Chapter XII: Part IX: , p. 475, 1890), Dr. Johnstone Stoney, F. R. S., published an (2)

Diametrically opposed to evolution by chance, are those theories which attribute all progress to an inward necessary principle, or other form of necessity. Many naturalists have thought that if an egg is destined to go through a certain series of embryological transformations, from which it is perfectly certain not to deviate, and if in geological time almost exactly the same forms appear successively, one replacing another in the same order, the strong presumption is that this latter succession was as predeterminate and certain to take place as the former. So, Nägeli, for instance, conceives that it somehow follows from the first law of motion and the peculiar, but unknown, molecular constitution of protoplasm, that forms must complicate themselves more and more. Kölliker makes one form generate another after a certain maturation has been accomplished. Weismann, too, though he calls himself a Darwinian, holds that nothing is due to chance, but that all forms are simple mechanical resultants of the heredity from two parents.[21] It is very noticeable that all these different sectaries seek to import into their science a mechanical necessity to which the facts that come under their observation do not point. Those geologists who think that the variation of species is due to cataclasmic alterations of climate or of the chemical constitution of the air and water are also making mechanical necessity chief factor of evolution.

Evolution by sporting and evolution by mechanical necessity are conceptions warring against one another. A third method, which supersedes their strife, lies enwrapped in the theory of Lamarck. According to his view, all that distinguishes the highest organic forms from the most rudimentary has been brought about by little hypertrophies or atrophies which have affected individuals early in their lives, and have been transmitted to their offspring. Such a transmission of acquired characters is of the general nature of habit-taking, and this is the representative and derivative within the physiological domain of the law of mind. Its action is essentially dissimilar to that of a physical force; and that is the secret of the repugnance of such necessitarians as Weismann to admitting its existence. The Lamarckians further suppose that although some of the modifications of form so transmitted were originally due to mechanical causes, yet the chief factors of their first production were the straining of endeavor and the overgrowth superinduced by exercise, together with the opposite actions. Now, endeavor, since it is directed toward an end, is essentially psychical, even though it be sometimes unconscious; and the growth due to exercise, as I argued in my last paper, follows a law of a character quite contrary to that of mechanics.

Lamarckian evolution is thus evolution by the force of habit.—That sentence slipped off my pen while one of those neighbors whose function in the social cosmos seems to be that of an Interrupter, was asking me a question. Of course, it is nonsense. Habit is mere inertia, a resting on one’s oars, not a propulsion. Now it is energetic projaculation (lucky there is such a word, or this untried hand might have been put to inventing one) by which in the typical instances of Lamarckian evolution the new elements of form are first created. Habit, however, forces them to take practical shapes, compatible with the structures they affect, and in the form of heredity and otherwise, gradually replaces the spontaneous energy that sustains them. Thus, habit plays a double part; it serves to establish the new features, and also to bring them into harmony with the general morphology and function of the animals and plants to which they belong. But if the reader will now kindly give himself the trouble of turning back a page or two, he will see that this account of Lamarckian evolution coincides with the general description of the action of love, to which, I suppose, he yielded his assent.

Remembering that all matter is really mind, remembering, too, the continuity of mind, let us ask what aspect Lamarckian evolution takes on within the domain of consciousness. Direct endeavor can achieve almost nothing. It is as easy by taking thought to add a cubit to one’s stature, as it is to produce an idea acceptable to any of the Muses by merely straining for it, before it is ready to come. We haunt in vain the sacred well and throne of Mnemosyne; the deeper workings of the spirit take place in their own slow way, without our connivance. Let but their bugle sound, and we may then make our effort, sure of an oblation for the altar of whatsoever divinity its savor gratifies. Besides this inward process, there is the operation of the environment, which goes to break up habits destined to be broken up and so to render the mind lively. Everybody knows that the long continuance of a routine of habit makes us lethargic, while a succession of surprises wonderfully brightens the ideas. Where there is a motion, where history is a-making, there is the focus of mental activity, and it has been said that the arts and sciences reside within the temple of Janus, waking when that is open, but slumbering when it is closed. Few psychologists have perceived how fundamental a fact this is. A portion of mind abundantly commissured to other portions works almost mechanically. It sinks to the condition of a railway junction. But a portion of mind almost isolated, a spiritual peninsula, or _cul-de-sac_, is like a railway terminus. Now mental commissures are habits. Where they abound, originality is not needed and is not found; but where they are in defect, spontaneity is set free. Thus, the first step in the Lamarckian evolution of mind is the putting of sundry thoughts into situations in which they are free to play. As to growth by exercise, I have already shown, in discussing “Man’s Glassy Essence,” in last October’s _Monist_, what its _modus operandi_ must be conceived to be, at least, until a second equally definite hypothesis shall have been offered. Namely, it consists of the flying asunder of molecules, and the reparation of the parts by new matter. It is, thus, a sort of reproduction. It takes place only during exercise, because the activity of protoplasm consists in the molecular disturbance which is its necessary condition. Growth by exercise takes place also in the mind. Indeed, that is what it is to _learn_. But the most perfect illustration is the development of a philosophical idea by being put into practice. The conception which appeared, at first, as unitary, splits up into special cases; and into each of these new thought must enter to make a practicable idea. This new thought, however, follows pretty closely the model of the parent conception; and thus a homogeneous development takes place. The parallel between this and the course of molecular occurrences is apparent. Patient attention will be able to trace all these elements in the transaction called learning.

Three modes of evolution have thus been brought before us; evolution by fortuitous variation, evolution by mechanical necessity, and evolution by creative love. We may term them _tychastic_ evolution, or _tychasm_, _anancastic_ evolution, or _anancasm_, and _agapastic_ evolution, or _agapasm_. The doctrines which represent these as severally of principal importance, we may term _tychasticism_, _anancasticism_, and _agapasticism_. On the other hand the mere propositions that absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and the law of love, are severally operative in the cosmos, may receive the names of _tychism_, _anancism_, and _agapism_.

All three modes of evolution are composed of the same general elements. Agapasm exhibits them the most clearly. The good result is here brought to pass, first, by the bestowal of spontaneous energy by the parent upon the offspring, and, second, by the disposition of the latter to catch the general idea of those about it and thus to subserve the general purpose. In order to express the relation that tychasm and anancasm bear to agapasm, let me borrow a word from geometry. An ellipse crossed by a straight line is a sort of cubic curve; for a cubic is a curve which is cut thrice by a straight line; now a straight line might cut the ellipse twice and its associated straight line a third time. Still the ellipse with the straight line across it would not have the characteristics of a cubic. It would have, for instance, no contrary flexure, which no true cubic wants; and it would have two nodes, which no true cubic has. The geometers say that it is a _degenerate_ cubic. Just so, tychasm and anancasm are degenerate forms of agapasm.

Men who seek to reconcile the Darwinian idea with Christianity will remark that tychastic evolution, like the agapastic, depends upon a reproductive creation, the forms preserved being those that use the spontaneity conferred upon them in such wise as to be drawn into harmony with their original, quite after the Christian scheme. Very good! This only shows that just as love cannot have a contrary, but must embrace what is most opposed to it, as a degenerate case of it, so tychasm is a kind of agapasm. Only, in the tychastic evolution progress is solely owing to the distribution of the napkin-hidden talent of the rejected servant among those not rejected, just as ruined gamesters leave their money on the table to make those not yet ruined so much the richer. It makes the felicity of the lambs just the damnation of the goats, transposed to the other side of the equation. In genuine agapasm, on the other hand, advance takes place by virtue of a positive sympathy among the created springing from continuity of mind. This is the idea which tychasticism knows not how to manage.

The anancasticist might here interpose, claiming that the mode of evolution for which he contends agrees with agapasm at the point at which tychasm departs from it. For it makes development go through certain phases, having its inevitable ebbs and flows, yet tending on the whole to a foreordained perfection. Bare existence by this its destiny betrays an intrinsic affinity for the good. Herein, it must be admitted, anancasm shows itself to be in a broad acception a species of agapasm. Some forms of it might easily be mistaken for the genuine agapasm. The Hegelian philosophy is such an anancasticism. With its revelatory religion, with its synechism (however imperfectly set forth), with its “reflection,” the whole idea of the theory is superb, almost sublime. Yet, after all, living freedom is practically omitted from its method. The whole movement is that of a vast engine, impelled by a _vis a tergo_, with a blind and mysterious fate of arriving at a lofty goal. I mean that such an engine it _would_ be, if it really worked; but in point of fact, it is a Keely motor. Grant that it really acts as it professes to act, and there is nothing to do but accept the philosophy. But never was there seen such an example of a long chain of reasoning,—shall I say with a flaw in every link?—no, with every link a handful of sand, squeezed into shape in a dream. Or say, it is a pasteboard model of a philosophy that in reality does not exist. If we use the one precious thing it contains, the idea of it, introducing the tychism which the arbitrariness of its every step suggests, and make that the support of a vital freedom which is the breath of the spirit of love, we may be able to produce that genuine agapasticism, at which Hegel was aiming.

A THIRD ASPECT. DISCRIMINATION.

In the very nature of things, the line of demarcation between the three modes of evolution is not perfectly sharp. That does not prevent its being quite real; perhaps it is rather a mark of its reality. There is in the nature of things no sharp line of demarcation between the three fundamental colors, red, green, and violet. But for all that they are really different. The main question is whether three radically different evolutionary elements have been operative; and the second question is what are the most striking characteristics of whatever elements have been operative.

I propose to devote a few pages to a very slight examination of these questions in their relation to the historical development of human thought. I first formulate for the reader’s convenience the briefest possible definitions of the three conceivable modes of development of thought, distinguishing also two varieties of anancasm and three of agapasm. The tychastic development of thought, then, will consist in slight departures from habitual ideas in different directions indifferently, quite purposeless and quite unconstrained whether by outward circumstances or by force of logic, these new departures being followed by unforeseen results which tend to fix some of them as habits more than others. The anancastic development of thought will consist of new ideas adopted without foreseeing whither they tend, but having a character determined by causes either external to the mind, such as changed circumstances of life, or internal to the mind as logical developments of ideas already accepted, such as generalisations. The agapastic development of thought is the adoption of certain mental tendencies, not altogether heedlessly, as in tychasm, nor quite blindly by the mere force of circumstances or of logic, as in anancasm, but by an immediate attraction for the idea itself, whose nature is divined before the mind possesses it, by the power of sympathy, that is, by virtue of the continuity of mind; and this mental tendency may be of three varieties, as follows. First, it may affect a whole people or community in its collective personality, and be thence communicated to such individuals as are in powerfully sympathetic connection with the collective people, although they may be intellectually incapable of attaining the idea by their private understandings or even perhaps of consciously apprehending it. Second, it may affect a private person directly, yet so that he is only enabled to apprehend the idea, or to appreciate its attractiveness, by virtue of his sympathy with his neighbors, under the influence of a striking experience or development of thought. The conversion of St. Paul may be taken as an example of what is meant. Third, it may affect an individual, independently of his human affections, by virtue of an attraction it exercises upon his mind, even before he has comprehended it. This is the phenomenon which has been well called the _divination_ of genius; for it is due to the continuity between the man’s mind and the Most High.

Let us next consider by means of what tests we can discriminate between these different categories of evolution. No absolute criterion is possible in the nature of things, since in the nature of things there is no sharp line of demarcation between the different classes. Nevertheless, quantitative symptoms may be found by which a sagacious and sympathetic judge of human nature may be able to estimate the approximate proportions in which the different kinds of influence are commingled.

So far as the historical evolution of human thought has been tychastic, it should have proceeded by insensible or minute steps; for such is the nature of chances when so multiplied as to show phenomena of regularity. For example, assume that of the native-born white adult males of the United States in 1880, one fourth part were below 5 feet 4 inches in stature and one fourth part above 5 feet 8 inches. Then by the principles of probability, among the whole population, we should expect

216 under 4 feet 6 inches, 216 above 6 feet 6 inches.
48 ” 4 ” 5 ” 48 ” 6 ” 7 ”
9 ” 4 ” 4 ” 9 ” 6 ” 8 ”
less than 2 ” 4 ” 3 ” less than 2 ” 6 ” 9 ”

I set down these figures to show how insignificantly few are the cases in which anything very far out of the common run presents itself by chance. Though the stature of only every second man is included within the four inches between 5 feet 4 inches and 5 feet 8 inches, yet if this interval be extended by thrice four inches above and below, it will embrace all our 8 millions odd of native-born adult white males (of 1880), except only 9 taller and 9 shorter.

The test of minute variation, if _not_ satisfied, absolutely negatives tychasm. If it _is_ satisfied, we shall find that it negatives anancasm but not agapasm. We want a positive test, satisfied by tychasm, only. Now wherever we find men’s thought taking by imperceptible degrees a turn contrary to the purposes which animate them, in spite of their highest impulses, there, we may safely conclude, there has been a tychastic action.

Students of the history of mind there be of an erudition to fill an imperfect scholar like me with envy edulcorated by joyous admiration, who maintain that ideas when just started are and can be little more than freaks, since they cannot yet have been critically examined, and further that everywhere and at all times progress has been so gradual that it is difficult to make out distinctly what original step any given man has taken. It would follow that tychasm has been the sole method of intellectual development. I have to confess I cannot read history so; I cannot help thinking that while tychasm has sometimes been operative, at others great steps covering nearly the same ground and made by different men independently, have been mistaken for a succession of small steps, and further that students have been reluctant to admit a real entitative “spirit” of an age or of a people, under the mistaken and unscrutinised impression that they should thus be opening the door to wild and unnatural hypotheses. I find, on the contrary, that, however it may be with the education of individual minds, the historical development of thought has seldom been of a tychastic nature, and exclusively in backward and barbarising movements. I desire to speak with the extreme modesty which befits a student of logic who is required to survey so very wide a field of human thought that he can cover it only by a reconnaisance, to which only the greatest skill and most adroit methods can impart any value at all; but, after all, I can only express my own opinions and not those of anybody else; and in my humble judgment, the largest example of tychasm is afforded by the history of Christianity, from about its establishment by Constantine, to, say, the time of the Irish monasteries, an era or eon of about 500 years. Undoubtedly the external circumstance which more than all others at first inclined men to accept Christianity in its loveliness and tenderness, was the fearful extent to which society was broken up into units by the unmitigated greed and hard-heartedness into which the Romans had seduced the world. And yet it was that very same fact, more than any other external circumstance, that fostered that bitterness against the wicked world of which the primitive Gospel of Mark contains not a single trace. At least, I do not detect it in the remark about the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, where nothing is said about vengeance, nor even in that speech where the closing lines of Isaiah are quoted, about the worm and the fire that feed upon the “carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me.” But little by little the bitterness increases until in the last book of the New Testament, its poor distracted author represents that all the time Christ was talking about having come to save the world, the secret design was to catch the entire human race, with the exception of a paltry 144000, and souse them all in brimstone lake, and as the smoke of their torment went up for ever and ever, to turn and remark, “There is no curse any more.” Would it be an insensible smirk or a fiendish grin that should accompany such an utterance? I wish I could believe St. John did not write it; but it is his gospel which tells about the “resurrection unto condemnation,”—that is of men’s being resuscitated just for the sake of torturing them;—and, at any rate, the Revelation is a very ancient composition. One can understand that the early Christians were like men trying with all their might to climb a steep declivity of smooth wet clay; the deepest and truest element of their life, animating both heart and head, was universal-love; but they were continually, and against their wills, slipping into a party spirit, every slip serving as a precedent, in a fashion but too familiar to every man. This party feeling insensibly grew until by about A. D. 330 the lustre of the pristine integrity that in St. Mark reflects the white spirit of light was so far tarnished that Eusebius, (the Jared Sparks of that day,) in the preface to his History, could announce his intention of exaggerating everything that tended to the glory of the church and of suppressing whatever might disgrace it. His Latin contemporary Lactantius is worse, still; and so the darkling went on increasing until before the end of the century the great library of Alexandria was destroyed by Theophilus,[22] until Gregory the Great, two centuries later, burnt the great library of Rome, proclaiming that “Ignorance is the mother of devotion,” (which is true, just as oppression and injustice is the mother of spirituality,) until a sober description of the state of the church would be a thing our not too nice newspapers would treat as “unfit for publication.” All this movement is shown by the application of the test given above to have been tychastic. Another very much like it on a small scale, only a hundred times swifter, for the study of which there are documents by the library-full, is to be found in the history of the French Revolution.

Anancastic evolution advances by successive strides with pauses between. The reason is that in this process a habit of thought having been overthrown is supplanted by the next strongest. Now this next strongest is sure to be widely disparate from the first, and as often as not is its direct contrary. It reminds one of our old rule of making the second candidate vice-president. This character, therefore, clearly distinguishes anancasm from tychasm. The character which distinguishes it from agapasm is its purposelessness. But external and internal anancasm have to be examined separately. Development under the pressure of external circumstances, or cataclasmine evolution, is in most cases unmistakable enough. It has numberless degrees of intensity, from the brute force, the plain war, which has more than once turned the current of the world’s thought, down to the hard fact of evidence, or what has been taken for it, which has been known to convince men by hordes. The only hesitation that can subsist in the presence of such a history is a quantitative one. Never are external influences the only ones which affect the mind, and therefore it must be a matter of judgment for which it would scarcely be worth while to attempt to set rules, whether a given movement is to be regarded as principally governed from without or not. In the rise of medieval thought, I mean scholasticism and the synchronistic art developments, undoubtedly the crusades and the discovery of the writings of Aristotle were powerful influences. The development of scholasticism from Roscellin to Albertus Magnus closely follows the successive steps in the knowledge of Aristotle. Prantl thinks that that is the whole story, and few men have thumbed more books than Carl Prantl. He has done good solid work, notwithstanding his slap-dash judgments. But we shall never make so much as a good beginning of comprehending scholasticism until the whole has been systematically explored and digested by a company of students regularly organised and held under rule for that purpose. But as for the period we are now specially considering, that which synchronised the Romanesque architecture, the literature is easily mastered. It does not quite justify Prantl’s dicta as to the slavish dependence of these authors upon their authorities. Moreover, they kept a definite purpose steadily before their minds, throughout all their studies. I am, therefore, unable to offer this period of scholasticism as an example of pure external anancasm, which seems to be the fluorine of the intellectual elements. Perhaps the recent Japanese reception of western ideas is the purest instance of it in history. Yet in combination with other elements, nothing is commoner. If the development of ideas under the influence of the study of external facts be considered as external anancasm,—it is on the border between the external and the internal forms,—it is, of course, the principal thing in modern learning. But Whewell, whose masterly comprehension of the history of science critics have been too ignorant properly to appreciate, clearly shows that it is far from being the overwhelmingly preponderant influence, even there.

Internal anancasm, or logical groping, which advances upon a predestined line without being able to foresee whither it is to be carried nor to steer its course, this is the rule of development of philosophy. Hegel first made the world understand this; and he seeks to make logic not merely the subjective guide and monitor of thought, which was all it had been ambitioning before, but to be the very main-spring of thinking, and not merely of individual thinking but of discussion, of the history of the development of thought, of all history, of all development. This involves a positive, clearly demonstrable error. Let the logic in question be of whatever kind it may, a logic of necessary inference or a logic of probable inference, (the theory might perhaps be shaped to fit either,) in any case it supposes that logic is sufficient of itself to determine what conclusion follows from given premises; for unless it will do so much, it will not suffice to explain why an individual train of reasoning should take just the course it does take, to say nothing of other kinds of development. It thus supposes that from given premises, only one conclusion can logically be drawn, and that there is no scope at all for free choice. That from given premises only one conclusion can logically be drawn, is one of the false notions which have come from logicians’ confining their attention to that Nantucket of thought, the logic of non-relative terms. In the logic of relatives, it does not hold good.

One remark occurs to me. If the evolution of history is in considerable part of the nature of internal anancasm, it resembles the development of individual men; and just as 33 years is a rough but natural unit of time for individuals, being the average age at which man has issue, so there should be an approximate period at the end of which one great historical movement ought to be likely to be supplanted by another. Let us see if we can make out anything of the kind. Take the governmental development of Rome as being sufficiently long and set down the principal dates.

B. C. 753, Foundation of Rome.
B. C. 510, Expulsion of the Tarquins.
B. C. 27, Octavius assumes title Augustus.
A. D. 476, End of Western Empire.
A. D. 962, Holy Roman Empire.
A. D. 1453, Fall of Constantinople.

The last event was one of the most significant in history, especially for Italy. The intervals are 243, 483, 502, 486, 491 years. All are rather curiously near equal, except the first which is half the others. Successive reigns of kings would not commonly be so near equal. Let us set down a few dates in the history of thought.

B. C. 585, Eclipse of Thales. Beginning of Greek philosophy.
A. D. 30, The crucifixion.
A. D. 529, Closing of Athenian schools. End of Greek philosophy.
A. D. 1125, (Approximate) Rise of the Universities of Bologna and Paris.
A. D. 1543, Publication of the “De Revolutionibus” of Copernicus.
Beginning of Modern Science.

The intervals are 615, 499, 596, 418, years. In the history of metaphysics, we may take the following:

B. C. 322, Death of Aristotle.
A. D. 1274, Death of Aquinas.
A. D. 1804, Death of Kant.

The intervals are 1595 and 530 years. The former is about thrice the latter.

From these figures, no conclusion can fairly be drawn. At the same time, they suggest that perhaps there may be a rough natural era of about 500 years. Should there be any independent evidence of this, the intervals noticed may gain some significance.

The agapastic development of thought should, if it exists, be distinguished by its purposive character, this purpose being the development of an idea. We should have a direct agapic or sympathetic comprehension and recognition of it, by virtue of the continuity of thought. I here take it for granted that such continuity of thought has been sufficiently proved by the arguments used in my paper on the “Law of Mind” in _The Monist_ of last July. Even if those arguments are not quite convincing in themselves, yet if they are reënforced by an apparent agapasm in the history of thought, the two propositions will lend one another mutual aid. The reader will, I trust, be too well grounded in logic to mistake such mutual support for a vicious circle in reasoning. If it could be shown directly that there is such an entity as the “spirit of an age” or of a people, and that mere individual intelligence will not account for all the phenomena, this would be proof enough at once of agapasticism and of synechism. I must acknowledge that I am unable to produce a cogent demonstration of this; but I am, I believe, able to adduce such arguments as will serve to confirm those which have been drawn from other facts. I believe that all the greatest achievements of mind have been beyond the powers of unaided individuals; and I find, apart from the support this opinion receives from synechistic considerations, and from the purposive character of many great movements, direct reason for so thinking in the sublimity of the ideas and in their occurring simultaneously and independently to a number of individuals of no extraordinary general powers. The pointed Gothic architecture in several of its developments appears to me to be of such a character. All attempts to imitate it by modern architects of the greatest learning and genius appear flat and tame, and are felt by their authors to be so. Yet at the time the style was living, there was quite an abundance of men capable of producing works of this kind of gigantic sublimity and power. In more than one case, extant documents show that the cathedral chapters, in the selection of architects, treated high artistic genius as a secondary consideration, as if there were no lack of persons able to supply that; and the results justify their confidence. Were individuals in general, then, in those ages possessed of such lofty natures and high intellect? Such an opinion would break down under the first examination.

How many times have men now in middle life seen great discoveries made independently and almost simultaneously! The first instance I remember was the prediction of a planet exterior to Uranus by Leverrier and Adams. One hardly knows to whom the principle of the conservation of energy ought to be attributed, although it may reasonably be considered as the greatest discovery science has ever made. The mechanical theory of heat was set forth by Rankine and by Clausius during the same month of February, 1850; and there are eminent men who attribute this great step to Thomson.[23] The kinetical theory of gases, after being started by John Bernoulli and long buried in oblivion, was reinvented and applied to the explanation not merely of the laws of Boyle, Charles, and Avogadro, but also of diffusion and viscosity, by at least three modern physicists separately. It is well known that the doctrine of natural selection was presented by Wallace and by Darwin at the same meeting of the British Association; and Darwin in his “Historical Sketch” prefixed to the later editions of his book shows that both were anticipated by obscure forerunners. The method of spectrum analysis was claimed for Swan as well as for Kirchhoff, and there were others who perhaps had still better claims. The authorship of the Periodical Law of the Chemical Elements is disputed between a Russian, a German, and an Englishman; although there is no room for doubt that the principal merit belongs to the first. These are nearly all the greatest discoveries of our times. It is the same with the inventions. It may not be surprising that the telegraph should have been independently made by several inventors, because it was an easy corollary from scientific facts well made out before. But it was not so with the telephone and other inventions. Ether, the first anæsthetic, was introduced independently by three different New England physicians. Now ether had been a common article for a century. It had been in one of the pharmacopœias three centuries before. It is quite incredible that its anæsthetic property should not have been known; it was known. It had probably passed from mouth to ear as a secret from the days of Basil Valentine; but for long it had been a secret of the Punchinello kind. In New England, for many years, boys had used it for amusement. Why then had it not been put to its serious use? No reason can be given, except that the motive to do so was not strong enough. The motives to doing so could only have been desire for gain and philanthropy. About 1846, the date of the introduction, philanthropy was undoubtedly in an unusually active condition. That sensibility, or sentimentalism, which had been introduced in the previous century, had undergone a ripening process, in consequence of which, though now less intense than it had previously been, it was more likely to influence unreflecting people than it had ever been. All three of the ether-claimants had probably been influenced by the desire for gain; but nevertheless they were certainly not insensible to the agapic influences.

I doubt if any of the great discoveries ought, properly, to be considered as altogether individual achievements; and I think many will share this doubt. Yet, if not, what an argument for the continuity of mind, and for agapasticism is here! I do not wish to be very strenuous. If thinkers will only be persuaded to lay aside their prejudices and apply themselves to studying the evidences of this doctrine, I shall be fully content to await the final decision.

CHARLES S. PEIRCE.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] How can a writer have any respect for science, as such, who is capable of confounding with the scientific propositions of political economy, which have nothing to say concerning what is “beneficent,” such brummagem generalisations as this?

[21] I am happy to find that Dr. Carus, too, ranks Weismann among the opponents of Darwin, notwithstanding his flying that flag.

[22] See _Draper’s History of Intellectual Development_, chap. x.

[23] Thomson, himself, in his article _Heat_ in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, never once mentions the name of Clausius.

RENAN.

A DISCOURSE GIVEN AT SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, LONDON, OCTOBER, 9, 1892.

“Be calm and resigned,” said Renan to his weeping wife. “We undergo the laws of that nature of which we are manifestations. We perish, we disappear, but heaven and earth remain, and the march of time goes on for ever.”

It is hard to-day to respond to these last words of the dying philosopher. Heaven and earth remain, but they seem cold and grey when the great heart in which they were united has ceased to beat, and when our sweet English singer has gone silent. By the passing away of the two highest-mounted minds in Europe this society is especially bereaved. The earliest welcome given to the genius of young Tennyson came from the pen of William Johnston Fox, the first Minister of this Chapel; here has his spiritual pilgrimage been followed, and its songs here sung as hymns. But for their magnitude Tennyson and Renan might have been considered together. They were children of the same spiritual epoch; the son of the Catholic Church, and the English Rector’s son, were fellow-pilgrims on the painful road of scepticism; they encountered the same phantoms, were attended by the same mighty shades, and found no altar but such as their own genius could raise and their glowing hearts kindle in the wilderness of doubt and denial. Alike they distrusted democracy, and dreamed of the ideal monarch,—as of Arthur, “flower of kings,” whom ancient legends of Britain and Brittany said would some day return to lead up the Golden Year. Renan loved to tell the story of how Tennyson, roaming in Brittany, stopped at an inn in Lannier, birthplace of Renan’s mother. In the morning the poet demanded his account, but the hostess said, “There is nothing to pay, Monsieur. It is you who have sung of our King Arthur.”

But the people have a greatness of their own. They enshrine Tennyson in Westminster Abbey, Renan in the Pantheon. The career of Renan is a triumph of republican France. Under the Empire he was deprived of his professorship, and of his office in the Imperial Library, for writing the “Life of Jesus.” But the Republic made him President of the College of France, gave him every honor, in life as in death. The national homage to that ex-priest, that outspoken rationalist, who flattered not the masses nor fawned on power, is a high water-mark of civilisation. For it marks the rise of a steady tide of liberty, and not the mere leap of waves under some tempest of momentary emotion. The great fact is that this unique heretic, thinker, and scholar, has been able, without compromising his independence, without help of any sect or school, to live his life, think his thought, and round out his life-work with completeness, on the scene of a thousand martyrdoms.

In Renan’s “Feuilles Détachées,” which appeared last spring but is not yet translated, there are outbursts of gratitude to his time, which, he says, has been good to him, and pardoned many faults. He had just finished, he says, his “History of the People of Israel”—“the serious work of my life.”

“The bridge which it remained to me to build between Judaism
and Christianism is built.... In the ‘Life of Jesus’ I tried
to exhibit the majestic growth of the Galilean tree from the
stock of its roots to the summit, where sing the birds of
heaven. In the volume just finished I have sought to make
known the subsoil in which shot the roots of Jesus. Thus my
principal duty is accomplished. At the Academy the work on the
Rabbins also nears conclusion, and the _Corpus Inscriptionum
Semiticorum_ is in excellent hands. So that now, having paid
all my debts, I am free enough to amuse myself a little,
and without scruples to indulge myself with the pleasure of
gathering these leaves, often light enough.”

So radiant was the author, at sixty-nine, having achieved the main schemes of a life which, at forty, was threatened with ruin by intolerance. Of course it was but a small part of what he would fain have accomplished. Last year (September 11) there was a festival, in the Island of Bréhat, where Renan was the chief speaker. In the course of his address he said:

“Every year I used to come hither with my mother to visit
my aunt Périne, who loved me much, for she thought me like
my father. Here on your rocks, and in your paths, I formed
plans and dreamed dreams, of which I have realised a third
or a quarter. That is much; I consider myself fortunate; I
hold myself among the privileged ones of life. I have been
more sad than now, for I feared I might die young (misfortune
notably not arrived) and never produce what was in my mind.
Oh certainly, could I live a long time yet, I would know what
to do. I have schemes of work for three or four lives. I
would write a history of the French Revolution, showing it an
attack of fever, grand, strange, horrible, and sublime; the
foundation, let us hope of something better. I would compose
a history of Athens, almost day by day; also a history of
science and freethought, telling by what steps man has come
to know something of how the world is made; I would write a
history of Brittany in six volumes. I would study Chinese,
and review critically all the problems of Chinese history and
literature. Of all that I would make nothing. There is a crowd
of things I wish to know and shall never know. But why reproach
nature for refusing me? Let us recognise what she has given
us. I have traversed the world at an interesting moment in its
development, and, after all, have seen enough. After my time
humanity will do surprising things: I can rest content during
eternity.”

The happiness of this venerable author, conscious that his life is closing, his work ended,—a happiness not derived from any hope of future reward, or even existence,—is a salient testimony of our time. In one of these recent addresses Renan says: “Let us die calmly, in the communion of humanity, the religion of the future.” The dying Voltaire was fed with a wafer, even while he ridiculed it. Renan partakes the communion of humanity, the religion of the future. It may appear cold comfort to the superstitious, for they comprehend not that to such a man the communion of humanity implies an eternal life.

In one sense Renan lived not quite threescore years and ten; in another he lived ages on ages. By his mastery of Eastern and Oriental languages and literatures, by his studies of ancient and modern systems, he had familiarly dwelt among primitive tribes, with them set up their sacred dolmens, knelt at their altars, travelled with their migrations in India, Persia, Egypt, Syria, shared their pilgrimages from lower to higher beliefs, listened to their prophets, visited the home of Mary and Joseph, walked with the disciples, conversed with Jesus, witnessed the crucifixion, journeyed through the middle ages, reached the Renaissance, passed through Protestantism, gathered every spiritual flower of the nineteenth century. Such long experience of the past, such knowledge of the attractions of humanity,—predicting its fulfilments,—carry the thinker equally far into the future. Knowing the angles of convergence in time’s rising pyramid, he can calculate the apex, and look down from it. He is able to rejoice in realisations of ideals now mere tendencies. His immortality is present. Such to Renan meant that communion of humanity, into which he entered by patient studies, and by the devotion of his life to the spiritual essence of the world. And this vision sustained him in his last hour.

And let me here say, that Renan’s optimism was not based in any belief in a superhuman providence, or any dynamic or compulsory destiny in nature. It was his faith in the heart and brain of man. In his last work he reminds youth that their efforts at new abstractions and theologies are idle: the new notions will follow the old into extinction. “Dear children,” he says—

“Dear children, it is useless to give yourself so much
headache to reach only a change of error. Let us die calm,
in the communion of humanity, the religion of the future.
The existence of the world is assured for a long time. The
future of science is guaranteed, for in the great scientific
book everything adds itself and nothing is lost. Error is not
deep; no error lasts long. Be tranquil. Before a thousand
years, let us hope, the earth will find means to supply its
exhausted coal, and, in some degree, its diminished virtue. The
resources of humanity are infinite. Eternal works accomplish
themselves without loss to the fountain of living forces, ever
rising again to the surface. Science, above all, will continue
to astonish us by its revelations, substituting the infinite
of time and space for a poor creationism that can no longer
satisfy the imagination of a child. Religion also is true to
the infinite. When God shall be complete, he will be just. I am
convinced that virtue will find itself one day clearly to have
been the better part. The merit is in affirming duty against
the apparent evidences. [As for the future] denying not,
affirming not, let us hope. Let us keep a place at our funerals
for the music and the incense.”

It will be seen that Renan’s deity is the brother of man’s divinity. God is as dependent on man as man on God. Natural evil is God’s incompleteness: when man is complete God will be complete: there will be no more injustice.

But I must warn you that while this is the way in which Renan impresses me, he is not a man to be caught or held in any one theory. He is the many-sided man of our time. When I heard his lectures in his college, two years ago,—his French was so clear and expressive that even a limping listener could follow him tolerably,—he impressed me as a sort of Buddha. Buddha is supposed by some to have got his large form by sitting so long in contemplation, by others his size is regarded as a protest against the meagreness of ill-fed ascetics. The unfurrowed serenity of Buddha’s face, his infantine smile, were those of Renan, also the remembered music of his voice. This association has been extended to Renan’s spiritual nature by a letter of his to a friend, in his “Feuilles Détachées.” He is fascinated by the legends of Buddha and Krishna which describe them as multiplying themselves. When Buddha was born into this world, ten thousand women entreated to be his nurses, and Buddha multiplied himself into ten thousand babies. Each woman believed that she alone had nursed the true Buddha. In the legend of the god Krishna, he first appeared to some shepherdesses who were dancing. The beautiful god multiplied himself into as many forms as there were maidens, so that each believed, that she alone had danced with Krishna, and through life kept her heart sacred to him. Writing of these legends, Renan says:

“The ideal loses nothing by dividing itself: it is entire
in each of its parts. We live that part of Krishna which we
assimilate according to our genius. The ideal is for all
partakers, like morsels modified to each taste. Each creates
his divine dancer. One refinement I would introduce into
the legend of Krishna, should I ever make it into a drama,
or, better, a philosophic ballet: at the time when the
shepherdesses believed they were singly dancing with Krishna,
he should find that they were in reality dancing with different
Krishnas. Each had made her Krishna to her fancy, and when
they came to describe to each other their heavenly lover, they
should find their visions in nowise alike; and nevertheless to
each it was always Krishna.”

The legend which thus charmed Renan has many correspondences in religious history; in Christianity, for instance, where we to-day find a hundred and fifty sects, each believing that it alone has the true Christ for partner. But it applies to all great personalities, and to all spiritual influences. The finest spirits frame no systems, found no schools. They are akin to the sun and rain which nourish and paint innumerable and diverse growths. It was so with Emerson. Dean Stanley said that he heard many different preachers in America, but their sermons were generally by Emerson. It was preëminently the case with Renan. The Catholic, the Protestant, the idealist, the sceptic, the man of the world, the mystic, the conservative, the radical, provided they are unsophisticated like the shepherdesses, not champions of some sect or party, find that Renan has spoken better for them than they can for themselves; he knows their secret heart, is their partner by unbounded sympathies. Yet it is always the same Renan, full and entire in each and all of his manifestations.

Some time ago, when his friend Littré, the Positivist, was buried by his family with Catholic rites, the aspersoir passed round the grave, and came to Renan, who, like the rest, sprinkled holy water on the coffin. There were cries of “Shame” among the freethinkers present; but really it was the act of a man less sectarian than themselves. The same tenderness that could not wound the family parting for ever from their beloved, is visible in the gentleness with which he treats old beliefs, when it is a question of affection or sentiment, not of dogma and authority. They have died out of his mind utterly; he sees the creeds already in their graves; he no longer fears them, but is glad to soothe those who cling to their lifeless forms by speaking kindly of their virtues in the past. His “Life of Jesus” is, in large part, a wreath of immortelles laid on the tomb of a faith to him utterly dead,—that is, faith in a supernatural Christ. He once told me of a little island on the coast of his native Brittany, from which some medieval saint was supposed to have driven monstrous serpents, or worms. To that island the peasants still repair to get a little of the soil to use as a—vermifuge. To similarly small size had shrunk, in Renan’s view, the greatest dogmas and superstitions of Christendom. Others might still compliment them with fear and wrath, but Renan was tender to them because of their smallness. He was endlessly good-natured with his ignorant opponents, from whom he often received warning letters. Of one who wrote him simply the words, _Remember, there is a Hell_, he said that this monitor did not terrify him as much as he may have supposed. He (Renan) would be rather glad to know for certain that there was beyond the grave even a hell. And if he should go there he felt certain that he would be able to address to the deity such subtle arguments to prove that he ought not to remain there, but to be transferred to paradise; (only he feared his exhorter’s paradise would be very dull,) that he would presently be released.

One purpose of the “Life of Jesus” has been mentioned, but that work had also another and a higher aim. With a love like that of Mary Magdalene, in whose rapt vision Jesus rose from the tomb, to be transformed into a supernatural Christ, Renan sought to raise out of the grave of that supernatural Christ the human Jesus. He had travelled through Palestine, visited every spot associated with the great teacher, and drew the most realistic portraiture he could of the parents, home, friends, disciples, and daily life of Jesus. The outcry against that book was a confession by theology of its utter loss of the human personality of Jesus. There had been a time when the religious heart loved to dwell on the sweet humanities of Jesus. In the seventeenth century the poet, Thomas Dekker, wrote:

“The best of men
That e’er wore earth about him was a sufferer;
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit,
The first true gentleman that ever breathed.”