been such as to suggest that it may hereafter be commemorated as the
illustrious herald of a new era. The Geneva event was brought about by a
treaty specially framed for the purpose, and might thus be regarded as
exceptional or extraordinary in its nature. Still greater, then, would be the
moral effect of a similar success achieved by a tribunal created under the
provisions of a permanent treaty.

The commission to arbitrate between the Argentine Republic and
Brazil, 1886.
Arbitration by Spain between Colombia and Venezuela, 1887.
Arbitration by the minister of Spain at Bogotá between Italy and
Colombia, 1887.
Arbitration by President Cleveland between Nicaragua and Costa Rica,
1888.

Arbitration by the Queen of Spain between Peru and Ecuador, 1888.
Arbitration by Baron Lambermont between England and Germany;
affair of Lamoo, 1888.
Arbitration by the Czar of Russia between France and the Netherlands;
affair of the boundaries of Guinea, 1888.
Arbitration by Sir Edward Momson between Denmark and Sweden,
1888.
Compromise between the United States and Venezuela, 1890.
Compromise between Germany, the United States, and Great Britain;
affair of Terranova, 1891.
Arbitration by Switzerland between England, the United States, and
Portugal; affair of the railroads at Delagoa Bay, 1891.
Arbitration between Great Britain and the United States relating to the
question of the delimitation of territorial power in Bering Sea, 1893.

It may be urged that arbitration cannot often succeed in dealing with
difficulties so formidable as those connected with the Alabama Claims. The
questions hitherto settled by arbitration have for the most part been of
minor importance, in which "national honour" has not been at stake, and the
bestial impulse to tear and bruise, which so many light-headed persons
mistake for patriotism, has not been aroused. The London "Spectator" tells
us that if the United States should ever repeat the Mason and Slidell
incident, or should feel insulted by the speech of some British prime
minister, there would be war, no matter how loudly the lawyers in both
countries might appeal to the Arbitration Treaty. The two illustrations cited
are not happy ones, since from both may be deduced reasons why war is not
likely to ensue. The Mason and Slidell incident was a most impressive
illustration of the value of delay and discussion in calming popular
excitement. The principle of international law which the United States
violated on that occasion was a principle for which the United States had
long and earnestly contended against the opposition of Great Britain. A very
brief discussion of the affair in the American press made this clear to every
one, and there was no cavilling when our government disowned the act and
surrendered the prisoners with the noble frankness which characterized

President Lincoln's way of doing things. What chiefly tended to hinder or
prevent such a happy termination of the affair was the unnecessary
arrogance of Lord Palmerston's government in making its demand of us.
What chiefly favoured it was the absence of an ocean telegraph, affording
the delay needful for sober second thought. I remember hearing people say
at the time that the breaking of the first Atlantic cable in 1858 had thus
turned out to be a blessing in disguise! Now, should any incident as
irritating as the Trent affair occur in future, the Arbitration Treaty can be
made to furnish the delay which the absence of an ocean cable once
necessitated; and I have enough respect for English-speaking people on
both sides of the water to believe that in such case they will behave
sensibly, and not like silly duellists. So, too, as regards "feeling insulted" by
the speech of a prime minister, there is a recent historic instance to the
point. Our British cousins may have had reason to feel insulted by some
expressions in President Cleveland's message of December, 1895, but they
took the matter very quietly. Had the boot been on the other leg, a few
pupils of Elijah Pogram might have indulged in Barmecide suppers of gore,
but there the affair would probably have ended. The reason is that deliberate
public opinion in both countries feels sure that nothing is to be gained, and
much is to be lost, by fighting. Under such conditions, the growing moral
sentiment which condemns most warfare as wicked has a chance to assert
itself. Thus the delay which allows deliberate public opinion to be brought
to bear upon irritating incidents is a great advantage; and the mere existence
of a permanent arbitration treaty tends toward insuring such delay.
People who prefer civilized and gentleman-like methods of settling disputes
to the savage and ruffian-like business of burning and slaughtering are
sometimes stigmatized by silly writers as "sentimentalists." In the deliberate
public opinion which has come to be so strong a force in preventing war
between the United States and Great Britain, sentiment has as yet probably
no great place; but it is hoped and believed that it will by and by have much
more. In the days of Alexander Hamilton, there was very little love for the
Federal Union in any part of this country; it was accepted as a disagreeable
necessity. But his policy brought into existence a powerful group of selfish
interests binding men more and more closely to the Union, and more so at
the North than at the South. When Webster made his reply to Hayne, there
was a growing sentiment of Union for him to appeal to, and stronger at the
North than at the South. When the Civil War came, that sentiment was

strong enough to sadden the heart of many a Southerner whose sense of
duty made him a secessionist; at the North it had waxed so powerful that
men were ready to die for it, as the Mussulman for his Prophet or the
Cavalier for his King. Thus sentiment can quickly and sturdily grow when
favoured by habits of thought originally dictated by self-interest. Obviously
a state of things in favour of which a strong sentiment is once enlisted has
its chances of permanence greatly increased. I therefore hope and believe
that in the deliberate public opinion above mentioned sentiment will by and
by have a larger place than it has at present. As feelings of dislike between
the peoples of two countries are always unintelligent and churlish, so
feelings of friendship are sure to be broadening and refining. The abiding
sentiment of Scotchmen toward England was for many centuries
immeasurably more rancorous than any Yankee schoolboy ever gave vent to
on the Fourth of July. There is no reason why the advent of the twenty-first
century should not find the friendship between the United States and Great
Britain quite as strong as that between Scotland and England to-day.
Toward so desirable a consummation a permanent policy of arbitration must
surely tend.
The fact that deliberate public opinion in both countries can be counted
upon as strongly adverse to war is the principal fact which makes such a
permanent policy feasible. It is our only sufficient guarantee that the awards
of the international tribunal will be respected. These considerations need to
be borne in mind, if we try to speculate upon the probable influence upon
other nations of a successful system of arbitration between the United States
and Great Britain. Upon the continent of Europe a considerable interest
seems already to have been felt in the treaty, and, as I observed above, its
working is sure to be carefully watched; for the states of Europe are
suffering acutely from the apparent necessity of keeping perpetually
prepared for war, and any expedient that holds out the slightest chance of
relief from such a burden cannot fail to attract earnest attention.
The peoples of Europe are not unfamiliar with the principles of arbitration.
Indeed, like many other good things which have loomed up conspicuously
in recent times, arbitration can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, for
whom it occasionally mitigated the evils attendant upon frequent warfare
between their city-states. Among the Italian republics of the Middle Ages,
disputes were sometimes submitted to the arbitration of learned professors

in the universities at Bologna and other towns. But such methods could not
prevail over the ruder fashions of Europe north of the Alps. As mediæval
Italy was the industrial and commercial centre of the world, so in our day it
is the nations most completely devoted to industry and commerce, the
English-speaking nations, that are foremost in bringing into practice the
methods of arbitration. The settlement of the Alabama Claims is the most
brilliant instance on record, and we have already cited examples of the
readiness of sundry nations, great and small, to imitate it. Such examples,
even when concerned with questions of minor importance, are to some
extent an indication of the growing conviction that war, and the unceasing
preparations for it, are becoming insupportable burdens.
It is the steadily increasing complication of industrial life, and the
heightened standard of living that has come therewith, that are making men,
year by year, more unwilling to endure the burdens entailed by war. In the
Middle Ages, human life was made hideous by famine, pestilence, perennial
warfare, and such bloody superstitions as the belief in witchcraft; but men
contrived to endure it, because they had no experience of anything better,
and could not even form a conception of relief save such as the Church
afforded. Deluges of war, fraught with horrors which stagger our powers of
conception, swept at brief intervals over every part of the continent of
Europe, and the intervals were mostly filled with petty waspish raids that
brought robbery and murder home to everybody's door; while honest
industry, penned up within walled towns, was glad of such precarious
immunity as stout battlements eked out by blackmail could be made to
afford. Fighting was incessant and ubiquitous. The change wrought in six
centuries has been amazing, and it has been chiefly due to industrial
development. Private warfare has been extinguished, famine and pestilence
seldom occur in civilized countries, mental habits nurtured by science have
banished the witches, the land is covered with cheerful homesteads, and the
achievement of success in life through devotion to industrial pursuits has
become general. Wars have greatly diminished in frequency, in length, and
in the amount of misery needlessly inflicted. We have thus learned how
pleasant life can become under peaceful conditions, and we are determined
as far as possible to prolong such conditions. We have no notion of
submitting to misery like that of the Middle Ages; on the contrary, we have
got rid of so much of it that we mean to go on and get rid of the whole.
Such is the general feeling among civilized men. It may safely be said not

only to that no nation in Christendom wishes to go to war, but also that the
nations are few which would not make a considerable sacrifice of interests
and feelings rather than incur its calamities. For reasons such as these, the
states of Continental Europe are showing an increasing disposition to
submit questions to arbitration, and in view of this situation the fullest
measure of success for our Arbitration Treaty is to be desired, for the sake
of its moral effect.
The method at present in vogue on the continent of Europe for averting
warfare is the excessively cumbrous expedient of keeping up great
armaments in time of peace. The origin of this expedient may be traced
back to the levée en masse to which revolutionary France resorted in the
agonies of self-defence in 1792. The levée en masse proved to be a far more
formidable engine of warfare than the small standing armies with which
Europe had long been familiar; and so, after the old military system of
Prussia had been overthrown in 1806, the reforms of Stein and Scharnhorst
introduced the principle of the levée en masse into times of peace, dividing
the male population into classes which could be kept in training, and might
be successively called to the field as soon as military exigencies should
demand it. The prodigious strength which Prussia could put forth under this
system was revealed in 1866 and 1870, and since then similar methods have
become universally adopted, so that the commencement of a general
European war to-day would doubtless find several millions of men under
arms. The progress of invention is at the same time daily improving
projectiles on the one hand, and fortifications on the other; we may perhaps
hope that some of us will live long enough to see what will happen when a
ball is fired with irresistible momentum against an impenetrable wall! To
keep up with the progress of invention enormous sums are expended on
military engines, while each nation endeavours to avert war by making such
a show of strength as will deter other nations from attacking it. A mania for
increasing armaments has thus been produced, and although this state of
things is far less destructive and demoralizing than actual war, it lays a
burden upon Europe which is fast becoming intolerable. For the modern
development of industry has given rise to problems that press for solution,
and no satisfactory solution can be reached in the midst of this monstrous
armed peace. Competition has reached a point where no nation can afford to
divert a considerable percentage of its population from industrial pursuits.
Each nation, in order to maintain its rank in the world, is called upon to

devote its utmost energies to agriculture, manufactures, and commerce.
Moreover, the economic disturbances due to the withdrawal of so many
men from the work of production are closely connected with the discontent
which finds vent in the wild schemes of socialists, communists, and
anarchists. There is no other way of beginning the work of social
redemption but by a general disarmament; and this opinion has for some
years been gaining strength in Europe. It is commonly felt that in one way
or another the state of armed peace will have to be abandoned.
In a lecture at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1880, I argued that
the contrast between the United States, with a population quite freed from
the demands of militarism, and the continent of Europe, with its enormous
armaments useless for productive purposes, could not long be maintained;
that American competition would soon come to press so severely upon
Europe as to compel a disarmament, and in this way the swords would get
beaten into ploughshares. American competition is less effective than it
might be, owing to our absurd tariffs and vicious currency, but its tendency
has undoubtedly been in the direction indicated. I suspect, however, that the
process will be less simple. Within the last twenty years the operations of
production and distribution have been assuming colossal proportions.
Syndicates, trusts, and other huge combinations of capital have begun
carrying on business upon a scale heretofore unprecedented. Already we see
symptoms that such combinations are to include partners in various parts of
the earth. Business, in short, is becoming more and more international; and
under such circumstances the era of general disarmament is likely to be
hastened. In the long run, peace has no other friend so powerful as
commerce.
While every successful resort to arbitration is to be welcomed as a step
toward facilitating disarmament, it seems probable that institutions of
somewhat broader scope than courts of arbitration will be required for the
settlement of many complex international questions. In the European
congresses which have assembled from time to time to deal with peculiar
exigencies, we have the precedent for such more regular and permanent
institutions. An example of what is meant was furnished by the Congress of
Paris in 1856, when it dealt summarily with the whole group of vexed
questions relating to the rights and duties of neutrals and belligerents upon
the ocean, and put an end to the chaos of two centuries by establishing an

international code relating to piracy, blockades, and seizures in times of
naval war. This code has been respected by maritime powers and enforced
by the world's public opinion, and its establishment was a memorable
incident in the advance of civilization. Now, such work as the Congress of
Paris did can be done in future by other congresses, but it is work of
broader scope than has hitherto been undertaken by courts of arbitration. I
am inclined to think that both these institutions—the International Congress
and the Tribunal of Arbitration—are destined to survive, with very
considerable increase in power and dignity, in the political society of the
future, long after disarmament has become an accomplished fact.
About the time that a small party of Englishmen at Jamestown were laying
the first foundation stones of the United States, one of the greatest kings
and one of the greatest ministers of modern times were deeply engaged in
what they called the Great Design, a scheme for a European Confederation.
The plan of Henry IV. of France and the Duke of Sully contemplated a
federal republic of Christendom, comprising six hereditary crowns (France,
England, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Lombardy), five elective crowns (the
Empire, the Papacy, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland), and four republics
(Venice, the small Italian states, Switzerland, and the Netherlands). There
was to be a federal government in three branches, legislative, executive,
judicial; a federal army of about three hundred thousand men, and a
powerful federal fleet. The purpose of the federation was to put an end once
and forever to wars, both civil and international. Probably the two great
statesmen were not sanguine as to the immediate success of their Great
Design, and doubtless none knew better than they that it would cost at least
one mighty war to establish it. But there is a largeness of view about the
scheme that is refreshing to meet in a world of arid and narrow
commonplaces. With all their breadth of vision, however, Henry and Sully
would surely have been amazed had they been told that the handful of half-
starved Englishmen at Jamestown were inaugurating a political and social
development that in course of time would contribute powerfully toward the
success of something like their Great Design.
In human affairs a period of three centuries is a brief one, and the progress
already made in the direction toward which the two great Frenchmen were
looking is significant and prophetic. The vast armaments now maintained
on the continent of Europe cannot possibly endure. Economic necessities

will put an end to them before many years. But disarmament, apparently,
can only proceed pari passu with the establishment of peaceful methods of
settling international questions. The machinery for this will probably be
found in the further development of two institutions that have already come
into existence, the International Congress and the Court of Arbitration. The
existence of these institutions, which is now occasional, will tend to become
permanent: the former will deal preferably with the establishment of
general principles, the latter with their judicial application to special cases.
As European congresses meet now upon extraordinary occasions, so once it
was with the congresses of the American colonies, such as the New York
Congress of 1690 and the Albany Congress of 1754 for concerting measures
against New France, and the New York Congress of 1765 for protesting
against the Stamp Act. Then came the Continental Congress of 1774, which
circumstances kept in existence for fifteen years, until a political revolution
reached its consummation in replacing it by a completely organized federal
government. In 1754 the possibility of a permanent federation of American
states was derided as an idle dream of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas
Hutchinson. Very little love was lost between the people of different
colonies; and when the crisis came on, after 1783, the majority hated and
dreaded a permanent Federal Union, and accepted it only as the alternative
to something worse, namely, anarchy and civil war. In like manner, it may
be surmised as not improbable that in course of time the occasions for
summoning European congresses will recur with increasing frequency until
the functions which they are called upon to discharge will convert them into
a permanent institution. Such a development, combined with the increased
employment of arbitration, must ultimately tend toward the creation of a
Federal Union in Europe. The fact that such a result will be hated and
dreaded by many people, perhaps by the great majority, need not prevent its
being accepted and acquiesced in as the alternative to something worse,
namely, the indefinite continuance of the system of vast armaments.
By the time when such a result comes clearly within sight, it will very likely
have been made evident that the policy of isolation which our country has
wisely pursued for the century past cannot be maintained perpetually. When
Washington wrote his Farewell Address, the danger of our getting dragged
into the mighty struggle then raging in Europe was a real and serious
danger, against which we needed to be solemnly warned. Since then times
have changed, and they are changing still. From a nation scarcely stronger

than Portugal we have become equal to the strongest. Railways, telegraphs,
and international industries are making every part of the world the
neighbour of every other part. To preserve a policy of isolation will not
always be possible, nor will it be desirable. Situations will arise (if they
have not already arisen) in which such moral weight as the United States
can exert will be called for. The pacification of Europe, therefore, is not an
affair that is foreign to our interests. In that, as in every other aspect of the
Christian policy of "peace on earth and good will to men," we are most
deeply concerned; and every incident, like the present Arbitration Treaty,
that promises to advance us even by one step toward the sublime result, it is
our solemn duty to welcome and encourage by all the means within our
power.
February, 1897.

VIII

FRANCIS PARKMAN[25]

In the summer of 1865 I had occasion almost daily to pass by the pleasant
windows of Little, Brown & Co., in Boston, and it was not an easy thing to
do without stopping for a moment to look in upon their ample treasures.
Among the freshest novelties there displayed were to be seen Lord Derby's
translation of the Iliad, Forsyth's Life of Cicero, Colonel Higginson's
Epictetus, a new edition of Edmund Burke's writings, and the tasteful
reprint of Froude's History of England, just in from the Riverside Press.
One day, in the midst of such time-honoured classics and new books on
well-worn themes, there appeared a stranger that claimed attention and
aroused curiosity. It was a modest crown octavo, clad in sombre garb, and
bearing the title "Pioneers of France in the New World." The author's name
was not familiar to me, but presently I remembered having seen it upon a
stouter volume labelled "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," of which many copies
used to stand in a row far back in the inner and dusky regions of the shop.
This older book I had once taken down from its shelf, just to quiet a lazy
doubt as to whether Pontiac might be the name of a man or a place. Had
that conspiracy been an event in Merovingian Gaul or in Borgia's Italy, I
should have felt a twinge of conscience at not knowing about it; but the
deeds of feathered and painted red men on the Great Lakes and the
Alleghanies, only a century old, seemed remote and trivial. Indeed, with the
old-fashioned study of the humanities, which tended to keep the
Mediterranean too exclusively in the centre of one's field of vision, it was
not always easy to get one's historical perspective correctly adjusted. Scenes
and events that come within the direct line of our spiritual ancestry, which
until yesterday was all in the Old World, thus become unduly magnified, so
as to deaden our sense of the interest and importance of the things that have
happened since our forefathers went forth from their homesteads to grapple
with the terrors of an outlying wilderness. We find no difficulty in realizing
the historic significance of Marathon and Chalons, of the barons at
Runnymede or Luther at Wittenberg; and scarcely a hill or a meadow in the

Romans Europe but blooms for us with flowers of romance. Literature and
philosophy, art and song, have expended their richest treasures in adding to
the witchery of Old World spots and Old World themes.
But as we learn to broaden our horizon, the perspective becomes somewhat
shifted. It begins to dawn upon us that in New World events, also, there is a
rare and potent fascination. Not only is there the interest of their present
importance, which nobody would be likely to deny, but there is the charm
of a historic past as full of romance as any chapter whatever in the annals of
mankind. The Alleghanies as well as the Apennines have looked down upon
great causes lost and won, and the Mohawk Valley is classic ground no less
than the banks of the Rhine. To appreciate these things thirty years ago
required the vision of a master in the field of history; and when I carried
home and read the "Pioneers of France," I saw at once that in Francis
Parkman we had found such a master. The reading of the book was for me,
as doubtless for many others, a pioneer experience in this New World. It
was a delightful experience, repeated and prolonged for many a year, as
those glorious volumes came one after another from the press, until the
story of the struggle between France and England for the possession of
North America was at last completed. It was an experience of which the full
significance required study in many and apparently diverse fields to realize.
By step after step one would alight upon new ways of regarding America
and its place in universal history.
First and most obvious, plainly visible from the threshold of the subject,
was its extreme picturesqueness. It is a widespread notion that American
history is commonplace and dull; and as for the American red man, he is
often thought to be finally disposed of when we have stigmatized him as a
bloodthirsty demon and grovelling beast. It is safe to say that those who
entertain such notions have never read Mr. Parkman. In the theme which
occupied him his poet's eye saw nothing that was dull or commonplace. To
bring him vividly before us, I will quote his own words from one of the
introductory pages of his opening volume:—
"The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke its
departed shades, they rise upon us from their graves in strange romantic
guise. Again their ghostly camp fires seem to burn, and the fitful light is
cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled with wild
forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on the same stern errand.

A boundless vision grows upon us: an untamed continent; vast wastes of
forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval sleep; river, lake, and
glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with the sky. Such was the
domain which France conquered for civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed
in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of
ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close
breath of the cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled
savage hordes with a mild parental sway, and stood serene before the direst
shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching
ancestry, here with their dauntless hardihood put to shame the boldest sons
of toil."
When a writer in sentences that are mere generalizations gives us such
pictures as these, one has much to expect from his detailed narrative,
glowing with sympathy and crowded with incident. In Parkman's books
such expectations are never disappointed. What was an uncouth and
howling wilderness in the world of literature he has taken for his own
domain, and peopled it forever with living figures, dainty and winsome, or
grim and terrible, or sprightly and gay. Never shall be forgotten the
beautiful earnestness, the devout serenity, the blithe courage, of Champlain;
never can we forget the saintly Marie de l'Incarnation, the delicate and long-
suffering Lalemant, the lionlike Brébeuf, the chivalrous Maisonneuve, the
grim and wily Pontiac, or that man against whom fate sickened of
contending, the mighty and masterful La Salle. These, with many a comrade
and foe, have now their place in literature as permanent and sure as Tancred
or St. Boniface, as the Cid or Robert Bruce. As the wand of Scott revealed
unsuspected depths of human interest in Border castle and Highland glen,
so it seems that North America was but awaiting the magician's touch that
should invest its rivers and hillsides with memories of great days gone by.
Parkman's sweep has been a wide one, and many are the spots that his wand
has touched, from the cliffs of the Saguenay to the Texas coast, and from
Acadia to the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
I do not forget that earlier writers than Parkman had felt something of the
picturesqueness and the elements of dramatic force in the history of the
conquest of our continent. In particular, the characteristics of the red men
and the incidents of forest life had long ago been made the theme of novels
and poems, such as they were; I wonder how many people of to-day

remember even the names of such books as "Yonnondio" or "Kabaosa"? All
such work was thrown into the shade by that of Fenimore Cooper, whose
genius, though limited, was undeniable. But when we mention Cooper we
are brought at once by contrast to the secret of Parkman's power. It has long
been recognized that Cooper's Indians are more or less unreal; just such
creatures never existed anywhere. When Corneille and Racine put ancient
Greeks or Romans on the stage they dressed them in velvet and gold lace,
flowing wigs and high buckled shoes, and made them talk like Louis XIV.'s
courtiers; in seventeenth-century dramatists the historical sense was
lacking. In the next age it was not much better. When Rousseau had
occasion to philosophize about men in a state of nature he invented the
Noble Savage, an insufferable creature whom any real savage would justly
loathe and despise. The noble savage has figured extensively in modern
literature, and has left his mark upon Cooper's pleasant pages as well as
upon many a chapter of serious history. But you cannot introduce unreal
Indians as factors in the development of a narrative without throwing a
shimmer of unreality about the whole story. It is like bringing in ghosts or
goblins among live men and women: it instantly converts sober narrative
into fairy tale; the two worlds will no more mix than oil and water. The
ancient and mediæval minds did not find it so, as the numberless histories
encumbered with the supernatural testify; but the modern mind does find it
so. The modern mind has taken a little draught, the prelude to deeper
draughts, at the healing and purifying well of science; and it has begun to be
dissatisfied with anything short of exact truth. When any unsound element
enters into a narrative, the taint is quickly tasted, and its flavour spoils the
whole.
We are then brought, I say, to the secret of Parkman's power. His Indians are
true to the life. In his pages Pontiac is a man of warm flesh and blood, as
much so as Montcalm or Israel Putnam. This solid reality in the Indians
makes the whole work real and convincing. Here is the great contrast
between Parkman's work and that of Prescott, in so far as the latter dealt
with American themes. In reading Prescott's account of the conquest of
Mexico, one feels one's self in the world of the "Arabian Nights;" indeed,
the author himself, in occasional comments, lets us see that he is unable to
get rid of just such a feeling.

His story moves on in a region that is unreal to him, and therefore
tantalizing to the reader; his Montezuma is a personality like none that ever
existed beneath the moon. This is because Prescott simply followed his
Spanish authorities not only in their statements of physical fact, but in their
inevitable misconceptions of the strange Aztec society which they
encountered; the Aztecs in his story are unreal, and this false note vitiates it
all. In his Peruvian story Prescott followed safer leaders in Garcilasso de la
Vega and Cieza de Leon, and made a much truer picture; but he lacked the
ethnological knowledge needful for coming into touch with that ancient
society, and one often feels this as the weak spot in a narrative of
marvellous power and beauty.
Now it was Parkman's good fortune at an early age to realize that in order to
do his work it was first of all necessary to know the Indian by personal
fellowship and contact. It was also his good fortune that the right sort of
Indians were still accessible. What would not Prescott have given, what
would not any student of human evolution give, for a chance to pass a week
or even a day in such a community as the Tlascala of Xicotencatl or the
Mexico of Montezuma! That phase of social development has long since
disappeared. But fifty years ago, on our great western plains and among the
Rocky Mountains, there still prevailed a state of society essentially similar
to that which greeted the eyes of Champlain upon the St. Lawrence and of
John Smith upon the Chickahominy. In those days the Oregon Trail had
changed but little since the memorable journey of Lewis and Clark in the
beginning of the present century. In 1846, two years after taking his
bachelor degree at Harvard, young Parkman had a taste of the excitements
of savage life in that primeval wilderness. He was accompanied by his
kinsman, Mr. Quincy Shaw. They joined a roving tribe of Sioux Indians, at
a time when to do such a thing was to take their lives in their hands, and
they spent a wild summer among the Black Hills of Dakota and in the vast
moorland solitudes through which the Platte River winds its interminable
length. In the chase and in the wigwam, in watching the sorcery of which
their religion chiefly consisted, or in listening to primitive folk tales by the
evening camp fire, Parkman learned to understand the red man, to interpret
his motives and his moods. With his naturalist's keen and accurate eye and
his quick poetic apprehension, that youthful experience formed a safe
foundation for all his future work. From that time forth he was fitted to

absorb the records and memorials of the early explorers, and to make their
strange experiences his own.
The next step was to gather these early records from government archives,
and from libraries public and private, on both sides of the Atlantic,—a task,
as Parkman himself called it, "abundantly irksome and laborious." It
extended over many years and involved several visits to Europe. It was
performed with a thoroughness approaching finality. Already in the preface
to the "Pioneers" the author was able to say that he had gained access to all
the published materials in existence. Of his research among manuscript
sources a notable monument exists in a cabinet now standing in the library
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, containing nearly two hundred
folio volumes of documents copied from the originals by expert copyists.
Ability to incur heavy expense is, of course, a prerequisite for all
undertakings of this sort, and herein our historian was favoured by fortune.
Against this chiefest among advantages were to be offset the hardships
entailed by delicate health and inability to use the eyes for reading and
writing. Parkman always dictated instead of holding the pen, and his huge
mass of documents had to be read aloud to him. The heroism shown year
after year in contending with physical ailments was the index of a character
fit to be mated, for its pertinacious courage, with the heroes that live in
those shining pages.
The progress in working up materials was slow and sure. "The Conspiracy
of Pontiac," which forms the sequel and conclusion of Parkman's work, was
first published in 1851, only five years after the summer spent with the
Indians; fourteen years then elapsed before the "Pioneers" made its
appearance in Little, Brown & Co.'s window; and then there were yet
seven-and-twenty years more before the final volumes came out in 1892.
Altogether, about half a century was required for the building of this grand
literary monument. Nowhere can we find a better illustration of the French
critic's definition of a great life,—a thought conceived in youth, and
realized in later years.
This elaborateness of preparation had its share in producing the intense
vividness of Parkman's descriptions. Profusion of detail makes them seem
like the accounts of an eye-witness. The realism is so strong that the author
seems to have come in person fresh from the scenes he describes, with the
smoke of the battle hovering about him and its fierce light glowing in his

eyes. Such realism is usually the prerogative of the novelist rather than of
the historian, and in one of his prefaces Parkman recognizes that the reader
may feel this and suspect him. "If at times," he says, "it may seem that
range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only, since the
minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or
on personal observation."
This kind of personal observation Parkman carried so far as to visit all the
important localities, indeed well-nigh all the localities, that form the
scenery of his story, and study them with the patience of a surveyor and the
discerning eye of a landscape painter. His strong love of nature added keen
zest to this sort of work. From boyhood he was a trapper and hunter; in later
years he became eminent as a horticulturist, originating new varieties of
flowers. To sleep under the open sky was his delight. His books fairly reek
with the fragrance of pine woods. I open one of them at random, and my
eye falls upon such a sentence as this: "There is softness in the mellow air,
the warm sunshine, and the budding leaves of spring; and in the forest
flower, which, more delicate than the pampered offspring of gardens, lifts
its tender head through the refuse and decay of the wilderness." Looking at
the context, I find that this sentence comes in a remarkable passage
suggested by Colonel Henry Bouquet's western expedition of 1764, when
he compelled the Indians to set free so many French and English prisoners.
Some of these captives were unwilling to leave the society of the red men;
some positively refused to accept the boon of what was called freedom. In
this strange conduct, exclaims Parkman, there was no unaccountable
perversity; and he breaks out with two pages of noble dithyrambics in
praise of savage life. "To him who has once tasted the reckless
independence, the haughty self-reliance, the sense of irresponsible freedom,
which the forest life engenders, civilization thenceforth seems flat and
stale.... The entrapped wanderer grows fierce and restless, and pants for
breathing room. His path, it is true, was choked with difficulties, but his
body and soul were hardened to meet them; it was beset with dangers, but
these were the very spice of his life, gladdening his heart with exulting self-
confidence, and sending the blood through his veins with a livelier current.
The wilderness, rough, harsh, and inexorable, has charms more potent in
their seductive influence than all the lures of luxury and sloth. And often he
on whom it has cast its magic finds no heart to dissolve the spell, and
remains a wanderer and an Ishmaelite to the hour of his death."[26]

No one can doubt that the man who could write like this had the kind of
temperament that could look into the Indian's mind and portray him
correctly. But for this inborn temperament all his microscopic industry
would have availed him but little. To use his own words: "Faithfulness to
the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and
scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most
minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be
unmeaning or untrue." These are golden words for the student of the
historical art to ponder. To make a truthful record of a vanished age patient
scholarship is needed, and something more. Into the making of a historian
there should enter something of the philosopher, something of the naturalist,
something of the poet. In Parkman this rare union of qualities was realized
in a greater degree than in any other American historian. Indeed, I doubt if
the nineteenth century can show in any part of the world another historian
quite his equal in respect of such a union.
There is one thing which lends to Parkman's work a peculiar interest, and
will be sure to make it grow in fame with the ages. Not only has he left the
truthful record of a vanished age so complete and final that the work will
never need to be done again, but if any one should in future attempt to do it
again he cannot approach the task with quite such equipment as Parkman.
In an important sense, the age of Pontiac is far more remote from us than
the age of Clovis or the age of Agamemnon. When barbaric society is
overwhelmed by advancing waves of civilization, its vanishing is final; the
thread of tradition is cut off forever with the shears of Fate. Where are
Montezuma's Aztecs? Their physical offspring still dwell on the table-land
of Mexico, and their ancient speech is still heard in the streets, but that old
society is as extinct as the trilobites, and has to be painfully studied in fossil
fragments of custom and tradition. So with the red men of the North: it is
not true that they are dying out physically, as many people suppose, but
their stage of society is fast disappearing, and soon it will have vanished
forever. Soon their race will be swallowed up and forgotten, just as we
overlook and ignore to-day the existence of five thousand Iroquois farmers
in the state of New York.
Now the study of comparative ethnology has begun to teach us that the red
Indian is one of the most interesting of men. He represents a stage of
evolution through which civilized men have once passed,—a stage far more

ancient and primitive than that which is depicted in the Odyssey or in the
Book of Genesis. When Champlain and Frontenac met the feathered
chieftains of the St. Lawrence, they talked with men of the Stone Age face
to face. Phases of life that had vanished from Europe long before Rome was
built survived in America long enough to be seen and studied by modern
men. Behind Mr. Parkman's picturesqueness, therefore, there lies a
significance far more profound than one at first would suspect. He has
portrayed for us a wondrous and forever fascinating stage in the evolution
of humanity. We may well thank Heaven for sending us such a scholar, such
an artist, such a genius, before it was too late. As we look at the changes
wrought in the last fifty years, we realize that already the opportunities by
which he profited in youth are in large measure lost. He came not a moment
too soon to catch the fleeting light and fix it upon his immortal canvas.
Thus Parkman is to be regarded as first of all the historian of Primitive
Society. No other great historian has dealt intelligently and consecutively
with such phases of barbarism as he describes with such loving minuteness.
To the older historians all races of men very far below the European grade
of culture seemed alike; all were ignorantly grouped together as "savages."
Mr. Lewis Morgan first showed the wide difference between true savages,
such as the Apaches and Bannocks on the one hand, and barbarians with
developed village life, like the Five Nations and the Cherokees. The latter
tribes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries exhibited social
phenomena such as were probably witnessed about the shores of the
Mediterranean some seven or eight thousand years earlier. If we carry our
thoughts back to the time that saw the building of the Great Pyramid, and
imagine civilized Egypt looking northward and eastward upon tribes of
white men with social and political ideas not much more advanced than
those of Frontenac's red men, our picture will be in its most essential
features a correct one. What would we not give for a historian who, with a
pen like that of Herodotus, could bring before us the scenes of that primeval
Greek world before the cyclopean works at Tiryns were built, when the
ancestors of Solon and Aristides did not yet dwell in neatly joinered houses
and fasten their door-latches with a thong, when the sacred city-state was
still unknown, and the countryman had not yet become a bucolic or "tender
of cows," and butter and cheese were still in the future! No written records
can ever take us back to that time in that place; for there, as everywhere in
the eastern hemisphere, the art of writing came many years later than the

domestication of animals, and some ages later than the first building of
towns. But in spite of the lack of written records, the comparative study of
institutions, especially comparative jurisprudence, throws back upon those
prehistoric times a light that is often dim, but sometimes wonderfully
suggestive and instructive. It is a light that reveals among primeval Greeks
ideas and customs essentially similar to those of the Iroquois. It is a light
that grows steadier and brighter as it leads us to the conclusion that five or
six thousand years before Christ white men around the Ægean Sea had
advanced about as far as the red men in the Mohawk Valley two centuries
ago. The one phase of this primitive society illuminates the other, though
extreme caution is necessary in drawing our inferences. Now Parkman's
minute and vivid description of primitive society among red men is full of
lessons that may be applied with profit to the study of preclassic antiquity in
the Old World. No other historian has brought us into such close and
familiar contact with human life in such ancient stages of its progress. In
Parkman's great book we have a record of vanished conditions such as
hardly exists anywhere else in literature.
I say his great book, using the singular number; for, with the exception of
that breezy bit of autobiography, "The Oregon Trail," all Parkman's books
are the closely related volumes of a single comprehensive work. From the
adventures of "The Pioneers of France" a consecutive story is developed
through "The Jesuits in North America" and "The Discovery of the Great
West." In "The Old Régime in Canada" it is continued with a masterly
analysis of French methods of colonization in this their greatest colony, and
then from "Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV." we are led
through "A Half-Century of Conflict" to the grand climax in the volumes on
"Montcalm and Wolfe," after which "The Conspiracy of Pontiac" brings the
long narrative to a noble and brilliant close. In the first volume we see the
men of the Stone Age at that brief moment when they were disposed to
adore the bearded newcomers as Children of the Sun; in the last we read the
bloody story of their last and most desperate concerted effort to loosen the
iron grasp with which these palefaces had seized and were holding the
continent. It is a well-rounded tale, and as complete as anything in real
history, where completeness and finality are things unknown.
Between the beginning and the end of this well-rounded tale a mighty
drama is wrought out in all its scenes. The struggle between France and

England for the soil of North America was one of the great critical moments
in the career of mankind,—no less important than the struggle between
Greece and Persia, or between Rome and Carthage. Out of the long and
complicated interaction between Roman and Teutonic institutions which
made up the history of the Middle Ages, two strongly contrasted forms of
political society had grown up and acquired aggressive strength when in the
course of the sixteenth century a New World beyond the sea was laid open
for colonization. The maritime nations of Europe were naturally the ones to
be attracted to this new arena of enterprise; and Spain, Portugal, France,
England, and Holland each played its interesting and characteristic part.
Spain at first claimed the whole, excepting only that Brazilian coast which
Borgia's decree gave to Portugal. But Spain's methods, as well as her early
failure of strength, prevented her from making good her claim. Spain's
methods were limited to stepping into the place formerly occupied by the
conquering races of half-civilized Indians. She made aboriginal tribes work
for her, just as the Aztec Confederacy and the Inca dynasty had done.
Where she was brought into direct contact with American barbarism
without the intermediation of half-civilized native races, she made little or
no headway. Her early failure of strength, on the other hand, was due to her
total absorption in the fight against civil and religious liberty in Europe. The
failure became apparent as soon as the absorption had begun to be
complete. Spain's last aggressive effort in the New World was the
destruction of the little Huguenot colony in Florida in 1565, and it is at that
point that Parkman's great work appropriately begins. From that moment
Spain simply beat her strength to pieces against the rocks of Netherland
courage and resourcefulness. As for the Netherlands, their energies were so
far absorbed in taking over and managing the great Eastern empire of the
Portuguese that their work in the New World was confined to seizing upon
the most imperial geographical position, and planting a cosmopolitan
colony there that, in the absence of adequate support, was sure to fall into
the hands of one or the other of the competitors more actively engaged upon
the scene.
The two competitors thus more actively engaged were France and England,
and from an early period it was felt between the two to be a combat in
which no quarter was to be given or accepted. These two strongly
contrasted forms of political society had each its distinct ideal, and that
ideal was to be made to prevail, to the utter exclusion and destruction of the

other. Probably the French perceived this somewhat earlier than the
English; they felt it to be necessary to stamp out the English before the
latter had more than realized the necessity of defending themselves against
the French. For the type of political society represented by Louis XIV. was
preëminently militant, as the English type was preëminently industrial. The
aggressiveness of the former was more distinctly conscious of its own
narrower aims, and was more deliberately set at work to attain them, while
the English, on the other hand, rather drifted into a tremendous world fight
without distinct consciousness of their purpose. Yet after the final issue had
been joined, the refrain Carthago delenda est was heard from the English
side, and it came fraught with impending doom from the lips of Pitt as in
days of old from the lips of Cato.
The French idea, had it prevailed in the strife, would not have been capable
of building up a pacific union of partially independent states, covering this
vast continent from ocean to ocean. Within that rigid and rigorous
bureaucratic system there was no room for spontaneous individuality, no
room for local self-government, and no chance for a flexible federalism to
grow up. A well-known phrase of Louis XIV. was, "The state is myself."
That phrase represented his ideal. It was approximately true in Old France,
realized as far as sundry adverse conditions would allow. The Grand
Monarch intended that in New France it should be absolutely true. Upon
that fresh soil was to be built up a pure monarchy without concession to
human weaknesses and limitations. It was a pet scheme of Louis XIV., and
never did a philanthropic world-mender contemplate his grotesque
phalanstery or pantarchy with greater pleasure than this master of kingcraft
looked forward to the construction of a perfect Christian state in America.
The pages of our great historian are full of examples which prove that if the
French idea failed of realization, and the state it founded was overwhelmed,
it was not from any lack of lofty qualities in individual Frenchmen. In all
the history of the American continent no names stand higher than some of
the French names. For courage, for fortitude and high resolve, for sagacious
leadership, statesmanlike wisdom, unswerving integrity, devoted loyalty, for
all the qualities which make life heroic, we may learn lessons innumerable
from the noble Frenchmen who throng in Parkman's pages. The difficulty
was not in the individuals, but in the system; not in the units, but in the way
they were put together. For while it is true—though many people do not

know it—that by no imaginable artifice can you make a society that is
better than the human units you put into it, it is also true that nothing is
easier than to make a society that is worse than its units. So it was with the
colony of New France.
Nowhere can we find a description of despotic government more careful
and thoughtful, or more graphic and lifelike, than Parkman has given us in
his volume on "The Old Régime in Canada." Seldom, too, will one find a
book fuller of political wisdom. The author never preaches like Carlyle, nor
does he hurl huge generalizations at our heads like Buckle; he simply
describes a state of society that has been. But I hardly need say that his
description is not—like the Dryasdust descriptions we are sometimes asked
to accept as history—a mere mass of pigments flung at random upon a
canvas. It is a picture painted with consummate art; and in this instance the
art consists in so handling the relations of cause and effect as to make them
speak for themselves. These pages are alive with political philosophy, and
teem with object lessons of extraordinary value. It would be hard to point to
any book where History more fully discharges her high function of
gathering friendly lessons of caution from the errors of the past.
Of all the societies that have been composed of European men, probably
none was ever so despotically organized as New France, unless it may have
been the later Byzantine Empire, which it resembled in the minuteness of
elaborate supervision over all the pettiest details of life. In Canada the
protective, paternal, socialistic, or nationalistic theory of government—it is
the same old cloven hoof, under whatever specious name you introduce it—
was more fully carried into operation than in any other community known
to history except ancient Peru. No room was left for individual initiative or
enterprise. All undertakings were nationalized. Government looked after
every man's interests in this world and the next: baptized and schooled him;
married him and paid the bride's dowry; gave him a bounty with every child
that was born to him; stocked his cupboard with garden seeds and
compelled him to plant them; prescribed the size of his house and the
number of horses and cattle he might keep, and the exact percentages of
profit he might be allowed to make, and how his chimneys should be swept,
and how many servants he might employ, and what theological doctrine he
might believe, and what sort of bread the bakers might bake, and where
goods might be bought and how much might be paid for them; and if in a

society so well cared for it were possible to find indigent persons, such
paupers were duly relieved, from a fund established by government.
Unmitigated benevolence was the theory of Louis XIV.'s Canadian colony,
and heartless political economy had no place there. Nor was there any room
for free thinkers; when the King after 1685 sent out word that no mercy
must be shown to heretics, the governor, Denonville, with a pious
ejaculation, replied that not so much as a single heretic could be found in all
Canada.
Such was the community whose career our historian has delineated with
perfect soundness of judgment and wealth of knowledge. The fate of this
nationalistic experiment, set on foot by one of the most absolute of
monarchs and fostered by one of the most devoted and powerful of
religious organizations, is traced to the operation of causes inherent in its
very nature. The hopeless paralysis, the woeful corruption, the moral torpor,
resulting from the suppression of individualism, are vividly portrayed; yet
there is no discursive generalizing, and from moment to moment the
development of the story proceeds from within itself. It is the whole
national life of New France that is displayed before us. Historians of
ordinary calibre exhibit their subject in fragments, or they show us some
phases of life and neglect others. Some have no eyes save for events that are
startling, such as battles and sieges; or decorative, such as coronations and
court balls. Others give abundant details of manners and customs; others
have their attention absorbed by economics; others again feel such interest
in the history of ideas as to lose sight of mere material incidents. Parkman,
on the other hand, conceives and presents his subject as a whole. He forgets
nothing, overlooks nothing; but whether it is a bloody battle, or a
theological pamphlet, or an exploring journey though the forest, or a code
for the discipline of nunneries, each event grows out of its context as a
feature in the total development that is going on before our eyes. It is only
the historian who is also philosopher and artist that can thus deal in block
with the great and complex life of a whole society. The requisite
combination is realized only in certain rare and high types of mind, and
there has been no more brilliant illustration of it than Parkman's volumes
afford.
The struggle between the machine-like socialistic despotism of New France
and the free and spontaneous political vitality of New England is one of the

most instructive object lessons with which the experience of mankind has
furnished us. The depth of its significance is equalled by the vastness of its
consequences. Never did Destiny preside over a more fateful contest; for it
determined which kind of political seed should be sown all over the widest
and richest political garden plot left untilled in the world. Free industrial
England pitted against despotic militant France for the possession of an
ancient continent reserved for this decisive struggle, and dragging into the
conflict the belated barbarism of the Stone Age,—such is the wonderful
theme which Parkman has treated. When the vividly contrasted modern
ideas and personages are set off against the romantic though lurid
background of Indian life, the artistic effect becomes simply magnificent.
Never has historian grappled with another such epic theme, save when
Herodotus told the story of Greece and Persia, or when Gibbon's pages
resounded with the solemn tread of marshalled hosts through a thousand
years of change.
The story of Mr. Parkman's life can be briefly told. He was born in Boston,
in what is now known as Allston Street, September 16, 1823. His ancestors
had for several generations been honourably known in Massachusetts. His
great-grandfather, Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, a graduate of Harvard in 1741,
was minister of the Congregational church in Westborough for nearly sixty
years; he was a man of learning and eloquence, whose attention was not all
given to Calvinistic theology, for he devoted much of it to the study of
history. A son of this clergyman, at the age of seventeen, served as private
in a Massachusetts regiment in that greatest of modern wars which was
decided on the Heights of Abraham. How little did this gallant youth dream
of the glory that was by and by to be shed on the scenes and characters
passing before his eyes by the genius of one of his own race and name!
Another son of Ebenezer Parkman returned to Boston and became a
successful merchant, engaged in that foreign traffic which played so
important and liberalizing a part in American life in the days before the
Enemy of mankind had invented forty per cent tariffs. The home of this
merchant, Samuel Parkman, on the corner of Green and Chardon streets,
was long famous for its beautiful flower garden, indicating perhaps the kind
of taste and skill so conspicuous afterwards in his grandson. In Samuel the
clerical profession skipped one generation, to be taken up again by his son,
Rev. Francis Parkman, a graduate of Harvard in 1807, and for many years
after 1813 the eminent and beloved pastor of the New North Church. Dr.

Parkman was noted for his public spirit and benevolence. Bishop
Huntington, who knew him well, says of him: "Every aspect of suffering
touched him tenderly. There was no hard spot in his breast. His house was
the centre of countless mercies to various forms of want; and there were
few solicitors of alms, local or itinerant, and whether for private necessity
or public benefactions, that his doors did not welcome and send away
satisfied.... For many years he was widely known and esteemed for his
efficient interest in some of our most conspicuous and useful institutions of
philanthropy. Among these may be especially mentioned the Massachusetts
Bible Society, the Society for Propagating the Gospel, the Orphan Asylum,
the Humane Society, the Medical Dispensary, the Society for the Relief of
Aged and Destitute Clergymen, and the Congregational Charitable Society."
He also took an active interest in Harvard University, of which he was an
Overseer. In 1829 he founded there the professorship of "Pulpit Eloquence
and the Pastoral Care," familiarly known as the Parkman Professorship. A
pupil and friend of Channing, he was noted among Unitarians for a broadly
tolerant disposition. His wealth of practical wisdom was enlivened by
touches of mirth, so that it was said that you could not "meet Dr. Parkman
in the street, and stop a minute to exchange words with him, without
carrying away with you some phrase or turn of thought so exquisite in its
mingled sagacity and humour that it touched the inmost sense of the
ludicrous, and made the heart smile as well as the lips." Such was the father
of our historian.
Mr. Parkman's mother was a descendant of Rev. John Cotton, one of the
most eminent of the leaders in the great Puritan exodus of the seventeenth
century. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Hall, of Medford, member of a
family which was represented in the convention that framed the
Constitution of Massachusetts in 1780. Caroline Hall was a lady of
remarkable character, and many of her fine qualities were noticeable in her
distinguished son. Of her the late Octavius Frothingham says: "Humility,
charity, truthfulness, were her prime characteristics. Her conscience was
firm and lofty, though never austere. She had a strong sense of right,
coupled with perfect charity toward other people; inflexible in principle, she
was gentle in practice. Intellectually she could hardly be called brilliant or
accomplished, but she had a strong vein of common sense and practical
wisdom, great penetration into character, and a good deal of quiet humour."

Of her six children, the historian, Francis Parkman, was the eldest. As a boy
his health was delicate. In a fragment of autobiography, written in the third
person, he tells us that "his childhood was neither healthful nor buoyant,"
and "his boyhood, though for a time active, was not robust." There was a
nervous irritability and impulsiveness which kept driving him into activity
more intense than his physical strength was well able to bear. At the same
time an inborn instinct of self-control, accompanied, doubtless, by a refined
unwillingness to intrude his personal feelings upon the notice of other
people, led him into such habits of self-repression that his friends
sometimes felicitated him on "having no nerves." There was something
rudely stoical in his discipline. As he says: "It was impossible that
conditions of the nervous system abnormal as his had been from infancy
should be without their effects on the mind, and some of these were of a
nature highly to exasperate him. Unconscious of their character and origin,
and ignorant that with time and confirmed health they would have
disappeared, he had no other thought than that of crushing them by force,
and accordingly applied himself to the work. Hence resulted a state of
mental tension, habitual for several years, and abundantly mischievous in
its effects. With a mind overstrained and a body overtasked, he was burning
his candle at both ends."
The conditions which were provided for the sensitive and highly strung boy
during a part of his childhood were surely very delightful, and there can be
little doubt that they served to determine his career. His grandfather Hall's
home in Medford was situated on the border of the Middlesex Fells, a rough
and rocky woodland, four thousand acres in extent, as wild and savage in
many places as any primeval forest. The place is within eight miles of
Boston, and it may be doubted if anywhere else can be found another such
magnificent piece of wilderness so near to a great city. It needs only a stray
Indian or two, with a few bears and wolves, to bring back for us the days
when Winthrop's company landed on the shores of the neighbouring bay. In
the heart of this shaggy woodland is Spot Pond, a lake of glorious beauty,
with a surface of three hundred acres, and a homely name which it is to be
hoped it may always keep,—a name bestowed in the good old times before
the national vice of magniloquence had begun to deface our maps. Among
the pleasure drives in the neighbourhood of Boston, the drive around Spot
Pond is perhaps foremost in beauty. A few fine houses have been built upon
its borders, and well-kept roads have given to some parts of the forest the

aspect of a park, but the greater part of the territory is undisturbed, and will
probably remain so. Seventy years ago the pruning hand of civilization has
scarcely touched it. To his grandfather's farm, on the outskirts of this
enchanting spot, the boy Parkman was sent in his eighth year. There, he tells
us, "I walked twice a day to a school of high but undeserved reputation,
about a mile distant, in the town of Medford. Here I learned very little, and
spent the intervals of schooling more profitably in collecting eggs, insects,
and reptiles, trapping squirrels and woodchucks, and making persistent
though rarely fortunate attempts to kill birds with arrows. After four years
of this rustication I was brought back to Boston, when I was unhappily
seized with a mania for experiments in chemistry, involving a lonely,
confined, unwholesome sort of life, baneful to body and mind." No doubt
the experience of four years of plastic boyhood in Middlesex Fells gave to
Parkman's mind the bent which directed him toward the history of the
wilderness. This fact he recognized of himself in after life, while he recalled
those boyish days as the brightest in his memory.
At the age of fifteen or so the retorts and crucibles were thrown away
forever, and a reaction in favor of woodland life began; "a fancy," he says,
"which soon gained full control over the course of the literary pursuits to
which he was also addicted." Here we come upon the first mention of the
combination of interests which determined his career. A million boys might
be turned loose in Middlesex Fells, one after another, there to roam in
solitude until our globe should have entered upon a new geological period,
and the chances are against any one of them becoming a great historian, or
anything else above mediocrity. But in Parkman, as in all men of genius, the
dominant motive power was something within him, something which
science has not data enough to explain. The divine spark of genius is
something which we know only through the acts which it excites. In
Parkman the strong literary instinct showed itself at Chauncy Hall School,
where we find him, at fourteen years of age, eagerly and busily engaged in
the study and practice of English composition. It was natural that tales of
heroes should be especially charming at that time of life, and among
Parkman's efforts were paraphrasing parts of the Æneid, and turning into
rhymed verse the scene of the tournament in "Ivanhoe." From the artificial
stupidity which is too often superinduced in boys by their early schooling
he was saved by native genius and breezy woodland life, and his progress
was rapid. In 1840, having nearly completed his seventeenth year, he

entered Harvard College. His reputation there for scholarship was good, but
he was much more absorbed in his own pursuits than in the regular college
studies. In the summer vacation of 1841 he made a rough journey of
exploration in the woods of northern New Hampshire, accompanied by one
classmate and a native guide, and there he had a taste of adventure slightly
spiced with hardship.
How much importance this ramble may have had one cannot say, but he
tells us that "before the end of the Sophomore year my various schemes had
crystallized into a plan of writing the story of what was then known as the
'Old French War,'—that is, the war that ended in the conquest of Canada;
for here, as it seemed to me, the forest drama was more stirring, and the
forest stage more thronged with appropriate actors, than in any other
passage of our history. It was not until some years later that I enlarged the
plan to include the whole course of the American conflict between France
and England, or, in other words, the history of the American forest; for this
was the light in which I regarded it. My theme fascinated me, and I was
haunted with wilderness images day and night." The way in which true
genius works could not be more happily described.
When the great scheme first took shape in Mr. Parkman's mind, he reckoned
that it would take about twenty years to complete the task. How he entered
upon it may best be told in his own words:—
"The time allowed was ample; but here he fell into a fatal error, entering on
this long pilgrimage with all the vehemence of one starting on a mile heat.
His reliance, however, was less on books than on such personal experience
as should in some sense identify him with his theme. His natural
inclinations urged him in the same direction, for his thoughts were always
in the forest, whose features, not unmixed with softer images, possessed his
waking and sleeping dreams, filling him with vague cravings impossible to
satisfy. As fond of hardships as he was vain of enduring them, cherishing a
sovereign scorn for every physical weakness or defect, deceived moreover
by a rapid development of frame and sinews which flattered him with the
belief that discipline sufficiently unsparing would harden him into an
athlete, he slighted the precautions of a more reasonable woodcraft, tired
old foresters with long marches, stopped neither for heat nor rain, and slept
on the earth without a blanket." In other words, "a highly irritable organism
spurred the writer to excess in a course which, with one of different

temperament, would have produced a free and hardy development of such
faculties and forces as he possessed." Along with the irritable organism
perhaps a heritage of fierce ancestral Puritanism may have prompted him to
the stoical discipline which sought to ignore the just claims of the physical
body. He tells us of his undoubting faith that "to tame the Devil, it is best to
take him by the horns;" but more mature experiences made him feel less
sure "of the advantages of this method of dealing with that subtle
personage."
Under these conditions, perhaps the college vacations which he spent in the
woods of Canada and New England may have done more to exhaust than to
recruit his strength. In his Junior year, some physical injury, the nature of
which does not seem to be known, caused it to be thought necessary to send
him to Europe for his health. He went first to Gibraltar in a sailing ship, and
a passage from his diary may serve to throw light upon the voyage and the
man: "It was a noble sight when at intervals the sun broke out over the
savage waves, changing their blackness to a rich blue almost as dark; while
the foam that flew over it seemed like whirling snow wreaths on the
mountain.... As soon as it was daybreak I went on deck. Two or three sails
were set. The vessel was scouring along, leaning over so that her lee
gunwale scooped up the water; the water in a foam, and clouds of spray
flying over us, frequently as high as the main yard. The spray was driven
with such force that it pricked the cheek like needles. I stayed on deck two
or three hours, when, being thoroughly salted, I went down, changed my
clothes, and read 'Don Quixote' till Mr. Snow appeared at the door with
'You are the man that wants to see a gale, are ye? Now is your chance; only
just come up on deck.' Accordingly I went. The wind was yelling and
howling in the rigging in a fashion that reminded me of a storm in a
Canadian forest.... The sailors clung, half drowned, to whatever they could
lay hold of, for the vessel was at times half inverted, and tons of water
washed from side to side of her deck."
Mr. Parkman's route was from Gibraltar by way of Malta, to Sicily, where
he travelled over the whole island, and thence to Naples, where he fell in
with the great preacher Theodore Parker. Together they climbed Vesuvius
and peered into its crater, and afterwards in and about Rome they renewed
their comradeship. Here Mr. Parkman wished to spend a few weeks in a
monastery, in order to study with his own eyes the priests and their way of

life. More than once he met with a prompt and uncompromising refusal, but
at length the coveted privilege was granted him; and, curiously enough, it
was by the strictest of all the monastic orders, the Passionists, brethren
addicted to wearing hair shirts and scourging themselves without mercy.
When these worthy monks learned that their visitor was not merely a
Protestant, but a Unitarian, their horror was intense; but they were ready for
the occasion, poor souls! and tried their best to convert him, thereby
doubtless enhancing their value in the historian's eyes as living and
breathing historic material. This visit was surely of inestimable service to
the pen which was to be so largely occupied with the Jesuits and
Franciscans of the New World.
Mr. Parkman did not leave Rome until he had seen temples, churches, and
catacombs, and had been presented to the Pope. He stopped at Florence,
Bologna, Modena, Parma, and Milan, and admired the Lake of Como, to
which, however, he preferred the savage wildness of Lake George. He saw
something of Switzerland, went to Paris and London, and did a bit of sight-
seeing in Edinburgh and its neighbourhood. From Liverpool he sailed for
America; and in spite of the time consumed in this trip we find him taking
his degree at Cambridge, along with his class, in 1844. Probably his name
stood high in the rank list, for he was at once elected a member of the Phi
Beta Kappa Society. After this he entered the Law School, but stayed not
long, for his life's work was already claiming him. In his brief vacation
journeys he had seen tiny remnants of wilderness here and there in Canada
or in lonely corners of New England; now he wished to see the wilderness
itself in all its gloom and vastness, and to meet face to face with the dusky
warriors of the Stone Age. At this end of the nineteenth century, as already
observed, such a thing can no longer be done. Nowhere now, within the
United States, does the primitive wilderness exist, save here and there in
shreds and patches. In the middle of the century it covered the western half
of the continent, and could be reached by a journey of sixteen or seventeen
hundred miles, from Boston to the plains of Nebraska. Parkman had
become an adept in woodcraft and a dead shot with the rifle, and could do
such things with horses, tame or wild, as civilized people never see done
except in a circus. There was little doubt as to his ability to win the respect
of Indians by outshining them in such deeds as they could appreciate. Early
in 1846 he started for the wilderness with Mr. Quincy Shaw. A passage from

the preface to the fourth edition of "The Oregon Trail," published in 1872,
will here be of interest:—
"I remember, as we rode by the foot of Pike's Peak, when for a fortnight we
met no face of man, my companion remarked, in a tone anything but
complacent, that a time would come when those plains would be a grazing
country, the buffalo give place to tame cattle, houses be scattered along the
watercourses, and wolves, bears, and Indians be numbered among the
things that were. We condoled with each other on so melancholy a prospect,
but with little thought what the future had in store. We knew that there was
more or less gold in the seams of those untrodden mountains; but we did
not foresee that it would build cities in the West, and plant hotels and
gambling houses among the haunts of the grizzly bear. We knew that a few
fanatical outcasts were groping their way across the plains to seek an
asylum from Gentile persecution; but we did not imagine that the
polygamous hordes of Mormons would rear a swarming Jerusalem in the
bosom of solitude itself. We knew that more and more, year after year, the
trains of emigrant wagons would creep in slow procession towards
barbarous Oregon or wild and distant California; but we did not dream how
Commerce and Gold would breed nations along the Pacific, the
disenchanting screech of the locomotive break the spell of weird,
mysterious mountains, woman's rights invade the fastnesses of the
Arapahoes, and despairing savagery, assailed in front and rear, veil its scalp
locks and feathers before triumphant commonplace. We were no prophets to
foresee all this; and had we foreseen it, perhaps some perverse regret might
have tempered the ardour of our rejoicing.
"The wild tribe that defiled with me down the gorges of the Black Hills,
with its paint and war plumes, fluttering trophies and savage embroidery,
bows, arrows, lances, and shields, will never be seen again. Those who
formed it have found bloody graves, or a ghastlier burial in the maws of
wolves. The Indian of to-day, armed with a revolver and crowned with an
old hat, cased possibly in trousers or muffled in a tawdry shirt, is an Indian
still, but an Indian shorn of the picturesqueness which was his most
conspicuous merit. The mountain trapper is no more, and the grim romance
of his wild, hard life is a memory of the past."
This first of Parkman's books, "The Oregon Trail," was published in 1847,
as a series of articles in the "Knickerbocker Magazine." Its pages reveal

such supreme courage, such physical hardiness, such rapturous enjoyment
of life, that one finds it hard to realize that even in setting out upon this bold
expedition the writer was something of an invalid. A weakness of sight—
whether caused by some direct injury, or a result of widespread nervous
disturbance, is not quite clear—had already become serious and somewhat
alarming. On arriving at the Indian camp, near the Medicine Bow range of
the Rocky Mountains, he was suffering from a complication of disorders. "I
was so reduced by illness," he says, "that I could seldom walk without
reeling like a drunken man; and when I rose from my seat upon the ground
the landscape suddenly grew dim before my eyes, the trees and lodges
seemed to sway to and fro, and the prairie to rise and fall like the swells of
the ocean. Such a state of things is not enviable anywhere. In a country
where a man's life may at any moment depend on the strength of his arm, or
it may be on the activity of his legs, it is more particularly inconvenient.
Nor is sleeping on damp ground, with an occasional drenching from a
shower, very beneficial in such cases. I sometimes suffered the extremity of
exhaustion, and was in a tolerably fair way of atoning for my love of the
prairie by resting there forever. I tried repose and a very sparing diet. For a
long time, with exemplary patience, I lounged about the camp, or at the
utmost staggered over to the Indian village, and walked faint and dizzy
among the lodges. It would not do, and I bethought me of starvation.
During five days I sustained life on one small biscuit a day. At the end of
that time I was weaker than before, but the disorder seemed shaken in its
stronghold, and very gradually I began to resume a less rigid diet." It did
not seem prudent to Parkman to let the signs of physical ailment become
conspicuous, "since in that case a horse, a rifle, a pair of pistols, and a red
shirt might have offered temptations too strong for aboriginal virtue."
Therefore, in order that his prestige with the red men might not suffer
diminution, he would "hunt buffalo on horseback over a broken country,
when without the tonic of the chase he could scarcely sit upright in the
saddle."
The maintenance of prestige was certainly desirable. The Ogillalah band of
Sioux, among whom he found himself, were barbarians of a low type.
"Neither their manners nor their ideas were in the slightest degree modified
by contact with civilization. They knew nothing of the power and real
character of the white men, and their children would scream in terror when
they saw me. Their religion, superstitions, and prejudices were the same

handed down to them from immemorial time. They fought with the
weapons that their fathers fought with, and wore the same garments of
skins. They were living representatives of the Stone Age; for, though their
lances and arrows were tipped with iron procured from the traders, they still
used the rude stone mallet of the primeval world." These savages welcomed
Parkman and one of his white guides with cordial hospitality, and they were
entertained by the chieftain Big Crow, whose lodge in the evening
presented a picturesque spectacle. "A score or more of Indians were seated
around it in a circle, their dark, naked forms just visible by the dull light of
the smouldering fire in the middle. The pipe glowed brightly in the gloom
as it passed from hand to hand. Then a squaw would drop a piece of buffalo
fat on the dull embers. Instantly a bright flame would leap up, darting its
light to the very apex of the tall conical structure, where the tops of the
slender poles that supported the covering of hide were gathered together. It
gilded the features of the Indians, as with animated gestures they sat around
it, telling their endless stories of war and hunting, and displayed rude
garments of skins that hung around the lodge; the bow, quiver, and lance
suspended over the resting place of the chief, and the rifles and
powderhorns of the two white guests. For a moment all would be bright as
day; then the flames would die out; fitful flashes from the embers would
illumine the lodge, and then leave it in darkness. Then the light would
wholly fade, and the lodge and all within it be involved again in obscurity."
From stories of war and the chase the conversation was now and then
diverted to philosophic themes. When Parkman asked what makes the
thunder, various opinions were expressed; but one old wrinkled fellow,
named Red Water, asseverated that he had always known what it was. "It
was a great black bird; and once he had seen it in a dream swooping down
from the Black Hills, with its loud roaring wings; and when it flapped them
over a lake, they struck lightning from the water." Another old man said that
the wicked thunder had killed his brother last summer, but doggedly refused
to give any particulars. It was afterwards learned that this brother was a
member of a thunder-fighting fraternity of priests or medicine men. On the
approach of a storm they would "take their bows and arrows, their magic
drum, and a sort of whistle made out of the wing bone of the war eagle, and,
thus equipped, run out and fire at the rising cloud, whopping, yelling,
whistling, and beating their drum, to frighten it down again. One afternoon
a heavy black cloud was coming up, and they repaired to the top of a hill,

where they brought all their magic artillery into play against it. But the
undaunted thunder, refusing to be terrified, darted out a bright flash, which
struck [the aforesaid brother] dead as he was in the very act of shaking his
long iron-pointed lance against it. The rest scattered, and ran yelling in an
ecstasy of superstitious terror back to their lodges."
One should read Mr. Parkman's detailed narrative of the strange life of these
people, and the manner of his taking part in it: how he called the villagers
together and regaled them sumptuously with boiled dog, and made them a
skilful speech, in which he quite satisfied them as to his reasons for coming
to dwell among them; how a warm friendship grew up between himself and
the venerable Red Water, who was the custodian of an immense fund of folk
lore, but was apt to be superstitiously afraid of imparting any of it to
strangers; how war parties were projected and abandoned; how buffalo and
antelope were hunted, and how life was carried on in the dull intervals
between such occupations. If one were to keep on quoting what is of
especial interest in the book, one would have to quote the whole of it. But
one characteristic portrait contains so much insight into Indian life that I
cannot forbear giving it. It is the sketch of a young fellow called the Hail-
Storm, as Parkman found him one evening on his return from the chase:
"his light graceful figure reclining on the ground in an easy attitude, while
... near him lay the fresh skin of a female elk which he had just killed
among the mountains, only a mile or two from camp. No doubt the boy's
heart was elated with triumph, but he betrayed no sign of it. He even
seemed totally unconscious of our approach, and his handsome face had all
the tranquillity of Indian self-control,—a self-control which prevents the
exhibition of emotion without restraining the emotion itself. It was about
two months since I had known the Hail-Storm, and within that time his
character had remarkably developed. When I first saw him, he was just
emerging from the habits and feelings of the boy into the ambition of the
hunter and warrior. He had lately killed his first deer, and this had excited
his aspirations for distinction. Since that time he had been continually in
search for game, and no young hunter in the village had been so active or so
fortunate as he. All this success had produced a marked change in his
character. As I first remembered him, he always shunned the society of the
young squaws, and was extremely bashful and sheepish in their presence;
but now, in the confidence of his new reputation, he began to assume the
airs and arts of a man of gallantry. He wore his red blanket dashingly over

his left shoulder, painted his cheeks every day with vermilion, and hung
pendants of shells in his ears. If I observed aright, he met with very good
success in his new pursuits; still the Hail-Storm had much to accomplish
before he attained the full standing of a warrior. Gallantly as he began to
bear himself before the women and girls, he was still timid and abashed in
the presence of the chiefs and old men; for he had never yet killed a man, or
stricken the dead body of an enemy in battle. I have no doubt that the
handsome smooth-faced boy burned with desire to flesh his maiden
scalping knife, and I would not have encamped alone with him without
watching his movements with a suspicious eye." Mr. Parkman once told me
that it was rare for a young brave to obtain full favour with the women
without having at least one scalp to show; and this fact was one of the secret
sources of danger which the ordinary white visitor would never think of.
Peril is also liable to lurk in allowing one's self to be placed in a ludicrous
light among these people; accordingly, whenever such occasions arose,
Parkman knew enough to "maintain a rigid, inflexible countenance, and
[thus] wholly escaped their sallies." He understood that his rifle and pistols
were the only friends on whom he could invariably rely when alone among
Indians. His own observation taught him "the extreme folly of confidence,
and the utter impossibility of foreseeing to what sudden acts the strange,
unbridled impulses of an Indian may urge him. When among this people,
danger is never so near as when you are unprepared for it, never so remote
as when you are armed and on the alert to meet it at any moment. Nothing
offers so strong a temptation to their ferocious instincts as the appearance of
timidity, weakness, or security."
The immense importance of this sojourn in the wilderness, in its relation to
Parkman's life work, is obvious. Knowledge, intrepidity, and tact carried
him through it unscathed, and good luck kept him clear of encounters with
hostile Indians, in which these qualities might not have sufficed to avert
destruction. It was rare good fortune that kept his party from meeting with
an enemy during five months of travel through a dangerous region. Scarcely
three weeks after he had reached the confines of civilization, the Pawnees
and Comanches began a systematized series of hostilities, and "attacked ...
every party, large or small, that passed during the next six months."
During this adventurous experience, says Parkman, "my business was
observation, and I was willing to pay dearly for the opportunity of

exercising it." A heavy price was exacted of him, not by red men, but by
that "subtle personage" whom he had tried to take by the horns, and who
seems to have resented such presumption. Toward the end of the journey
Parkman found himself ill in much the same way as at the beginning, and
craved medical advice. It was in mid-September, on a broad meadow in the
wild valley of the Arkansas, where his party had fallen in with a huge Santa
Fé caravan of white-topped wagons, with great droves of mules and horses;
and we may let Parkman tell the story in his own words, in the last of our
extracts from his fascinating book. One of the guides had told him that in
this caravan was a physician from St. Louis, by the name of Dobbs, of the
very highest standing in his profession. "Without at all believing him, I
resolved to consult this eminent practitioner. Walking over to the camp, I
found him lying sound asleep under one of the wagons. He offered in his
own person but indifferent evidence of his skill; for it was five months since
I had seen so cadaverous a face. His hat had fallen off, and his yellow hair
was all in disorder; one of his arms supplied the place of a pillow; his
trousers were wrinkled halfway up to his knees, and he was covered with
little bits of grass and straw upon which he had rolled in his uneasy
slumber. A Mexican stood near, and I made him a sign to touch the doctor.
Up sprang the learned Dobbs, and sitting upright rubbed his eyes and
looked about him in bewilderment. I regretted the necessity of disturbing
him, and said I had come to ask professional advice.
"'Your system, sir, is in a disordered state,' said he solemnly, after a short
examination. I inquired what might be the particular species of disorder.
'Evidently a morbid action of the liver,' replied the medical man. 'I will give
you a prescription.'
"Repairing to the back of one of the covered wagons, he scrambled in; for a
moment I could see nothing of him but his boots. At length he produced a
box which he had extracted from some dark recess within, and opening it
presented me with a folded paper. 'What is it?' said I. 'Calomel,' said the
doctor.
"Under the circumstances I would have taken almost anything. There was
not enough to do me much harm, and it might possibly do good; so at camp
that night I took the poison instead of supper."

After the return from the wilderness Parkman found his physical condition
rather worse than better. The trouble with the eyes continued, and we begin
to find mention of a lameness which was sometimes serious enough to
confine him to the house, and which evidently lasted a long time; but from
this he seems to have recovered. My personal acquaintance with him began
in 1872, and I never noticed any symptoms of lameness, though I remember
taking several pleasant walks with him. Perhaps the source of lameness may
be indicated in the following account of his condition in 1848, cited from
the fragment of autobiography in which he uses the third person: "To the
maladies of the prairie succeeded a suite of exhausting disorders, so
reducing him that circulation of the extremities ceased, the light of the sun
became insupportable, and a wild whirl possessed his brain, joined to a
universal turmoil of the nervous system which put his philosophy to the
sharpest test it had hitherto known. All collapsed, in short, but the tenacious
strength of muscles hardened by long activity." In 1851, whether due or not
to disordered circulation, there came an effusion of water on the left knee,
which for the next two years prevented walking.
It was between 1848 and 1851 that Parkman was engaged in writing "The
Conspiracy of Pontiac." He felt that no regimen could be worse for him
than idleness, and that no tonic could be more bracing than work in
pursuance of the lofty purpose which had now attained maturity in his
mind. He had to contend with a "triple-headed monster:" first, the weakness
of the eyes, which had come to be such that he could not keep them open to
the light while writing his own name; secondly, the incapacity for sustained
attention; and thirdly, the indisposition to putting forth mental effort.
Evidently, the true name of this triple-headed monster was nervous
exhaustion; there was too much soul for the body to which it was yoked.
"To be made with impunity, the attempt must be made with the most
watchful caution. He caused a wooden frame to be constructed of the size
and shape of a sheet of letter paper. Stout wires were fixed horizontally
across it, half an inch apart, and a movable back of thick pasteboard fitted
behind them. The paper for writing was placed between the pasteboard and
the wires, guided by which, and using a black lead crayon, he could write
not illegibly with closed eyes. He was at the time absent from home, on
Staten Island, where, and in the neighbouring city of New York, he had
friends who willingly offered their aid. It is needless to say to which half of

humanity nearly all these kind assistants belonged. He chose for a
beginning that part of the work which offered fewest difficulties and with
the subject of which he was most familiar; namely, the Siege of Detroit. The
books and documents, already partially arranged, were procured from
Boston, and read to him at such times as he could listen to them; the length
of each reading never without injury much exceeding half an hour, and
periods of several days frequently occurring during which he could not
listen at all. Notes were made by him with closed eyes, and afterwards
deciphered and read to him till he had mastered them. For the first half-year
the rate of composition averaged about six lines a day. The portion of the
book thus composed was afterwards partially rewritten.
"His health improved under the process, and the remainder of the volume—
in other words, nearly the whole of it—was composed in Boston, while
pacing in the twilight of a large garret, the only exercise which the sensitive
condition of his sight permitted him in an unclouded day while the sun was
above the horizon. It was afterwards written down from dictation by
relatives under the same roof, to whom he was also indebted for the
preparatory readings. His progress was much less tedious than at the outset,
and the history was complete in about two years and a half."
The book composed under such formidable difficulties was published in
1851. It did not at once meet with the reception which it deserved. The
reading public did not expect to find entertainment in American history. In
the New England of those days the general reader had heard a good deal
about the Pilgrim Fathers and Salem Witchcraft, and remembered hazily the
stories of Hannah Dustin and of Putnam and the wolf, but could not be
counted on for much else before the Revolution. I remember once hearing it
said that the story of the "Old French War" was something of no more
interest or value for Americans of to-day than the cuneiform records of an
insurrection in ancient Nineveh; and so slow are people in gaining a correct
historical perspective that within the last ten years the mighty world
struggle in which Pitt and Frederick were allied is treated in a book entitled
"Minor Wars of the United States"! In 1851 the soil was not yet ready for
the seed sown by Parkman, and he did not quickly or suddenly become
popular. But after the publication of the "Pioneers of France" in 1865 his
fame grew rapidly. In those days I took especial pleasure in praising his
books, from the feeling that they were not so generally known as they ought

to be, particularly in England, where he has since come to be recognized as
foremost among American writers of history. In 1879 I had been giving a
course of lectures at University College, London, on "America's Place in
History," and shortly afterwards repeated this course at the little Hawthorne
Hall, on Park Street, in Boston. One evening, having occasion to allude
briefly to Pontiac and his conspiracy, I said, among other things, that it was
memorable as "the theme of one of the most brilliant and fascinating books
that have ever been written by any historian since the days of Herodotus."
The words were scarcely out of my mouth when I happened to catch sight
of Mr. Parkman in my audience. I had not observed him before, though he
was seated quite near me. I shall never forget the sudden start which he
gave, and the heightened colour of his noble face, with its curious look of
surprise and pleasure,—an expression as honest and simple as one might
witness in a rather shy schoolboy suddenly singled out for praise. I was so
glad that I had said what I did without thinking of his hearing me.
In May, 1850, while at work upon this great book, Mr. Parkman married
Catherine, daughter of Jacob Bigelow, an eminent physician of Boston. Of
this marriage there were three children,—a son, who died while an infant,
and two daughters, who still survive. Mrs. Parkman died in 1858, and her
husband never married again.
During these years, when his complicated ailments for a time made
historical work impossible even to this man of Titanic will, he assuaged his
cravings for spiritual creation by writing a novel, "Vassall Morton." Of his
books it is the only one that I have never seen, and I can speak of it only
from hearsay. It is said to be not without signal merits, but it did not find a
great many readers, and its author seems not to have cared much for it. The
main current of his interest in life was too strong to allow of much diversion
into side channels.
"Meanwhile," to cite his own words, "the Faculty of Medicine were not
idle, displaying that exuberance of resource for which that remarkable
profession is justly famed. The wisest, indeed, did nothing, commending his
patient to time and faith; but the activity of his brethren made full amends
for this masterly inaction. One was for tonics, another for a diet of milk;
one counselled galvanism, another hydropathy; one scarred him behind the
neck with nitric acid, another drew red-hot irons along his spine with a view
of enlivening that organ. Opinion was divergent as practice. One assured

him of recovery in six years; another thought that he would never recover.
Another, with grave circumlocution, lest the patient should take fright,
informed him that he was the victim of an organic disease of the brain
which must needs dispatch him to another world within a twelvemonth; and
he stood amazed at the smile of an auditor who neither cared for the
announcement nor believed it. Another, an eminent physiologist of Paris,
after an acquaintance of three months, one day told him that from the nature
of the disorder he had at first supposed that it must, in accordance with
precedent, be attended with insanity, and had ever since been studying him
to discover under what form the supposed aberration declared itself; adding,
with a somewhat humorous look, that his researches had not been rewarded
with the smallest success."
Soon after his marriage Mr. Parkman became possessor of a small estate of
three acres or so in Jamaica Plain, on the steep shore of the beautiful pond.
It was a charming place, thoroughly English in its homelike simplicity and
refined comfort. The house stood near the entrance, and on not far from the
same level as the roadway; but from the side and rear the ground fell off
rapidly, so that it was quite a sharp descent to the pretty little wharf or dock,
where one might sit and gaze on the placid, dreamy water. It is with that
lovely home that Parkman is chiefly associated in my mind. Twenty years
ago, while I was acting as librarian at Harvard University, he was a member
of the corporation, and I had frequent occasion to consult with him on
matters of business. At such times I would drive over from Cambridge or
take a street car to Jamaica Plain, sure of a cordial greeting and a pleasant
chat, in which business always received its full measure of justice, and was
then thrust aside for more inspiring themes. The memory of one day in
particular will go with me through life,—an enchanted day in the season of
apple blossoms, when I went in the morning for a brief errand, taking with
me one of my little sons. The brief errand ended in spending the whole day
and staying until late in the evening, while the world of thought was
ransacked and some of its weightiest questions provisionally settled! Nor
was either greenhouse or garden or pond neglected. At such times there was
nothing in Parkman's looks or manner to suggest the invalid. He and I were
members of a small club of a dozen or more congenial spirits who now for
nearly thirty years have met once a month to dine together. When he came
to the dinner he was always one of the most charming companions at the
table; but ill health often prevented his coming, and in the latter years of his

life he never came. I knew nothing of the serious nature of his troubles; and
when I heard the cause of his absence alleged, I used to suppose that it was
merely some need for taking care of digestion or avoiding late hours that
kept him at home. What most impressed one, in talking with him, was the
combination of power and alertness with extreme gentleness. Nervous
irritability was the last thing of which I should have suspected him. He
never made the slightest allusion to his ill health; he would probably have
deemed it inconsistent with good breeding to intrude upon his friends with
such topics; and his appearance as always most cheerful. His friend (our
common friend), the late Octavius Frothingham, says of him: "Again and
again he had to restrain the impulse to say vehement things, or to do violent
deeds without the least provocation; but he maintained so absolutely his
moral self-control that none but the closest observer would notice any
deviation from the most perfect calm and serenity." I can testify that until
after Mr. Parkman's death I had never dreamed of the existence of any such
deviation.
Garden and greenhouse formed a very important part of the home by
Jamaica Pond. Mr. Parkman's love for Nature was in no way more
conspicuously shown than in his diligence and skill in cultivating flowers. It
is often observed that plants will grow for some persons, but not for others;
one man's conservatory will be heavy with verdure, gorgeous in its colours,
and redolent of sweet odours, while his neighbour's can show nothing but a
forlorn assemblage of pots and sticks. The difference is due to the loving
care which learns and humours the idiosyncrasies of each individual thing
that grows, the keen observation of the naturalist supplemented by the
watchful solicitude of the nurse. Among the indications of rare love and
knowledge of Nature is marked success in inducing her to bring forth her
most exquisite creations, the flowers. As an expert in horticulture Parkman
achieved celebrity. His garden and greenhouse had extraordinary things to
show. As he pointed out to me on my first visit to them, he followed
Darwinian methods and originated new varieties of plants. The Lilium
Parkmani has long been famous among florists. He was also eminent in the
culture of roses, and author of a work entitled "The Book of Roses," which
was published in 1866. He was President of the Horticultural Society, and at
one time Professor of Horticulture in Harvard University. There can be no
doubt as to the beneficial effects of these pursuits. It is wholesome to be out
of doors with spade and trowel and sprinkler; there is something tonic in the

aroma of fresh damp loam; and nothing is more restful to the soul than daily
sympathetic intercourse with flowering plants. It was surely here that
Parkman found his best medicine.
When he entered, in 1851, upon his great work on "France and England in
the New World," he had before him the task "of tracing out, collecting,
indexing, arranging, and digesting a great mass of incongruous material
scattered on both sides of the Atlantic." A considerable portion of this
material was in manuscript, and involved much tedious exploration and the
employment of trained copyists. It was necessary to study carefully the
catalogues of many European libraries, and to open correspondence with
such scholars and public officials in both hemispheres as might be able to
point to the whereabouts of fresh sources of information. Work of this sort,
as one bit of clue leads to another, is capable of arousing the emotion of
pursuit to a very high degree; and I believe the effect of it upon Parkman's
health must have been good, in spite of, or rather because of, its difficulties.
The chase was carried on until his manuscript treasures had been brought to
an extraordinary degree of completeness. These made his library quite
remarkable. In printed books it was far less rich. He had not the tastes of a
bibliophile, and did not feel it necessary, as Freeman did, to own all the
books he used. His library of printed books, which at his death went to
Harvard University, was a very small one for a scholar,—about twenty-five
hundred volumes, including more or less of Greek and Latin literature and
theology inherited from his father. His manuscripts, as I have already
mentioned, went to the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
When the manuscripts had come into his hands, an arduous labour was
begun. All had to be read to him and taken in slowly, bit by bit. The
incapacity to keep steadily at work made it impossible to employ regular
assistants profitably; and for readers he either depended upon members of
his own family or called in pupils from the public schools. Once he speaks
of having had a well-trained young man, who was an excellent linguist; on
another occasion it was a schoolgirl "ignorant of any tongue but her own,"
and "the effect, though highly amusing to bystanders, was far from being so
to the person endeavouring to follow the meaning of this singular jargon."
The larger part of the documents used in preparing the earlier volumes were
in seventeenth-century French, which, though far from being Old French, is

enough unlike the nineteenth-century speech to have troubled Parkman's
readers, and thus to have worried his ears.
As Frothingham describes his method, when the manuscripts were slowly
read to him, "first the chief points were considered, then the details of the
story were gone over carefully and minutely. As the reading went on he
made notes, first of essential matters, then of non-essential. After this he
welded everything together, made the narrative completely his own, infused
into it his own fire, quickened it by his own imagination, and made it, as it
were, a living experience, so that his books read like personal
reminiscences. It was certainly a slow and painful process, but the result
more than justified the labour."
In the fragment of autobiography already quoted, which Mr. Parkman left
with Dr. Ellis in 1868, but which was apparently written in 1865, he says:
"One year, four years, and numerous short intervals lasting from a day to a
month represent the literary interruptions since the work in hand was begun.
Under the most favourable conditions it was a slow and doubtful
navigation, beset with reefs and breakers, demanding a constant lookout
and a constant throwing of the lead. Of late years, however, the condition of
the sight has so far improved as to permit reading, not exceeding on the
average five minutes at one time. This modicum of power, though
apparently trifling, proves of the greatest service, since by a cautious
management its application may be extended. By reading for one minute,
and then resting for an equal time, this alternate process may generally be
continued for about half an hour. Then after a sufficient interval it may be
repeated, often three or four times in the course of the day. By this means
nearly the whole of the volume now offered ["Pioneers"] has been
composed.... How far, by a process combining the slowness of the tortoise
with the uncertainty of the hare, an undertaking of close and extended
research can be advanced, is a question to solve which there is no aid from
precedent, since it does not appear that an attempt under similar
circumstances has hitherto been made. The writer looks, however, for a fair
degree of success."
After 1865 the progress was certainly much more rapid than before. The
next fourteen years witnessed the publication of "The Jesuits," "La Salle,"
"The Old Régime," and "Frontenac," and saw "Montcalm and Wolfe" well
under way; while the "Half-Century of Conflict," intervening between

"Frontenac" and "Montcalm and Wolfe," was reserved until the last-
mentioned work should be done, for the same reason that led Herbert
Spencer to postpone the completing of his "Sociology" until he should have
finished his "Principles of Ethics." In view of life's vicissitudes, it was
prudent to make sure of the crowning work, at all events leaving some
connecting links to be inserted afterwards. As one obstacle after another
was surmounted, as one grand division of the work after another became an
accomplished fact, the effect upon Parkman's condition must have been
bracing, and he seems to have acquired fresh impetus as he approached the
goal.
For desultory work in the shape of magazine articles he had little leisure;
but two essays of his, on "The Failure of Universal Suffrage" and on "The
Reasons against Woman Suffrage," are very thoughtful, and worthy of
serious consideration. In questions of political philosophy, his conclusions,
which were reached from a very wide and impartial survey of essential
facts, always seemed to me of the highest value.
When I look back upon Parkman's noble life, I think of Mendelssohn's
chorus, "He that shall endure to the end," with its chaste and severely
beautiful melody, and the calm, invincible faith which it expresses. After all
the harrowing years of doubt and distress, the victory was such in its
magnitude as has been granted to but few mortals to win. He lived to see his
life's work done; the thought of his eighteenth year was realized in his sixty-
ninth; and its greatness had come to be admitted throughout the civilized
world. In September, 1893, his seventieth year was completed, and his
autumn in the lovely home at Jamaica Plain was a pleasant one. On the first
Sunday afternoon in November he rowed on the pond in his boat, but felt ill
as he returned to the house, and on the next Wednesday, the 8th, he passed
quietly away. Thus he departed from a world which will evermore be the
richer and better for having once had him as its denizen. The memory of a
life so strong and beautiful is a precious possession for us all.
As for the book on which he laboured with such marvellous heroism, a
word may be said in conclusion. Great in his natural powers and great in the
use he made of them, Parkman was no less great in his occasion and in his
theme. Of all American historians he is the most deeply and peculiarly
American, yet he is at the same time the broadest and most cosmopolitan.
The book which depicts at once the social life of the Stone Age, and the

victory of the English political ideal over the ideal which France inherited
from imperial Rome, is a book for all mankind and for all time. The more
adequately men's historic perspective gets adjusted, the greater will it seem.
Strong in its individuality, and like to nothing else, it clearly belongs, I
think, among the world's few masterpieces of the highest rank, along with
the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Gibbon.
February, 1897.

IX
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN

The sudden death of Professor Freeman, last March [1892], was a great
calamity to the world of letters. Although his achievements in the field of
historical writing had been so varied and voluminous, yet some of his most
important themes—some of those which had been slowly ripening and most
richly developed in his mind—were still awaiting literary treatment at his
hands, and at the time of his death he had just finished the third volume of a
colossal work which was still in its earlier stages. His end was premature,
and it is with a keen sense of bereavement that we take this occasion to pay
a brief word of tribute to so dear and honoured a teacher.
Edward Augustus Freeman, son of John Freeman of Redmore Hall, in
Worcestershire, was born at Harborne, Staffordshire, August 2, 1823. His
life was always purely that of a scholar and teacher, and a chronicle of its
events would consist chiefly of the record of books published and offices
held at the University of Oxford. He was graduated at Trinity College in
1845, and remained there as a Fellow until 1847. In 1857, 1863, and 1873
he served as Examiner in Modern History. In 1880 he was chosen honorary
Fellow of Trinity, and in 1884 Fellow of Oriel. In the latter year he was
appointed Regius Professor of Modern History, succeeding Bishop Stubbs
in that position. It is not necessary to enumerate the honorary degrees which
he received from Oxford and Cambridge, and from universities in various
European countries. At the time of his death he was a member of learned
societies in nearly all parts of the world. For many years he had been a
Knight Commander of the Greek Order of the Saviour. He had also received
honours of knighthood from Servia and Montenegro. In 1868 he was a
candidate for Parliament, but failed of election; and that seems to have been
his sole venture in the world of politics. His travels upon the continent of
Europe were many and extensive. When at home he lived in rural seclusion,
—"far from the madding crowd,"—upon his estate at Somerleaze, near
Wells and its noble cathedral; only in these latter years he made a home for
himself, during the Oxford terms, at St. Giles in that city.

From the very beginning Freeman's historical studies were characterized on
the one hand by philosophical breadth of view, and on the other hand by
extreme accuracy of statement, and such loving minuteness of detail as is
apt to mark the local antiquary whose life has been spent in studying only
one thing. It was to the combination of these two characteristics that the
preëminent greatness of his historical work was due. We see the
combination already prefigured, and to some extent realized, in his first
book, "A History of Architecture," published in 1849, although this can
hardly be called such a work of original research as the books of his
maturer years. Two years afterward appeared the learned "Essay on the
Origin and Development of Window Tracery in England," a work which I
do not feel able to criticise, but which I am sure is very charming to read. I
believe that this book was followed by at least three others in the same
department, "Architectural Antiquities of Gower," "The Antiquities of St.
David's," and "The Architecture of Llandaff Cathedral," but I have never
seen them. In the preface to the essay on window tracery Mr. Freeman
alludes to Rev. G. W. Cox as his "friend and coadjutor in many
undertakings," and I have heard of a volume of poems "by G. W. C. and E.
A. F." published in those days, but I know no more about it. It is to be
hoped that these early works, which have become very scarce, will before
long be collected and reprinted.
When, after these publications on architecture, Freeman began publishing
books and articles on ancient Greece and on the Saracens, I presume there
were many of his readers who thoughtlessly assumed that he had changed
his vocation; he must more than once have had to answer the stupid
question why he had gone over from architecture to history. But in his mind
the evolution of architecture was never separated from the course of
political history; and the effect of these early studies in architecture, which
were indeed never abandoned, but kept up with enthusiasm in later years,
was to give increased definiteness and concreteness to his presentation of
historical events. When I use such a word as "evolution" in this connection,
I do not mean that Mr. Freeman was in any sense a "disciple" of the modern
evolution philosophy. There is nothing to show that he ever gave any time
or attention to the study of that subject, or that he had any technical
knowledge even of its terminology. Whether consciously or unconsciously,
however, he was an evolutionist in spirit. From the outset he was deeply
impressed with the solidarity of human history, and no student of political

development in our time has made more effective use of the comparative
method.
From 1850 to 1863 Freeman's published writings were chiefly concerned
with Mediterranean history viewed on the broadest scale in relation to all
those movements of progressive humanity which have had that great inland
sea for a common centre. Here came those brilliant essays on "Ancient
Greece and Mediæval Italy," "Homer and the Homeric Age," "The Athenian
Democracy," "Alexander the Great," "Greece during the Macedonian
Period," "Mommsen's History of Rome," "The Flavian Cæsars," and others
since collected in the second series of his "Historical Essays." To this period
also belongs the little book on the "History of the Saracens," based upon
lectures given at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh.
From these Mediterranean studies may be said to have grown two of
Freeman's three great works,—both of them, unfortunately, left incomplete
at his death,—the "History of Federal Government" and the "History of
Sicily." Freeman was remarkably free from the common habit—common
even among eminent historians—of concentrating his attention upon some
exceptionally brilliant period or so-called "classical age," to the exclusion
of other ages that went before and came after. Such a habit is fatal to all
correct understanding of history, even that of the ages upon which attention
is thus unwisely concentrated. Freeman understood that in some respects, if
not in others, the history of Greece is just as important after the battle of
Chæronea as before; and he became especially interested in the history of
the Achaian League and other Greek attempts at federation. Thence grew
the idea of studying the development of federal union as the highest form of
nation-building, beginning with its germs in the leagues among Greek
autonomous cities. The enterprise was arduous, involving as it did the
determination of obscure points in the history of many ages and countries,
more particularly Greece, Switzerland, and America. The first volume,
containing the general introduction and the history of the Greek federations,
was published in 1863, a stalwart octavo of 721 pages. It bore upon the
title-page a motto from "The Federalist," No. xviii.,—"Could the interior
structure and regular operation of the Achaian League be ascertained, it is
probable that more light might be thrown by it on the science of federal
government than by any of the like experiments with which we are
acquainted." This book is of priceless value, and if Freeman had never

published anything more, it would have entitled him to a place in the
foremost rank of historians. It deals thoroughly with a very important
portion of the world's history to which no one before had even begun to do
justice. Its admirable philosophical spirit is matched by its keen critical
insight and its minute and exhaustive control of all sources of information.
Its narrative, moreover, is full of human interest. Yet it never became a
popular book. It was hard to make people believe that the Achaian League
could be interesting, and in order to realize the philosophical value of the
whole story most readers would need to have the later portions of it set
before their eyes.
But this noble work, in some respects the grandest of the author's
conceptions, was never completed. The first volume was all that ever was
published. For this fact I have sometimes heard Americans offer a grotesque
explanation. The volume published in 1863, in the middle of our Civil War,
bore the title "History of Federal Government, from the Foundation of the
Achaian League to the Disruption of the United States." This title gave
offence in America. It was too hastily taken to indicate that the author
wished well to the Southern Confederacy, and regarded its independence as
an accomplished fact. There can be no doubt that the title was ill chosen;
but to suppose, as some people did, that chagrin at the success of the Union
arms prevented Freeman from going on with his book was simply
ridiculous. It was not anything that happened in America, but something
that happened in Europe, which caused him to defer the completion of his
second volume. That volume was to deal with federal government as
exemplified in Switzerland and otherwise in Germany; and the war of 1866
between Prussia and Austria marked the beginning of organic changes in
Germany which Freeman was anxious to watch for a while before finishing
his book.
He therefore turned aside and took up the third of his three great works,—
the only one that he lived to complete,—the "History of the Norman
Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results." Upon this subject he had
thought and studied for nearly twenty years, or ever since the time when he
was publishing works on architecture. As one turns the leaves of these stout
volumes, each of seven or eight hundred pages, crowded with minute and
accurate erudition, one marvels that the author could carry along so many
researches and of such exhaustive character at the same time. Alike in

Greek, in German, and in English history, along with abundant
generalizations, often highly original and suggestive, we find investigations
of obscure points in which every item of evidence is weighed as in an
apothecary's scale, and in all these directions Freeman was working at once.
When it came to publishing, volume followed volume with surprising
quickness. Turning aside in 1866 from the second volume of the "Federal
Government" when a large part of it was already written, Freeman brought
out the first volume of the "Norman Conquest" in 1867, the second in 1868,
the third in 1869, the fourth in 1871, the fifth more leisurely in 1876. The
proportions of this work are eminently characteristic of the author's
historical perspective. In order to understand the Norman Conquest, a
survey of all previous English history, and especially of the struggle
between Englishmen and Danes, is essential; and the first volume carries us
in one great sweep from the landing of Hengist to the accession of Edward
the Confessor, while the early history of Normandy also receives due
attention. We now enter the region of proximate causes, which require more
detailed specification, and the second volume takes us through the four-and-
twenty years of Edward's reign. His death hurries the situation to its
dramatic climax, and the whole of the third volume is devoted to the events
of the single year 1066. The completion of the Conquest down to the death
of the Conqueror is treated with less detail, and the twenty-one years are
comprised within a volume. Finally, in summing up the results of the great
event, the last volume covers two centuries, and leaves us in the reign of
Edward I., the king who did so much to make modern English history the
glorious tale that it has been. In finishing his work upon these proportions,
Freeman encountered many points in the reign of William Rufus that
needed fuller treatment, and so in 1882 he published in two volumes the
history of that reign as a sequel to the "Norman Conquest." Taken as a
whole, the seven volumes give us such a masterly philosophic analysis and
such a picturesque and vivid narrative of the history of England in the
eleventh century that it must be pronounced the monumental work upon
which Freeman's reputation will chiefly rest.
While these volumes were in course of publication, there was scarcely a
year when its busy author, from his wealth of knowledge, did not bring out
some other book. Sometimes it was what men count a slight affair, such as a
textbook,—albeit the textbook is perhaps the hardest kind of book to write
well; sometimes it was a brief monograph or course of lectures; sometimes

a collection of earlier writings. There was an "Old English History for
Children" (1869), a "Short History of the Norman Conquest" (1880), and a
"General Sketch of European History" (1873). The "Growth of the English
Constitution" was suggestively treated in a small volume (1872). There was
a "History of the Cathedral Church at Wells" (1870), and there was a
collection of "Historical and Architectural Sketches," chiefly from Italy
(1876), followed by "Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of
Venice" (1881). In these two last-named volumes, illustrated chiefly from
the author's own drawings, one sees that his interest in Diocletian and
Theodoric was scarcely less keen than in Alfred of Wessex or William the
Norman. No other modern traveller has done such justice to Istria and
Dalmatia. "I am not joking," he writes, "when I say that the best guide to
those parts is still the account written by the Emperor Constantine
Porphyrogenitus more than nine hundred years back. But it is surely high
time that there should be another." Freeman's accurate knowledge of
southeastern Europe and its peoples, coupled with his wide and
comprehensive study of the contact between Christians and Mussulmans in
all ages, led him to take very sound and wholesome views of the
unspeakable Turk and the everlasting Eastern Question; and in 1877, when
public attention was so strongly directed toward the Balkans, he published a
lucid and graphic little volume on "The Ottoman Power in Europe." This
book was a companion to the "History of the Saracens," above mentioned,
and the two together make as good an introduction to Mussulman history in
its relations to Europe as the general reader is likely to find.
Among the host of side works which were issued during these years, two
call for especial mention. In the lectures on "Comparative Politics," given at
the Royal Institution in 1873, Freeman analyzed and described the different
forms assumed by Aryan institutions among Greeks, Romans, and Teutons.
This book is his most distinct attempt to make his central theme the career
of an institution, such as kingship or representative assemblies, rather than
the career of a state or a people. In the "History of Federal Government,"
the two kinds of treatment, analytical and synthetical, were combined in a
way that would, I think, have made that his grandest work, had it been
completed. In the lectures we get an able analysis and comparison, full of
fruitful suggestions, and in our author's happiest style. There is not the
originality of scholarship here that we find in Sir Henry Maine, nor do we
find the breadth of view that can be gained only when the barbaric non-

Aryan world is taken into account. Such breadth was not to be expected
twenty years ago, and before the path-breaking work of the American
scholar Lewis Morgan. Freeman's outlook was confined to the Aryan
domain; but he did not attempt more than he knew. His task was conceived
with so clear a consciousness of his limitations, and every point was so
richly illustrated, that the "Comparative Politics" remains one of his most
useful and charming books.
The other work calling for especial mention is "The Historical Geography
of Europe," published in 1880. Its object was "to trace out the extent of
territory which the different states and nations of Europe have held at
different times in the world's history; to mark the different boundaries
which the same country has had, and the different meanings in which the
same name has been used." Such work is of great and fundamental
importance, because men are perpetually making grotesque mistakes
through ignorance or forgetfulness of the changes which have occurred on
the map; as, for example, when somebody speaks of Lyons in the twelfth
century as a French city, or supposes that Charles the Bold invaded Swiss
territory. Historical writings fairly swarm with blunders based upon
unconscious errors of this sort, and nowhere did Freeman do better service
than in pointing them out on every possible occasion. No writer has so
effectively warned the historical student against that besetting sin of
"bondage to the modern map." His exposition of historical geography is a
book of purest gold, and no serious student of history can safely neglect it.
In 1881 Mr. Freeman visited the United States, and gave lectures on "The
English People in its Three Homes" and "The Practical Bearings of
European History," which were afterward published in a volume. After
returning home he published "Some Impressions of the United States"
(1883), a very entertaining book because of the author's ingrained habit of
comparing and discriminating social phenomena upon so wide a scale.
Gauls and Illyrians, Wessex and Achaia, come in to point each a moral, and
show how to this great historian the whole European past was almost as
much a present and living reality as the incidents occurring before his eyes.
In the same year, 1883, Freeman published his "English Towns and
Districts," a series of addresses and sketches in which he had from time to
time embodied the results of his antiquarian and architectural studies in
many parts of England and Wales. It is a book of rare fascination as

illustrating how largely national history is made up of local history, and
how it is impossible to understand the former correctly without paying
much attention to the latter. In further illustration of the same point,
Freeman projected the well-known series of monographs on "Historic
Towns," to which he himself contributed the opening volume, on "Exeter"
(1886).
Having been called to the Regius Professorship at Oxford in 1884,
Freeman's next publications were university lectures on "Methods of
Historical Study," "The Chief Periods of European History," "Fifty Years of
European History," "Teutonic Conquest in Gaul and Britain," "Greater
Greece and Greater Britain," and "George Washington the Expander of
England" (1886-88). Meanwhile, the colossal work on "Sicily" was rapidly
assuming its final shape. This topic obviously touched upon Freeman's
other two chief topics at two points. Ancient Sicily was part of that Greek
world which he had so thoroughly studied in connection with the
beginnings of federal government. Mediæval Sicily was one of the most
important of the Norman's fields of activity. But the thought of writing the
history of that fateful island did not come to Freeman as an afterthought
suggested by his other two great works. On the contrary, the conception of
the historic position of Sicily was among the first that stimulated his
philosophic mind to undertake comprehensive studies. The contact between
the Aryan and Semitic civilizations along the coasts of the Mediterranean is
surely the most interesting topic in the history of mankind, as the reader
will at once admit when he reflects that it involves the origin and rise of
Christianity. But, restricting ourselves to the political aspects of the subject,
how full of dramatic grandeur it is! How stirring were the scenes of which
Sicily has been the theatre! There struggled Carthage, first against Greek,
and then against Roman; and in later times the conflict was renewed
between Arabic-speaking Mussulmans and Greek-speaking Christians, until
the Norman came to assert his sway over both, and to loosen the clutch of
the Saracen upon the centre of the Mediterranean world. The theme, in its
manifold bearings, was worthy of Freeman, and he was worthy of it. His
design was to start with the earliest times in which Sicily is known to
history, and to carry on the narrative as far as the death of the Emperor
Frederick II. and the final overthrow of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. The
scheme lay ripening in his mind for nearly half a century, and its
consummation was begun with characteristic swiftness and vigour. Two

noble volumes were published in 1891, and the third was out of the author's
hands by the end of last January. But for a death most lamentably sudden
and premature there was no reason why the whole task should not have
been soon accomplished. The author seems to have fallen a victim to his
superabundant zeal and energy. He had always been a traveller, visiting in
person the scenes of his narratives, narrowly scrutinizing each locality with
the eye of an antiquarian, exploring battlefields and making drawings of
churches and castles, running from one end of Europe to the other to verify
some mooted point. It was, I believe, on some such expedition as this that
he found himself, last March, at Alicante, where an attack of smallpox
suddenly ended his life.
To the faithful students of his works the tidings of Freeman's death must
have come like the news of the loss of a personal friend. To those who
enjoyed his friendship even in a slight way the sense of loss was keen, for
he was a very lovable man. Some people, indeed, seem to think of him as a
gruff and growling pedant, ever on the lookout for some culprit to chastise;
but, while not without some basis, this notion is far from the truth.
Freeman's conception of the duty of a historian was a high one, and he lived
up to it. He had a holy horror of slovenly and inaccurate work; pretentious
sciolism was something that he could not endure, and he knew how easy it
is to press garbled or misunderstood history into the service of corrupt
politics. He found the minds of English-speaking contemporaries full of
queer notions of European history, especially as to the Middle Ages,—
notions usually misty and often grotesquely wrong; and he did more than
any other Englishman of our time to correct such errors and clear up men's
minds. Such work could not be done without attacking blunders and the
propagators of blunders. Freeman's assaults were not infrequent, and they
were apt to be crushing; but they were made in the interests of historic truth,
and there were none too many of them. Like "Mr. F.'s Aunt," the great
historian did "hate a fool;" and it is clearly right that fools should be
silenced and made to know their place.
Not only foolishness and inaccuracy did Freeman hate, but also tyranny,
fraud, and social injustice, under whatever specious disguises they might be
veiled. In matters of right and wrong his perceptions were rather clouded.
He never could be duped into admiring a charlatan like the late Emperor of
the French. Upon the Eastern Question he wielded a Varangian axe, and had

his advice been heeded, the Commander of the Faithful would ere now have
been sent back to Brusa, or beyond. But while in politics and in criticism he
could hit hard, his disposition was as tender and humane as Uncle Toby's.
Eminently characteristic is the discussion on fox-hunting which he carried
on with Anthony Trollope some years ago in the "Fortnightly Review," in
which he condemned that time-honoured sport as intolerably cruel.
Mr. Freeman was very domestic in his habits. When not travelling, he was
to be found in his country home, writing in his own library. When he was in
the United States, it amused him to see people's surprise when told that he
did not live in a city, and did not spend his time deciphering musty
manuscripts in public libraries or archives. He used to say that, even in
point of economy, he thought it better to dwell among pleasant green fields
and to consult one's own books than to take long journeys or be stifled in
dirty cities in order to consult other people's book. His chief subjects of
study favoured such a policy, for most of the sources of information on the
eleventh century, as well as upon ancient Greece, are contained in printed
volumes. Now and then he missed some little point upon which a
manuscript might have helped him. But one cannot help wishing he might
have stayed among the quiet fields of Somerset instead of taking that last
fatal journey to Alicante.
It was chiefly with the political aspects of history that Freeman concerned
himself; not in the old-fashioned way, as a mere narrative of the deeds of
kings and cabinets, but in scientific fashion, as an application of the
comparative method to the various processes of nation-building. I do not
mean that his narrative was subordinated to scientific exposition, but that it
was informed and vitalized by the spirit and methods of science. In pure
description Freeman was often excellent; his account of the death of
William Rufus, for example, is a masterpiece of impressive narrative. In
description and in argument alike Freeman usually confined his attention to
political history, except when he dealt in his suggestive way with
architecture and archæology. To art in general, to the history of philosophy
and of scientific ideas, to the development of literary expression, of
manners and customs, of trade and the industrial arts, he devoted much less
thought. I believe he did not fully approve of his friend Green's method of
carrying along political, social, and literary topics abreast in his "History of

the English People." Few will doubt, however, that in this respect Green's
artistic grasp upon his subject was stronger than Freeman's.
It is some slight consolation for our bitter loss to know that many of the
great historian's books were in large part written long before he felt the time
to be ripe for completing and publishing them. Some of the unfinished
portions may be brought toward completeness and edited by other hands. In
this way I hope we may look for one or two more volumes of the "Sicily,"
and perhaps for the second volume of the "Federal Government," dealing
with the Swiss and other German federations. Probably no other
Englishman, and few other men anywhere in our time, knew anything like
so much as Freeman about the history of Switzerland. I once or twice
begged him to make haste and finish that volume, but desisted; for it was
evident that "Sicily" was absorbing him, and an author does not like to be
pestered with advice to turn aside from the work that is uppermost in his
mind.
November, 1892.

X

CAMBRIDGE AS VILLAGE AND CITY[27]

We have met together this evening on one of those occasions, which keep
recurring, for communities as well as for individuals, when it is desirable to
take a retrospect of the past, to call attention to some of the characteristic
incidents in our history, to sum up the work we have done and estimate the
position we occupy in the world. As long as we retain the decimal
numeration that is natural to ten-fingered creatures, we shall encounter such
moments at intervals of half centuries and centuries, and happy are the
communities that can meet them without shameful memories that shun the
light of history; happy are the people that can look back upon the work of
their fathers and in their heart of hearts pronounce it good! What a blot it
was upon the civic fame of every Greek community that took part in putting
out the brightest light of Hellas in the wicked Peloponnesian War! Can any
right-minded Venetian look without blushing at the bronze horses that
surmount the stately portal of St. Mark's?—a perpetual memento of that
black day when ravening commercial jealousy decoyed an army of
Crusaders to the despoiling of the chief city of Christendom, and thus broke
away the strongest barrier in the path of the advancing Turk! What must the
citizen of Paris think to-day of cowardly massacres of unresisting prisoners,
such as happened in 1418 and in 1792? Is there any dweller in Birmingham
who would not gladly expunge from the past that summer evening which
witnessed the burning of the house and library of Dr. Priestley? From such
melancholy scenes, and from complicity in political crime, our community,
our neighbourhood, has been notably free. The annals of Massachusetts,
during its existence of nearly three centuries, are written in a light that is
sometimes dull or sombre, but very seldom lurid. In particular the career of
Cambridge has been a placid one. We do not find in it many things to startle
us; but there is much that we can approve, much upon which, without
falling into the self-satisfied mood that is the surest index of narrowness
and provincialism, we may legitimately pride ourselves. In commemorating
the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of Cambridge as a city, a

retrospect of the half century is needful; but we shall find it pleasant to go
farther back, and start with a glimpse of the beginnings of our town.
I came near saying "humble beginnings;" it is a stock phrase, and perhaps
savours of tautology, since beginnings are apt to be humble as compared
with long-matured results. But an adjective which better suits the
beginnings of our Cambridge is "dignified." Circumstances of dignity
attended the selection of this spot upon the bank of Charles River as the site
of a town, and there was something peculiarly dignified in the
circumstances of the change of vocation which determined the change in its
name. The story is a very different one from that of the founding of towns
in the Old World, in the semi-barbarous times when the art of nation-
making was in its infancy. In those earlier ages, it was only through
prolonged warfare against enemies nearly equal in prowess and resources
that a free political life could be maintained; and it was only after
numberless crude experiments that nations could be formed in which
political rights could be efficiently preserved for the people. All the training
that such long ages of turbulence could impart had been gained by our
forefathers in the Old World. To the founders of our Cambridge it had come
as a rich inheritance. They were not as the rough followers of Alaric or
Hengist. They had profited by the work of Roman civilization, with its vast
and subtle nexus of legal and political ideas. In the hands of their fathers
had been woven the wonderful fabric of English law; they were familiar
with parliamentary institutions; they had been brought up in a country
where the king's peace was better preserved than anywhere else in Europe,
and where at the same time self-government was maintained in full vigour.
They had profited, moreover, by the scholastic learning of the Middle Ages
and the Greek scholarship of the Renaissance; nor was the newly
awakening spirit of scientific inquiry, visible in Galileo and Gilbert, lost
upon their keen and inquisitive minds. These Puritans, heirs to what was
strongest and best in the world's culture, came to Massachusetts Bay in
order to put into practice a theory of civil government in which the interests
both of liberty and of godliness seemed to them likely to be best subserved.
They came to plant the most advance civilization in the midst of a heathen
wilderness, and thus the selection of a seat of government for the new
commonwealth was an affair of dignity and importance.

Half a dozen towns, including Boston, had already been begun, when it was
decided that a site upon the bank of Charles River, three or four miles
inland, would be most favourable for the capital of the Puritan colony. It
would be somewhat more defensible against a fleet than the peninsulas of
Boston and Charlestown. The warships to be dreaded at that moment were
not so much those of any foreign power as those of King Charles himself;
for none could tell that the grim clouds of civil war then lowering upon the
horizon of England and Scotland might not also darken the coast of
Massachusetts Bay. When the site was selected, on the 28th of December,
1630, it was agreed that the governor, deputy governor, and all the Court of
Assistants (except Endicott, already settled at Salem) should build their
houses here. Fortunately no name was bestowed upon the new town. It was
known simply as the New Town, and here in the years before 1638 the
General Court was several times assembled. During those seven years the
number of Puritans in New England increased from about 1500 to nearly
20,000. It was also clear that the King's troubles at home were likely to
keep him from molesting Massachusetts. With the increased feeling of
security, Boston came to be preferred as the seat of government, and only
two of its members ever fulfilled the agreement to build their houses in the
New Town.
The building of the New Town, however, furnished the occasion for
determining at the outset what kind of government the Puritan
commonwealth should have. It was to be a walled town, for defence against
frontier barbarism of the New World type; not the formidable destructive
power of an Attila or a Bayazet, but the feeble barbarism of the red men and
the Stone Age, so that a wall of masonry was not required, but a wooden
palisade would do. In 1632 the Court of Assistants imposed a tax of £60 for
the purpose of building this palisade; but the men of Watertown refused to
pay their share, on the ground that they were not represented in the taxing
body. The ensuing discussion resulted in the establishment of a House of
Deputies, in which every town was represented. Henceforth the Court of
Assistants together with the House of Deputies formed the General Court.
There was no authority for such a representative body in the charter, which
vested the government in the Court of Assistants; but, as Hutchinson tells
us, the people assumed that the right to such representation was implied in
that clause of the charter which reserved to them the natural rights of
Englishmen. Thus the building of a wooden palisade from Ash Street to

Jarvis Field furnished the occasion for the first distinct assertion in the New
World of the principles that were to bear fruit in the independence of the
United States.
But the most interesting event in the history of the New Town before it
became Cambridge was the brief sojourn of the Rev. Thomas Hooker and
his company, from Braintree in England. In popular generalizations it is
customary to allude to our Puritan forefathers as if they were all alike in
their ways of thinking, whereas in reality it would be difficult to point out
any group of men and women among whom individualism has more
strongly flourished. Among the numberless differences of opinion and
policy, it was only a few—and mostly such as were related to vital political
questions—that blazed up in acts of persecution. For the disorganization
wrought by Mrs. Hutchinson swift banishment seemed the only available
remedy; but slighter differences could be healed by a peaceful secession,
which some people deprecated as the "removal of a candlestick." Such a
secession was that of Hooker and his friends. The difference between
Hooker's ideal of government and Winthrop's has come to be recognized as
in some measure foreshadowing the different conceptions of Jefferson and
Hamilton in later days. But of controversy between the two eminent
Puritans only slight traces are left. One act of omission on the part of the
friendly seceders is more forcible than reams of argument: the founders of
Connecticut did not see fit to limit the suffrage by the qualification of
church membership.
The removal of so many people to the banks of the Connecticut left in the
New Town only eleven families of those who had settled here before 1635.
But depopulation was prevented by the arrival of a new congregation from
England. There stands on our common a monument in commemoration of
John Bridge, who was for many years a selectman of Cambridge, and dwelt
beyond the western limits of the town, on or near the site since famous as
the headquarters of Washington and the home of Longfellow. This John
Bridge, deacon of the First Church, was one of the earliest settlers of the
New Town, and one of the eleven householders that stayed behind, a
connecting link between the old congregation of Thomas Hooker and the
new congregation of Thomas Shepard. The coming of this eminent divine
was undoubtedly an event of cardinal importance in the history of our
community, for in the Hutchinson controversy, which shook the little colony

to its foundations, his zeal and vigilance in exposing heresy were
conspicuously shown; and, if we may believe Cotton Mather, it was this
circumstance that led to the selection of the New Town as the site for the
projected college. It was well for students of divinity to sit under the
preaching of such a man, and of such as he might train up to succeed him.
How vain were all such hopes of keeping this New English Canaan free
from heresy was shown when Henry Dunster, first president of the college,
was censured by the magistrates and dismissed from office for disapproving
of infant baptism!
In the great English universities at that time Royalism and Episcopacy
prevailed at Oxford, while Puritanism more or less allied with
Republicanism was rife at Cambridge. Ever since the fourteenth century a
superior flexibility in opinion had been observable in the eastern counties,
whence came so many of the people that founded New England. Not only
Hooker and Shepard, but most of our clergy, among whom individualism
was so rife, were graduates of Cambridge. When it was decided that the
New Town was to be the home of our college, it was natural for people to
fall into the habit of calling it Cambridge; and this name, so long enshrined
already in their affections, already made illustrious by Erasmus and Fisher,
by Latimer and Cranmer, by Burghley and Walsingham and the two Bacons,
by Edmund Spenser and Ben Jonson,—this name of such fame and dignity
was adopted in 1638 by an order of the General Court. The map of the
United States abounds in town names taken at random from the Old World,
often inappropriate and sometimes ludicrous from the incongruity of
associations. The name of our city is connected by a legitimate bond of
inheritance with that of the beautiful city on the Cam. It was given in the
thought that the work for scholarship, for godliness, and for freedom, which
had so long been carried on in the older city, was to be continued in the
younger. The name thus given was a pledge to posterity, and it has been
worthily fulfilled.
Into the history of the town of Cambridge during the two centuries after it
received its name I do not propose to enter. But a glimpse of its general
appearance during the greater part of that period is needful, in order to give
precision and the right sort of emphasis to the contrast which we see before
us to-day. The Cambridge of those days was simply the seat of the college,
not yet developed into a university. Within the memory of persons now

living, Old Cambridge was commonly alluded to as "the village." In the
original laying out of the township we seem to see a reminiscence of the
ancient threefold partition into town mark, arable mark, and common. The
"east gate," near the corner of Harvard and Linden streets, and the "west
gate," at the corner of Ash and Brattle, marked the limits of the town in
those directions. The town was at first comprised between Harvard Street
and the marshes which cut off approach to the river bank. Afterward, the
"West End," from Harvard Square to Sparks Street, was gradually covered
with homesteads. The common began, as now, hard by God's Acre, the
venerable burying ground, and afforded pasturage for the village cattle as
far as Linnæan Street. The regions now occupied by Cambridgeport and
East Cambridge contained the arable district with many farms, small and
large, but everywhere salt marshes bordered the river, and much of the
country was a wild woodland. The tale of wolves killed in Cambridge for
the year 1696 was seventy-six, and a bear was seen roaming as late as 1754.
It was a rough country which the British first encountered when they landed
at Lechmere Point in 1775, on their night march to Lexington. Cambridge
then turned its back toward Boston, to which the only approach was by a
causeway and bridge at what we now call Boylston Street, and by this route
the distance was eight miles, as we still read upon the ancient milestone in
God's Acre. To complete our outline of the village, we must recall the
principal public buildings. The meetinghouse, a little south of the site of
Dane Hall, was used both as church and as townhouse until 1708, when a
building was erected in the middle of Harvard Square to serve for town
meetings and courts. A little eastward, near the "east gate," stood the
parsonage. The schoolhouse was behind the site of Holyoke House. The jail
stood on then west side of Winthrop Square, which was then an open
market. Between this market and Harvard Square, in the sanded parlour of
the Blue Anchor Tavern, then selectmen held their meetings; and on the
corner of the street which still bears the name of Harvard's first president
was something rarely to be seen in so small a village, the printing press now
known as the University Press, established in 1639,—the only one in
English America until Boston followed the example in 1676.
Until the beginning of the present century these outlines of Cambridge
remained with but little change, save for the building of noble houses on
spacious estates toward Mount Auburn in one direction, and upon Dana Hill
in the other. The occupants of many of these estates were members of the

Church of England, and the building of Christ Church in 1759 was one
marked symptom of the change that was creeping over the little Puritan
community. It was a change toward somewhat wider views of life, and
toward the softening of old animosities. In contrast with the age in which
we live the whole eighteenth century in New England seems a slow and
quiet time, when the public pulse beat more languidly, or at any rate less
feverishly, than now. The people of New England led a comparatively
isolated life.
Thought in our college town did not keep pace with European centres of
thought, as it does in our day. There was less hospitality toward foreign
ideas. Few people visited Europe. Life in New England was thrown upon its
own resources, and this was in great measure true of Cambridge in the days
when it was eight miles from Boston, and indefinitely remote from the
mother country. One of the surest results of social isolation is the
acquirement of peculiarities of speech, often shown in the retaining of
archaisms which fashionable language had dropped. That quaint Yankee
dialect, of which Hosea Biglow says that,

"For puttin' in a downright lick
'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther's few can metch it,
An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick
Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hetchet,"—

that dialect so sweet to the ears of every true child of New England may
still be heard, if we go to seek it; but in Lowell's boyhood it must have been
a familiar sound in the neighbourhood of Elmwood.
But the work done in this rustic college community, if done within
somewhat narrow horizons, was eminently a widening and liberalizing
work. The seeds of the nineteenth century were germinating in the
eighteenth. Two or three indications must suffice, out of many that might be
cited. In 1669 there was a schism in the First Parish of Boston, brought
about by an attempt to revise the conditions of church membership, in order
to obviate some of the difficulties arising from the restriction of the suffrage
to church members, and the founding of the Old South Church by the more
liberal party was a result of this schism. One hundred and sixty years later,
in 1829, there was a schism in the First Parish of Cambridge, which resulted
in the founding of the Shepard Church by the more conservative party. The
questions at issue between the two parties were the questions that divide
Unitarian theology from Trinitarian, and the distance between the kind of
interests at stake in the earlier controversy and in the later may serve as a
fair measure of the progress which the mind of Massachusetts had been
making during that interval of a hundred and sixty years. In all that time,
the chief training school for the ministers by whom the speculative minds of
Massachusetts were stimulated and guided was Harvard College. But it was
here, too, that men eminent in civic life were trained; and among the
various illustrations of the type thus nurtured may be cited Samuel Adams
and Thomas Hutchinson, foemen worthy of one another, Warren and
Hancock, Jonathan Trumbull and John Adams. So far as New England was
concerned, the chief work in bringing on the Revolution was done by
graduates of Harvard. In the convention which framed our Federal
Constitution, three important delegates were the Harvard men, Gerry,
Strong, and King; and in this connection we cannot fail to recall names so
closely associated with our national beginnings as Timothy Pickering and
Fisher Ames, nor can we omit the noble line of jurists from Parsons to

Story, and so on to Curtis, whom so many of us well remember; or, going
back to that Massachusetts convention, of which the work is
commemorated in the name of Federal Street, we may single out for
mention the great minister and statesman, type of what is best in
Puritanism, Samuel West, of New Bedford. Such names speak for the kind
of quiet, unobtrusive work that was going on in Cambridge during those
two centuries of rural existence. Such strengthening and unfolding of the
spirit is the only work that is truly immortal. In a town like ours the material
relics of the past are inspiring, and it is right that we should do our best to
preserve them; but they are perishable. The gambrel-roofed house from the
door of which President Langdon asked God's blessing upon the men that
were starting for Bunker Hill, in later days the birthplace and homestead of
our beloved Autocrat, has vanished from the scene; the venerable elm under
which Washington drew the sword in defence of American liberty is slowly
dying, year by year. But for the spiritual achievement that has marked the
career of our community there is no death, and they that have turned many
to righteousness shall shine in our firmament as the stars forever and ever.
In contrasting the Cambridge of the nineteenth with that of the two
preceding centuries, the first fact which strikes our attention is the increase
in the rate of growth. In 1680 the population of Cambridge seems to have
been about 850, and the graduating class for that year numbered five. In
1793 the population—not counting the parishes that have since become
Brighton and Arlington—was about 1200, and there was a graduating class
of 38. Thus in more than a century the population had increased barely fifty
per cent. In 1793 there were only four houses east of Dana Street, but that
year witnessed an event of cardinal importance, the opening of West Boston
Bridge. The distance between Boston and Old Cambridge was thus reduced
from eight miles to three, and a direct avenue was opened between the
interior of Middlesex County and the Boston markets. The effect was
shown in doubling the population of Cambridge by the year 1809, when
another bridge was completed from Lechmere Point to the north end of
Boston. These were toll bridges, in the hands of private corporations, and
their success led to further bridges,—the one at River Street in 1811, the
one at Western Avenue in 1825, and Brookline Bridge so lately as 1850.
The principal thoroughfares south and east of Old Cambridge were built as
highways connecting with these bridges: thus River Street and Western
Avenue were tributary to West Boston Bridge, and to that point the Concord

Turnpike was prolonged by Broadway, the Middlesex Turnpike by
Hampshire Street, and the Medford Road by Webster Avenue; while
Cambridge Street, intersecting these avenues, formed a direct thoroughfare
from the Concord and Watertown roads to the northern part of Boston. The
completion of these important works led to projects for filling up the
marshes and establishing docks in rivalry of Boston,—plans but very
slightly realized before circumstances essentially changed them.
In this way, Cambridge, which had hitherto faced the Brighton mainland,
turned its face toward the Boston peninsula, and two new villages began to
grow up at "the Port" and "the Point," otherwise Cambridgeport and East
Cambridge. It was not long before the new villages began in some ways to
assert rivalry with the old one. The corporation which owned the bridge and
large tracts of land at Lechmere Point naturally wished to increase the value
of its real estate. Middlesex County needed a new courthouse and jail. In
1757 a new courthouse had been built on the site of Lyceum Hall, but in
1813 there was a need for something better; whereupon the Lechmere Point
Corporation forthwith built a courthouse and jail in East Cambridge, and
presented them, with the ground on which they stood, to the county. In
1818, a lot of land in the Port, bounded by Harvard, Prospect, Austin, and
Norfolk streets, was appropriated for a poorhouse. Soon afterward it was
proposed to inclose our common,—which with the lapse of time had shrunk
to about its present size,—and to convert it from a grazing ground into an
ornamental park. The scheme met with vehement opposition, and the town
meetings in this growing community suddenly became so large that the old
courthouse in Harvard Square would not hold them. Accordingly, a bigger
townhouse was built in 1832 on the eastern part of the poorhouse lot, and
thus was the civic centre removed from Old Cambridge.
This event served to emphasize the state of things which had been growing
up with increasing rapidity since the beginning of the century. Instead of a
single village, with a single circle of interests, there were now three
villages, with interests diverse and sometimes conflicting as regards the
expending of public money, so that feelings of sectional antagonism were
developed.
In New England history, the usual remedy for such a state of things has
been what might be called "spontaneous fission." The overgrown town
would divide into three, and the segments would go on pouting at each

other as independent neighbours. We need not be surprised to learn that in
1842 the people of Old Cambridge petitioned to be set off as a separate
town; but this attempt was successfully opposed, with the result that in 1846
a city government was adopted. In that year the population had reached
13,000, and was approaching the point at which town meetings become
unmanageable from sheer bulk. For small communities, Thomas Jefferson
was probably right in holding that the town meeting is the best form of
government ever devised by man. It was certainly the form best loved in
New England down to 1822, when Boston, with its population of 40,000,
reluctantly gave it up, and adopted a representative government instead. The
example of Boston was followed in 1836 by Salem and Lowell, and next in
1846 by Roxbury and Cambridge. From that time forth the making of cities
went on more rapidly. It was the beginning of a period of urban
development, the end of which we cannot as yet even dimly foresee. This
unprecedented growth of cities is sometimes spoken of as peculiarly
American, but it is indeed not less remarkable in Europe, and it extends
over the world so far as the influence of railroad and telegraph extends. The
influence of these agencies of communication serves to diffuse over wide
areas the effects wrought by machinery at different centres of production.
With increased demand for human energy, the earth's power of sustaining
human life has vastly increased, and there is a strong tendency to
congregate about centres of production and exchange. In 1846 there were
but five cities in the United States with a population exceeding 100,000;
New York had not yet reached half a million. To-day New York is
approaching the two-million mark, three other cities[28] have passed the
million, and not less than thirty have passed the hundred-thousand. During
this half century the 13,000 of Cambridge have increased to more than
80,000. The Cambridge of to-day contains as many people as the Boston of
sixty years ago.
The causes of this growth of Cambridge might be treated, had we space for
it, under three heads. Our city has grown because of its proximity to
Boston; it has grown by reason of its flourishing manufactures; and it has
grown with the growth of the University. That Cambridge should have
shared in the general prosperity of this whole suburban region is but natural.
But persons at a distance are apt to show surprise when we speak of it as a
manufacturing city. This feature in our development belongs to the period
subsequent to 1846, and has much to do with the growth of the eastern

portions of Cambridge, where the combined facilities for railroad and water
communication have been peculiarly favourable to manufactures. In the
early part of this century, the glassworks at East Cambridge, which have
since departed, were somewhat famous, considerable manufactures of soap
and leather had been begun, and cars and wagons were made here. At the
present time some of our chief manufactures are of engine boilers and
various kinds of machinery, of which the annual product exceeds
$2,000,000. Among the industries which produce in yearly value more than
$1,000,000 may be mentioned printing and publishing, musical instruments
(especially pianos and organs), furniture, clothing, carpenter's work, soap
and candles, biscuit-baking; while among those that produce $500,000 or
more are carriage-making and wheelwright's work, plumbing and plumber's
materials, bricks and tiles, and confectionery. Not only our own new
Harvard Bridge, but most of the steel railway bridges in New England, have
been built in Cambridge. We supply a considerable part of the world with
hydraulic engines; the United States Navy comes here for its pumps, and
our pumping machines may be seen at work in Honolulu, in Sydney, in St.
Petersburg. In the dimensions of its pork-packing industry, Cambridge
comes next after Chicago and Kansas City. In 1842 all the fish-netting used
in America was made in England; to-day it is chiefly made in East
Cambridge, which also furnishes the twine prized by disciples of Izaak
Walton in many parts of the world. Last year the potteries on Walden Street
turned out seven million flower-pots. Such facts as these bear witness to the
unusual facilities of our city, where coal can be taken and freight can be
shipped at the very door of the factory, where taxes and insurance are not
burdensome and the fire department is unsurpassed for efficiency, where
skilled labour is easy to get because good workmen find life comfortable
and attractive, with excellent sanitary conditions and unrivalled means of
free education, even to the Latin School and the Manual Training School. It
is well said, in one of the reports in our semi-centennial volume, that "to
Cambridge herself, as much as to any other one thing, is the success of all
her manufacturing enterprises due, and all agree in acknowledging it."
Among Cambridge industries, two may be mentioned as especially
characteristic and famous. Of the printing establishments now existing, not
many can be more venerable than our University Press, of which we have
spoken as beginning in 1639. Of the wise and genial founder of the
Riverside Press—who once was mayor of our city, and whose memory we

love and revere—it may be said that few men of recent times have had a
higher conception of bookmaking as one of the fine arts. These two
institutions have set a lofty standard for the Athenæum Press, which has
lately come to bear them company. The past half century has seen
Cambridge come into the foremost rank among the few publishing centres
of the world, where books are printed with faultless accuracy and artistic
taste.
The visitor to Cambridge from Brookline, as he leaves the bridge at
Brookline Street, comes upon a pleasant dwelling house, with a private
observatory, and hard by it a plain brick building. That is the shop of Alvan
Clark & Sons, who have carried the art of telescope-making to a height
never reached before. There have been made the most powerful refracting
telescopes in the world, and one of the firm, more than thirty years ago,
himself acquired fame as an astronomer for his discovery of the companion
of Sirius.
From this quiet nook in the Port one's thoughts naturally turn to the Harvard
Observatory, which in those days the two Bonds made famous for their
accurate methods of research, their discoveries relating to the planet Saturn,
and their share in the application of photography to telescopic observation.
The honourable position then taken by the Observatory has been since
maintained; but as we note this, we find ourselves brought to the
consideration of the University and its last half century of growth. And here
my remarks cannot help taking the form, to some extent, of personal
reminiscences.
When I first came to Old Cambridge, in 1860, it still had much of the
village look, which it has since been fast losing. Pretty much all the spaces
now covered by street after street of wooden "Queen Anne" houses, in such
proximity as to make one instinctively look for the whereabouts of the
nearest fire alarm, were then open, smiling fields. The old house where the
Shepard Church stands was rural enough for the Berkshire Hills; and on the
site of Austin Hall, in the doorway of a homestead built in 1710, one might
pause for a cosy chat with the venerable and courtly Royal Morse, whose
personal recollections went back into the eighteenth century. The trees on
the common were the merest saplings, but an elm of mighty sweep, whose
loss one must regret, shaded the whole of Harvard Square. Horse cars came
and went on week days, but on Sunday he who would visit Boston must

either walk or take an omnibus, in which riding was a penance severe
enough to atone for the sin. "Blue Laws" in the University were in full
force; the student who spent his Sundays at home in Boston must bring out
a certificate showing that he had attended divine service twice; no
discretion was allowed the parents.
College athletics were in their infancy, as the little gymnasium still standing
serves to remind us. There were rowing matches, but baseball had not come
upon the scene, and football had just been summarily suppressed. The first
college exercise in which I took part was the burial of the football, with
solemn rites, in a corner of this Delta. On Class Day there was no need for
closing the yard; there was room enough for all, and groups of youths and
maidens in light summer dress, dancing on the green before Holworthy,
made a charming picture, like that of an ancient May Day in merry
England, save for the broiling heat.
The examination days which followed were more searching than at other
American colleges. The courses of study were on the whole better arranged
than elsewhere, but during the first half of the course everything was
prescribed, and in the last half the elective system played but a subordinate
part. The system of examinations did not extend to the Law School, where a
simple residence of three terms entitled a student to receive the bachelor's
degree. The library at Gore Hall had less than one fifth of its present
volumes, with no catalogue accessible to the public, while one small table
accommodated all the readers. For laboratory work the facilities were
meagre, and very little was done. We all studied a book of chemistry; how
many of us ever really looked at such things as manganese or antimony?
For the student of biology the provision was better, for the Botanic Garden
was very helpful, and in the autumn of 1860 was opened the first section of
our glorious Museum of Comparative Zoölogy.
Here one is naturally led to the reflection that in that day of small things, as
some might call it, there were spiritual influences operative at Harvard
which more than made up for shortcomings in material equipment. There is
a kind of human presence, all too rare in this world, which is in itself a
stimulus and an education worth more than all the scholastic artifices that
the wit of man has devised; for in the mere contact with it one's mind is
trained and widened as if by enchantment. Such a human presence in
Cambridge was Louis Agassiz. Can one ever forget that beaming face as he

used to come strolling across the yard, with lighted cigar, in serene
obliviousness of the University statutes? Scarcely had one passed him,
when one might exchange a pleasant word with Asa Gray, or descry in
some arching vista the picturesque figures of Sophocles or Peirce, or,
turning up Brattle Street, encounter, with a thrill of pleasure not untinged
with awe, Longfellow and Lowell walking side by side. In such wise are the
streets and lawns of our city hallowed by the human presences that once
graced them; and few are the things to be had for which one would
exchange the memories of those days!
My class of 1863, with 120 members, was the largest that had been
graduated here. It would have been larger but for the Civil War, and a
period followed with classes of less than 100 members,—a sad commentary
upon the times. Boundless possibilities of valuable achievement must be
sacrificed to secure the supreme end, that the commonwealth should not
suffer harm. How nobly Harvard responded to the demand is recorded upon
the solemn tablets in this Memorial Hall. For those who are inclined to
dally with the thought that war is something that may be undertaken lightly
and with frolicsome heart, this sacred precinct and the monument on yonder
common have their lesson that may well be pondered.
The vast growth of our country since the Civil War has been attended with
the creation of new universities and the enlargement of the old ones to such
an extent as to show that the demand for higher education more than keeps
pace with the increase of population. The last graduating class in our
Quinquennial Catalogue numbered 350 members. The University contains
more than 3000 students.[29] The increase in number of instructors, in
courses of instruction, in laboratories and museums, in facilities and
appliances of every sort, has wrought changes like those in a fairy tale. The
Annual Catalogue is getting to be as multifarious as Bradshaws Guide, and
a trained intellect is required to read it. The little college of half a century
ago has bloomed forth as one of the worlds foremost universities. Such
things can come from great opportunities wielded and made the most of by
clearness of vision and administrative capacity.
To this growth of the University must be added the most happy inception
and growth of Radcliffe College, marking as it does the maturing of a new
era in the education of women. We may well wish for Radcliffe a career as
noble and as useful as that of Harvard, and I doubt not that such is in store

for it. A word must be said of the Episcopal Theological School, based upon
ideas as sound and broad as Christianity; and of the New-Church
Theological School, more recently founded. We must hail such indications
of the tendency toward making our Cambridge the centre for the
untrammelled study of the most vital problems that can occupy the human
mind.
But the day we are celebrating is a civic, not a university occasion, and I
must dwell no longer upon academic themes. We are signalizing the
anniversary of the change which we once made from government by town
meeting to city government. Have we a good reason for celebrating that
change? Has our career as a civic community been worthy of approval? In
answering this question, I shall not undertake to sum up the story of our
public schools and library; our hospital and charity organizations; the
excellent and harmonious work of our churches, Protestant and Catholic;
our Prospect Union, warmly to be commended; our arrangements for water
supply and sewage; and our admirable park system (in which we may
express a hope that Elmwood will be included). This interesting and
suggestive story may be read in the semi-centennial volume, "The
Cambridge of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Six," just issued from the
Riverside Press. It is an enlivening story of progress, but like every story it
has a moral, and I am going to pass over details and make straight for that
moral. Americans are a bragging race because they have enjoyed immense
opportunities, and are apt to forget that the true merit lies, not in the
opportunity, but in the use we make of it. Much gratifying progress can be
achieved in spite of the worst sort of blundering and sinning on the part of
governments. The greater part, indeed, of human progress within historic
times has been thus achieved. A good deal of the progress of which
Americans are wont to boast has been thus achieved. Now the moral of our
story is closely concerned with the fact that in the city of Cambridge such
has not been the case. Our city government has from the outset been
upright, intelligent, and helpful. We are satisfied with it. We do not wish to
change it. In this respect the experience of Cambridge is very different from
that of many other American cities. The government of our cities is
acknowledged to be a problem of rare difficulty, so that it has begun to
seem a natural line of promotion for a successful mayor to elect him
governor, and then to send him to the White House! In some cities one finds
people inclined to give up the problem as insoluble. I was lately assured by

a gentleman in a city which I will not name, but more than a thousand miles
from here, that the only cure for the accumulated wrongs of that community
would be an occasional coup d'état, with the massacre of all the city
officers. So the last word of our boasted progress, when it comes to
municipal government, is declared to be the Oriental idea of "despotism
tempered by assassination"! Now to what cause or causes are we to ascribe
the contrast between Cambridge and the cities that are so wretchedly
governed? The answer is, that in Cambridge we keep city government clear
of politics, we do not mix up municipal questions with national questions. If
I may repeat what I have said elsewhere, "since the object of a municipal
election is simply to secure an upright and efficient municipal government,
to elect a city magistrate because he is a Republican or a Democrat is about
as sensible as to elect him because he believes in homœopathy or has a taste
for chrysanthemums." Upon this plain and obvious principle of common
sense our city has acted, on the whole with remarkable success, during its
half century of municipal existence. The results we see all about us, and the
example may be commended as an object lesson to all who are interested in
the most vital work that can occupy the mind of an American,—the work of
elevating the moral tone of public life. For it is neither wealth, nor power,
nor cunning, nor craft that exalts a nation, but righteousness and the fear of
the Lord.
May, 1896.

XI
A HARVEST OF IRISH FOLK-LORE

Since the days when Castrèn made his arduous journeys of linguistic
exploration in Siberia, or when the brothers Grimm collected their rich
treasures of folk-lore from the lips of German peasants, an active quest of
vocables and myths has been conducted with much zeal and energy in
nearly all parts of the world. We have tales, proverbs, fragments of verse,
superstitious beliefs and usages, from Greenland, from the southern Pacific,
from the mountaineers of Thibet and the freedmen upon Georgia
plantations. We follow astute Reynard to the land of the Hottentots, and find
the ubiquitous Jack planting his beanstalk among the Dog-Rib Indians. At
the same time, the nooks and corners of Europe have been ransacked with
bountiful results; so that whereas our grandfathers, in speculating about the
opinions and mental habits of people in low stages of culture, were dealing
with a subject about which they knew almost nothing, on the other hand,
our chief difficulty to-day is in shaping and managing the enormous mass of
data which keen and patient inquirers have collected. It is well that this
work has been carried so far in our time, for modern habits of thought are
fast exterminating the Old World fancies. Railroad, newspaper, and
telegraphic bulletin of prices are carrying everything before them. The
peasant's quaint dialect and his fascinating myth tales are disappearing
along with his picturesque dress; and savages, such of them as do not
succumb to fire-water, are fast taking on the airs and manners of civilized
folk. It is high time to be gathering in all the primitive lore we can find,
before the men and women in whose minds it is still a living reality have all
passed from the scene.
The collection of Irish myth stories lately published by Mr. Jeremiah
Curtin[30] is the result of a myth-hunting visit which the author made in
Ireland in 1887, and is one of the most interesting and valuable
contributions to the study of folk-lore that have been made for many years.
"All the tales in my collection," says Mr. Curtin, "of which those printed in
this volume form but a part, were taken down from the mouths of men who,

with one or two exceptions, spoke only Gaelic, or but little English, and that
imperfectly. These men belong to a group of persons all of whom are well
advanced in years, and some very old; with them will pass away the
majority of the story-tellers of Ireland, unless new interest in the ancient
language and lore of the country is roused.
"For years previous to my visit of 1887 I was not without hope of finding
some myth tales in a good state of preservation. I was led to entertain this
hope by indications in the few Irish stories already published, and by certain
tales and beliefs that I had taken down myself from old Irish persons in the
United States. Still, during the earlier part of my visit in Ireland, I was
greatly afraid that the best myth materials had perished. Inquiries as to who
might be in possession of these old stories seemed fruitless for a
considerable time. The persons whom I met that were capable of reading
the Gaelic language had never collected stories, and could refer only in a
general way to the districts in which the ancient language was still living.
All that was left was to seek out the old people for whom Gaelic is the
every-day speech, and trust to fortune to find the story-tellers."
Thus Mr. Curtin was led to explore the counties of Kerry, Galway, and
Donegal. "Comforting myself with the Russian proverb that 'game runs to
meet the hunter,' I set out on my pilgrimage, giving more prominence to the
study and investigation of Gaelic, which, though one of the two objects of
my visit, was not the first. In this way I thought to come more surely upon
men who had myth tales in their minds than if I went directly seeking for
them. I was not disappointed, for in all my journeyings I did not meet a
single person who knew a myth tale or an old story who was not fond of
Gaelic, and specially expert in the use of it, while I found very few story-
tellers from whom a myth tale could be obtained unless in the Gaelic
language; and in no case have I found a story in the possession of a man or
woman who knew only English."
There is something so interesting in this fact, and so pathetic in the
explanation of it, that we are tempted to quote further: "Since all mental
training in Ireland is directed by powers both foreign and hostile to
everything Gaelic, the moment a man leaves the sphere of that class which
uses Gaelic as an every-day language, and which clings to the ancient ideas
of the people, everything which he left behind seems to him valueless,
senseless, and vulgar; consequently he takes no care to retain it, either in

whole or in part. Hence the clean sweep of myth tales in one part of the
country,—the greater part, occupied by a majority of the people; while they
are still preserved in other and remoter districts, inhabited by men who, for
the scholar and the student of mankind, are by far the most interesting in
Ireland."
The fate of the Gaelic language has, indeed, been peculiarly sad. In various
parts of Europe, and especially among the western Slavs, the native tongues
have been to some extent displaced by the speech of conquering peoples;
yet it is only in Erin that, within modern times, a "language of Aryan stock
has been driven first from public use, and then dropped from the worship of
God and the life of the fireside." Hence, while in many parts of Europe the
ancient tales live on, often with their incidents more or less dislocated and
their significance quite blurred, on the other hand, in English-speaking
Ireland they have been cleared away "as a forest is felled by the axe."
Nevertheless, in the regions where Irish myths have been preserved, they
have been remarkably well preserved, and bear unmistakable marks of their
vast antiquity. One very noticeable feature in these myths is the definiteness
and precision of detail with which the personages and their fields of action
are brought before us. This is a characteristic of mythologies which are,
comparatively speaking, intact; and, as Mr. Curtin observes, it is to be seen
in the myths of the American Indians. As long as a mythology remains
intact it "puts its imprint on the whole region to which it belongs." Every
rock, every spring, is the scene of some definite incident; every hill has its
mythical people, who are as real to the narrators as the flesh-and-blood
population which one finds there. In this whole world of belief and
sentiment there is the vigour of fresh life, and the country is literally
enchanted ground. But when, through the invasion of alien peoples, there is
a mingling and conflict of sacred stories, and new groups of ideas and
associations have partly displaced the old ones, so that only the argument or
general statement of the ancient myth is retained, and perhaps even that but
partially, then "all precision and details with reference to persons and places
vanish; they become indefinite; are in some kingdom, some place,—
nowhere in particular." There is this vagueness in the folk-tales of eastern
and central Europe as contrasted with those of Ireland. "Where there was or
where there was not," says the Magyar, "there was in the world;" or, if the
Russian hero goes anywhere, it is simply across forty-nine kingdoms, etc.;

"but in the Irish tales he is always a person of known condition in a
specified place" (for example, "There was a blacksmith in Dunkenealy,
beyond Killybegs," etc., page 244).
As to the antiquity and the primitive character of Mr. Curtin's stories an
experienced observer can entertain no doubt. His book is certainly the most
considerable achievement in the field of Gaelic mythology since the
publication, thirty years ago, of Campbell's "Tales of the West Highlands;"
and it does for the folk-lore of Ireland what Asbjörnsen and Moe's
collection (the English translation of which is commonly, and with some
injustice, known by the name of the translator as Dasent's "Norse Tales")
did for the folk-lore of Norway. This is, of course, very high praise, but we
do not believe it will be called extravagant by any competent scholar who
reads Mr. Curtin's book. The stories have evidently been reduced to writing
with most scrupulous and loving fidelity. In turning the Gaelic into English
some of the characteristic Hibernian phrases and constructions of our
language have been employed, and this has been done with such perfect
good taste that the effect upon the ear is like that of a refined and delicate
brogue.
The mythical material in the stories is largely that with which the student of
Aryan folk-lore is familiar. We have variants of Cinderella, the swan
maidens, the giant who had no heart in his body, the cloak of darkness, the
sword of light, the magic steed which overtakes the wind before and
outstrips the wind behind; the pot of plenty, from which one may eat
forever, and the cup that is never drained; the hero who performs impossible
tasks, and wooes maidens whose beauty hardly relieves their treacherous
cruelty: "I must tell you now that three hundred king's sons, lacking one,
have come to ask for my daughter, and in the garden behind my castle are
three hundred iron spikes, and every spike of them but one is covered with
the head of a king's son who couldn't do what my daughter wanted of him,
and I'm greatly in dread that your own head will be put on the one spike that
is left uncovered." The princess in this story—Shaking-Head—is such a
wretch, not a bit better than Queen Labe in the "Arabian Nights," that one
marvels at the hero for marrying her at last, instead of slicing off her head
with his two-handed sword of darkness, and placing it on the three-
hundredth spike. But moral as well as physical probabilities are often
overstrained in this deliciously riotous realm of folk-lore.

Along with much material that is common to the Aryan world there is some
that is peculiar to Ireland, while the Irish atmosphere is over everything.
The stories of Fin MacCumhail (pronounced MacCool) and the Fenians of
Erin are full of grotesque incident and inimitable drollery. Fin and his
redoubtable dog Bran, the one-eyed Gruagach, the hero Diarmuid, the old
hag with the life-giving ointment, the weird hand of Mal MacMulcan, and
the cowherd that was son of the king of Alban make a charming series of
pictures. Among Fin's followers there is a certain Conán Maol, "who never
had a good word in his mouth for any man," and for whom no man had a
good word. This counterpart of Thersites, as Mr. Curtin tells us, figures as
conspicuously in North American as in Aryan myths. Conán was always at
Fin's side, and advising him to mischief. Once it had like to have gone hard
with Conán. The Fenians had been inveigled into an enchanted castle, and
could not rise from their chairs till two of Fin's sons had gone and beheaded
three kings in the north of Erin, and put their blood into three goblets, and
come back and rubbed the blood on the chairs. Conán had no chair, but was
sitting on the floor, with his back to the wall, and just before they came to
him the last drop of blood gave out. The Fenians were hurrying past without
minding the mischief-maker, when, upon his earnest appeal, Diarmuid
"took him by one hand, and Goll MacMornee by the other, and, pulling with
all their might, tore him from the wall and the floor. But if they did, he left
all the skin of his back, from his head to his heels, on the floor and the wall
behind him. But when they were going home through the hills of Tralee,
they found a sheep on the way, killed it, and clapped the skin on Conán. The
sheepskin grew to his body; and he was so well and strong that they sheared
him every year, and got wool enough from his back to make flannel and
frieze for the Fenians of Erin ever after." This is a favourite incident, and
recurs in the story of the laughing Gruagach. In most of the Fenian stories
the fighting is brisk and incessant. It is quite a Donnybrook fair. Everybody
kills everybody else, and then some toothless old woman comes along and
rubs a magic salve on them, when, all in a minute, up they pop, and go at it
again.
One of the quaintest conceits, and a pretty one withal, is that of Tir na n-Og,
the Land of Youth, the life-giving region just beneath the ground, whence
mysteriously spring the sturdy trees, the soft green grass, and the bright
flowers. The journey thither is not long; sometimes the hero just pulls up a
root and dives down through the hole into the blessed Tir na n-Og,—as

primitive a bit of folk-lore as one could wish to find! A lovely country, of
course, was that land of sprouting life, and some queer customs did they
have there. The mode of "running for office" was especially worthy of
mention. Once in seven years all the champions and best men "met at the
front of the palace, and ran to the top of a hill two miles distant. On the top
of that hill was a chair, and the man that sat first in the chair was king of Tir
na n-Og for the next seven years." This method enabled them to dispense
with nominating conventions and campaign lies, but not with intrigue and
sorcery, as we find in the droll story of Oisin (or Ossian), which concludes
the Fenian series.
The story of the Fisherman's Son and the Gruagach of Tricks is
substantially the same with the famous story of Farmer Weathersky, in the
Norse collection translated by Sir George Dasent. Gruagach (accented on
the first syllable) means "the hairy one," and, as Mr. Curtin cautiously
observes, "we are more likely to be justified in finding a solar agent
concealed in the person of the laughing Gruagach or the Gruagach of Tricks
than in many of the sun myths put forth by some modern writers." He
reminds one of Hermes and of Proteus, and in the wonderful changes at the
end of the story we have, as in Farmer Weathersky, a variant of the
catastrophe in the story of the Second Royal Mendicant in the "Arabian
Nights;" but the Irishman gives us a touch of humour that is quite his own.
The Gruagach and his eleven artful sons are chasing the fisherman's son
through water and air, and various forms of fish and bird are assumed, until
at length the fisherman's son, in the shape of a swallow, hovers over the
summerhouse where the daughter of the king of Erin is sitting. Weary with
the chase, the swallow becomes a ring, and falls into the girl's lap; it takes
her fancy, and she puts it on her finger. Then the twelve pursuers change
from hawks into handsome men, and entertain the king in his castle with
music and games, until he asks them what in the world he can give them.
All they want, says the old Gruagach, is the ring which he once lost, and
which is now on the princess's finger. Of course, says the king, if his
daughter has got the ring, she must give it to its owner. But the ring,
overhearing all this, speaks to the princess, and tells her what to do. She
gets a gallon of wheat grains and three gallons of the strongest potheen that
was ever brewed in Ireland, and she mixes them together in an open barrel
before the fire. Then her father calls her and asks for the ring; and when she
finds that her protests are of no avail, and she must give up, she throws it

into the fire. "That moment the eleven brothers made eleven pairs of tongs
of themselves; their father, the old Gruagach, was the twelfth pair. The
twelve jumped into the fire to know in what spark of it would they find the
old fisherman's son; and they were a long time working and searching
through the fire, when out flew a spark, and into the barrel. The twelve
made themselves men, turned over the barrel, and spilled the wheat on the
floor. Then in a twinkling they were twelve cocks strutting around. They
fell to, and picked away at the wheat, to know which one would find the
fisherman's son. Soon one dropped on one side, and a second on the
opposite side, until all twelve were lying drunk from the wheat."
One seems to see the gleam in the corner of the eye and the pucker in the
Gaelic visage of the old narrator. To be sure, it was the wheat. It couldn't
have been the mountain dew; it never is. Well, when things had come to this
pass, the spark that was the fisherman's son just turned into a fox, and with
one smart bite he took the head off the old Gruagach, and the eleven other
boozy cocks he finished with eleven other bites. Then he made himself the
handsomest man in Erin, and married the princess and succeeded to the
crown.
There is a breezy freshness about these tales, which will make the book a
welcome addition to young people's libraries. It is safe to predict for it an
enviable success. In the next edition there ought to be an index, and we
wish the author need not feel it necessary to be so sparing with his own
notes and comments. His brief Introduction is so charming, from its weight
of sense and beauty of expression, that one would gladly hear more from
the author himself. It is to be hoped that the book lately published is the
forerunner of many.
August, 1890.

XII
GUESSING AT HALF AND MULTIPLYING BY TWO

"The small philosopher is a great character in New England. His
fundamental rule of logical procedure is to guess at the half and multiply by
two. [Applause.]"[31] It is [in 1880] only two or three years since the
philosopher from whom this text is quoted was himself a great character in
New England, inasmuch as he could give a lecture once every week, in one
of the largest halls of New England's principal city, and could entertain his
audience of two or three thousand people with discussions of the most vast
and abstruse themes of science and metaphysics. The success with which he
entertained his audience is carefully chronicled for us in the volumes made
up from the reports of his lectures, in which parenthetical notes of
"laughter," "applause," or "sensation" occur as frequently as in ordinary
newspaper reports of stump speeches or humorous convivial harangues. As
a social phenomenon this career of the Rev. Joseph Cook possesses
considerable interest,—enough, at any rate, to justify a brief inquiry as to
his "fundamental rule of procedure."
Among the wise and witty sayings of the ancients with which our children
are puzzled and edified in the first dozen pages of the Greek Reader, there is
a caustic remark attributed to Phokion, on the occasion of being very loudly
applauded by the populace. "Dear me," said the old statesman, "can it be
that I have been making a fool of myself?" So, when three thousand people
are made to laugh and clap their hands over statements about the origin of
species or the anatomy of the nervous system, the first impulse of any
scientific inquirer of ordinary sagacity and experience is to ask in what
meretricious fashion these sober topics can have been treated, in order to
have produced such a result. The inference may be cynical, but is none the
less likely to be sound. In the present case, one does not need to read far in
the published reports of these lectures to see that the fundamental rule of
procedure is something very different from any of the rules by which truth
is wooed and won by scientific inquirers. Among Mill's comprehensive
canons of logical method one might search in vain for a specimen of the

method employed by Mr. Cook. Of the temper of mind, indeed, in which
scientific inquiries are conducted, he has no more conception than Laura
Bridgman could have of Pompeian red or a chord of the minor ninth. The
process of holding one's judgment in suspense over a complicated problem,
of patiently gathering and weighing the evidence on either side, of
subjecting one's own first-formed hypotheses to repeated verification, of
clearly comprehending and fairly stating opposing views, of setting forth
one's conclusions at last, guardedly and with a distinct consciousness of the
conditions under which they are tenable,—all this sort of thing is quite
foreign to Mr. Cook's nature.
To him a scientific thesis is simply a statement over which it is possible to
get up a fight. The gamecock is his totem; to him the bones of the vertebrate
subkingdom are only so many bones of contention, and the sponge is
interesting chiefly as an emblem which is never, on any account, to be
thrown up. He talks accordingly of scientific men lying in wait for Mr.
Darwin, ready to pounce on him like a tiger on its prey; he is very fond of
exhibiting what he calls the "strategic point" of a scientific book or theory;
and altogether his attitude is bellicose to a degree that is as unbecoming in a
preacher of the gospel as it is out of place in a discussion of scientific
questions. His favourite method of dealing with a scientific writer is to
quote from him all sorts of detached statements and inferences, and, without
the slightest regard to the writer's general system of opinions or habits of
thought, to praise or vituperate the detached statements according to some
principle which it is not always easy for the reader to discover, but which
has always doubtless some reference to their supposed bearings upon the
peculiar kind of orthodoxy of which Mr. Cook appears as the champion.
There are some writers whom he thinks it necessary always to scold or
vilify, no matter what they say. If they happen to say something which
ought to be quite satisfactory to any reasonable person of "orthodox"
opinions, Mr. Cook either accuses them of insincerity or represents them as
making "concessions."
This last device, I am sorry to be obliged to add, is not an uncommon one
with theological controversialists, when their zeal runs away with them.
When a man makes a statement which expresses his deepest convictions,
there is no easier way of seeming to knock away the platform on which he
stands than to quote his statement, and describe it as something which he

has reluctantly "conceded." In dealing with the principal writers on
evolution, Mr. Cook is continually found resorting to this cheap device. For
example, when Professor Tyndall declares that "if a right-hand spiral
movement of the particles of the brain could be shown to occur in love, and
a left-hand spiral movement in hate, we should be as far off as ever from
understanding the connection of this physical motion with the spiritual
manifestations,"—when Professor Tyndall declares this, he simply asserts
what is a cardinal proposition with the group of English philosophers to
which he belongs. With Professor Huxley, as well as with Mr. Spencer, it is
a fundamental proposition that psychical phenomena cannot possibly be
interpreted in terms of matter and motion, and this proposition they have at
various times set forth and defended. In the chapter on Matter and Spirit, in
my work on "Cosmic Philosophy," I have fully expounded this point, and
have further illustrated it in "The Unseen World." With the conclusions
there set forth the remark of Professor Tyndall thoroughly agrees, and it
does so because all these expressions of opinion and all these arguments are
part and parcel of a coherent system of anti-materialistic thought adopted[32]
by the English school of evolutionists. Yet when Mr. Cook quotes Professor
Tyndall's remark, he does it in this wise: "It is notorious that even Tyndall
concedes," etc., etc.
By proceeding in this way, Mr. Cook finds it easy to make out a formidable
array of what he calls "the concessions of evolutionists." He first gives the
audience a crude impression of some sort of theory of evolution, such as no
scientific thinker ever dreamed of; or, to speak more accurately, he plays
upon the crude impression already half formed in the average mind of his
audience, and which he evidently shares himself. The average notion of the
doctrine of evolution, possessed in common by an audience big enough to
fill Tremont Temple, would no doubt seem to Darwin or to Spencer
something quite fearful and wonderful. Playing with this sort of crude
material, Mr. Cook puts together a series of numbered propositions, which
remind one of those interminable auction catalogues of Walt Whitman,
which some of our British cousins, more ardent than discriminating,
mistake for a truly American species of inspired verse. In this long catena of
statements, almost everything is easily seen to disagree with the crude
general impression to which the speaker appeals, and almost everything is
accordingly set down as a "concession." And as the audience go out after
the lecture, they doubtless ask one another, in amazed whispers, how it is

that sensible men who make so many "concessions" can find it in their
hearts to maintain the doctrine of evolution at all!
Sometimes Mr. Cook goes even farther than this, and, in the very act of
quoting an author's declared opinions, expressly refuses to give him credit
for them. Thus he has the hardihood to say: "Even Herbert Spencer, who
would be very glad to prove the opposite,[33] says, in his Biology, 'The
proximate chemical principles or chemical units—albumen, fibrine,
gelatine, or the hypothetical proteine substance—cannot possess the
property of forming the endlessly varied structures of animal forms.'" Mr.
Cook here lays claim to a knowledge of his author's innermost thoughts and
wishes which is quite remarkable. For a fit parallel one would have to cite
the instance of the German who flogged his son for profanity, though the
boy had not opened his mouth. "You dinks tamn," exclaimed the irate
father, "and I vips you for dat!"
As there are some writers whom Mr. Cook thinks it always necessary to
vituperate, no matter what they say, so there are others whom he finds it
convenient to quote, as foils to the former, and to mention with praise on all
occasions, though it is difficult to assign the reasons for this preference,
except on the hypothesis that the lecturer has an implicit faith in the simple
and confiding nature of his audience. Before giving these lectures Mr. Cook
had studied awhile in Germany, and his citations of German writers show
how far he deems it safe to presume on New England's ignorance of what
the Fatherland thinks. It is nice to have such a learned country as Germany
at one's disposal to hurl at the heads of people whose "outlook in
philosophy does not reach beyond the Straits of Dover;" it saves a great
deal of troublesome argument, and still more painful examination of facts.
This English opinion is all very well, you know, but it comes from a
philosopher "whose star is just touching the western pines," and a German
professor whom I am about to quote, whose book I "hold in my hand," and
"whose star is in the ascendant," does not agree with it. All this is extremely
neat and convincing, apparently, to the crowd in Tremont Temple. With all
Germany at his disposal, however, it must be acknowledged that our
lecturer makes a very sparing use of his resources. He quotes Helmholtz
and Wundt every now and then with warm approval, though wherein they
should be found any more acceptable to the orthodox world than Tyndall
and Spencer it is not easy to see, save that the ill repute of German free

thinkers takes somewhat longer to get diffused in New England than the ill
repute of English free thinkers.
Then, among these Germans who are to set the English-speaking world
aright we have Delitzsch! To speak of Wundt and Delitzsch is as if one were
to bracket together John Stuart Mill and Frederick Denison Maurice. And
then comes the admirable Lotze, whom Mr. Cook is continually setting off
as a foil to Herbert Spencer. On page 179 of the lectures on "Heredity" he
enumerates, with emphasis, those opinions of Lotze which he deems of
especial importance with regard to the relations between matter and mind,
and then proceeds to deprecate the "thunder" which he presumes he has
evoked "from all quarters of the Spencerian sky." But, considering that the
propositions he quotes from Lotze express the very views of Herbert
Spencer, only somewhat inadequately worded, it would seem that the
lecturer's alarm cannot be very real, and the thunder in question is only a
kind of comic-opera thunder manufactured behind the curtain for the
benefit of the acquiescent audience. For example, the fourth proposition
quoted with approval from Lotze reads thus: "Physical phenomena point to
an underlying being to which they belong, but do not determine whether
that being is material or immaterial." Now this is Spencerism, pure and
simple, and it is a crucial proposition, too, pointing out the drift of the
whole philosophy before which it is set up. The fact that Mr. Cook adopts
such an opinion when stated by Lotze, but vituperates the same opinion
when stated by Spencer, reveals to us, with a pungent though not wholly
delicious flavour, the "true inwardness" of his fundamental method of
procedure.
That method, it must be acknowledged with due regard to the bon mot of
the old Greek statesman, is a method well adapted to conciliate the favour
of an immense audience,—even in Boston. We are all descended from
fighting ancestors, and many of us, who care little for the disinterested
discussion of scientific theories, still like to see a man knocked down or
impaled, provided the knocking down be done with a syllogistic club, or the
impaling be restricted to such a hard substance as is afforded by the horns
of a dilemma. It satisfies our combative instincts, without shocking our
physical sympathies or making any great demand on our keener thinking
powers, which most people do most of all dislike to be called upon to
exercise. To this kind of feeling Mr. Cook's lectures appeal, and the peculiar

character of his success seems to show that he knows well how to deal with
it. In a moment of winning frankness he exclaims: "Do you suppose that I
think that this audience can be cheated? I do not know where in America
there is another weekly audience with as many brains in it; at least, I do not
know where in New England I should be so likely to be tripped up, if I were
to make an incorrect statement, as here."[34] After this coaxing little dose,
Mr. Cook proceeds to show his respect for the learning of his audience in
some remarks on bathybius, which, as he condescendingly explains, is a
name derived from two Greek words, meaning deep and sea!! The profound
knowledge of Greek thus exhibited is quite equalled by his account of
bathybius from the zoölogical point of view. He begins by telling his
hearers that, in a paper published in the "Microscopical Journal" in 1868,
Professor Huxley "announced his belief that the gelatinous substance found
in the ooze of the beds of the deep seas is a sheet of living matter extending
around the globe." Furthermore, of "this amazingly strategic [!!] and
haughtily trumpeted substance ... Huxley assumed that it was in the past,
and would be in the future, the progenitor of all the life on the planet." Now
it is not true that, in the paper referred to, Huxley announces any such belief
or makes any such assumption as is here ascribed to him; but we shall see,
in a moment, that Mr. Cook's system of quotation is peculiar in enabling
him to extract from the text of an author any meaning whatever that may
happen to suit his purposes. This ingenious garbling enables the lecturer to
come in with telling effect at the close of his third lecture, and earn an
ignoble round of applause by holding up the current number of the
"American Journal of Science and Arts" (which he would appear to have
picked up at a bookstall on his way to the lecture room) and citing from it,
as the fifty-first and closing "concession" of evolutionists, "that bathybius
has been discovered in 1875, by the ship Challenger, to be—hear, O
heavens! and give ear, O earth!—sulphate of lime; and that when dissolved
it crystallizes as gypsum. [Applause.]" This is what Mr. Cook calls striking,
with the "latest scientific intelligence," at the "bottom stem" of the great
tree of evolution. The "latest scientific intelligence," with him, means the
last book or article which he has glanced over without comprehending its
import, but from which he has contrived to glean some statement calculated
to edify his audience and scatter the hosts of Midian. In point of fact, the
identification of bathybius with sulphate of lime was set down by Sir
Wyville Thomson only as a suspicion, to which Huxley, like a true man of

science, at once accorded all possible weight, while leaving the question
open for further discussion. Only a mountebank, dealing with an audience
upon whose ignorance of the subject he might safely rely, could pretend to
suppose that the fate of the doctrine of evolution was in any way involved
in the question as to the organic nature of bathybius. The amazing strategy
was all Mr. Cook's own, and the haughty trumpeting appears to have been
chiefly done with his own very brazen instrument.
I said a moment ago that Mr. Cook's system of quotation is peculiar. The
following instance is so good that it will bear citing at some length.
According to Mr. Cook, Professor Huxley says, in his article on Biology in
the ninth edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica:" "Throughout almost the
whole series of living beings, we find agamogenesis, or not-sexual
generation." After a pause, Mr. Cook proceeded in a lower voice: "When
the topic of the origin of the life of our Lord on the earth is approached
from the point of view of the microscope, some men, who know not what
the holy of holies in physical and religious science is, say that we have no
example of the origin of life without two parents." He went on to cite the
familiar instances of parthenogenesis in bees and silk moths, and then
proceeded as follows: "Take up your Mivart, your Lyell, your Owen, and
you will read [where?] this same important fact which Huxley here asserts,
when he says that the law that perfect individuals may be virginally born
extends to the higher forms of life. I am in the presence of Almighty God;
and yet, when a great soul like that tender spirit of our sainted Lincoln, in
his early days, with little knowledge but with great thoughtfulness, was
troubled by his difficulty, and almost thrown into infidelity by not knowing
that the law that there must be two parents is not universal, I am willing to
allude, even in such a presence as this, to the latest science concerning
miraculous conception. [Sensation.]"
The vulgarity of this rhetoric is as glaring as its absurdity. All that concerns
me now, however, is to point out the Brobdignagian dimensions of the
misstatement of facts. Let us look back for a moment at the italicized
quotation from Huxley, upon which Mr. Cook builds up the wondrous
assertion "that the law that perfect individuals may be virginally born
extends to the higher forms of life." Then let us turn to Huxley's article and
see what he really does say.

Treating of the whole subject of agamogenesis in the widest possible way
by including it under the more general process of cell-multiplication,
Huxley says: "Common as the process is in plants and in the lower animals,
it becomes rare among the higher animals. In these, the reproduction of the
whole organism from a part, in the way indicated above, ceases. At most we
find that the cells at the end of an amputated portion of the organism are
capable of reproducing the lost part, and in the very highest animals even
this power vanishes in the adult.... Throughout almost the whole series of
living beings, however, we find concurrently with the process of
agamogenesis, or asexual generation, another method of generation, in
which the development of the germ into an organism resembling the parent
depends on an influence exerted by living matter different from the germ.
This is gamogenesis, or sexual generation."[35]
Comparing the italicized passage here with Mr. Cook's italicized quotation,
we see vividly illustrated the fundamental method of procedure by which
the "Monday Lectureship" jumps from a statement about the reproduction
of a lobster's claw to the inference that a man may be born without a father.
It reminds one of that worthy clergyman who introduced a scathing sermon
on a new-fangled variety of ladies' headdress by the appropriate text, "Top-
knot come down!" On being reminded by one of his deacons that the full
verse seemed to read, "Let him that is upon the housetop not come down,"
the pastor boldly justified his abridgment on the ground that any particular
collocation of words in Scripture is as authoritative as any other, since all
parts of the Bible are equally inspired. Perhaps there are some who would
justify Mr. Cook's peculiar principle of abridgment on the familiar ground
that the end sanctifies the means, and that if a statement seems helpful to
"the truth" in general, it is no matter whether the statement itself is true or
not.
Enough of this. If we were to go through with these volumes in detail, we
should find little else but misrepresentations of facts, misconceptions of
principles, and floods of tawdry rhetoric, of which the specimens here
quoted are quite sufficient to illustrate the lecturer's "fundamental method
of procedure." If I have treated him somewhat lightly, it is because there is
nothing in his matter or in his manner that would justify, or even excuse, a
more serious style of treatment. The only aspect of his career which affords
matter for grave reflection is the ease with which he succeeded for a

moment in imposing on the credulity and in appealing to the prejudices of
his public. The eagerness with which the orthodox world hailed the
appearance of this new champion could not but remind one, with sad
emphasis, of Oxenstjern's famous remark: "Quam parva sapientia mundus
regitur!" It is comforting to remember that one of the world's greatest
naturalists, Asa Gray,—whose orthodoxy is as unimpeachable as his
science,—very promptly declared in print that such championship is
something of which orthodoxy has no reason to feel proud.
December, 1880.

XIII

FORTY YEARS OF BACON-SHAKESPEARE FOLLY[36]

Some time ago, while I happened to be looking over a wheelbarrow-load of
rubbish written to prove that such plays as "King Lear" and "The Merry
Wives of Windsor" emanated from one of the least poetical and least
humorous minds of modern times, I was reminded of a story which I heard
when a boy. I forget whether it was some whimsical man of letters like
Charles Lamb, or some such professional wag as Theodore Hook, who took
it into his head one day to stand still on a London street, with face turned
upward, gazing into the sky. Thereupon the next person who came that way
forthwith stopped and did likewise, and then the next, and the next, until the
road was blocked by a dense crowd of men and women, all standing as if
rooted in the ground, and with solemn sky-ward stare. The enchantment
was at last broken when some one asked what they were looking at, and
nobody could tell. It was simply an instance of a certain remnant of
primitive gregariousness of action on the part of human beings, which
exhibits itself from time to time in sundry queer fashions and fads.
So when Miss Delia Bacon, in the year which saw the beginning of "The
Atlantic Monthly," published a book purporting to unfold the "philosophy"
of Shakespeare's dramas, it was not long before other persons began staring
intently into the silliest mare's nest ever devised by human dulness; and the
fruits of so much staring have appeared in divers eccentric volumes, of
which more specific mention will presently be made. Neither in number nor
in quality are they such as to indicate that the Bacon-Shakespeare folly has
yet become fashionable, and we shall presently observe in it marked
suicidal tendencies which are likely to prevent its ever becoming so; but
there are enough of such volumes to illustrate the point of my anecdote.
Another fad, once really fashionable, and in defence of which some
plausible arguments could be urged, was the Wolfian theory of the Homeric
poems, which dazzled so many of our grandparents. It is worth our while to
mention it here by way of prelude. The theory that the Iliad and Odyssey

are mere aggregations of popular ballads, collected and arranged in the time
of Pisistratus, was perhaps originally suggested by the philosopher Vico, but
first attracted general attention in 1795, when set forth by Friedrich August
Wolf, one of the most learned and brilliant of modern scholars. Thus
eminently respectable in its parentage and quite reasonable on the surface,
this ballad theory came to be widely fashionable; forty years ago it was
accepted by many able scholars, though usually with large modifications.
The Wolfians urged that we know absolutely nothing about the man Homer,
not even when or where he lived. His existence is merely matter of
tradition, or of inference from the existence of the poems. But as the poems
know nothing of Dorians in Peloponnesus, their date can hardly be so late
as 1100 b. c. What happened, then, when "an edition of Homer" was made
at Athens, about 530 b. c., by Pisistratus, or under his orders? Did the editor
simply edit two great poems already six centuries old, or did he make up
two poems by piecing together a miscellaneous lot of ancient ballads? Wolf
maintained the latter alternative, chiefly because of the alleged
impossibility of composing and preserving such long poems in the alleged
absence of the art of writing. Having thus made a plausible start, the
Wolfians proceeded to pick the poems to pieces, and to prove by "internal
evidence" that there was nothing like "unity of design" in them, etc.; and so
it went on, till poor old Homer was relegated to the world of myth. As a
schoolboy I used to hear the belief in the existence of such a poet derided as
"uncritical" and "unscholarly."
In spite of these terrifying epithets, the ballad theory never made any
impression upon me; for it seemed to ignore the most conspicuous and vital
fact about the poems, namely, the style, the noble, rapid, simple, vivid,
supremely poetical style,—a style as individual and unapproachable as that
of Dante or Keats. For an excellent characterization of it, read Matthew
Arnold's charming essays "On Translating Homer." The style is the man,
and to suppose that this Homeric style ever came from a democratic
multitude of minds, or from anything save one of those supremely endowed
individual natures such as get born once or twice in a millennium, is simply
to suppose a psychological impossibility. I remember once talking about
this with George Eliot, who had lately been reading Frederick Paley's
ingenious restatement of the ballad theory, and was captivated by its
ingenuity. I told her I did not wonder that old dry-as-dust philologists

should hold such views, but I was indeed surprised to find such a literary
artist as herself ignoring the impassable gulf between Homer's language and
that which any ballad theory necessarily implies. She had no answer for this
except to say that she should have supposed an evolutionist like me would
prefer to regard the Homeric poems as gradually evolved rather than
suddenly created! A retort so clever and amiable most surely entitled her to
the woman's privilege of the last word.
The Wolfian theory may now be regarded as a thing of the past; it has had
its day and been flung aside. If Wolf himself were living, he would be the
first to laugh at it. Its original prop has been knocked away, since it has
become pretty clear that the art of writing was practised about the shores of
the Ægean Sea long before 1100 b. c. Even Wolf would now admit that it
might have been a real letter that Bellerophon carried to the father of
Anteia.[37] All attempts to show a lack of unity in the design of the Iliad and
the Odyssey have failed irretrievably, and the discussion has served only to
make more and more unmistakable the work of the mighty master. The
ballad theory is dead and buried, and he who would read its obituary may
find keen pleasure, as well as many a wholesome lesson in sound criticism,
in the sensible and brilliant book by Andrew Lang on "Homer and the
Epic."
The Bacon-Shakespeare folly has never been set forth by scholars of
commanding authority, like Wolf and Lachmann, or Niese and Wilamowitz
Moellendorff. Among Delia Bacon's followers not one can by any
permissible laxity of speech be termed a scholar, and their theory has found
acceptance with very few persons. Nevertheless, it illustrates as well as the
Wolfian theory the way in which such notions grow. It starts from a false
premise, hazily conceived, and it subsists upon arguments in which trivial
facts are assigned higher value than facts of vital importance. Mr. Lang's
remark upon certain learned Homeric commentators, "that they pore over
the hyssop on the wall, but are blind to the cedar of Lebanon," applies with
tenfold force to the Bacon-Shakespeare sciolists. In them we always miss
the just sense of proportion which is one of the abiding marks of sanity. The
unfortunate lady who first brought their theory into public notoriety in 1857
was then sinking under the cerebral disease of which she died two years
later, and her imitators have been chiefly weak minds of the sort that thrive
upon paradox, closely akin to the circle-squarers and inventors of perpetual

motion. Underlying all the absurdities, however, there is something that
deserves attention. Like many other morbid phenomena, the Bacon-
Shakespeare folly has its natural history which is instructive. The vagaries
of Delia Bacon and her followers originated in a group of conditions which
admit of being specified and described, and which the historian of
nineteenth-century literature will need to notice. In order to understand the
natural history of the affair, it is necessary to examine the Delia Bacon
theory at greater length than it would otherwise deserve. Let us see how it is
constructed.
It starts with a syllogism, of which the major premise is that the dramas
ascribed to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and ever since believed to be
his, abound in evidences of extraordinary book-learning. The minor premise
is that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon could not have acquired
or possessed so much book-learning. The conclusion is that he could not
have written those plays.
The question then arises, Which of Shakespeare's contemporaries had
enough book-lore to have written them? No doubt Francis Bacon had
enough. The conclusion does not follow, however, that he wrote the plays;
for there were other contemporaries with learning enough and to spare, as
for example George Chapman and Ben Jonson. These two men, to judge
from their acknowledged works, were great poets, whereas in Bacon's
fifteen volumes there is not a paragraph which betrays poetical genius. Why
not, then, ascribe the Shakespeare dramas to Chapman or Jonson? Here the
Baconizers endeavour to support their assumption by calling attention to
similarities in thought and phrase between Francis Bacon and the writer of
the dramas. Up to this point their argument consists of deductions from
assumed premises; here they adduce inductive evidence, such as it is. We
shall see specimens of it by and by. At present we are concerned with the
initial syllogism.
And first, as to the major premise, it must be met with a flat denial. The
Shakespeare plays do not abound with evidences of scholarship or learning
of the sort that is gathered from profound and accurate study of books. It is
precisely in this respect that they are conspicuously different from many of
the plays contemporary with them, and from other masterpieces of English
literature. Such plays as Jonson's "Sejanus" and "Catiline" are the work of a
scholar deeply indoctrinated with the views and mental habits of classic

antiquity; he has soaked himself in the style of Lucan and Seneca, until
their mental peculiarities have become like a second nature to him, and are
unconsciously betrayed alike in the general handling of his story and in
little turns of expression. Or take Milton's "Lycidas:" no one but a man
saturated in every fibre with Theocritus and Virgil could have written such a
poem. An extremely foreign and artificial literary form has been so
completely mastered and assimilated by Milton that he uses it with as much
ease as Theocritus himself, and has produced a work that even the master of
idyls had scarcely equalled. After the terrific invective against the clergy
and the beautiful invocation to the flowers, followed by the triumphant
hallelujah of Christian faith, observe the sudden reversion to pagan
sentiment where Lycidas is addressed as the genius of the shore. Only
profound scholarship could have written this wonderful poem,—could have
brought forth the Christian thought as if spontaneously through the medium
of the pagan form. Now there is nothing of this sort in Shakespeare. He uses
classical materials, or anything else under the sun that suits his purpose. He
takes a chronicle from Holinshed, a biography from North's translation of
Plutarch, a legend from Saxo Grammaticus through Belleforest's French
version, a novel of Boccaccio, a miracle play,—whatever strikes his fancy;
he chops up his materials and weaves them into a story without much
regard to classical models; defying rules of order and unity, and not always
heeding probability, but never forgetful of his abiding purpose, to create
live men and women. These people may have Greek or Latin names, and
their scene of action may be Rome or Mitylene, decorated with scraps of
classical knowledge such as a bright man might pick up in miscellaneous
reading; but all this is the superficial setting, the mere frame to the picture.
The living canvas is human nature as Shakespeare saw it in London and
depicted with supreme poetic faculty. Among the new books within his
reach was Chapman's magnificent translation of the Iliad, which at a later
day inspired Keats to such a noble outburst of encomium; and in "Troilus
and Cressida" we have the Greek and Trojan heroes set before us with an
incisive reality not surpassed by Homer himself. This play shows how
keenly Shakespeare appreciated Homer, how delicately and exquisitely he
could supplement the picture; but there is nothing in its five acts that shows
him clothed in the garment of ancient thought as Milton wore it.
Shakespeare's freedom from such lore is a great advantage to him; in
"Troilus and Cressida" there is a freedom of treatment hardly possible to a

professional scholar. It is because of this freedom that Shakespeare reaches
a far wider public of readers and listeners than Milton or Dante, whose vast
learning makes them in many places "caviare to the general." Book-lore is a
great source of power, but one may easily be hampered by it. What we
forever love in Homer is the freshness that comes with lack of it, and in this
sort of freshness Shakespeare agrees with Homer far more than with the
learned poets.
It is not for a moment to be denied that Shakespeare's plays exhibit a
remarkable wealth of varied knowledge. The writer was one of the keenest
observers that ever lived. In the woodland or on the farm, in the printing
shop or the alehouse, or up and down the street, not the smallest detail
escaped him. Microscopic accuracy, curious interest in all things, unlimited
power of assimilating knowledge, are everywhere shown in the plays. These
are some of the marks of what we call genius,—something that we are far
from comprehending, but which experience has shown that books and
universities cannot impart. All the colleges on earth could not by combined
effort make the kind of man we call a genius, but such a man may at any
moment be born into the world, and it is as likely to be in a peasant's
cottage as anywhere.
There is nothing in which men differ more widely than in the capacity for
imbibing and assimilating knowledge. The capacity is often exercised
unconsciously. When my eldest son, at the age of six, was taught to read in
the course of a few weeks of daily instruction, it was suddenly discovered
that his four-year-old brother also could read. Nobody could tell how it
happened. Of course the younger boy must have taken keen notice of what
the elder one was doing, but the process went on without attracting attention
until the result appeared.
This capacity for unconscious learning is not at all uncommon. It is
possessed to some extent by everybody; but a very high degree of it is one
of the marks of genius. I remember one evening, many years ago, hearing
Herbert Spencer in a friendly discussion regarding certain functions of the
cerebellum. Abstruse points of comparative anatomy and questions of
pathology were involved. Spencer's three antagonists were not violently
opposed to him, but were in various degrees unready to adopt his views.
The three were: Huxley, one of the greatest of comparative anatomists;
Hughlings Jackson, a very eminent authority on the pathology of the

nervous system; and George Henry Lewes, who, although more of an
amateur in such matters, had nevertheless devoted years of study to neural
physiology, and was thoroughly familiar with the history of the subject.
Spencer more than held his ground against the others. He met fact with fact,
brought up points in anatomy the significance of which Huxley confessed
that he had overlooked, and had more experiments and clinical cases at his
tongue's end than Jackson could muster. It was quite evident that he knew
all they knew on the subject, and more besides. Yet Spencer had never been
through a course of "regular training" in the studies concerned; nor had he
ever studied at a university, or even at a high school. Where did he learn the
wonderful mass of facts which he poured forth that evening? Whence came
his tremendous grasp upon the principles involved? Probably he could not
have told you. A few days afterward I happened to be talking with Spencer
about history, a subject of which he modestly said he knew but little. I told
him I had often been struck with the aptness of the historic illustrations
cited in many chapters of his "Social Statics," written when he was twenty-
nine years old. The references were not only always accurate, but they
showed an intelligence and soundness of judgment unattainable, one would
think, save by close familiarity with history. Spencer assured me that he had
never read extensively in history. Whence, then, this wealth of knowledge,
—not smattering, not sciolism, but solid, well-digested knowledge? Really,
he did not know, except that when his interest was aroused in any subject he
was keenly alive to all facts bearing upon it, and seemed to find them
whichever way he turned. When I mentioned this to Lewes, while recalling
the discussion on the cerebellum, he exclaimed: "Oh, you can't account for
it! It's his genius. Spencer has greater instinctive power of observation and
assimilation than any man since Shakespeare, and he is like Shakespeare for
hitting the bull's-eye every time he fires. As for Darwin and Huxley, we can
follow their intellectual processes, but Spencer is above and beyond all; he
is inspired!"
Those were Lewes's exact words, and they made a deep impression upon
me. The comparison with Shakespeare struck me as a happy one, and I can
understand both Spencer and Shakespeare the better for it. Concerning
Spencer one circumstance may be observed. Since his early manhood he
has lived in London, and has had for his daily associates men of vast
attainments in every department of science. He has thus had rare
opportunities for absorbing an immense fund of knowledge unconsciously.

It is evident that the author of Shakespeare's plays possessed an
extraordinary "instinctive power of observation and assimilation." There
was nothing strange in such a genius growing up in a small Warwickshire
town. The difficulty is one which the Delia-Baconians have created for
themselves. As it is their chief stock in trade, they magnify it in every way
they can think of. Shakespeare's parents, they say, were illiterate, and he did
not know how to spell his own name. It appears as Shagspere, Shaxpur,
Shaxberd, Chacsper, and so on through some thirty forms, several of which
William Shakespeare himself used indifferently. The implication is that
such a man must have been shockingly ignorant. The real ignorance,
however, is on the part of those who use such an argument. Apparently, they
do not know that in Shakespeare's time such laxity in spelling was common
in all ranks of society and in all grades of culture. The name of Elizabeth's
great Lord Treasurer, Cecil, and his title, Burghley, were both spelled in half
a dozen ways. The name of Raleigh occurs in more than forty different
forms, and Sir Walter, one of the most accomplished men of his time, wrote
it Rauley, Rawleyghe, Ralegh, and in yet other ways. The talk of the
Baconizers on this point is simply ludicrous.
Equally silly is their talk about the dirty streets of Stratford. They seem to
have just discovered that Elizabeth's England was a badly drained country,
with heaps of garbage in the streets. Shakespeare's father, they tell us, was a
butcher, and evidently from a butcher's son, living in an ill-swept town, and
careless about the spelling of his name, not much in the way of intellectual
achievement was to be expected! In point of fact, Shakespeare's parents
belonged to the middle class. His father owned several houses in Stratford
and two or three farms in the neighbourhood. As a farmer in those days, he
would naturally have cattle slaughtered on his premises and would sell wool
off the backs of his own flocks, whence the later tradition of his having
been butcher and wool dealer. That his social position was good is shown
by the facts that he was chief alderman and high bailiff of Stratford, and
justice of the peace, and was styled "Master John Shakespeare," or (as we
should say) "Mr.;" whereas, had he been one of the common folk, his style
had been "Goodman Shakespeare." A visit to his home in Henley Street, and
to Anne Hathaway's cottage at Shottery, shows that the two families were in
eminently respectable circumstances. The son of the high bailiff would see
the best people in the neighbourhood. There was in the town a remarkably
good free grammar school, where he might have learned the "small Latin

and less Greek" which his friend Ben Jonson assures us he possessed. This
expression, by the way, is usually misunderstood, because people do not
pause to consider it. Coming from Ben Jonson, I should say that "small
Latin and less Greek" might fairly describe the amount of those languages
ordinarily possessed by a member of the graduating class at Harvard in
good standing. It can hardly imply less than the ability to read Terence at
sight, and perhaps Euripides less fluently. The author of the plays, with his
unerring accuracy of observation, knows Latin enough at least to use the
Latin part of English most skilfully; at the same time, when he has occasion
to use Greek authors, such as Homer or Plutarch, he usually prefers an
English translation. At all events, Jonson's remark informs us that the man
whom he addresses as "sweet swan of Avon" knew some Latin and some
Greek,—a conclusion which is so distasteful to one of our Baconizers, Mr.
Edwin Reed, that he will not admit it. Rather than do so, he has the
assurance to ask us to believe that by the epithet "sweet swan of Avon"
Jonson really meant Francis Bacon! Dear me, Mr. Reed, do you really mean
it? And how about the editor of Beaumont and Fletcher in 1647, when, in
his dedication to Shakespeare's friend the Earl of Pembroke, he speaks of
"Sweet Swan of Avon Shakespear"? Was he too a participator in the little
scheme for fooling posterity? Or was he one of those who were fooled?
Whether Shakespeare had other chances for book-lore than those which the
grammar school afforded, whether there was any interesting parson at hand,
as often in small towns, to guide and stimulate his unfolding thoughts,—
upon such points we have no information. But there were things to be
learned in the country town quite outside of books and pedagogues. There,
while the poet listened to the "strain of strutting chanticleer," and watched
the "sun-burn'd sicklemen, of August weary," putting on their rye-straw hats
and making holiday with rustic nymphs, he could rejoice in

"Earth's increase, foison plenty,
Barns and garners never empty;
Vines with clust'ring bunches growing;
Plants with goodly burthen bowing;"

there he could see the "unbacked colts" prick their ears, advance their
eyelids, lift up their noses, as if they smelt music; there he knew, doubtless,
many a bank where the wild thyme grew and on which the moonlight

sweetly slept; there he watched the coming of "violets dim," "pale
primroses," flower-de-luce, carnations, with "rosemary and rue" to keep
their "savour all the winter long,"

"When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail."

Such lore as this no books or college could impart.
It was this that Milton had in mind when he introduced Shakespeare and
Ben Jonson into his poem "L'Allegro." Milton was in his thirtieth year when
Jonson, poet laureate, was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey; he was only a
boy of eight years when Shakespeare died, but the beautiful sonnet written
fourteen years later shows how lovingly he studied his works:—

"What needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones,"
etc.

The poem "L'Allegro" and its fellow "Il Penseroso" describe the delights of
Milton's life at his father's country house near Windsor Castle. He used
often to ride into London to hear music or pass an evening at the theatre, as
in the following lines:—

"Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child,
Warble his native woodnotes wild."

This accurate and happy contrast exasperates the Baconizers, for it spoils
their stock in trade, and accordingly they try their best to assure us that
Milton did not know what he was writing about. They asseverate with
vehemence that in all the seven-and-thirty plays there is no such thing as a
native woodnote wild.
But before leaving the contrast we may pause for a moment to ask, Where
did Ben Jonson get his learning? He was, as he himself tells us, "poorly
brought up" by his stepfather, a bricklayer. He went to Westminster School,

where he was taught by Camden, and he may have spent a short time at
Cambridge, though this is doubtful. His schooling was nipped in the bud,
for he had to go home and lay brick; and when he found such an existence
insupportable he went into the army and fought in the Netherlands. At about
the age of twenty we find him back in London, and there lose sight of him
for five years, when all at once his great comedy "Every Man in his
Humour" is performed, and makes him famous. Now, in such a life, when
did Jonson get the time for his immense reading and his finished classical
scholarship? Reasoning after the manner of the Delia-Baconians, we may
safely say that he could not possibly have accumulated the learning which
is shown in his plays: therefore he could not have written those plays;
therefore Lord Bacon must have written them! There are daring soarers in
the empyrean who do not shrink from this conclusion; a doctor in Michigan,
named Owen, has published a pamphlet to prove, among other things, that
Bacon was the author of the plays which were performed and printed as
Jonson's.
To return to Shakespeare. Somewhere about 1585, when he was one-and-
twenty, he went to London, leaving his wife and three young children at
Stratford. His father had lost money, and the fortunes of the family were at
the lowest ebb. In London we lose sight of Shakespeare for a while, just as
we lose sight of Jonson, until literary works appear. The work first
published is "Venus and Adonis," one of the most exquisite pieces of diction
in the English language. It was dedicated to Henry, Earl of Southampton, by
William Shakespeare, whose authorship of the poem is asserted as distinctly
as the title-page of "David Copperfield" proclaims that novel to be by
Charles Dickens, yet some precious critics assure us that Shakespeare
"could not" have written the poem, and never knew the Earl of
Southampton. Some years ago, Mr. Appleton Morgan, who does not wish to
be regarded as a Baconizer, published an essay on the Warwickshire dialect,
in which he maintained that since no traces of that kind of speech occur in
"Venus and Adonis," therefore it could not have been written by a young
man fresh from a small Warwickshire town. This is a specimen of the loose
kind of criticism which prepares soil for Delia-Baconian weeds to grow in.
The poem was published in 1593, seven or eight years after Shakespeare's
coming to London; and we are asked to believe that the world's greatest
genius, one of the most consummate masters of speech that ever lived,
could tarry seven years in the city without learning how to write what

Hosea Biglow calls "citified English"! One can only exclaim with Gloster,
"O monstrous fault, to harbour such a thought!"
In those years Shakespeare surely learned much else. It seems clear that he
had a good reading acquaintance with French and Italian, though he often
uses translations, as for instance Florio's version of Montaigne. In
estimating what Shakespeare "must have" known or "could not have"
known, one needs to use more caution than some of our critics display. For
example, in "The Winter's Tale" the statue of Hermione is called "a piece ...
now newly performed by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano." Now,
since Romano is known as a great painter, but not as a sculptor, this has
been cited as a blunder on Shakespeare's part. It appears, however, that the
first edition of Vasari's "Lives of the Painters," published in 1550 and never
translated from its original Italian, informs us that Romano did work in
sculpture. In Vasari's second edition, published in 1568 and translated into
several languages, this information is not given. From these facts, the
erudite German critic Dr. Karl Elze, who is not a bit of a Delia-Baconian,
but only an occasional sufferer from vesania commentatorum, introduces us
to a solemn dilemma: either the author of "The Winter's Tale" must have
consulted the first edition of Vasari in the original Italian, or else he must
have travelled in Italy and gazed upon statues by Romano. Ah! prithee not
so fast, worthy doctor; be not so lavish with these "musts." It is, I think,
improbable that Shakespeare ever saw Italy except with the eyes of his
imperial fancy. On the other hand, there are many indications that he could
read Italian, but among them we cannot attach much importance to this one.
Why should he not have learned from hearsay that Romano had made
statues? In the name of common sense, are there no sources of knowledge
save books? Or, since it was no unusual thing for Italian painters in the
sixteenth century to excel in sculpture and architecture, why should not
Shakespeare have assumed without verification that it was so in Romano's
case? It was a tolerably safe assumption to make, especially in an age
utterly careless of historical accuracy, and in a comedy which provides
Bohemia with a sea-coast, and mixes up times and customs with as scant
heed of probability as a fairy tale.
In arguing about what Shakespeare "must have" or "could not have" known,
we must not forget that at no time or place since history began has human
thought fermented more briskly than in London while he was living there.

The age of Drake and Raleigh was an age of efflorescence in dramatic
poetry, such as had not been seen in the twenty centuries since Euripides
died. Among Shakespeare's fellow craftsmen were writers of such great and
varied endowments as Chapman, Marlowe, Greene, Nash, Peele, Marston,
Dekker, Webster, and Cyril Tourneur. During his earlier years in London,
Richard Hooker was master of the Middle Temple, and there a little later
Ford and Beaumont were studying. The erudite Camden was master of
Westminster School; among the lights of the age for legal learning were
Edward Coke and Francis Bacon; at the same time, one might have met in
London the learned architect Inigo Jones and the learned poet John Donne,
both of them excellent classical scholars; there one would have found the
divine poet Edmund Spenser, just come over from Ireland to see to the
publication of his "Faerie Queene;" not long afterward came John Fletcher
from Cambridge, and the acute philosopher Edward Herbert from Oxford
and one and all might listen to the incomparable table-talk of that giant of
scholarship, John Selden. The delights of the Mermaid Tavern, where these
rare wits were wont to assemble, still live in tradition. As Keats says:—

"Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?"

It has always been believed that this place was one of Shakespeare's
favourite haunts. By common consent of scholars, it has been accepted as
the scene of those contests of wit between Shakespeare and Jonson of
which Fuller tells us when he compares Jonson to a Spanish galleon, built
high with learning, but slow in movement, while he likens Shakespeare to
an English cruiser, less heavily weighted, but apt for victory because of its
nimbleness,—the same kind of contrast, by the way, as that which occurred
to Milton.
But our Baconizing friends will not allow that Shakespeare ever went to the
Mermaid, or knew the people who met there; at least, none but a few fellow
dramatists. We have no documentary proof that he ever met with Raleigh,
or Bacon, or Selden. Let us observe that, while these sapient critics are in
some cases ready to welcome the slightest circumstantial evidence, there
are others in which they will accept nothing short of absolute

demonstration. Did Shakespeare ever see a maypole? The word occurs just
once in his plays, namely, in the "Midsummer Night's Dream," where little
Hermia, quarrelling with tall Helena, calls her a "painted maypole;" but that
proves nothing. I am not aware that there is any absolute documentary proof
that Shakespeare ever set eyes on a maypole. It is nevertheless certain that
in England, at that time, no boy could grow to manhood without seeing
many a maypole. Common sense has some rights which we are bound to
respect.
Now, Shakespeare's London was a small city of from 150,000 to 200,000
souls, or about the size of Providence or Minneapolis at the present time. In
cities of such size, everybody of the slightest eminence is known all over
town, and such persons are sure to be more or less acquainted with one
another; it is a very rare exception when it is not so. Before his thirtieth
year, Shakespeare was well known in London as an actor, a writer of plays,
and the manager of a prominent theatre. It was in that year that Spenser, in
his "Colin Clout's Come Home Again," alluding to Shakespeare under the
name of Aëtion, or "eagle-like," paid him this compliment:—

"And there, though last, not least, is Aëtion;
A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found;
Whose muse, full of high thought's invention,
Doth, like himself, heroically sound."

Four years after this, in 1598, Francis Meres published his book entitled
"Palladis Tamia," a very interesting contribution to literary history. The
author, who had been an instructor in rhetoric in the University of Oxford,
was then living in London, near the Globe Theatre. In this book Meres tells
his readers that "the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and
honey-tongued Shakespeare; witness his 'Venus and Adonis,' his 'Lucrece,'
his sugared sonnets among his private friends, etc.... As Plautus and Seneca
are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so
Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the
stage: for comedy, witness his 'Gentlemen of Verona,' his 'Errors,' his
'Love's Labour's Lost,' his 'Love's Labour's Wonne,'[38] his 'Midsummer
Night's Dream,' and his 'Merchant of Venice;' for tragedy, his 'Richard II.,'
'Richard III.,' 'Henry IV.,' 'King John,' 'Titus Andronicus,' and his 'Romeo
and Juliet.' As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus's

tongue if they would speak Latin, so I say that the Muses would speak with
Shakespeare's fine filed phrase if they would speak English." In other
passages Meres mentions Shakespeare's lyrical quality, for which he likens
him to Pindar and Catullus; and the glory of his style, for which he places
him along with Virgil and Homer. It thus appears that, at the age of thirty-
four, this poet from Stratford was already ranked by critical scholars by the
side of the greatest names of antiquity. Let me add that the popularity of his
plays was making him a somewhat wealthy man, so that he had relieved his
father from pecuniary troubles, and had just bought for himself the Great
House at Stratford where the last years of his life were spent. His income
seems already to have been equivalent to $10,000 a year in our modern
money. His position had come to be such that he could extend patronage to
others. It was in 1598 that through his influence Ben Jonson obtained, after
many rebuffs, his first hearing before a London audience, when "Every Man
in his Humour" was brought out at Blackfriars Theatre, with Shakespeare
acting one of the parts.
To suppose that such a man as this, in a town the size of Minneapolis,
connected with a principal theatre, writer of the most popular plays of the
day, a poet whom men were already coupling with Homer and Pindar,—to
suppose that such a man was not known to all the educated people in the
town is simply absurd. There were probably very few men, women, or
children in London, between 1595 and 1610, who did not know who
Shakespeare was when he passed them in the street; and as for such wits as
drank ale and sack at the Mermaid, as for Raleigh and Bacon and Selden
and the rest, to suppose that Shakespeare did not know them well—nay, to
suppose that he was not the leading spirit and brightest wit of those
ambrosial nights—is about as sensible as to suppose that he never saw a
maypole.
The facts thus far contemplated point to one conclusion. The son of a well-
to-do magistrate in a small country town is born with a genius which the
world has never seen surpassed. Coming to London at the age of twenty-
one, he achieves such swift success that within thirteen years he is
recognized as one of the chief glories of English literature. During this time
he is living in the midst of such a period of intellectual ferment as the world
has seldom seen, and in a position which necessarily brings him into
frequent contact with all the most cultivated men. Under such

circumstances, there is nothing in the smallest degree strange or surprising
in his acquiring the varied knowledge which his plays exhibit. The major
premise of the Delia-Baconians has, therefore, nothing in it whatever. It is a
mere bubble, an empty vagary,—only this, and nothing more.
Before leaving this part of the subject, however, there are still one or two
points of interest to be mentioned. Shakespeare shows a fondness for the
use of phrases and illustrations taken from the law; and on such grounds our
Delia-Baconians argue that the plays must have been written by an eminent
lawyer, such as the Lord Chancellor Bacon undoubtedly was. They feel that
this is a great point on their side. One instance, cited by Nathaniel Holmes
and other Baconizers, is the celebrated case of Sir James Hales, who
committed suicide by drowning, and was accordingly buried at the junction
of crossroads, with a stake through his body, while all his property was
forfeited to the Crown. Presently his widow brought suit for an estate by
survivorship in joint-tenancy. Her case turned upon the question whether
the forfeiture occurred during her late husband's lifetime: if it did, he left no
estate which she could take; if it did not, she took the estate by
survivorship. The lady's counsel argued that so long as Sir James was alive
he had not been guilty of suicide, and the instant he died the estate vested in
his widow as joint-tenant. But the opposing counsel argued that the instant
Sir James voluntarily made the fatal plunge, and therefore before the breath
had left his body, the guilt of suicide was incurred and the forfeiture took
place. The court decided in favour of this view, and the widow got nothing.
There can be little doubt that this decision is travestied in the conversation
of the two clowns in "Hamlet" with regard to Ophelia's right to Christian
burial. The first clown makes precisely the point upon which the ingenious
counsel for the defendant had rested his argument: "If I drown myself
wittingly, it argues an act, and an act hath three branches; it is to act, to do,
and to perform." In making this distinction the counsel had maintained that
the second branch, or the doing, was the only thing for the law to consider.
The talk of the clowns brings out the humour of the case with Shakespeare's
inimitable lightness of touch.
The report of the Hales case was published in the volume of "Plowden's
Reports" which was issued in 1578; and Mr. Holmes informs us that "there
is not the slightest ground for a belief, on the facts which we know, that
Shakespeare ever looked into 'Plowden's Reports.'" This is one of the cases

where your stern Baconizer will not hear of anything short of absolute
demonstration. Mere considerations of human probability might disturb the
cogency of a neat little pair of syllogisms:—
(1.) The author of "Hamlet" must have read Plowden. Shakespeare never
read Plowden. Therefore Shakespeare was not the author of "Hamlet."
(2.) The author of "Hamlet" must have read Plowden. The lawyer, Bacon,
must have read Plowden. Therefore Bacon wrote "Hamlet."
With regard to the major premise here, one might freely deny it. The author
of "Hamlet" might easily have got all the knowledge involved from an
evening chat with some legal friend at an alehouse. Then as to the minor
premise, what earthly improbability is there in Shakespeare's having dipped
into Plowden? Can anybody but lawyers or law students enjoy reading
reports of law cases? I remember that, when I was about ten years old, a
favourite book with me was one entitled "Criminal Trials of All Countries,
by a Member of the Philadelphia Bar." I read it and read it, until forbidden
to read such a gruesome book, and then I read it all the more. One of the
most elaborate reports in it was that of the famous case of Captain
Donellan, tried in 1780 on a charge of poisoning his wife's brother, Sir
Theodosius Boughton, a dissipated and diseased young man, who died very
suddenly one day. A post-mortem inspection showed spots in the intestine,
which three ordinary country doctors ascribed to poisoning by laurel water,
while Sir John Hunter, one of the greatest authorities in Europe, testified
that they might equally well have ensued upon death from apoplexy. The
judge, Sir Francis Buller, saw fit, in his charge, to reckon this as the
testimony of three experts against one; and thus the jury were driven to a
verdict of murder, though it was not proved that any murder had been
committed. Captain Donellan, who lived in his brother-in-law's house, was
a man of blameless life, an amateur chemist, much given to fooling with
odorous liquids and hissing retorts. It was proved that he had been distilling
laurel water, and one or two other suspicious circumstances were alleged.
The whole trial was begun and ended on the same day, the jury were about
twenty minutes in finding the captain guilty, and three days afterward he
was hung. It was a case where reason was submerged and drowned under a
wave of angry prejudice shrieking for a victim.

Now, if I did not forthwith write a play, and take the occasion to ridicule the
judge's charge to the jury, it was because I could not write a play, not
because I did not fully appreciate the insult to law and common sense which
that unfortunate case involved. In view of this and other experiences, when
I now read a play or a novel that contains an intelligent allusion to some law
case, I am far from feeling driven to the conclusion that it must have been
written by a lord chancellor.
If Shakespeare's dramas are proved by such internal evidence to have been
written by a lawyer, that lawyer, by parity of reasoning, could hardly have
been Francis Bacon. For he was preëminently a chancery lawyer, and
chancery phrases are in Shakespeare conspicuously absent. The word
"injunctions" occurs five times in the plays, once perhaps with a reference
to its legal use ("Merchant of Venice," II. ix.); but nowhere do we find any
exhibition of a knowledge of chancery law. His allusions to the common
law are often very amusing, as when, in "Love's Labour's Lost," at the end
of a brisk punning-match between Boyet and Maria, he offers to kiss her,
laughingly asking for a grant of pasture on her lips, and she replies, "Not so;
my lips are no common, though several they be." Again, in "The Comedy of
Errors," "Dromio asserts that there is no time for a bald man to recover his
hair. This having been written, the law phrase suggested itself, and he was
asked whether he might not do it by fine and recovery, and this suggested
the efficiency of that proceeding to bar heirs; and this started the conceit
that thus the lost hair of another man would be recovered."[39] In such
quaint allusions to the common law and its proceedings Shakespeare
abounds, and we cannot help remembering that Nash, in his prefatory
epistle to Greene's "Menaphon," printed about 1589, makes sneering
mention of Shakespeare as a man who had left the "trade of Noverint,"
whereunto he was born, in order to try his hand at tragedy. The "trade of
Noverint" was a slang expression for the business of attorney; and this
passage has suggested that Shakespeare may have spent some time in a law
office, as student or as clerk, either before leaving Stratford, or perhaps
soon after his arrival in London. This seems to me not improbable. On the
other hand, "The Merchant of Venice" contains such crazy law that it is hard
to imagine it coming even from a lawyer's clerk. At all events, we may
safely say that the legal knowledge exhibited in the plays is no more than
might readily have been acquired by a man of assimilative genius

associating with lawyers. It simply shows the range and accuracy of
Shakespeare's powers of observation.
Let us come now to the second part of the Delia Bacon theory. Having
satisfied herself that William Shakespeare could not have written the poems
and plays published under his name, she jumped to the conclusion that
Francis Bacon was the author. Surely, a singular choice! Of all men, why
Francis Bacon?[40] Why not, as I said before, George Chapman or Ben
Jonson, men who were at once learned scholars and great poets? Chapman,
like Marlowe, could write the "mighty line." Jonson had rare lyric power;
his verses sing, as witness the wonderful "Do but look on her eyes," which
Francis Bacon could no more have written than he could have jumped over
the moon. To pitch upon Bacon as the writer of "Twelfth Night" or "Romeo
and Juliet" is about as sensible as to assert that "David Copperfield" must
have been written by Charles Darwin. After a familiar acquaintance of more
than forty years with Shakespeare's works, of nearly forty years with
Bacon's, the two men impress me as simply antipodal one to the other. A
similar feeling was entertained by the late Mr. Spedding, the biographer and
editor of Bacon; and no one has more happily hit off the vagaries of the
Baconizers than the foremost Bacon scholar now living, Dr. Kuno Fischer,
in his recent address before the Shakespeare Society at Weimar.[41] I used to
wonder whether the Bacon-Shakespeare people really knew anything about
Bacon, and, now that chance has led me to read their books, I am quite sure
they do not. To their minds, his works are simply a storehouse of texts
which serve them for controversial missiles, very much as scattered texts
from the Bible used to serve our uncritical grandfathers.
Francis Bacon was one of the most interesting persons of his time, and, as is
often the case with such many-sided characters, posterity has held various
opinions about him. On the one hand, his fame has grown brighter with the
years; on the other hand, it has come to be more or less circumscribed and
limited. Pope's famous verse, "The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind,"
may be disputed in all its three specifications. Bacon's treatment of Essex,
which formerly called forth such bitter condemnation, has been, I think,
completely justified; and as for the taking of bribes, which led to his
disgrace, there were circumstances which ought largely to mitigate the
severity of our judgment. But if Bacon was far from being a mean example
of human nature, it is surely an exaggeration to call him the wisest and

brightest of mankind. He was a scholar and critic of vast accomplishments,
a writer of noble English prose, and a philosopher who represented rather
than inaugurated a most beneficial revolution in the aims and methods of
scientific inquiry. He is one of the real glories of English literature, but he is
also one of the most overrated men of modern times. When we find
Macaulay saying that Bacon had "the most exquisitely constructed intellect
that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men," we need not be
surprised to find that his elaborate essay on Bacon is as false in its
fundamental conception as it is inaccurate in details. For a long time it was
one of the accepted commonplaces that Bacon inaugurated the method by
which modern discoveries in physical science have been made. Early in the
present century, such writers on the history of science as Whewell began to
show the incorrectness of this notion, and it was completely exploded by
Stanley Jevons in his "Principles of Science," the most profound treatise on
method that has appeared in the last fifty years. Jevons writes: "It is wholly
a mistake to say that modern science is the result of the Baconian
philosophy; it is the Newtonian philosophy and the Newtonian method
which have led to all the great triumphs of physical science, and ... the
'Principia' forms the true Novum Organon." This statement of Jevons is
thoroughly sound. The great Harvey, who knew how scientific discoveries
are made, said with gentle sarcasm that Bacon "wrote philosophy like a lord
chancellor;" yet Harvey would not have denied that the chancellor was
doing noble service as the eloquent expounder of many sides of the
scientific movement that was then gathering strength. Bacons mind was
eminently sagacious and fertile in suggestions, but the supreme creative
faculty, the power to lead men into new paths, was precisely the thing
which he did not possess. His place is a very high one among intellects of
the second order; but to rank him with such godlike spirits as Newton,
Spinoza, and Leibnitz simply shows that one has no real knowledge of the
work which such men have done.
So much for Bacon himself. With regard to him as possible author of the
Shakespeare poems and plays, it is difficult to imagine so learned a scholar
making the kind of mistakes that abound in those writings. Bacon would
hardly have introduced clocks into the Rome of Julius Cæsar; nor would he
have made Hector quote Aristotle, nor Hamlet study at the University of
Wittenberg, founded five hundred years after Hamlet's time; nor would he
have put pistols into the age of Henry IV., nor cannon into the age of King

John; and we may be pretty sure that he would not have made one of the
characters in "King Lear" talk about Turks and Bedlam. In this severely
realistic age of ours, writers are more on their guard against such
anachronisms than they were in Shakespeare's time; in his works we cannot
call them serious blemishes, for they do not affect the artistic character of
the plays, but they are certainly such mistakes as a scholar like Bacon
would not have committed.
Deeper down lies the contrast involved in the fact that Bacon was in a high
degree a subjective writer, from whom you are perpetually getting
revelations of his idiosyncrasies and moods, whereas of all writers in the
world Shakespeare is the most completely objective, the most absorbed in
the work of creation. In the one writer you are always reminded of the man
Bacon; in the other the personality is never thrust into sight. Bacon is highly
self-conscious; from Shakespeare self-consciousness is absent.
The contrast is equally great in respect of humour. I would not deny that
Bacon relished a joke, or could perpetrate a pun; but the bubbling, seething,
frolicsome, irrepressible drollery of Shakespeare is something quite foreign
to him. Read his essays, and you get charming English, wide knowledge,
deep thought, keen observation, worldly wisdom, good humour, sweet
serenity; but exuberant fun is not there. In writing these essays Bacon was
following an example set by Montaigne, but, as contrasted with the delicate
effervescent humour of the Frenchman, his style seems sober and almost
insipid. Only fancy such a man trying to write "The Merry Wives of
Windsor"!
Both Shakespeare and Bacon were sturdy and rapacious purloiners. They
seized upon other men's bright thoughts and made them their own without
compunction and without acknowledgment; and this may account for
sundry similarities which may be culled from the plays and from Bacon's
works, upon which Baconizing text-mongers are wont to lay great stress as
proof of common authorship. Some such resemblances may be due to
borrowing from common sources; others are doubtless purely fanciful;
others indicate either that Shakespeare cribbed from Bacon or vice versa.
Here are a few miscellaneous instances:—
Where Bacon says, "Be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others"
("Essay of Wisdom"), Shakespeare says:—

"To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

(Hamlet, I. iii.)

This looks as if one writer might have copied from the other. If so, it is
Bacon who is the thief, for the lines occur in the quarto "Hamlet" published
in 1603, whereas the "Essay of Wisdom" was first published in 1612.
Again, where Bacon, in the "Essay of Gardens," says, "The breath of
flowers comes and goes like the warbling of music," it reminds one strongly
of the exquisite passage in "Twelfth Night" where the Duke exclaims:—

"That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour."

I have little doubt that Bacon had this passage in mind when he wrote the
"Essay of Gardens," which was first published in 1625, two years later than
the complete folio of Shakespeare. This effectually disposes of the attempt
to cite these correspondences in evidence that Bacon wrote the plays.
Another instance is from "Richard III.:"—

"By a divine instinct men's minds mistrust
Ensuing danger; as, by proof, we see
The waters swell before a boisterous storm."

Bacon, in the "Essay of Sedition," writes, "As there are ... secret swellings
of seas before a tempest, so there are in states." But this essay was not
published till 1625, so again we find him copying Shakespeare. Many such
"parallelisms," cited to prove that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's works, do
really prove that he read them with great care and remembered them well,
or else took notes from them.
An interesting illustration of the helpless ignorance shown by Baconizers is
furnished by a remark of Sir Toby Belch in "Twelfth Night." In his
instructions to that dear old simpleton, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, about the

challenge, Sir Toby observes, "If thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not
be amiss." In Elizabethan English, to address a man as "thou" was to treat
him as socially inferior; such familiarity was allowable only between
members of the same family or in speaking to servants, just as you address
your wife, and likewise the cook and housemaid, by their Christian names,
while with the ladies of your acquaintance such familiarity would be
rudeness. The same rule for the pronoun survives to-day in French and
German, but has been forgotten in English. In the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh
in 1604, Justice Coke insulted the prisoner by calling out, "Thou viper! for I
thou thee, thou traitor!" Now, one of our Baconizers thinks that his idol, in
writing "Twelfth Night," introduced Sir Toby's suggestion in order to recall
to the audience Coke's abusive remark. Once more, a little attention to dates
would have prevented the making of a bad blunder. We know from
Manningham's Diary that "Twelfth Night" had been on the stage nearly two
years before Raleigh's trial. On the other hand, to say that the play might
have suggested to Coke his coarse speech would be admissible, but idle,
inasmuch as the expression "to thou a man" was an every-day phrase in that
age.
Here it naturally occurs to me to mention the "Promus," about which as
much fuss has been made as if it really furnished evidence in support of the
Baconian folly. There is in the British Museum a manuscript, in Bacon's
handwriting, entitled "Promus of Formularies and Elegancies." "Promus"
means "storehouse" or "treasury." A date at the top of the first page shows
that it was begun in December, 1594; there is nothing, I believe, to show
over how many years it extended. It is a scrap-book in which Bacon jotted
down such sentences, words, and phrases as struck his fancy, such as might
be utilized in his writings. These neatly turned phrases, these "formularies
and elegancies," are gathered from all quarters,—from the Bible, from
Virgil and Horace, from Ovid and Seneca, from Erasmus, from collections
of proverbs in various languages, etc. As there is apparently nothing
original in this scrap-bag, Mr. Spedding did not think it worth while to
include it in his edition of Bacon's works, but in the fourteenth volume he
gives a sufficient description of it, with illustrative extracts. In 1883 Mrs.
Henry Pott published the whole of this "Promus" manuscript, and swelled it
by comments and dissertations into a volume of 600 octavo pages. She had
found in it several hundred expressions which reminded her of passages in
Shakespeare, and so it confirmed her in the opinion which she already

entertained that Bacon was the author of Shakespeare's works. Thus, when
the "Promus" has a verse from Ovid, which means, "And the forced tongue
begins to lisp the sound commanded," it reminds Mrs. Pott of divers lines in
which Shakespeare uses the word "lisp," as for example, in "As You Like
It," "you lisp and wear strange suits;" and she jumps to the conclusion that
when Bacon jotted down the verse from Ovid, it was as a preparatory study
toward "As You Like It," and any other play that contains the word "lisp:"
therefore Bacon wrote all those plays, Q. E. D.! On the next page we find
Virgil's remark, "Thus was I wont to compare great things with small,"
made the father of Falstaff's "base comparisons," and Fluellen's "Macedon
and Monmouth," as well as honest Dogberry's "comparisons are odorous."
When one reads such things, evidently printed in all seriousness, one feels
like asking Mrs. Pott, in the apt words of Shakespeare's friend Fletcher,
"What mare's nest hast thou found?" ("Bonduca," V. ii.)
There are many phrases, however, in the "Promus" which undoubtedly
agree with phrases in the plays. They show that Bacon heard or read the
plays with great interest, and culled from them his "elegancies" with no
stinted hand. As for Mrs. Pott's bulky volume, it brings us so near to the
final reductio ad absurdum of the Bacon theory that we hardly need spend
many words upon the gross improbabilities which that theory involves. The
plays of Shakespeare were universally ascribed to him by his
contemporaries; many of them were published during his lifetime with his
name upon the title-page as the author; all were collected and published
together by Hemminge and Condell, two of his fellow actors, seven years
after his death; and for more than two centuries nobody ever dreamed of
looking for a different authorship, or of associating the plays with Bacon.
But this Chimborazo of prima facie evidence becomes a mere mole-hill in
the hands of your valiant Baconizer. It is all clear to him. Bacon did not
acknowledge the authorship of these works because such literature was
deemed frivolous, and current prejudices against theatres and playwrights
might injure his hopes of advancement at the bar and in political life.
Therefore, by some sort of private understanding with the ignorant and
sordid wretch Shakespeare,[42] at whose theatre they were brought out, their
authorship was ascribed to him, the real author died without revealing the
secret, and the whole world was deceived until the days of Delia Bacon.

But there are questions which even this ingenious hypothesis fails to
answer. Why should Bacon have taken the time to write those thirty-seven
plays, two poems, and one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, if they were
never to be known as his works? Not for money, surely, for that grasping
Shakespeare seems to have got the money as well as the fame; Bacon died a
poor man. His principal aim in life was to construct a new system of
philosophy; on this noble undertaking he spent such time as he could save
from the exactions of his public career as member of Parliament, chancery
lawyer, solicitor-general, attorney-general, lord chancellor; and he died with
this work far from finished. The volumes which he left behind him were
only fragments of the mighty structure which he had planned. We may well
ask, Where did this overburdened writer find the time for doing work of
another kind voluminous enough to fill a lifetime, and what motive had he
for doing it without recompense in either fame or money? Baconizers find it
strange that Shakespeare's will contains no reference to his plays as literary
property. The omission is certainly interesting, since it seems to indicate
that he had parted with his pecuniary interest in them,—had perhaps sold it
out to the Globe Theatre. If this omission can be held to show that
Shakespeare was lacking in fondness for the productions of his own genius,
what shall be said of the notion that Bacon spent half his life in writing
works the paternity of which he must forever disown?
This question is answered by Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, a writer who
speculates with equal infelicity on all subjects, but never suffers for lack of
boldness. He published in 1887 a book even bigger than that of Mrs. Pott,
for it has nearly 1000 pages. Its title is, "The Great Cryptogram," and its
thesis is, that Bacon really did claim the authorship of the Shakespeare
plays. Only the claim was made in a cipher, and if you simply make some
numbers mean some words, and other words mean other numbers, and
perform a good many sums in what the Mock Turtle called "ambition,
distraction, uglification, and derision," you will be able to read this claim
between the lines, along with much other wonderful information. Thus does
the arithmetical Donnelly carry us quite a long stride nearer to the reductio
ad absurdum, or suicide point, than we were left by Mrs. Pott, with her
lisping and limping comparisons.
But before we come to the jumping-off place, let us pause for a moment and
take a retrospective glance at the natural history of the Bacon-Shakespeare

craze. What was it that first unlocked the sluice-gates, and poured forth
such a deluge of foolishness upon a sorely suffering world? It will hardly do
to lay the blame upon poor Delia Bacon. Her suggestions would have borne
no fruit had they not found a public, albeit a narrow one, in some degree
prepared for them. Who, then, prepared the soil for the seeds of this idiocy
to take root? Who but the race of fond and foolish Shakespeare
commentators, with their absurd claims for their idol? During the eighteenth
century Shakespeare was generally underrated. Voltaire wondered how a
nation that possessed such a noble tragedy as Addison's "Cato" could
endure such plays as "Hamlet" and "Othello." In the days of Scott and
Burns a reaction set in; and Shakespeare worship reached its height when
the Germans took it up, and, not satisfied with calling him the prince of
poets and peerless master of dramatic art, began to discover in his works all
sorts of hidden philosophy and impossible knowledge. Of the average
German mind Lowell good-naturedly says that "it finds its keenest pleasure
in divining a profound significance in the most trifling things, and the
number of mare's nests that have been stared into by the German Gelehrter
through his spectacles passes calculation."[43] But the Germans are not the
only sinners; let me cite an instance from near home. In the quarto "Hamlet"
of 1603 we read:—

"Full forty years are past, their date is gone,
Since happy time joined both our hearts as one:
And now the blood that filled my youthful veins
Runs weakly in their pipes," etc.

Whereupon Mr. Edward Vining calls upon us to observe how Shakespeare,
"to whom all human knowledge seems to be but a matter of instinct, in
[these lines] asserts the circulation of the blood in the veins and 'pipes,' a
truth which Harvey probably did not even suspect until at least thirteen
years later," etc.[44] Does Mr. Vining really suppose that what Harvey did
was to discover that blood runs in our veins? A little further study of history
would have taught him that even the ancients knew that blood runs in the
veins.[45] About fourteen hundred years before "Hamlet" was written, Galen
proved that it also runs in the arteries. After Galen's time, it was believed
that the dark blood nourishes such plebeian organs as the liver, while the
bright blood nourishes such lordly organs as the brain, and that the

interchange takes place in the heart; until the sixteenth century, when
Vesalius proved that the interchange does not take place in the heart, and
the martyr Servetus proved that it does take place in the lungs; and so on till
1619, when Harvey discovered that dark blood is brought by the veins to
the right side of the heart, and thence driven into the lungs, where it
becomes bright and flows into the left side of the heart, thence to be
propelled throughout the body in the arteries. That it then grows dark and
returns through the veins Harvey believed, but no one could tell how, until,
forty years later, Malpighi with his microscope detected the capillaries.
Now to talk about Shakespeare discerning as if by instinct a truth which
Harvey afterward discovered is simply silly. Instead of showing rare
scientific knowledge, his remark about blood running in the veins is one
that anybody might have made.
This is a fair specimen of the ignorant way in which doting commentators
have built up an impossible Shakespeare, until at last they have provoked a
reaction. Sooner or later the question was sure to arise, Where did your
Stratford boy get all this abstruse scientific knowledge? The keynote was
perhaps first sounded by August von Schlegel, who persuaded himself that
Shakespeare had mastered "all the things and relations of this world," and
then went on to declare that the accepted account of his life must be a mere
fable. Thus we reach the point from which Delia Bacon started.
It may safely be said that all theories of Shakespeare's plays which suppose
them to be attempts at teaching occult philosophical doctrines, or which
endow them with any other meanings than those which their words directly
and plainly convey, are a delusion and a snare. Those plays were written,
not to teach philosophy, but to fill the theatre and make money. They were
written by a practised actor and manager, the most consummate master of
dramatic effects that ever lived; a poet unsurpassed for fertility of invention,
unequalled for melody of language, unapproached for delicacy of fancy,
inexhaustible in humour, profoundest of moralists; a man who knew human
nature by intuition, as Mozart knew counterpoint or as Chopin knew
harmony. The name of that writer was none other than William Shakespeare
of Stratford-on-Avon.
It was inevitable that the Bacon folly, after once adopting such methods as
those of Mrs. Pott and Mr. Donnelly, should proceed to commit suicide by
piling up extravagances. By such methods one can prove anything, and

accordingly we find these writers busy in tracing Bacon's hand in the
writings of Greene, Marlowe, Shirley, Marston, Massinger, Middleton, and
Webster. They are sure that he was the author of Montaigne's Essays, which
were afterward translated into what we have always supposed to be the
French original. Mr. Donnelly believes that Bacon also wrote Burton's
"Anatomy of Melancholy." Next comes Dr. Orville Owen with a new
cipher, which proves that Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth by Robert
Dudley, and that he was the author of the "Faerie Queene" and other poems
attributed to Edmund Spenser. Finally we have Mr. J. E. Roe, who does not
mean to be outdone. He asks us what we are to think of the notion that an
ignorant tinker, like John Bunyan, could have written the most perfect
allegory in any language. Perish the thought! Nobody but Bacon could have
done it. Of course Bacon had been more than fifty years in his grave when
"Pilgrim's Progress" was published as Bunyan's. But your true Baconizer is
never stopped by trifles. Mr. Roe assures us that Bacon wrote that heavenly
book, as well as "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Tale of a Tub;" which surely
begins to make him seem ubiquitous and everlasting. If things go on at this
rate, we shall presently have a religious sect holding as its first article of
faith that Francis Bacon created the heavens and the earth in six days, and
rested on the seventh day.
November, 1896.

XIV
SOME CRANKS AND THEIR CROTCHETS

"Now, by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time!"

Merchant of Venice, I. i.

About five-and-twenty years ago, when I was assistant librarian at Harvard
University, much of my time was occupied in revising and bringing toward
completion the gigantic pair of twin catalogues—of authors and subjects—
which my predecessor, Dr. Ezra Abbot, had started in 1861. Twins they
were in simultaneity of birth, but not in likeness of growth. Naturally, the
classified catalogue was much bigger than its brother, filled more drawers,
cost more money, and made a vast deal more trouble. For while some books
were easy enough to classify, others were not at all easy, and sometimes
curious questions would arise.
One day, for example, I happened to be looking at a pamphlet on the value
of Pi; and, should any of my readers ask what that might mean, I should
answer that Pi (pi ) is the Greek letter which geometers use to denote the
ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The arithmetical value
of this symbol is 3.1415926536, and so on in an endless fraction. Is it not
hard to see what there can be in such an innocent decimal to irritate human
beings and destroy their peace of mind? Yet so it is. Many a human life has
been wrecked upon Pi. To a certain class of our fellow-creatures its
existence is maddening. It interferes with the success of a little scheme on
which they have set their hearts,—nothing less than to construct a square
which shall be exactly equivalent in dimensions to a given circle. Nobody
has ever done such a thing, for it cannot be done. But when mathematicians
tell these poor people that such is the case, they howl with rage, and,
dipping their pens in gall, write book after book bristling with figures to
prove that they have "squared the circle." The Harvard library does not buy
such books, but it accepts all manner of gifts, and has thus come to contain
some queer things.
When I consulted the subject catalogue, to see under what head it had been
customary to classify these lucubrations on Pi, I found, sure enough, that it
was Mathematics § Circle-Squaring. Following this cue, I explored the
drawers in other directions, and found books on "perpetual motion" formed
a section under Physics, while crazy interpretations of the book of Daniel

were grouped along with works of solid Biblical scholarship by such
eminent writers as Reuss and Kuenen and Cheyne. Clearly, here was a case
for reform. The principle of classification was faulty. In one sense, the
treatment of the quadrature of the circle may be regarded as a section under
the general head of mathematics; as, for example, when Lindemann, in
1882, showed that Pi cannot be represented as the root of any algebraic
equation with rational coefficients. But our circle-squaring literature is very
different. It is usually written by persons whose mathematical horizon
scarcely extends beyond long division: just as the writers on perpetual
motion know nothing of physics; just as so many expositors have dealt with
the ten-horned beast in blissful ignorance alike of ancient history and of the
principles of literary criticism. What all such books illustrate, however
various may be their ostensible themes, is the pathology of the human mind.
They are specimens of Insane Literature. As such they have a certain sort of
interest; and to any rational being it is the only sort they can have.
So I culled from many a little drawer the cards appertaining to divers
printed products of morbid cerebration, and gathered them into a class of
Insane Literature; and under this rubric such sections as Circle-Squaring,
Perpetual Motion, Great Pyramid, Earth not a Globe, etc., were evidently in
their proper place. The name of the class was duly inscribed on the outside
of its drawer, and the matter seemed happily disposed of.
The way of the reformer, however, is beset with difficulties, and it is seldom
that his first efforts are crowned with entire success. Not many days had
elapsed since this emendation of the catalogue, when one of my assistants
brought me the card of a book on the Apocalypse, by a certain Mr.
Smallwit, and called my attention to the fact that it was classified as Insane
Literature.
"Very well," I said, "so it is."
"I don't doubt it, sir," said she; "but the author lives over in Chelsea, and I
saw him this morning in one of the alcoves. Perhaps, if he were to look in
the catalogue and see how his book is classified, he mightn't altogether like
it. Then, as I looked a little further along the cards, I came upon this
pamphlet by Herr Dummkopf, of Breslau, upsetting the law of gravitation;
and—do you know?—Herr Dummkopf is spending the winter here in
Cambridge!"

"To be sure," said I, "it was very stupid of me not to foresee such cases. Of
course we can't call a man a fool to his face. In a catalogue which marshals
the quick along with the dead some heed must be paid to the amenities of
life. Pray get and bring me all those cards."
By the time they arrived a satisfactory solution of the difficulty had
suggested itself. I told the assistant simply to scratch out "Insane," and put
"Eccentric" instead. For while the harsh Latin epithet would of course
infuriate Messrs. Dummkopf, Smallwit & Co., it might be doubted if their
feelings would be hurt by the milder Greek word. Some people of their
stripe, to whom notoriety is the very breath of their nostrils, would consider
it a mark of distinction to be called eccentric. At all events, the harshness
would be delicately veiled under a penumbra of ambiguity.
Thus the class Eccentric Literature was established in our catalogue, and
there it has remained, while the books in the library have increased from a
hundred thousand to half a million. Once or twice, I am told, has some
disgusted author uttered a protest, but the quiet of Gore Hall has not been
disturbed thereby. Care is needed in treating such a subject, and my rule
was that no amount of mere absurdity, no extremity of dissent from
generally received opinions, should consign a book to the class of Eccentric
Literature, unless it showed unmistakable symptoms of crankery, or the
buzzing of a bee in the author's bonnet. This rule has been strictly followed.
One lot of books—the Bacon-Shakespeare stuff—which I intended to put in
this class, but forgot to do so because of sore stress of work, still remain
absurdly grouped along with the books on Shakespeare written by men in
their senses. With this exception, the class offers us a fairly comprehensive
view of the literature of cranks.
Just where the line should be drawn between sanity and crankery is not
always easy to determine, and must usually be left to soundness of
judgment in each particular case, as with so many other questions of all
grades, from the supreme court down to the kitchen. One of the most
frequent traits of your crank is his megalomania, or self-magnification. His
intellectual equipment is so slender that he cannot see wherein he is inferior
to Descartes or Newton. Without enough knowledge to place him in the
sixth form of a grammar school, he will assail the conclusions of the
greatest minds the world has seen. His mood is belligerent; since people
will not take him at his own valuation, he is apt to regard society as

engaged in a conspiracy to ignore and belittle him. Of humour he is pretty
sure to be destitute; an abounding sense of the ludicrous is one of the best
safeguards of mental health, and even a slight endowment will usually nip
and stunt the fungus growth of crankery.
The slightest glimmering sense of humour would have restrained that
inveterate circle-squarer, James Smith, from publishing (in 1865) his
pamphlet entitled "The British Association in Jeopardy, and Dr. Whewell,
the Master of Trinity, in the Stocks without Hope of Escape." His case, with
those of many other ingenious lunatics, was racily set forth by the late
Professor De Morgan in his "Budget of Paradoxes" (London, 1872), a bulky
book dealing with the author's personal experiences with cranks and their
crotchets. It was De Morgan's lot as an eminent mathematician to be
outrageously bored by circle-squarers and their kin, and it was a happy
thought to put on record the queer things that happened. His friends asked
him again and again why he took the trouble to mention and expose such
absurdities. He replied that, when your crank publishes a book "full of
figures which few readers can criticise, a great many people are staggered
to this extent, that they imagine there must be the indefinite something in
the mysterious all this. They are brought to the point of suspicion that the
mathematicians ought not to treat all this with such undisguised contempt,
at least. Now I have no fear for π; but I do think it possible that general
opinion might in time demand that the crowd of circle-squarers, etc., should
be admitted to the honours of opposition; and this would be a time-tax of
five per cent. one man with another, upon those who are better employed."
At any rate, continues De Morgan, with a twinkle in the corner of his eye,
whether in chastising cranks he has any motive but public good "must be
referred to those who can decide whether a missionary chooses his pursuit
solely to convert the heathen." He confesses that perhaps he may have a
little of the spirit of Colonel Quagg, whose principle of action was thus
succinctly expressed: "I licks ye because I kin, and because I like, and
because ye's critters that licks is good for!"
Among the creatures whose malady seemed to call for such drastic
treatment was Captain Forman, R. N., who in 1833 wrote against the law of
gravitation, and got not a word of notice. Then he wrote to Sir John
Herschel and Lord Brougham, asking them to get his book reviewed in
some of the quarterlies. Receiving no answer from these gentlemen, he

addressed in one of the newspapers a card to Lord John Russell, inveighing
against their "dishonest" behaviour. Still getting no satisfaction, the
valorous captain wrote to the Royal Astronomical Society with a challenge
to controversy. To this letter came a polite but brief answer, advising him to
study the rudiments of mechanics. It was not in the paradoxer's nature to
submit tamely to such treatment; and he replied in a printed pamphlet,
wherein he called that learned society "craven dunghill cocks," and
bestrewed them, with other choice flowers of rhetoric, much to the relief of
his feelings.
One of this naval officer's fellow sufferers was a farm labourer, who took it
into his head that the Lord Chancellor had offered £100,000 reward to any
one who should square the circle. So Hodge went to work and squared it,
and then hied him to London, blissfully dreaming of sudden wealth.
Hearing that De Morgan was a great mathematician, he left his papers with
him, including a letter to the Lord Chancellor, claiming the £100,000. De
Morgan returned the papers with a note, saying that no such prize had ever
been offered, and gently hinting that the worthy Hodge had not sufficient
knowledge to see in what the problem consisted. This elicited from the
rustic philosopher a long letter, from which I must quote a few sentences, so
characteristic of the circle-squaring talent and temper:—

Doctor Morgan, Sir. Permit me to address you
Brute Creation may perhaps enjoy the faculty of beholding visible
things with a more penitrating eye than ourselves. But Spiritual objects
are as far out of their reach as though they had no being Nearest
therefore to the brute Creation are those men who Suppose themselves
to be so far governed by external objects as to believe nothing but what
they See and feel And Can accomedate to their Shallow understanding
and Imaginations
... When a Gentleman of your Standing in Society ... Can not
understand or Solve a problem That is explicitly explained by words
and Letters and mathematacally operated by figuers He had best
consult the wise proverd
Do that which thou Canst understand and Comprehend for thy good.
I would recommend that Such Gentleman Change his business