ESSAYS ON LIFEART AND SCIENCE

BYSAMUEL BUTLER

AUTHOR OF "EREWHON, " "EREWHON RE-VISITED, ""THE WAY OF ALL FLESH, " ETC. 

EDITED BYR. A. STREATFEILD

LONDONA. C. FIFIELD1908

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & COAt the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh. 

Contents:

IntroductionQuis Desiderio?Ramblings in CheapsideThe Aunt, The Nieces, and the DogHow to make the best of lifeThe Sanctuary of MontrigoneA Medieval Girl SchoolArt in the Valley of SaasThought and LanguageThe Deadlock in Darwinism

INTRODUCTION

It is hardly necessary to apologise for the miscellaneous character ofthe following collection of essays. Samuel Butler was a man of suchunusual versatility, and his interests were so many and so various thathis literary remains were bound to cover a wide field. Nevertheless itwill be found that several of the subjects to which he devoted much timeand labour are not represented in these pages. I have not thought itnecessary to reprint any of the numerous pamphlets and articles which hewrote upon the Iliad and Odyssey, since these were all merged in "TheAuthoress of the Odyssey, " which gives his matured views upon everythingrelating to the Homeric poems. For a similar reason I have not includedan essay on the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which heprinted in 1865 for private circulation, since he subsequently madeextensive use of it in "The Fair Haven. "

Two of the essays in this collection were originally delivered aslectures; the remainder were published in _The Universal Review_ during1888, 1889, and 1890. 

I should perhaps explain why two other essays of his, which also appearedin _The Universal Review_, have been omitted. 

The first of these, entitled "L'Affaire Holbein-Rippel, " relates to adrawing of Holbein's "Danse des Paysans, " in the Basle Museum, which isusually described as a copy, but which Butler believed to be the work ofHolbein himself. This essay requires to be illustrated in so elaborate amanner that it was impossible to include it in a book of this size. 

The second essay, which is a sketch of the career of the sculptorTabachetti, was published as the first section of an article entitled "ASculptor and a Shrine, " of which the second section is here given underthe title, "The Sanctuary of Montrigone. " The section devoted to thesculptor represents all that Butler then knew about Tabachetti, but sinceit was written various documents have come to light, principally owing tothe investigations of Cavaliere Francesco Negri, of Casale Monferrato, which negative some of Butler's most cherished conclusions. Had Butlerlived he would either have rewritten his essay in accordance withCavaliere Negri's discoveries, of which he fully recognised the value, orincorporated them into the revised edition of "Ex Voto, " which heintended to publish. As it stands, the essay requires so much revisionthat I have decided to omit it altogether, and to postpone giving Englishreaders a full account of Tabachetti's career until a second edition of"Ex Voto" is required. Meanwhile I have given a brief summary of themain facts of Tabachetti's life in a note (page 154) to the essay on "Artin the Valley of Saas. " Any one who wishes for further details of thesculptor and his work will find them in Cavaliere Negri's pamphlet, "IlSantuario di Crea" (Alessandria, 1902). 

The three essays grouped together under the title of "The Deadlock inDarwinism" may be regarded as a postscript to Butler's four books onevolution, viz. , "Life and Habit, " "Evolution, Old and New, " "UnconsciousMemory" and "Luck or Cunning. " An occasion for the publication of theseessays seemed to be afforded by the appearance in 1889 of Mr. AlfredRussel Wallace's "Darwinism"; and although nearly fourteen years haveelapsed since they were published in the _Universal Review_, I have nofear that they will be found to be out of date. How far, indeed, theproblem embodied in the deadlock of which Butler speaks is from solutionwas conclusively shown by the correspondence which appeared in the_Times_ in May 1903, occasioned by some remarks made at UniversityCollege by Lord Kelvin in moving a vote of thanks to Professor Henslowafter his lecture on "Present Day Rationalism. " Lord Kelvin's claim fora recognition of the fact that in organic nature scientific thought iscompelled to accept the idea of some kind of directive power, and hisstatement that biologists are coming once more to a firm acceptance of avital principle, drew from several distinguished men of science retortsheated enough to prove beyond a doubt that the gulf between the two maindivisions of evolutionists is as wide to-day as it was when Butler wrote. It will be well, perhaps, for the benefit of readers who have notfollowed the history of the theory of evolution during its laterdevelopments, to state in a few words what these two main divisions are. All evolutionists agree that the differences between species are causedby the accumulation and transmission of variations, but they do not agreeas to the causes to which the variations are due. The view held by theolder evolutionists, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, who have beenfollowed by many modern thinkers, including Herbert Spencer and Butler, is that the variations occur mainly as the result of effort and design;the opposite view, which is that advocated by Mr. Wallace in "Darwinism, "is that the variations occur merely as the result of chance. The formeris sometimes called the theological view, because it recognises thepresence in organic nature of design, whether it be called creativepower, directive force, directivity, or vital principle; the latter view, in which the existence of design is absolutely negatived, is now usuallydescribed as Weismannism, from the name of the writer who has been itsprincipal advocate in recent years. 

In conclusion, I must thank my friend Mr. Henry Festing Jones most warmlyfor the invaluable assistance which he has given me in preparing theseessays for publication, in correcting the proofs, and in compiling theintroduction and notes. 

R. A. STREATFEILD. 

QUIS DESIDERIO . . . ? {1}

Like Mr. Wilkie Collins, I, too, have been asked to lay some of myliterary experiences before the readers of the _Universal Review_. Itoccurred to me that the _Review_ must be indeed universal before it couldopen its pages to one so obscure as myself; but, nothing daunted by thedistinguished company among which I was for the first time asked to move, I resolved to do as I was told, and went to the British Museum to seewhat books I had written. Having refreshed my memory by a glance at thecatalogue, I was about to try and diminish the large and ever-increasingcircle of my non-readers when I became aware of a calamity that broughtme to a standstill, and indeed bids fair, so far as I can see at present, to put an end to my literary existence altogether. 

I should explain that I cannot write unless I have a sloping desk, andthe reading-room of the British Museum, where alone I can compose freely, is unprovided with sloping desks. Like every other organism, if I cannotget exactly what I want I make shift with the next thing to it; true, there are no desks in the reading-room, but, as I once heard a visitorfrom the country say, "it contains a large number of very interestingworks. " I know it was not right, and hope the Museum authorities willnot be severe upon me if any of them reads this confession; but I wanteda desk, and set myself to consider which of the many very interestingworks which a grateful nation places at the disposal of its would-beauthors was best suited for my purpose. 

For mere reading I suppose one book is pretty much as good as another;but the choice of a desk-book is a more serious matter. It must beneither too thick nor too thin; it must be large enough to make asubstantial support; it must be strongly bound so as not to yield orgive; it must not be too troublesome to carry backwards and forwards; andit must live on shelf C, D, or E, so that there need be no stooping orreaching too high. These are the conditions which a really good bookmust fulfil; simple, however, as they are, it is surprising how fewvolumes comply with them satisfactorily; moreover, being perhaps toosensitively conscientious, I allowed another consideration to influenceme, and was sincerely anxious not to take a book which would be inconstant use for reference by readers, more especially as, if I did this, I might find myself disturbed by the officials. 

For weeks I made experiments upon sundry poetical and philosophicalworks, whose names I have forgotten, but could not succeed in finding myideal desk, until at length, more by luck than cunning, I happened tolight upon Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians, " which I had no soonertried than I discovered it to be the very perfection and _ne plus ultra_of everything that a book should be. It lived in Case No. 2008, and Iaccordingly took at once to sitting in Row B, where for the last dozenyears or so I have sat ever since. 

The first thing I have done whenever I went to the Museum has been totake down Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians" and carry it to my seat. It is not the custom of modern writers to refer to the works to whichthey are most deeply indebted, and I have never, that I remember, mentioned it by name before; but it is to this book alone that I havelooked for support during many years of literary labour, and it is roundthis to me invaluable volume that all my own have page by page grown up. There is none in the Museum to which I have been under anything like suchconstant obligation, none which I can so ill spare, and none which Iwould choose so readily if I were allowed to select one single volume andkeep it for my own. 

On finding myself asked for a contribution to the _Universal Review_, Iwent, as I have explained, to the Museum, and presently repaired tobookcase No. 2008 to get my favourite volume. Alas! it was in the roomno longer. It was not in use, for its place was filled up already;besides, no one ever used it but myself. Whether the ghost of the lateMr. Frost has been so eminently unchristian as to interfere, or whetherthe authorities have removed the book in ignorance of the steady demandwhich there has been for it on the part of at least one reader, arepoints I cannot determine. All I know is that the book is gone, and Ifeel as Wordsworth is generally supposed to have felt when he becameaware that Lucy was in her grave, and exclaimed so emphatically that thiswould make a considerable difference to him, or words to that effect. 

Now I think of it, Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians" was very likeLucy. The one resided at Dovedale in Derbyshire, the other in GreatRussell Street, Bloomsbury. I admit that I do not see the resemblancehere at this moment, but if I try to develop my perception I shalldoubtless ere long find a marvellously striking one. In other respects, however, than mere local habitat the likeness is obvious. Lucy was notparticularly attractive either inside or out--no more was Frost's "Livesof Eminent Christians"; there were few to praise her, and of those fewstill fewer could bring themselves to like her; indeed, Wordsworthhimself seems to have been the only person who thought much about her oneway or the other. In like manner, I believe I was the only reader whothought much one way or the other about Frost's "Lives of EminentChristians, " but this in itself was one of the attractions of the book;and as for the grief we respectively felt and feel, I believe my own tobe as deep as Wordsworth's, if not more so. 

I said above, "as Wordsworth is generally supposed to have felt"; for anyone imbued with the spirit of modern science will read Wordsworth's poemwith different eyes from those of a mere literary critic. He will notethat Wordsworth is most careful not to explain the nature of thedifference which the death of Lucy will occasion to him. He tells usthat there will be a difference; but there the matter ends. Thesuperficial reader takes it that he was very sorry she was dead; it is, of course, possible that he may have actually been so, but he has notsaid this. On the contrary, he has hinted plainly that she was ugly, andgenerally disliked; she was only like a violet when she was half-hiddenfrom the view, and only fair as a star when there were so few stars outthat it was practically impossible to make an invidious comparison. Ifthere were as many as even two stars the likeness was felt to be at anend. If Wordsworth had imprudently promised to marry this young personduring a time when he had been unusually long in keeping to goodresolutions, and had afterwards seen some one whom he liked better, thenLucy's death would undoubtedly have made a considerable difference tohim, and this is all that he has ever said that it would do. What righthave we to put glosses upon the masterly reticence of a poet, and credithim with feelings possibly the very reverse of those he actuallyentertained?

Sometimes, indeed, I have been inclined to think that a mystery is beinghinted at more dark than any critic has suspected. I do not happen topossess a copy of the poem, but the writer, if I am not mistaken, saysthat "few could know when Lucy ceased to be. " "Ceased to be" is asuspiciously euphemistic expression, and the words "few could know" arenot applicable to the ordinary peaceful death of a domestic servant suchas Lucy appears to have been. No matter how obscure the deceased, anynumber of people commonly can know the day and hour of his or her demise, whereas in this case we are expressly told it would be impossible forthem to do so. Wordsworth was nothing if not accurate, and would nothave said that few could know, but that few actually did know, unless hewas aware of circumstances that precluded all but those implicated in thecrime of her death from knowing the precise moment of its occurrence. IfLucy was the kind of person not obscurely pourtrayed in the poem; ifWordsworth had murdered her, either by cutting her throat or smotheringher, in concert, perhaps, with his friends Southey and Coleridge; and ifhe had thus found himself released from an engagement which had becomeirksome to him, or possibly from the threat of an action for breach ofpromise, then there is not a syllable in the poem with which he crownshis crime that is not alive with meaning. On any other supposition tothe general reader it is unintelligible. 

We cannot be too guarded in the interpretations we put upon the words ofgreat poets. Take the young lady who never loved the dear gazelle--and Idon't believe she did; we are apt to think that Moore intended us to seein this creation of his fancy a sweet, amiable, but most unfortunateyoung woman, whereas all he has told us about her points to an exactlyopposite conclusion. In reality, he wished us to see a young lady whohad been an habitual complainer from her earliest childhood; whose plantshad always died as soon as she bought them, while those belonging to herneighbours had flourished. The inference is obvious, nor can wereasonably doubt that Moore intended us to draw it; if her plants werethe very first to fade away, she was evidently the very first to neglector otherwise maltreat them. She did not give them enough water, or leftthe door of her fern-ease open when she was cooking her dinner at the gasstove, or kept them too near the paraffin oil, or other like folly; andas for her temper, see what the gazelles did; as long as they did notknow her "well, " they could just manage to exist, but when they got tounderstand her real character, one after another felt that death was theonly course open to it, and accordingly died rather than live with such amistress. True, the young lady herself said the gazelles loved her; butdisagreeable people are apt to think themselves amiable, and in view ofthe course invariably taken by the gazelles themselves any one accustomedto weigh evidence will hold that she was probably mistaken. 

I must, however, return to Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians. " I willleave none of the ambiguity about my words in which Moore and Wordsworthseem to have delighted. I am very sorry the book is gone, and know notwhere to turn for its successor. Till I have found a substitute I canwrite no more, and I do not know how to find even a tolerable one. Ishould try a volume of Migne's "Complete Course of Patrology, " but I donot like books in more than one volume, for the volumes vary inthickness, and one never can remember which one took; the four volumes, however, of Bede in Giles's "Anglican Fathers" are not open to thisobjection, and I have reserved them for favourable consideration. Mather's "Magnalia" might do, but the binding does not please me;Cureton's "Corpus Ignatianum" might also do if it were not too thin. Ido not like taking Norton's "Genuineness of the Gospels, " as it is justpossible some one may be wanting to know whether the Gospels are genuineor not, and be unable to find out because I have got Mr. Norton's book. Baxter's "Church History of England, " Lingard's "Anglo-Saxon Church, " andCardwell's "Documentary Annals, " though none of them as good as Frost, are works of considerable merit; but on the whole I think Arvine's"Cyclopedia of Moral and Religious Anecdote" is perhaps the one book inthe room which comes within measurable distance of Frost. I shouldprobably try this book first, but it has a fatal objection in its tooseductive title. "I am not curious, " as Miss Lottie Venne says in one ofher parts, "but I like to know, " and I might be tempted to pervert thebook from its natural uses and open it, so as to find out what kind of athing a moral and religious anecdote is. I know, of course, that thereare a great many anecdotes in the Bible, but no one thinks of callingthem either moral or religious, though some of them certainly seem as ifthey might fairly find a place in Mr. Arvine's work. There are somethings, however, which it is better not to know, and take it all round Ido not think I should be wise in putting myself in the way of temptation, and adopting Arvine as the successor to my beloved and lamented Frost. 

Some successor I must find, or I must give up writing altogether, andthis I should be sorry to do. I have only as yet written about a third, or from that--counting works written but not published--to a half, of thebooks which I have set myself to write. It would not so much matter ifold age was not staring me in the face. Dr. Parr said it was "a beastlyshame for an old man not to have laid down a good cellar of port in hisyouth"; I, like the greater number, I suppose, of those who write booksat all, write in order that I may have something to read in my old agewhen I can write no longer. I know what I shall like better than any onecan tell me, and write accordingly; if my career is nipped in the bud, asseems only too likely, I really do not know where else I can turn forpresent agreeable occupation, nor yet how to make suitable provision formy later years. Other writers can, of course, make excellent provisionfor their own old ages, but they cannot do so for mine, any more than Ishould succeed if I were to try to cater for theirs. It is one of thosecases in which no man can make agreement for his brother. 

I have no heart for continuing this article, and if I had, I have nothingof interest to say. No one's literary career can have been smoother ormore unchequered than mine. I have published all my books at my ownexpense, and paid for them in due course. What can be conceivably moreunromantic? For some years I had a little literary grievance against theauthorities of the British Museum because they would insist on saying intheir catalogue that I had published three sermons on Infidelity in theyear 1820. I thought I had not, and got them out to see. They wererather funny, but they were not mine. Now, however, this grievance hasbeen removed. I had another little quarrel with them because they woulddescribe me as "of St. John's College, Cambridge, " an establishment forwhich I have the most profound veneration, but with which I have not hadthe honour to be connected for some quarter of a century. At last theysaid they would change this description if I would only tell them what Iwas, for, though they had done their best to find out, they hadthemselves failed. I replied with modest pride that I was a Bachelor ofArts. I keep all my other letters inside my name, not outside. Theymused and said it was unfortunate that I was not a Master of Arts. CouldI not get myself made a Master? I said I understood that a Mastershipwas an article the University could not do under about five pounds, andthat I was not disposed to go sixpence higher than three ten. They againsaid it was a pity, for it would be very inconvenient to them if I didnot keep to something between a bishop and a poet. I might be anything Iliked in reason, provided I showed proper respect for the alphabet; butthey had got me between "Samuel Butler, bishop, " and "Samuel Butler, poet. " It would be very troublesome to shift me, and bachelor camebefore bishop. This was reasonable, so I replied that, under thosecircumstances, if they pleased, I thought I would like to be aphilosophical writer. They embraced the solution, and, no matter what Iwrite now, I must remain a philosophical writer as long as I live, forthe alphabet will hardly be altered in my time, and I must be somethingbetween "Bis" and "Poe. " If I could get a volume of my excellentnamesake's "Hudibras" out of the list of my works, I should be robbed ofmy last shred of literary grievance, so I say nothing about this, butkeep it secret, lest some worse thing should happen to me. Besides, Ihave a great respect for my namesake, and always say that if "Erewhon"had been a racehorse it would have been got by "Hudibras" out of"Analogy. " Some one said this to me many years ago, and I felt so muchflattered that I have been repeating the remark as my own ever since. 

But how small are these grievances as compared with those endured withouta murmur by hundreds of writers far more deserving than myself. When Isee the scores and hundreds of workers in the reading-room who have doneso much more than I have, but whose work is absolutely fruitless tothemselves, and when I think of the prompt recognition obtained by my ownwork, I ask myself what I have done to be thus rewarded. On the otherhand, the feeling that I have succeeded far beyond my deserts hitherto, makes it all the harder for me to acquiesce without complaint in theextinction of a career which I honestly believe to be a promising one;and once more I repeat that, unless the Museum authorities give me backmy Frost, or put a locked clasp on Arvine, my career must beextinguished. Give me back Frost, and, if life and health are spared, Iwill write another dozen of volumes yet before I hang up my fiddle--if soserious a confusion of metaphors may be pardoned. I know from longexperience how kind and considerate both the late and presentsuperintendents of the reading-room were and are, but I doubt how fareither of them would be disposed to help me on this occasion; continue, however, to rob me of my Frost, and, whatever else I may do, I will writeno more books. 

_Note by Dr. Garnett_, _British Museum_. --The frost has broken up. Mr. Butler is restored to literature. Mr. Mudie may make himself easy. England will still boast a humourist; and the late Mr. Darwin (to whoseposthumous machinations the removal of the book was owing) will continueto be confounded. --R. GANNETT. 

RAMBLINGS IN CHEAPSIDE {2}

Walking the other day in Cheapside I saw some turtles in Mr. Sweeting'swindow, and was tempted to stay and look at them. As I did so I wasstruck not more by the defences with which they were hedged about, thanby the fatuousness of trying to hedge that in at all which, if hedgedthoroughly, must die of its own defencefulness. The holes for the headand feet through which the turtle leaks out, as it were, on to theexterior world, and through which it again absorbs the exterior worldinto itself--"catching on" through them to things that are thus bothturtle and not turtle at one and the same time--these holes stultify thearmour, and show it to have been designed by a creature with more offaithfulness to a fixed idea, and hence one-sidedness, than of that quicksense of relative importances and their changes, which is the main factorof good living. 

The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed so widelyfrom myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this word occurred tome, it occurred also that until my body comprehended its body in aphysical material sense, neither would my mind be able to comprehend itsmind with any thoroughness. For unity of mind can only be consummated byunity of body; everything, therefore, must be in some respects both knaveand fool to all that which has not eaten it, or by which it has not beeneaten. As long as the turtle was in the window and I in the streetoutside, there was no chance of our comprehending one another. 

Nevertheless I knew that I could get it to agree with me if I could soeffectually button-hole and fasten on to it as to eat it. Most men havean easy method with turtle soup, and I had no misgiving but that if Icould bring my first premise to bear I should prove the better reasoner. My difficulty lay in this initial process, for I had not with me theargument that would alone compel Mr. Sweeting think that I ought to beallowed to convert the turtles--I mean I had no money in my pocket. Nomissionary enterprise can be carried on without any money at all, buteven so small a sum as half-a-crown would, I suppose, have enabled me tobring the turtle partly round, and with many half-crowns I could in timeno doubt convert the lot, for the turtle needs must go where the moneydrives. If, as is alleged, the world stands on a turtle, the turtlestands on money. No money no turtle. As for money, that stands onopinion, credit, trust, faith--things that, though highly material inconnection with money, are still of immaterial essence. 

The steps are perfectly plain. The men who caught the turtles brought afairly strong and definite opinion to bear upon them, that passed intoaction, and later on into money. They thought the turtles would comethat way, and verified their opinion; on this, will and action weregenerated, with the result that the men turned the turtles on their backsand carried them off. Mr. Sweeting touched these men with money, whichis the outward and visible sign of verified opinion. The customertouches Mr. Sweeting with money, Mr. Sweeting touches the waiter and thecook with money. They touch the turtle with skill and verified opinion. Finally, the customer applies the clinching argument that brushes allsophisms aside, and bids the turtle stand protoplasm to protoplasm withhimself, to know even as it is known. 

But it must be all touch, touch, touch; skill, opinion, power, and money, passing in and out with one another in any order we like, but still linkto link and touch to touch. If there is failure anywhere in respect ofopinion, skill, power, or money, either as regards quantity or quality, the chain can be no stronger than its weakest link, and the turtle andthe clinching argument will fly asunder. Of course, if there is aninitial failure in connection, through defect in any member of the chain, or of connection between the links, it will no more be attempted to bringthe turtle and the clinching argument together, than it will to chain upa dog with two pieces of broken chain that are disconnected. The contactthroughout must be conceived as absolute; and yet perfect contact isinconceivable by us, for on becoming perfect it ceases to be contact, andbecomes essential, once for all inseverable, identity. The most absolutecontact short of this is still contact by courtesy only. So here, aseverywhere else, Eurydice glides off as we are about to grasp her. Wecan see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling ofblind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket. 

Presently my own blind finger-ends fished up the conclusion, that as Ihad neither time nor money to spend on perfecting the chain that wouldput me in full spiritual contact with Mr. Sweeting's turtles, I hadbetter leave them to complete their education at some one else's expenserather than mine, so I walked on towards the Bank. As I did so it struckme how continually we are met by this melting of one existence intoanother. The limits of the body seem well defined enough as definitionsgo, but definitions seldom go far. What, for example, can seem moredistinct from a man than his banker or his solicitor? Yet these arecommonly so much parts of him that he can no more cut them off and grownew ones, than he can grow new legs or arms; neither must he wound hissolicitor; a wound in the solicitor is a very serious thing. As for hisbank--failure of his bank's action may be as fatal to a man as failure ofhis heart. I have said nothing about the medical or spiritual adviser, but most men grow into the society that surrounds them by the help ofthese four main tap-roots, and not only into the world of humanity, butinto the universe at large. We can, indeed, grow butchers, bakers, andgreengrocers, almost _ad libitum_, but these are low developments, andcorrespond to skin, hair, or finger-nails. Those of us again who are nothighly enough organised to have grown a solicitor or banker can generallyrepair the loss of whatever social organisation they may possess asfreely as lizards are said to grow new tails; but this with the highersocial, as well as organic, developments is only possible to a verylimited extent. 

The doctrine of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls--a doctrine towhich the foregoing considerations are for the most part easycorollaries--crops up no matter in what direction we allow our thoughtsto wander. And we meet instances of transmigration of body as well as ofsoul. I do not mean that both body and soul have transmigrated together, far from it; but that, as we can often recognise a transmigrated mind inan alien body, so we not less often see a body that is clearly only atransmigration, linked on to some one else's new and alien soul. We meetpeople every day whose bodies are evidently those of men and women longdead, but whose appearance we know through their portraits. We see themgoing about in omnibuses, railway carriages, and in all public places. The cards have been shuffled, and they have drawn fresh lots in life andnationalities, but any one fairly well up in mediaeval and last centuryportraiture knows them at a glance. 

Going down once towards Italy I saw a young man in the train whom Irecognised, only he seemed to have got younger. He was with a friend, and his face was in continual play, but for some little time I puzzled invain to recollect where it was that I had seen him before. All of asudden I remembered he was King Francis I. Of France. I had hithertothought the face of this king impossible, but when I saw it in play Iunderstood it. His great contemporary Henry VIII. Keeps a restaurant inOxford Street. Falstaff drove one of the St. Gothard diligences for manyyears, and only retired when the railway was opened. Titian once made mea pair of boots at Vicenza, and not very good ones. At Modena I had myhair cut by a young man whom I perceived to be Raffaelle. The model whosat to him for his celebrated Madonnas is first lady in a confectioneryestablishment at Montreal. She has a little motherly pimple on the leftside of her nose that is misleading at first, but on examination she isreadily recognised; probably Raffaelle's model had the pimple too, butRaffaelle left it out--as he would. 

Handel, of course, is Madame Patey. Give Madame Patey Handel's wig andclothes, and there would be no telling her from Handel. It is not onlythat the features and the shape of the head are the same, but there is acertain imperiousness of expression and attitude about Handel which hehardly attempts to conceal in Madame Patey. It is a curious coincidencethat he should continue to be such an incomparable renderer of his ownmusic. Pope Julius II. Was the late Mr. Darwin. Rameses II. Is a blindwoman now, and stands in Holborn, holding a tin mug. I never couldunderstand why I always found myself humming "They oppressed them withburthens" when I passed her, till one day I was looking in Mr. Spooner'swindow in the Strand, and saw a photograph of Rameses II. Mary Queen ofScots wears surgical boots and is subject to fits, near the Horse Shoe inTottenham Court Road. 

Michael Angelo is a commissionaire; I saw him on board the _Glen Rosa_, which used to run every day from London to Clacton-on-Sea and back. Itgave me quite a turn when I saw him coming down the stairs from the upperdeck, with his bronzed face, flattened nose, and with the familiar barupon his forehead. I never liked Michael Angelo, and never shall, but Iam afraid of him, and was near trying to hide when I saw him comingtowards me. He had not got his commissionaire's uniform on, and I didnot know he was one till I met him a month or so later in the Strand. When we got to Blackwall the music struck up and people began to dance. Inever saw a man dance so much in my life. He did not miss a dance allthe way to Clacton, nor all the way back again, and when not dancing hewas flirting and cracking jokes. I could hardly believe my eyes when Ireflected that this man had painted the famous "Last Judgment, " and hadmade all those statues. 

Dante is, or was a year or two ago, a waiter at Brissago on the LagoMaggiore, only he is better-tempered-looking, and has a more intellectualexpression. He gave me his ideas upon beauty: "Tutto ch' e vero ebello, " he exclaimed, with all his old self-confidence. I am not afraidof Dante. I know people by their friends, and he went about with Virgil, so I said with some severity, "No, Dante, il naso della Signora Robinsone vero, ma non e bello"; and he admitted I was right. Beatrice's name isTowler; she is waitress at a small inn in German Switzerland. I used tosit at my window and hear people call "Towler, Towler, Towler, " fiftytimes in a forenoon. She was the exact antithesis to Abra; Abra, if Iremember, used to come before they called her name, but no matter howoften they called Towler, every one came before she did. I suppose theyspelt her name Taula, but to me it sounded Towler; I never, however, metany one else with this name. She was a sweet, artless little hussy, whomade me play the piano to her, and she said it was lovely. Of course Ionly played my own compositions; so I believed her, and it all went offvery nicely. I thought it might save trouble if I did not tell her whoshe really was, so I said nothing about it. 

I met Socrates once. He was my muleteer on an excursion which I will notname, for fear it should identify the man. The moment I saw my guide Iknew he was somebody, but for the life of me I could not remember who. All of a sudden it flashed across me that he was Socrates. He talkedenough for six, but it was all in _dialetto_, so I could not understandhim, nor, when I had discovered who he was, did I much try to do so. Hewas a good creature, a trifle given to stealing fruit and vegetables, butan amiable man enough. He had had a long day with his mule and me, andhe only asked me five francs. I gave him ten, for I pitied his poor oldpatched boots, and there was a meekness about him that touched me. "Andnow, Socrates, " said I at parting, "we go on our several ways, you tosteal tomatoes, I to filch ideas from other people; for the rest--whichof these two roads will be the better going, our father which is inheaven knows, but we know not. "

I have never seen Mendelssohn, but there is a fresco of him on theterrace, or open-air dining-room, of an inn at Chiavenna. He is notcalled Mendelssohn, but I knew him by his legs. He is in the costume ofa dandy of some five-and-forty years ago, is smoking a cigar, and appearsto be making an offer of marriage to his cook. Beethoven both my friendMr. H. Festing Jones and I have had the good fortune to meet; he is anengineer now, and does not know one note from another; he has quite losthis deafness, is married, and is, of course, a little squat man with thesame refractory hair that he always had. It was very interesting towatch him, and Jones remarked that before the end of dinner he had becomepositively posthumous. One morning I was told the Beethovens were goingaway, and before long I met their two heavy boxes being carried down thestairs. The boxes were so squab and like their owners, that I halfthought for a moment that they were inside, and should hardly have beensurprised to see them spring up like a couple of Jacks-in-the-box. "Sonoindentro?" said I, with a frown of wonder, pointing to the boxes. Theporters knew what I meant, and laughed. But there is no end to the listof people whom I have been able to recognise, and before I had gotthrough it myself, I found I had walked some distance, and hadinvoluntarily paused in front of a second-hand bookstall. 

I do not like books. I believe I have the smallest library of anyliterary man in London, and I have no wish to increase it. I keep mybooks at the British Museum and at Mudie's, and it makes me very angry ifany one gives me one for my private library. I once heard two ladiesdisputing in a railway carriage as to whether one of them had or had notbeen wasting money. "I spent it in books, " said the accused, "and it'snot wasting money to buy books. " "Indeed, my dear, I think it is, " wasthe rejoinder, and in practice I agree with it. Webster's Dictionary, Whitaker's Almanack, and Bradshaw's Railway Guide should be sufficientfor any ordinary library; it will be time enough to go beyond these whenthe mass of useful and entertaining matter which they provide has beenmastered. Nevertheless, I admit that sometimes, if not particularlybusy, I stop at a second-hand bookstall and turn over a book or two frommere force of habit. 

I know not what made me pick up a copy of AEschylus--of course in anEnglish version--or rather I know not what made AEschylus take up withme, for he took me rather than I him; but no sooner had he got me than hebegan puzzling me, as he has done any time this forty years, to knowwherein his transcendent merit can be supposed to lie. To me he is, likethe greater number of classics in all ages and countries, a literaryStruldbrug, rather than a true ambrosia-fed immortal. There are trueimmortals, but they are few and far between; most classics are as greatimpostors dead as they were when living, and while posing as gods are, five-sevenths of them, only Struldbrugs. It comforts me to remember thatAristophanes liked AEschylus no better than I do. True, he praises himby comparison with Sophocles and Euripides, but he only does so that hemay run down these last more effectively. Aristophanes is a safe man tofollow, nor do I see why it should not be as correct to laugh with him asto pull a long face with the Greek Professors; but this is neither herenor there, for no one really cares about AEschylus; the more interestingquestion is how he contrived to make so many people for so many yearspretend to care about him. 

Perhaps he married somebody's daughter. If a man would get hold of thepublic ear, he must pay, marry, or fight. I have never understood thatAEschylus was a man of means, and the fighters do not write poetry, so Isuppose he must have married a theatrical manager's daughter, and got hisplays brought out that way. The ear of any age or country is like itsland, air, and water; it seems limitless but is really limited, and isalready in the keeping of those who naturally enough will have nosquatting on such valuable property. It is written and talked up to asclosely as the means of subsistence are bred up to by a teemingpopulation. There is not a square inch of it but is in private hands, and he who would freehold any part of it must do so by purchase, marriage, or fighting, in the usual way--and fighting gives the longest, safest tenure. The public itself has hardly more voice in the questionwho shall have its ear, than the land has in choosing its owners. It isfarmed as those who own it think most profitable to themselves, and smallblame to them; nevertheless, it has a residuum of mulishness which theland has not, and does sometimes dispossess its tenants. It is in thisresiduum that those who fight place their hope and trust. 

Or perhaps AEschylus squared the leading critics of his time. When onecomes to think of it, he must have done so, for how is it conceivablethat such plays should have had such runs if he had not? I met a ladyone year in Switzerland who had some parrots that always travelled withher and were the idols of her life. These parrots would not let any oneread aloud in their presence, unless they heard their own namesintroduced from time to time. If these were freely interpolated into thetext they would remain as still as stones, for they thought the readingwas about themselves. If it was not about them it could not be allowed. The leaders of literature are like these parrots; they do not look atwhat a man writes, nor if they did would they understand it much betterthan the parrots do; but they like the sound of their own names, and ifthese are freely interpolated in a tone they take as friendly, they mayeven give ear to an outsider. Otherwise they will scream him off if theycan. 

I should not advise any one with ordinary independence of mind to attemptthe public ear unless he is confident that he can out-lung and out-lasthis own generation; for if he has any force, people will and ought to beon their guard against him, inasmuch as there is no knowing where he maynot take them. Besides, they have staked their money on the wrong men sooften without suspecting it, that when there comes one whom they dosuspect it would be madness not to bet against him. True, he may diebefore he has out-screamed his opponents, but that has nothing to do withit. If his scream was well pitched it will sound clearer when he isdead. We do not know what death is. If we know so little about lifewhich we have experienced, how shall we know about death which we havenot--and in the nature of things never can? Every one, as I said yearsago in "Alps and Sanctuaries, " is an immortal to himself, for he cannotknow that he is dead until he is dead, and when dead how can he knowanything about anything? All we know is, that even the humblest dead maylive long after all trace of the body has disappeared; we see them doingit in the bodies and memories of those that come after them; and not afew live so much longer and more effectually than is desirable, that ithas been necessary to get rid of them by Act of Parliament. It is lovethat alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not inourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern. Our concern is so to order ourselves that we may be of the number of themthat enter into life--although we know it not. 

AEschylus did so order himself; but his life is not of that inspiritingkind that can be won through fighting the good fight only--or beingbelieved to have fought it. His voice is the echo of a drone, drone-begotten and drone-sustained. It is not a tone that a man mustutter or die--nay, even though he die; and likely enough half theallusions and hard passages in AEschylus of which we can make neitherhead nor tail are in reality only puffs of some of the literary leadersof his time. 

The lady above referred to told me more about her parrots. She was likea Nasmyth's hammer going slow--very gentle, but irresistible. She alwaysread the newspaper to them. What was the use of having a newspaper ifone did not read it to one's parrots?

"And have you divined, " I asked, "to which side they incline inpolitics?"

"They do not like Mr. Gladstone, " was the somewhat freezing answer; "thisis the only point on which we disagree, for I adore him. Don't ask moreabout this, it is a great grief to me. I tell them everything, " shecontinued, "and hide no secret from them. "

"But can any parrot be trusted to keep a secret?"

"Mine can. "

"And on Sundays do you give them the same course of reading as on a week-day, or do you make a difference?"

"On Sundays I always read them a genealogical chapter from the Old or NewTestament, for I can thus introduce their names without profanity. Ialways keep tea by me in case they should ask for it in the night, and Ihave an Etna to warm it for them; they take milk and sugar. The oldwhite-headed clergyman came to see them last night; it was very painful, for Jocko reminded him so strongly of his late . . . "

I thought she was going to say "wife, " but it proved to have been only ofa parrot that he had once known and loved. 

One evening she was in difficulties about the quarantine, which wasenforced that year on the Italian frontier. The local doctor had gonedown that morning to see the Italian doctor and arrange some details. "Then, perhaps, my dear, " she said to her husband, "he is thequarantine. " "No, my love, " replied her husband. "The quarantine is nota person, it is a place where they put people"; but she would not becomforted, and suspected the quarantine as an enemy that might at anymoment pounce out upon her and her parrots. So a lady told me once thatshe had been in like trouble about the anthem. She read in her prayer-book that in choirs and places where they sing "here followeth theanthem, " yet the person with this most mysteriously sounding name neverdid follow. They had a choir, and no one could say the church was not aplace where they sang, for they did sing--both chants and hymns. Why, then, this persistent slackness on the part of the anthem, who at thisjuncture should follow her papa, the rector, into the reading-desk? Nodoubt he would come some day, and then what would he be like? Fair ordark? Tall or short? Would he be bald and wear spectacles like papa, orwould he be young and good-looking? Anyhow, there was something wrong, for it was announced that he would follow, and he never did follow;therefore there was no knowing what he might not do next. 

I heard of the parrots a year or two later as giving lessons in Italianto an English maid. I do not know what their terms were. Alas! sincethen both they and their mistress have joined the majority. When thepoor lady felt her end was near she desired (and the responsibility forthis must rest with her, not me) that the birds might be destroyed, asfearing that they might come to be neglected, and knowing that they couldnever be loved again as she had loved them. On being told that all wasover, she said, "Thank you, " and immediately expired. 

Reflecting in such random fashion, and strolling with no greater method, I worked my way back through Cheapside and found myself once more infront of Sweeting's window. Again the turtles attracted me. They werealive, and so far at any rate they agreed with me. Nay, they had eyes, mouths, legs, if not arms, and feet, so there was much in which we wereboth of a mind, but surely they must be mistaken in arming themselves sovery heavily. Any creature on getting what the turtle aimed at wouldoverreach itself and be landed not in safety but annihilation. It shouldhave no communion with the outside world at all, for death could creep inwherever the creature could creep out; and it must creep out somewhere ifit was to hook on to outside things. What death can be more absolutethan such absolute isolation? Perfect death, indeed, if it wereattainable (which it is not), is as near perfect security as we canreach, but it is not the kind of security aimed at by any animal that isat the pains of defending itself. For such want to have things bothways, desiring the livingness of life without its perils, and the safetyof death without its deadness, and some of us do actually get this for aconsiderable time, but we do not get it by plating ourselves with armouras the turtle does. We tried this in the Middle Ages, and no longer mockourselves with the weight of armour that our forefathers carried inbattle. Indeed the more deadly the weapons of attack become the more wego into the fight slug-wise. 

Slugs have ridden their contempt for defensive armour as much to death asthe turtles their pursuit of it. They have hardly more than skin enoughto hold themselves together; they court death every time they cross theroad. Yet death comes not to them more than to the turtle, whosedefences are so great that there is little left inside to be defended. Moreover, the slugs fare best in the long run, for turtles are dying out, while slugs are not, and there must be millions of slugs all the worldover for every single turtle. Of the two vanities, therefore, that ofthe slug seems most substantial. 

In either case the creature thinks itself safe, but is sure to be foundout sooner or later; nor is it easy to explain this mockery save byreflecting that everything must have its meat in due season, and thatmeat can only be found for such a multitude of mouths by givingeverything as meat in due season to something else. This is like theKilkenny cats, or robbing Peter to pay Paul; but it is the way of theworld, and as every animal must contribute in kind to the picnic of theuniverse, one does not see what better arrangement could be made than theproviding each race with a hereditary fallacy, which shall in the end getit into a scrape, but which shall generally stand the wear and tear oflife for some time. "_Do ut des_" is the writing on all flesh to himthat eats it; and no creature is dearer to itself than it is to someother that would devour it. 

Nor is there any statement or proposition more invulnerable than livingforms are. Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another justlike living forms. They support one another as plants and animals do;they are based ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash ofirrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the creditsystem, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were tocollapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it livesby faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by someinscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest inmatter and in flesh: it is meteoric--suspended in midair; it is thebaseless fabric of a vision so vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that nobase can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet anyman can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails asystem based on faith fails also. 

Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is aninflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another matter. If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable certainty foreverything that they have taken hitherto as paper money on the credit ofthe bank of public opinion, is there money enough behind it all to standso great a drain even on so great a reserve? Probably there is not, buthappily there can be no such panic, for even though the cultured classesmay do so, the uncultured are too dull to have brains enough to commitsuch stupendous folly. It takes a long course of academic training toeducate a man up to the standard which he must reach before he canentertain such questions seriously, and by a merciful dispensation ofProvidence, university training is almost as costly as it isunprofitable. The majority will thus be always unable to afford it, andwill base their opinions on mother wit and current opinion rather than ondemonstration. 

So I turned my steps homewards; I saw a good many more things on my wayhome, but I was told that I was not to see more this time than I couldget into twelve pages of the _Universal Review_; I must therefore reserveany remark which I think might perhaps entertain the reader for anotheroccasion. 

THE AUNT, THE NIECES, AND THE DOG {3}

When a thing is old, broken, and useless we throw it on the dust-heap, but when it is sufficiently old, sufficiently broken, and sufficientlyuseless we give money for it, put it into a museum, and read papers overit which people come long distances to hear. By-and-by, when thewhirligig of time has brought on another revenge, the museum itselfbecomes a dust-heap, and remains so till after long ages it isre-discovered, and valued as belonging to a neo-rubbish age--containing, perhaps, traces of a still older paleo-rubbish civilisation. So whenpeople are old, indigent, and in all respects incapable, we hold them ingreater and greater contempt as their poverty and impotence increase, till they reach the pitch when they are actually at the point to die, whereon they become sublime. Then we place every resource our hospitalscan command at their disposal, and show no stint in our consideration forthem. 

It is the same with all our interests. We care most about extremes ofimportance and of unimportance; but extremes of importance are taintedwith fear, and a very imperfect fear casteth out love. Extremes ofunimportance cannot hurt us, therefore we are well disposed towards them;the means may come to do so, therefore we do not love them. Hence wepick a fly out of a milk-jug and watch with pleasure over its recovery, for we are confident that under no conceivable circumstances will it wantto borrow money from us; but we feel less sure about a mouse, so we showit no quarter. The compilers of our almanacs well know this tendency ofour natures, so they tell us, not when Noah went into the ark, nor whenthe temple of Jerusalem was dedicated, but that Lindley Murray, grammarian, died January 16, 1826. This is not because they could notfind so many as three hundred and sixty-five events of considerableinterest since the creation of the world, but because they well know wewould rather hear of something less interesting. We care most about whatconcerns us either very closely, or so little that practically we havenothing whatever to do with it. 

I once asked a young Italian, who professed to have a considerableknowledge of English literature, which of all our poems pleased him best. He replied without a moment's hesitation:--

 "Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed to see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon. "

He said this was better than anything in Italian. They had Dante andTasso, and ever so many more great poets, but they had nothing comparableto "Hey diddle diddle, " nor had he been able to conceive how any onecould have written it. Did I know the author's name, and had we givenhim a statue? On this I told him of the young lady of Harrow who wouldgo to church in a barrow, and plied him with whatever rhyming nonsense Icould call to mind, but it was no use; all of these things had an elementof reality that robbed them of half their charm, whereas "Hey diddlediddle" had nothing in it that could conceivably concern him. 

So again it is with the things that gall us most. What is it that risesup against us at odd times and smites us in the face again and again foryears after it has happened? That we spent all the best years of ourlife in learning what we have found to be a swindle, and to have beenknown to be a swindle by those who took money for misleading us? Thatthose on whom we most leaned most betrayed us? That we have only come tofeel our strength when there is little strength left of any kind to feel?These things will hardly much disturb a man of ordinary good temper. Butthat he should have said this or that little unkind and wanton saying;that he should have gone away from this or that hotel and given ashilling too little to the waiter; that his clothes were shabby at suchor such a garden-party--these things gall us as a corn will sometimes do, though the loss of a limb way not be seriously felt. 

I have been reminded lately of these considerations with more than commonforce by reading the very voluminous correspondence left by mygrandfather, Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury, whose memoirs I am engaged inwriting. I have found a large number of interesting letters on subjectsof serious import, but must confess that it is to the hardly lessnumerous lighter letters that I have been most attracted, nor do I feelsure that my eminent namesake did not share my predilection. Among otherletters in my possession I have one bundle that has been kept apart, andhas evidently no connection with Dr. Butler's own life. I cannot usethese letters, therefore, for my book, but over and above the charm oftheir inspired spelling, I find them of such an extremely trivial naturethat I incline to hope the reader may derive as much amusement from themas I have done myself, and venture to give them the publicity here whichI must refuse them in my book. The dates and signatures have, with theexception of Mrs. Newton's, been carefully erased, but I have collectedthat they were written by the two servants of a single lady who residedat no great distance from London, to two nieces of the said lady wholived in London itself. The aunt never writes, but always gets one ofthe servants to do so for her. She appears either as "your aunt" or as"She"; her name is not given, but she is evidently looked upon with agood deal of awe by all who had to do with her. 

The letters almost all of them relate to visits either of the aunt toLondon, or of the nieces to the aunt's home, which, from occasionalallusions to hopping, I gather to have been in Kent, Sussex, or Surrey. Ihave arranged them to the best of my power, and take the following to bethe earliest. It has no signature, but is not in the handwriting of theservant who styles herself Elizabeth, or Mrs. Newton. It runs:--

 "MADAM, --Your Aunt Wishes me to inform you she will be glad if you will let hir know if you think of coming To hir House thiss month or Next as she cannot have you in September on a kount of the Hoping If you ar coming she thinkes she had batter Go to London on the Day you com to hir House the says you shall have everry Thing raddy for you at hir House and Mrs. Newton to meet you and stay with you till She returnes a gann. 

 "if you arnot Coming thiss Summer She will be in London before thiss Month is out and will Sleep on the Sofy As She willnot be in London more thann two nits. And She Says she willnot truble you on anny a kount as She Will returne the Same Day before She will plage you anny more. But She thanks you for asking hir to London. But She says She cannot leve the house at prassant She sayhir Survants ar to do for you as she cannot lodge yours nor she willnot have thim in at the house anny more to brake and destroy hir thinks and beslive hir and make up Lies by hir and Skandel as your too did She says she mens to pay fore 2 Nits and one day, She says the Pepelwill let hir have it if you ask thim to let hir: you Will be so good as to let hir know sun: wish She is to do, as She says She dos not care anny thing a bout it. Which way tiss she is batter than She was and desirs hir Love to bouth bouth. 

 "Your aunt wises to know how the silk Clocks ar madup [how the silk cloaks are made up] with a Cape or a wood as she is a goin to have one madeup to rideout in in hir littel shas [chaise]. 

 "Charles is a butty and so good. 

 "Mr & Mrs Newton ar quite wall & desires to be remembered to you. "

I can throw no light on the meaning of the verb to "beslive. " Eachletter in the MS. Is so admirably formed that there can be no questionabout the word being as I have given it. Nor have I been able todiscover what is referred to by the words "Charles is a butty and sogood. " We shall presently meet with a Charles who "flies in the Fier, "but that Charles appears to have been in London, whereas this one isevidently in Kent, or wherever the aunt lived. 

The next letter is from Mrs. Newton

 "DER MISS ---, I Receve your Letter your Aunt is vary Ill and Lowspireted I Donte think your Aunt wood Git up all Day if My Sister Wasnot to Persage her We all Think hir lif is two monopolous. You Wish to know Who Was Liveing With your Aunt. That is My Sister and Willian--and Cariline--as Cock and Old Poll Pepper is Come to Stay With her a Littel Wile and I hoped [hopped] for Your Aunt, and Harry has Worked for your Aunt all the Summer. Your Aunt and Harry Whent to the Wells Races and Spent a very Pleasant Day your Aunt has Lost Old Fanney Sow She Died about a Week a Go Harry he Wanted your Aunt to have her killed and send her to London and Shee Wold Fech her 11 pounds the Farmers have Lost a Greet Deal of Cattel such as Hogs and Cows What theay call the Plage I Whent to your Aunt as you Wish Mee to Do But She Told Mee She Did not wont aney Boddy She Told Mee She Should Like to Come up to see you But She Cant Come know for she is Boddyley ill and Harry Donte Work there know But he Go up there Once in Two or Three Day Harry Offered is self to Go up to Live With your Aunt But She Made him know Ancer. I hay Been up to your Aunt at Work for 5 Weeks Hopping and Ragluting Your Aunt Donte Eat nor Drink But vary Littel indeed. 

 "I am Happy to Say We are Both Quite Well and I am Glad no hear you are Both Quite Well

 "MRS NEWTON. "

This seems to have made the nieces propose to pay a visit to their aunt, perhaps to try and relieve the monopoly of her existence and cheer her upa little. In their letter, doubtless, the dog motive is introduced thatis so finely developed presently by Mrs. Newton. I should like to havebeen able to give the theme as enounced by the nieces themselves, buttheir letters are not before me. Mrs. Newton writes:--

 "MY DEAR GIRLS, --Your Aunt receiv your Letter your Aunt will Be vary glad to see you as it quite a greeable if it tis to you and Shee is Quite Willing to Eair the beds and the Rooms if you Like to Trust to hir and the Servantes; if not I may Go up there as you Wish. My Sister Sleeps in the Best Room as she allways Did and the Coock in the garret and you Can have the Rooms the same as you allways Did as your Aunt Donte set in the Parlour She Continlery Sets in the Ciching. Your Aunt says she Cannot Part from the dog know hows and She Says he will not hurt you for he is Like a Child and I can safeley say My Self he wonte hurt you as She Cannot Sleep in the Room With out him as he allWay Sleep in the Same Room as She Dose. Your Aunt is agreeable to Git in What Coles and Wood you Wish for I am know happy to say your Aunt is in as Good health as ever She Was and She is happy to hear you are Both Well your Aunt Wishes for Ancer By Return of Post. "

The nieces replied that their aunt must choose between the dog and them, and Mrs. Newton sends a second letter which brings her development to aclimax. It runs:--

 "DEAR MISS ---, I have Receve your Letter and i Whent up to your Aunt as you Wish me and i Try to Perveal With her about the Dog But she Wold not Put the Dog away nor it alow him to Be Tied up But She Still Wishes you to Come as Shee says the Dog Shall not interrup you for She Donte alow the Dog nor it the Cats to Go in the Parlour never sence She has had it Donup ferfere of Spoiling the Paint your Aunt think it vary Strange you Should Be so vary Much afraid of a Dog and She says you Cant Go out in London But What you are up a gance one and She says She Wonte Trust the Dog in know one hands But her Owne for She is afraid theay Will not fill is Belley as he Lives upon Rost Beeff and Rost and Boil Moutten Wich he Eats More then the Servantes in the House there is not aney One Wold Beable to Give Sattefacktion upon that account Harry offerd to Take the Dog But She Wood not Trust him in our hands so I Cold not Do aney thing With her your Aunt youse to Tell Me When we was at your House in London She Did not know how to make you amens and i Told her know it was the Time to Do it But i Considder She sets the Dog Before you your Aunt keep know Beer know Sprits know Wines in the House of aney Sort Oneley a Little Barl of Wine I made her in the Summer the Workmen and servantes are a Blige to Drink wauter Morning Noon and Night your Aunt the Same She Donte Low her Self aney Tee nor Coffee But is Loocking Wonderful Well

 "I Still Remane your Humble Servant Mrs Newton

 "I am vary sorry to think the Dog Perventes your Comeing

 "I am Glad to hear you are Both Well and we are the same. "

The nieces remained firm, and from the following letter it is plain theaunt gave way. The dog motive is repeated _pianissimo_, and is notreturned to--not at least by Mrs. Newton. 

 "DEAR MISS ---, I Receve your Letter on Thursday i Whent to your Aunt and i see her and She is a Greable to everry thing i asked her and seme so vary Much Please to see you Both Next Tuseday and she has sent for the Faggots to Day and she Will Send for the Coles to Morrow and i will Go up there to Morrow Morning and Make the Fiers and Tend to the Beds and sleep in it Till you Come Down your Aunt sends her Love to you Both and she is Quite well your Aunt Wishes you wold Write againe Before you Come as she ma Expeckye and the Dog is not to Gointo the Parlor a Tall

 "your Aunt kind Love to you Both & hopes you Wonte Fail in Coming according to Prommis

 MRS NEWTON. "

From a later letter it appears that the nieces did not pay their visitafter all, and what is worse a letter had miscarried, and the aunt sat upexpecting them from seven till twelve at night, and Harry had paid for"Faggots and Coles quarter of Hund. Faggots Half tun of Coles 1_l. _1_s. _ 3_d. _" Shortly afterwards, however, "She" again talks of coming upto London herself and writes through her servant--

 "My Dear girls i Receve your kind letter & I am happy to hear you ar both Well and I Was in hopes of seeing of you Both Down at My House this spring to stay a Wile I am Quite well my self in Helth But vary Low Spireted I am vary sorry to hear the Misforting of Poor charles & how he cum to flie in the Fier I cannot think. I should like to know if he is dead or a Live, and I shall come to London in August & stay three or four daies if it is agreable to you. Mrs. Newton has lost her mother in Law 4 day March & I hope you send me word Wather charles is Dead or a Live as soon as possible, and will you send me word what Little Betty is for I cannot make her out. "

The next letter is a new handwriting, and tells the nieces of theiraunt's death in the the following terms:--

 "DEAR MISS ---, It is my most painful duty to inform you that your dear aunt expired this morning comparatively easy as Hannah informs me and in so doing restored her soul to the custody of him whom she considered to be alone worthy of its care. 

 "The doctor had visited her about five minutes previously and had applied a blister. 

 "You and your sister will I am sure excuse further details at present and believe me with kindest remembrances to remain

 "Yours truly, &c. "

After a few days a lawyer's letter informs the nieces that their aunt hadleft them the bulk of her not very considerable property, but had chargedthem with an annuity of 1 pound a week to be paid to Harry and Mrs. Newton so long as the dog lived. 

The only other letters by Mrs. Newton are written on paper of a differentand more modern size; they leave an impression of having been written agood many years later. I take them as they come. The first is veryshort:--

 "DEAR MISS ---, i write to say i cannot possiblely come on Wednesday as we have killed a pig. Your's truely, "ELIZABETH NEWTON. "

The second runs:--

 "DEAR MISS ---, i hope you are both quite well in health & your Leg much better i am happy to say i am getting quite well again i hope Amandy has reached you safe by this time i sent a small parcle by Amandy, there was half a dozen Pats of butter & the Cakes was very homely and not so light as i could wish i hope by this time Sarah Ann has promised she will stay untill next monday as i think a few daies longer will not make much diferance and as her young man has been very considerate to wait so long as he has i think he would for a few days Longer dear Miss --- I wash for William and i have not got his clothes yet as it has been delayed by the carrier & i cannot possiblely get it done before Sunday and i do not Like traviling on a Sunday but to oblige you i would come but to come sooner i cannot possiblely but i hope Sarah Ann will be prevailed on once more as She has so many times i feel sure if she tells her young man he will have patient for he is a very kind young man

 "i remain your sincerely "ELIZABETH NEWTON. "

The last letter in my collection seems written almost within measurabledistance of the Christmas-card era. The sheet is headed by a beautifullyembossed device of some holly in red and green, wishing the recipient ofthe letter a merry Xmas and a happy new year, while the border is crimpedand edged with blue. I know not what it is, but there is something inthe writer's highly finished style that reminds me of Mendelssohn. Itwould almost do for the words of one of his celebrated "Lieder ohneWorte":

 "DEAR MISS MARIA, --I hasten to acknowledge the receipt of your kind note with the inclosure for which I return my best thanks. I need scarcely say how glad I was to know that the volumes secured your approval, and that the announcement of the improvement in the condition of your Sister's legs afforded me infinite pleasure. The gratifying news encouraged me in the hope that now the nature of the disorder is comprehended her legs will--notwithstanding the process may be gradual--ultimately get quite well. The pretty Robin Redbreast which lay ensconced in your epistle, conveyed to me, in terms more eloquent than words, how much you desired me those Compliments which the little missive he bore in his bill expressed; the emblem is sweetly pretty, and now that we are again allowed to felicitate each other on another recurrence of the season of the Christian's rejoicing, permit me to tender to yourself, and by you to your Sister, mine and my Wife's heartfelt congratulations and warmest wishes with respect to the coming year. It is a common belief that if we take a retrospective view of each departing year, as it behoves us annually to do, we shall find the blessings which we have received to immeasurably outnumber our causes of sorrow. Speaking for myself I can fully subscribe to that sentiment, and doubtless neither Miss --- nor yourself are exceptions. Miss ---'s illness and consequent confinement to the house has been a severe trial, but in that trouble an opportunity was afforded you to prove a Sister's devotion and she has been enabled to realise a larger (if possible) display of sisterly affection. 

 "A happy Christmas to you both, and may the new year prove a Cornucopia from which still greater blessings than even those we have hitherto received, shall issue, to benefit us all by contributing to our temporal happiness and, what is of higher importance, conducing to our felicity hereafter. 

 "I was sorry to hear that you were so annoyed with mice and rats, and if I should have an opportunity to obtain a nice cat I will do so and send my boy to your house with it. 

 "I remain, "Yours truly. "

How little what is commonly called education can do after all towards theformation of a good style, and what a delightful volume might not beentitled "Half Hours with the Worst Authors. " Why, the finest word Iknow of in the English language was coined, not by my poor oldgrandfather, whose education had left little to desire, nor by any of theadmirable scholars whom he in his turn educated, but by an old matron whopresided over one of the halls, or houses of his school. 

This good lady, whose name by the way was Bromfield, had a fine hightemper of her own, or thought it politic to affect one. One night whenthe boys were particularly noisy she burst like a hurricane into thehall, collared a youngster, and told him he was "theramp-ingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boy in thewhole school. " Would Mrs. Newton have been able to set the aunt and thedog before us so vividly if she had been more highly educated? WouldMrs. Bromfield have been able to forge and hurl her thunderbolt of a wordif she had been taught how to do so, or indeed been at much pains tocreate it at all? It came. It was her [Greek text]. She did notprobably know that she had done what the greatest scholar would have hadto rack his brains over for many an hour before he could even approach. Tradition says that having brought down her boy she looked round the hallin triumph, and then after a moment's lull said, "Young gentlemen, prayers are excused, " and left them. 

I have sometimes thought that, after all, the main use of a classicaleducation consists in the check it gives to originality, and the way inwhich it prevents an inconvenient number of people from using their owneyes. That we will not be at the trouble of looking at things forourselves if we can get any one to tell us what we ought to see goeswithout saying, and it is the business of schools and universities toassist us in this respect. The theory of evolution teaches that anypower not worked at pretty high pressure will deteriorate: originalityand freedom from affectation are all very well in their way, but we caneasily have too much of them, and it is better that none should be eitheroriginal or free from cant but those who insist on being so, no matterwhat hindrances obstruct, nor what incentives are offered them to seethings through the regulation medium. 

To insist on seeing things for oneself is to be in [Greek text], or inplain English, an idiot; nor do I see any safer check against generalvigour and clearness of thought, with consequent terseness of expression, than that provided by the curricula of our universities and schools ofpublic instruction. If a young man, in spite of every effort to fit himwith blinkers, will insist on getting rid of them, he must do so at hisown risk. He will not be long in finding out his mistake. Our publicschools and universities play the beneficent part in our social schemethat cattle do in forests: they browse the seedlings down and prevent thegrowth of all but the luckiest and sturdiest. Of course, if there aretoo many either cattle or schools, they browse so effectually that theyfind no more food, and starve till equilibrium is restored; but it seemsto be a provision of nature that there should always be these alternateperiods, during which either the cattle or the trees are getting the bestof it; and, indeed, without such provision we should have neither the onenor the other. At this moment the cattle, doubtless, are in theascendant, and if university extension proceeds much farther, we shallassuredly have no more Mrs. Newtons and Mrs. Bromfields; but whatever isis best, and, on the whole, I should propose to let things find prettymuch their own level. 

However this may be, who can question that the treasures hidden in many acountry house contain sleeping beauties even fairer than those that Ihave endeavoured to waken from long sleep in the foregoing article? Howmany Mrs. Quicklys are there not living in London at this present moment?For that Mrs. Quickly was an invention of Shakespeare's I will notbelieve. The old woman from whom he drew said every word that he putinto Mrs. Quickly's mouth, and a great deal more which he did not andperhaps could not make use of. This question, however, would again leadme far from my subject, which I should mar were I to dwell upon itlonger, and therefore leave with the hope that it may give my readersabsolutely no food whatever for reflection. 

HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF LIFE {4}

I have been asked to speak on the question how to make the best of life, but may as well confess at once that I know nothing about it. I cannotthink that I have made the best of my own life, nor is it likely that Ishall make much better of what may or may not remain to me. I do noteven know how to make the best of the twenty minutes that your committeehas placed at my disposal, and as for life as a whole, who ever yet madethe best of such a colossal opportunity by conscious effort anddeliberation? In little things no doubt deliberate and conscious effortwill help us, but we are speaking of large issues, and such kingdoms ofheaven as the making the best of these come not by observation. 

The question, therefore, on which I have undertaken to address you is, asyou must all know, fatuous, if it be faced seriously. Life is likeplaying a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goeson. One cannot make the best of such impossibilities, and the questionis doubly fatuous until we are told which of our two lives--the consciousor the unconscious--is held by the asker to be the truer life. Whichdoes the question contemplate--the life we know, or the life which othersmay know, but which we know not?

Death gives a life to some men and women compared with which their so-called existence here is as nothing. Which is the truer life ofShakespeare, Handel, that divine woman who wrote the "Odyssey, " and ofJane Austen--the life which palpitated with sensible warm motion withintheir own bodies, or that in virtue of which they are still palpitatingin ours? In whose consciousness does their truest life consist--theirown, or ours? Can Shakespeare be said to have begun his true life till ahundred years or so after he was dead and buried? His physical life wasbut as an embryonic stage, a coming up out of darkness, a twilight anddawn before the sunrise of that life of the world to come which he was toenjoy hereafter. We all live for a while after we are gone hence, but weare for the most part stillborn, or at any rate die in infancy, asregards that life which every age and country has recognised as higherand truer than the one of which we are now sentient. As the life of therace is larger, longer, and in all respects more to be considered thanthat of the individual, so is the life we live in others larger and moreimportant than the one we live in ourselves. This appears nowhereperhaps more plainly than in the case of great teachers, who often in thelives of their pupils produce an effect that reaches far beyond anythingproduced while their single lives were yet unsupplemented by those otherlives into which they infused their own. 

Death to such people is the ending of a short life, but it does not touchthe life they are already living in those whom they have taught; andhappily, as none can know when he shall die, so none can make sure thathe too shall not live long beyond the grave; for the life after death islike money before it--no one can be sure that it may not fall to him orher even at the eleventh hour. Money and immortality come in such oddunaccountable ways that no one is cut off from hope. We may not havemade either of them for ourselves, but yet another may give them to us invirtue of his or her love, which shall illumine us for ever, andestablish us in some heavenly mansion whereof we neither dreamed norshall ever dream. Look at the Doge Loredano Loredani, the old man'ssmile upon whose face has been reproduced so faithfully in so many landsthat it can never henceforth be forgotten--would he have had onehundredth part of the life he now lives had he not been linked awhilewith one of those heaven-sent men who know _che cosa e amor_? Look atRembrandt's old woman in our National Gallery; had she died before shewas eighty-three years old she would not have been living now. Then, when she was eighty-three, immortality perched upon her as a bird on awithered bough. 

I seem to hear some one say that this is a mockery, a piece of specialpleading, a giving of stones to those that ask for bread. Life is notlife unless we can feel it, and a life limited to a knowledge of suchfraction of our work as may happen to survive us is no true life in otherpeople; salve it as we may, death is not life any more than black iswhite. 

The objection is not so true as it sounds. I do not deny that we hadrather not die, nor do I pretend that much even in the case of the mostfavoured few can survive them beyond the grave. It is only because thisis so that our own life is possible; others have made room for us, and weshould make room for others in our turn without undue repining. What Imaintain is that a not inconsiderable number of people do actually attainto a life beyond the grave which we can all feel forcibly enough, whetherthey can do so or not--that this life tends with increasing civilisationto become more and more potent, and that it is better worth considering, in spite of its being unfelt by ourselves, than any which we have felt orcan ever feel in our own persons. 

Take an extreme case. A group of people are photographed by Edison's newprocess--say Titiens, Trebelli, and Jenny Lind, with any two of thefinest men singers the age has known--let them be photographedincessantly for half an hour while they perform a scene in "Lohengrin";let all be done stereoscopically. Let them be phonographed at the sametime so that their minutest shades of intonation are preserved, let theslides be coloured by a competent artist, and then let the scene becalled suddenly into sight and sound, say a hundred years hence. Arethose people dead or alive? Dead to themselves they are, but while theylive so powerfully and so livingly in us, which is the greater paradox--tosay that they are alive or that they are dead? To myself it seems thattheir life in others would be more truly life than their death tothemselves is death. Granted that they do not present all the phenomenaof life--who ever does so even when he is held to be alive? We are heldto be alive because we present a sufficient number of living phenomena tolet the others go without saying; those who see us take the part for thewhole here as in everything else, and surely, in the case supposed above, the phenomena of life predominate so powerfully over those of death, thatthe people themselves must be held to be more alive than dead. Ourliving personality is, as the word implies, only our mask, and those whostill own such a mask as I have supposed have a living personality. Granted again that the case just put is an extreme one; still many a manand many a woman has so stamped him or herself on his work that, thoughwe would gladly have the aid of such accessories as we doubtlesspresently shall have to the livingness of our great dead, we can see themvery sufficiently through the master pieces they have left us. 

As for their own unconsciousness I do not deny it. The life of theembryo was unconscious before birth, and so is the life--I am speakingonly of the life revealed to us by natural religion--after death. But asthe embryonic and infant life of which we were unconscious was the mostpotent factor in our after life of consciousness, so the effect which wemay unconsciously produce in others after death, and it may be evenbefore it on those who have never seen us, is in all sober seriousnessour truer and more abiding life, and the one which those who would makethe best of their sojourn here will take most into their consideration. 

Unconsciousness is no bar to livingness. Our conscious actions are adrop in the sea as compared with our unconscious ones. Could we know allthe life that is in us by way of circulation, nutrition, breathing, wasteand repair, we should learn what an infinitesimally small partconsciousness plays in our present existence; yet our unconscious life isas truly life as our conscious life, and though it is unconscious toitself it emerges into an indirect and vicarious consciousness in ourother and conscious self, which exists but in virtue of our unconsciousself. So we have also a vicarious consciousness in others. Theunconscious life of those that have gone before us has in great partmoulded us into such men and women as we are, and our own unconsciouslives will in like manner have a vicarious consciousness in others, though we be dead enough to it in ourselves. 

If it is again urged that it matters not to us how much we may be alivein others, if we are to know nothing about it, I reply that the commoninstinct of all who are worth considering gives the lie to such cynicism. I see here present some who have achieved, and others who no doubt willachieve, success in literature. Will one of them hesitate to admit thatit is a lively pleasure to her to feel that on the other side of theworld some one may be smiling happily over her work, and that she is thusliving in that person though she knows nothing about it? Here it seemsto me that true faith comes in. Faith does not consist, as the SundaySchool pupil said, "in the power of believing that which we know to beuntrue. " It consists in holding fast that which the healthiest and mostkindly instincts of the best and most sensible men and women areintuitively possessed of, without caring to require much evidence furtherthan the fact that such people are so convinced; and for my own part Ifind the best men and women I know unanimous in feeling that life inothers, even though we know nothing about it, is nevertheless a thing tobe desired and gratefully accepted if we can get it either before deathor after. I observe also that a large number of men and women doactually attain to such life, and in some cases continue so to live, ifnot for ever, yet to what is practically much the same thing. Our lifethen in this world is, to natural religion as much as to revealed, aperiod of probation. The use we make of it is to settle how far we areto enter into another, and whether that other is to be a heaven of justaffection or a hell of righteous condemnation. 

Who, then, are the most likely so to run that they may obtain thisveritable prize of our high calling? Setting aside such lucky numbersdrawn as it were in the lottery of immortality, which I have referred tocasually above, and setting aside also the chances and changes from whicheven immortality is not exempt, who on the whole are most likely to liveanew in the affectionate thoughts of those who never so much as saw themin the flesh, and know not even their names? There is a _nisus_, astraining in the dull dumb economy of things, in virtue of which some, whether they will it and know it or no, are more likely to live afterdeath than others, and who are these? Those who aimed at it as by somegreat thing that they would do to make them famous? Those who have livedmost in themselves and for themselves, or those who have been mostensouled consciously, but perhaps better unconsciously, directly but moreoften indirectly, by the most living souls past and present that haveflitted near them? Can we think of a man or woman who grips us firmly, at the thought of whom we kindle when we are alone in our honest daw'splumes, with none to admire or shrug his shoulders, can we think of onesuch, the secret of whose power does not lie in the charm of his or herpersonality--that is to say, in the wideness of his or her sympathy with, and therefore life in and communion with other people? In the wreckagethat comes ashore from the sea of time there is much tinsel stuff that wemust preserve and study if we would know our own times and people;granted that many a dead charlatan lives long and enters largely andnecessarily into our own lives; we use them and throw them away when wehave done with them. I do not speak of these, I do not speak of theVirgils and Alexander Popes, and who can say how many more whose names Idare not mention for fear of offending. They are as stuffed birds orbeasts in a Museum, serviceable no doubt from a scientific standpoint, but with no vivid or vivifying hold upon us. They seem to be alive, butare not. I am speaking of those who do actually live in us, and move usto higher achievements though they be long dead, whose life thrusts outour own and overrides it. I speak of those who draw us ever more towardsthem from youth to age, and to think of whom is to feel at once that weare in the hands of those we love, and whom we would most wish toresemble. What is the secret of the hold that these people have upon us?Is it not that while, conventionally speaking, alive, they most mergedtheir lives in, and were in fullest communion with those among whom theylived? They found their lives in losing them. We never love the memoryof any one unless we feel that he or she was himself or herself a lover. 

I have seen it urged, again, in querulous accents, that the so-calledimmortality even of the most immortal is not for ever. I see a passageto this effect in a book that is making a stir as I write. I will quoteit. The writer says:--

 "So, it seems to me, is the immortality we so glibly predicate of departed artists. If they survive at all, it is but a shadowy life they live, moving on through the gradations of slow decay to distant but inevitable death. They can no longer, as heretofore, speak directly to the hearts of their fellow-men, evoking their tears or laughter, and all the pleasures, be they sad or merry, of which imagination holds the secret. Driven from the marketplace they become first the companions of the student, then the victims of the specialist. He who would still hold familiar intercourse with them must train himself to penetrate the veil which in ever-thickening folds conceals them from the ordinary gaze; he must catch the tone of a vanished society, he must move in a circle of alien associations, he must think in a language not his own. " {5}

This is crying for the moon, or rather pretending to cry for it, for thewriter is obviously insincere. I see the _Saturday Review_ says thepassage I have just quoted "reaches almost to poetry, " and indeed I findmany blank verses in it, some of them very aggressive. No prose is freefrom an occasional blank verse, and a good writer will not go huntingover his work to rout them out, but nine or ten in little more than asmany lines is indeed reaching too near to poetry for good prose. This, however, is a trifle, and might pass if the tone of the writer was not soobviously that of cheap pessimism. I know not which is cheapest, pessimism or optimism. One forces lights, the other darks; both areequally untrue to good art, and equally sure of their effect with thegroundlings. The one extenuates, the other sets down in malice. Thefirst is the more amiable lie, but both are lies, and are known to be soby those who utter them. Talk about catching the tone of a vanishedsociety to understand Rembrandt or Giovanni Bellini! It's nonsense--thefolds do not thicken in front of these men; we understand them as well asthose among whom they went about in the flesh, and perhaps better. Homerand Shakespeare speak to us probably far more effectually than they didto the men of their own time, and most likely we have them at their best. I cannot think that Shakespeare talked better than we hear him now in"Hamlet" or "Henry the Fourth"; like enough he would have been found avery disappointing person in a drawing-room. People stamp themselves ontheir work; if they have not done so they are naught; if they have wehave them; and for the most part they stamp themselves deeper in theirwork than on their talk. No doubt Shakespeare and Handel will be one dayclean forgotten, as though they had never been born. The world will inthe end die; mortality therefore itself is not immortal, and when deathdies the life of these men will die with it--but not sooner. It isenough that they should live within us and move us for many ages as theyhave and will. Such immortality, therefore, as some men and women areborn to, achieve, or have thrust upon them, is a practical if not atechnical immortality, and he who would have more let him have nothing. 

I see I have drifted into speaking rather of how to make the best ofdeath than of life, but who can speak of life without his thoughtsturning instantly to that which is beyond it? He or she who has made thebest of the life after death has made the best of the life before it; whocares one straw for any such chances and changes as will commonly befallhim here if he is upheld by the full and certain hope of everlasting lifein the affections of those that shall come after? If the life afterdeath is happy in the hearts of others, it matters little how unhappy wasthe life before it. 

And now I leave my subject, not without misgiving that I shall havedisappointed you. But for the great attention which is being paid to thework from which I have quoted above, I should not have thought it well toinsist on points with which you are, I doubt not, as fully impressed as Iam: but that book weakens the sanctions of natural religion, andminimises the comfort which it affords us, while it does more toundermine than to support the foundations of what is commonly calledbelief. Therefore I was glad to embrace this opportunity of protesting. Otherwise I should not have been so serious on a matter that transcendsall seriousness. Lord Beaconsfield cut it shorter with more effect. Whenasked to give a rule of life for the son of a friend he said, "Do not lethim try and find out who wrote the letters of Junius. " Pressed forfurther counsel he added, "Nor yet who was the man in the iron mask"--andhe would say no more. Don't bore people. And yet I am by no means surethat a good many people do not think themselves ill-used unless he whoaddresses them has thoroughly well bored them--especially if they havepaid any money for hearing him. My great namesake said, "Surely thepleasure is as great of being cheated as to cheat, " and great as thepleasure both of cheating and boring undoubtedly is, I believe he wasright. So I remember a poem which came out some thirty years ago in_Punch_, about a young lady who went forth in quest to "Some burden makeor burden bear, but which she did not greatly care, oh Miserie. " So, again, all the holy men and women who in the Middle Ages professed tohave discovered how to make the best of life took care that being bored, if not cheated, should have a large place in their programme. Stillthere are limits, and I close not without fear that I may have exceededthem. 

THE SANCTUARY OF MONTRIGONE {6}

The only place in the Valsesia, except Varallo, where I at presentsuspect the presence of Tabachetti {7} is at Montrigone, a little-knownsanctuary dedicated to St. Anne, about three-quarters of a mile south ofBorgo-Sesia station. The situation is, of course, lovely, but thesanctuary does not offer any features of architectural interest. Thesacristan told me it was founded in 1631; and in 1644 Giovanni d'Enrico, while engaged in superintending and completing the work undertaken hereby himself and Giacomo Ferro, fell ill and died. I do not know whetheror no there was an earlier sanctuary on the same site, but was told itwas built on the demolition of a stronghold belonging to the Counts ofBiandrate. 

The incidents which it illustrates are treated with even more than thehomeliness usual in works of this description when not dealing with suchsolemn events as the death and passion of Christ. Except when thesesubjects were being represented, something of the latitude, and evenhumour, allowed in the old mystery plays was permitted, doubtless from adesire to render the work more attractive to the peasants, who were themost numerous and most important pilgrims. It is not until faith beginsto be weak that it fears an occasionally lighter treatment of semi-sacredsubjects, and it is impossible to convey an accurate idea of the spiritprevailing at this hamlet of sanctuary without attuning oneself somewhatto the more pagan character of the place. Of irreverence, in the senseof a desire to laugh at things that are of high and serious import, thereis not a trace, but at the same time there is a certain unbending of thebow at Montrigone which is not perceivable at Varallo. 

The first chapel to the left on entering the church is that of the Birthof the Virgin. St. Anne is sitting up in bed. She is not at all ill--infact, considering that the Virgin has only been born about five minutes, she is wonderful; still the doctors think it may be perhaps better thatshe should keep her room for half an hour longer, so the bed has beenfestooned with red and white paper roses, and the counterpane is coveredwith bouquets in baskets and in vases of glass and china. These cannothave been there during the actual birth of the Virgin, so I suppose theyhad been in readiness, and were brought in from an adjoining room as soonas the baby had been born. A lady on her left is bringing in some moreflowers, which St. Anne is receiving with a smile and most graciousgesture of the hands. The first thing she asked for, when the birth wasover, was for her three silver hearts. These were immediately brought toher, and she has got them all on, tied round her neck with a piece ofblue silk ribbon. 

Dear mamma has come. We felt sure she would, and that any littlemisunderstandings between her and Joachim would ere long be forgotten andforgiven. They are both so good and sensible if they would onlyunderstand one another. At any rate, here she is, in high state at theright hand of the bed. She is dressed in black, for she has lost herhusband some few years previously, but I do not believe a smarter, sprierold lady for her years could be found in Palestine, nor yet that eitherGiovanni d'Enrico or Giacomo Ferro could have conceived or executed sucha character. The sacristan wanted to have it that she was not a woman atall, but was a portrait of St. Joachim, the Virgin's father. "Sembra unadonna, " he pleaded more than once, "ma non e donna. " Surely, however, inworks of art even more than in other things, there is no "is" butseeming, and if a figure seems female it must be taken as such. Besides, I asked one of the leading doctors at Varallo whether the figure was manor woman. He said it was evident I was not married, for that if I hadbeen I should have seen at once that she was not only a woman but amother-in-law of the first magnitude, or, as he called it, "una suoceratremenda, " and this without knowing that I wanted her to be a mother-in-law myself. Unfortunately she had no real drapery, so I could not settlethe question as my friend Mr. H. F. Jones and I had been able to do atVarallo with the figure of Eve that had been turned into a Roman soldierassisting at the capture of Christ. I am not, however, disposed to wastemore time upon anything so obvious, and will content myself with sayingthat we have here the Virgin's grandmother. I had never had thepleasure, so far as I remembered, of meeting this lady before, and wasglad to have an opportunity of making her acquaintance. 

Tradition says that it was she who chose the Virgin's name, and if so, what a debt of gratitude do we not owe her for her judicious selection!It makes one shudder to think what might have happened if she had namedthe child Keren-Happuch, as poor Job's daughter was called. How could wehave said, "Ave Keren-Happuch!" What would the musicians have done? Iforget whether Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz was a man or a woman, but there wereplenty of names quite as unmanageable at the Virgin's grandmother'soption, and we cannot sufficiently thank her for having chosen one thatis so euphonious in every language which we need take into account. Forthis reason alone we should not grudge her her portrait, but we shouldtry to draw the line here. I do not think we ought to give the Virgin'sgreat-grandmother a statue. Where is it to end? It is like Mr. Crookes's ultimissimate atoms; we used to draw the line at ultimateatoms, and now it seems we are to go a step farther back and haveultimissimate atoms. How long, I wonder, will it be before we feel thatit will be a material help to us to have ultimissimissimate atoms?Quavers stopped at demi-semi-demi, but there is no reason to suppose thateither atoms or ancestresses of the Virgin will be so complacent. 

I have said that on St. Anne's left hand there is a lady who is bringingin some flowers. St. Anne was always passionately fond of flowers. Thereis a pretty story told about her in one of the Fathers, I forget which, to the effect that when a child she was asked which she liked best--cakesor flowers? She could not yet speak plainly and lisped out, "Oh fowses, pretty fowses"; she added, however, with a sigh and as a kind of wistfulcorollary, "but cakes are very nice. " She is not to have any cakes, justnow, but as soon as she has done thanking the lady for her beautifulnosegay, she is to have a couple of nice new-laid eggs, that are beingbrought her by another lady. Valsesian women immediately after theirconfinement always have eggs beaten up with wine and sugar, and one cantell a Valsesian Birth of the Virgin from a Venetian or a Florentine bythe presence of the eggs. I learned this from an eminent Valsesianprofessor of medicine, who told me that, though not according to receivedrules, the eggs never seemed to do any harm. Here they are evidently tobe beaten up, for there is neither spoon nor egg-cup, and we cannotsuppose that they were hard-boiled. On the other hand, in the MiddleAges Italians never used egg-cups and spoons for boiled eggs. Themediaeval boiled egg was always eaten by dipping bread into the yolk. 

Behind the lady who is bringing in the eggs is the under-under-nurse whois at the fire warming a towel. In the foreground we have the regulationmidwife holding the regulation baby (who, by the way, was anastonishingly fine child for only five minutes old). Then comes theunder-nurse--a good buxom creature, who, as usual, is feeling the waterin the bath to see that it is of the right temperature. Next to her isthe head-nurse, who is arranging the cradle. Behind the head-nurse isthe under-under-nurse's drudge, who is just going out upon some errands. Lastly--for by this time we have got all round the chapel--we arrive atthe Virgin's grandmother's-body-guard, a stately, responsible-lookinglady, standing in waiting upon her mistress. I put it to the reader--isit conceivable that St. Joachim should have been allowed in such a roomat such a time, or that he should have had the courage to avail himselfof the permission, even though it had been extended to him? At any rate, is it conceivable that he should have been allowed to sit on St. Anne'sright hand, laying down the law with a "Marry, come up here, " and a"Marry, go-down there, " and a couple of such unabashed collars as the oldlady has put on for the occasion?

Moreover (for I may as well demolish this mischievous confusion betweenSt. Joachim and his mother-in-law once and for all), the merest tyro inhagiology knows that St. Joachim was not at home when the Virgin wasborn. He had been hustled out of the temple for having no children, andhad fled desolate and dismayed into the wilderness. It shows how sillypeople are, for all the time he was going, if they had only waited alittle, to be the father of the most remarkable person of purely humanorigin who had ever been born, and such a parent as this should surelynot be hurried. The story is told in the frescoes of the chapel ofLoreto, only a quarter of an hour's walk from Varallo, and no one canhave known it better than D'Enrico. The frescoes are explained bywritten passages that tell us how, when Joachim was in the desert, anangel came to him in the guise of a fair, civil young gentleman, and toldhim the Virgin was to be born. Then, later on, the same young gentlemanappeared to him again, and bade him "in God's name be comforted, and turnagain to his content, " for the Virgin had been actually born. On whichSt. Joachim, who seems to have been of opinion that marriage after all_was_ rather a failure, said that, as things were going on so nicelywithout him, he would stay in the desert just a little longer, andoffered up a lamb as a pretext to gain time. Perhaps he guessed abouthis mother-in-law, or he may have asked the angel. Of course, even inspite of such evidence as this I may be mistaken about the Virgin'sgrandmother's sex, and the sacristan may be right; but I can only saythat if the lady sitting by St. Anne's bedside at Montrigone is theVirgin's father--well, in that case I must reconsider a good deal that Ihave been accustomed to believe was beyond question. 

Taken singly, I suppose that none of the figures in the chapel, exceptthe Virgin's grandmother, should be rated very highly. The under-nurseis the next best figure, and might very well be Tabachetti's, for neitherGiovanni d'Enrico nor Giacomo Ferro was successful with his femalecharacters. There is not a single really comfortable woman in any chapelby either of them on the Sacro Monte at Varallo. Tabachetti, on theother hand, delighted in women; if they were young he made them comelyand engaging, if they were old he gave them dignity and individualcharacter, and the under-nurse is much more in accordance withTabachetti's habitual mental attitude than with D'Enrico's or GiacomoFerro's. Still there are only four figures out of the eleven that aremere otiose supers, and taking the work as a whole it leaves a pleasantimpression as being throughout naive and homely, and sometimes, which isof less importance, technically excellent. 

Allowance must, of course, be made for tawdry accessories and repeatedcoats of shiny oleaginous paint--very disagreeable where it has peeledoff and almost more so where it has not. What work could stand againstsuch treatment as the Valsesian terra-cotta figures have had to put upwith? Take the Venus of Milo; let her be done in terra-cotta, and haverun, not much, but still something, in the baking; paint her pink, twooils, all over, and then varnish her--it will help to preserve the paint;glue a lot of horsehair on to her pate, half of which shall have comeoff, leaving the glue still showing; scrape her, not too thoroughly, getthe village drawing-master to paint her again, and the drawing-master inthe next provincial town to put a forest background behind her with thebrightest emerald-green leaves that he can do for the money; let thispainting and scraping and repainting be repeated several times over;festoon her with pink and white flowers made of tissue paper; surroundher with the cheapest German imitations of the cheapest decorations thatBirmingham can produce; let the night air and winter fogs get at her forthree hundred years, and how easy, I wonder, will it be to see thegoddess who will be still in great part there? True, in the case of theBirth of the Virgin chapel at Montrigone, there is no real hair and nofresco background, but time has had abundant opportunities without these. I will conclude my notice of this chapel by saying that on the left, above the door through which the under-under-nurse's drudge is about topass, there is a good painted terra-cotta bust, said--but I believe on noauthority--to be a portrait of Giovanni d'Enrico. Others say that theVirgin's grandmother is Giovanni d'Enrico, but this is even more absurdthan supposing her to be St. Joachim. 

The next chapel to the Birth of the Virgin is that of the _Sposalizio_. There is no figure here which suggests Tabachetti, but still there aresome very good ones. The best have no taint of _barocco_; the man whodid them, whoever he may have been, had evidently a good deal of life andgo, was taking reasonable pains, and did not know too much. Where thisis the case no work can fail to please. Some of the figures have realhair and some terra cotta. There is no fresco background worthmentioning. A man sitting on the steps of the altar with a book on hislap, and holding up his hand to another, who is leaning over him andtalking to him, is among the best figures; some of the disappointedsuitors who are breaking their wands are also very good. 

The angel in the Annunciation chapel, which comes next in order, is afine, burly, ship's-figurehead, commercial-hotel sort of being enough, but the Virgin is very ordinary. There is no real hair and no frescobackground, only three dingy old blistered pictures of no interestwhatever. 

In the visit of Mary to Elizabeth there are three pleasing subordinatelady attendants, two to the left and one to the right of the principalfigures; but these figures themselves are not satisfactory. There is nofresco background. Some of the figures have real hair and some terracotta. 

In the Circumcision and Purification chapel--for both these events seemcontemplated in the one that follows--there are doves, but there isneither dog nor knife. Still Simeon, who has the infant Saviour in hisarms, is looking at him in a way which can only mean that, knife or noknife, the matter is not going to end here. At Varallo they have now gota dreadful knife for the Circumcision chapel. They had none last winter. What they have now got would do very well to kill a bullock with, butcould not be used professionally with safety for any animal smaller thana rhinoceros. I imagine that some one was sent to Novara to buy a knife, and that, thinking it was for the Massacre of the Innocents chapel, hegot the biggest he could see. Then when he brought it back people said"chow" several times, and put it upon the table and went away. 

Returning to Montrigone, the Simeon is an excellent figure, and theVirgin is fairly good, but the prophetess Anna, who stands just behindher, is by far the most interesting in the group, and is alone enough tomake me feel sure that Tabachetti gave more or less help here, as he haddone years before at Orta. She, too, like the Virgin's grandmother, is awidow lady, and wears collars of a cut that seems to have prevailed eversince the Virgin was born some twenty years previously. There is alargeness and simplicity of treatment about the figure to which none butan artist of the highest rank can reach, and D'Enrico was not more than asecond or third-rate man. The hood is like Handel's Truth sailing uponthe broad wings of Time, a prophetic strain that nothing but the oldexperience of a great poet can reach. The lips of the prophetess are forthe moment closed, but she has been prophesying all the morning, and thepeople round the wall in the background are in ecstasies at the luciditywith which she has explained all sorts of difficulties that they hadnever been able to understand till now. They are putting theirforefingers on their thumbs and their thumbs on their forefingers, andsaying how clearly they see it all and what a wonderful woman Anna is. Aprophet indeed is not generally without honour save in his own country, but then a country is generally not without honour save with its ownprophet, and Anna has been glorifying her country rather than revilingit. Besides, the rule may not have applied to prophetesses. 

The Death of the Virgin is the last of the six chapels inside the churchitself. The Apostles, who of course are present, have all of them realhair, but, if I may say so, they want a wash and a brush-up so very badlythat I cannot feel any confidence in writing about them. I should saythat, take them all round, they are a good average sample of apostle asapostles generally go. Two or three of them are nervously anxious tofind appropriate quotations in books that lie open before them, whichthey are searching with eager haste; but I do not see one figure aboutwhich I should like to say positively that it is either good or bad. There is a good bust of a man, matching the one in the Birth of theVirgin chapel, which is said to be a portrait of Giovanni d'Enrico, butit is not known whom it represents. 

Outside the church, in three contiguous cells that form part of thefoundations, are:--

1. A dead Christ, the head of which is very impressive while the rest ofthe figure is poor. I examined the treatment of the hair, which is terra-cotta, and compared it with all other like hair in the chapels abovedescribed; I could find nothing like it, and think it most likely thatGiacomo Ferro did the figure, and got Tabachetti to do the head, or thatthey brought the head from some unused figure by Tabachetti at Varallo, for I know no other artist of the time and neighbourhood who could havedone it. 

2. A Magdalene in the desert. The desert is a little coal-cellar of anarch, containing a skull and a profusion of pink and white paperbouquets, the two largest of which the Magdalene is hugging while she issaying her prayers. She is a very self-sufficient lady, who we may besure will not stay in the desert a day longer than she can help, andwhile there will flirt even with the skull if she can find nothing betterto flirt with. I cannot think that her repentance is as yet genuine, andas for her praying there is no object in her doing so, for she does notwant anything. 

3. In the next desert there is a very beautiful figure of St. John theBaptist kneeling and looking upwards. This figure puzzles me more thanany other at Montrigone; it appears to be of the fifteenth rather thanthe sixteenth century; it hardly reminds me of Gaudenzio, and still lessof any other Valsesian artist. It is a work of unusual beauty, but I canform no idea as to its authorship. 

I wrote the foregoing pages in the church at Montrigone itself, havingbrought my camp-stool with me. It was Sunday; the church was open allday, but there was no mass said, and hardly any one came. The sacristanwas a kind, gentle, little old man, who let me do whatever I wanted. Hesat on the doorstep of the main door, mending vestments, and to this endwas cutting up a fine piece of figured silk from one to two hundred yearsold, which, if I could have got it, for half its value, I should muchlike to have bought. I sat in the cool of the church while he sat in thedoorway, which was still in shadow, snipping and snipping, and thensewing, I am sure with admirable neatness. He made a charming picture, with the arched portico over his head, the green grass and low churchwall behind him, and then a lovely landscape of wood and pasture andvalleys and hillside. Every now and then he would come and chirrup aboutJoachim, for he was pained and shocked at my having said that his Joachimwas some one else and not Joachim at all. I said I was very sorry, but Iwas afraid the figure was a woman. He asked me what he was to do. Hehad known it, man and boy, this sixty years, and had always shown it asSt. Joachim; he had never heard any one but myself question hisascription, and could not suddenly change his mind about it at thebidding of a stranger. At the same time he felt it was a very seriousthing to continue showing it as the Virgin's father if it was really hergrandmother. I told him I thought this was a case for his spiritualdirector, and that if he felt uncomfortable about it he should consulthis parish priest and do as he was told. 

On leaving Montrigone, with a pleasant sense of having made acquaintancewith a new and, in many respects, interesting work, I could not get thesacristan and our difference of opinion out of my head. What, I askedmyself, are the differences that unhappily divide Christendom, and whatare those that divide Christendom from modern schools of thought, but aseeing of Joachims as the Virgin's grandmothers on a larger scale? True, we cannot call figures Joachim when we know perfectly well that they arenothing of the kind; but I registered a vow that henceforward when Icalled Joachims the Virgin's grandmothers I would bear more in mind thanI have perhaps always hitherto done, how hard it is for those who havebeen taught to see them as Joachims to think of them as somethingdifferent. I trust that I have not been unfaithful to this vow in thepreceding article. If the reader differs from me, let me ask him toremember how hard it is for one who has got a figure well into his headas the Virgin's grandmother to see it as Joachim. 

A MEDIEVAL GIRL SCHOOL {8}

This last summer I revisited Oropa, near Biella, to see what connection Icould find between the Oropa chapels and those at Varallo. I will takethis opportunity of describing the chapels at Oropa, and more especiallythe remarkable fossil, or petrified girl school, commonly known as the_Dimora_, or Sojourn of the Virgin Mary in the Temple. 

If I do not take these works so seriously as the reader may expect, letme beg him, before he blames me, to go to Oropa and see the originals forhimself. Have the good people of Oropa themselves taken them veryseriously? Are we in an atmosphere where we need be at much pains tospeak with bated breath? We, as is well known, love to take even ourpleasures sadly; the Italians take even their sadness _allegramente_, andcombine devotion with amusement in a manner that we shall do well tostudy if not imitate. For this best agrees with what we gather to havebeen the custom of Christ himself, who, indeed, never speaks of austeritybut to condemn it. If Christianity is to be a living faith, it mustpenetrate a man's whole life, so that he can no more rid himself of itthan he can of his flesh and bones or of his breathing. The Christianitythat can be taken up and laid down as if it were a watch or a book isChristianity in name only. The true Christian can no more part fromChrist in mirth than in sorrow. And, after all, what is the essence ofChristianity? What is the kernel of the nut? Surely common sense andcheerfulness, with unflinching opposition to the charlatanisms andPharisaisms of a man's own times. The essence of Christianity liesneither in dogma, nor yet in abnormally holy life, but in faith in anunseen world, in doing one's duty, in speaking the truth, in finding thetrue life rather in others than in oneself, and in the certain hope thathe who loses his life on these behalfs finds more than he has lost. Whatcan Agnosticism do against such Christianity as this? I should beshocked if anything I had ever written or shall ever write should seem tomake light of these things. I should be shocked also if I did not knowhow to be amused with things that amiable people obviously intended to beamusing. 

The reader may need to be reminded that Oropa is among the somewhatinfrequent sanctuaries at which the Madonna and infant Christ are notwhite, but black. I shall return to this peculiarity of Oropa later on, but will leave it for the present. For the general characteristics ofthe place I must refer the reader to my book, "Alps and Sanctuaries. " {9}I propose to confine myself here to the ten or a dozen chapels containinglife-sized terra-cotta figures, painted up to nature, that form one ofthe main features of the place. At a first glance, perhaps, all thesechapels will seem uninteresting; I venture to think, however, that some, if not most of them, though falling a good deal short of the best work atVarallo and Crea, are still in their own way of considerable importance. The first chapel with which we need concern ourselves is numbered 4, andshows the Conception of the Virgin Mary. It represents St. Anne askneeling before a terrific dragon or, as the Italians call it, "insect, "about the size of a Crystal Palace pleiosaur. This "insect" is supposedto have just had its head badly crushed by St. Anne, who seems to bebegging its pardon. The text "Ipsa conteret caput tuum" is writtenoutside the chapel. The figures have no artistic interest. As regardsdragons being called insects, the reader may perhaps remember that theisland of S. Giulio, in the Lago d'Orta, was infested with _insetti_, which S. Giulio destroyed, and which appear, in a fresco underneath thechurch on the island, to have been monstrous and ferocious dragons; but Icannot remember whether their bodies are divided into three sections, andwhether or no they have exactly six legs--without which, I am told, theycannot be true insects. 

The fifth chapel represents the birth of the Virgin. Having obtainedpermission to go inside it, I found the date 1715 cut large and deep onthe back of one figure before baking, and I imagine that this date coversthe whole. There is a Queen Anne feeling throughout the composition, andif we were told that the sculptor and Francis Bird, sculptor of thestatue in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, had studied under the samemaster, we could very well believe it. The apartment in which the Virginwas born is spacious, and in striking contrast to the one in which sheherself gave birth to the Redeemer. St. Anne occupies the centre of thecomposition, in an enormous bed; on her right there is a lady of theGeorge Cruikshank style of beauty, and on the left an older person. Bothare gesticulating and impressing upon St. Anne the enormous obligationshe has just conferred upon mankind; they seem also to be imploring hernot to overtax her strength, but, strange to say, they are giving herneither flowers nor anything to eat and drink. I know no other birth ofthe Virgin in which St. Anne wants so little keeping up. 

I have explained in my book "Ex Voto, " {10} but should perhaps repeathere, that the distinguishing characteristic of the Birth of the Virgin, as rendered by Valsesian artists, is that St. Anne always has eggsimmediately after the infant is born, and usually a good deal more, whereas the Madonna never has anything to eat or drink. The eggs are inaccordance with a custom that still prevails among the peasant classes inthe Valsesia, where women on giving birth to a child generally are givena _sabaglione_--an egg beaten up with a little wine, or rum, and sugar. East of Milan the Virgin's mother does not have eggs, and I suppose, fromthe absence of the eggs at Oropa, that the custom above referred to doesnot prevail in the Biellese district. The Virgin also is invariablywashed. St. John the Baptist, when he is born at all, which is not veryoften, is also washed; but I have not observed that St. Elizabeth hasanything like the attention paid her that is given to St. Anne. What, however, is wanting here at Oropa in meat and drink is made up in Cupids;they swarm like flies on the walls, clouds, cornices, and capitals ofcolumns. 

Against the right-hand wall are two lady-helps, each warming a towel at aglowing fire, to be ready against the baby should come out of its bath;while in the right-hand foreground we have the _levatrice_, who havingdischarged her task, and being now so disposed, has removed the bottlefrom the chimney-piece, and put it near some bread, fruit and a chicken, over which she is about to discuss the confinement with two othergossips. The _levatrice_ is a very characteristic figure, but the bestin the chapel is the one of the head nurse, near the middle of thecomposition; she has now the infant in full charge, and is showing it toSt. Joachim, with an expression as though she were telling him that herhusband was a merry man. I am afraid Shakespeare was dead before thesculptor was born, otherwise I should have felt certain that he had drawnJuliet's nurse from this figure. As for the little Virgin herself, Ibelieve her to be a fine boy of about ten months old. Viewing the workas a whole, if I only felt more sure what artistic merit really is, Ishould say that, though the chapel cannot be rated very highly from somestandpoints, there are others from which it may be praised warmly enough. It is innocent of anatomy-worship, free from affectation or swagger, andnot devoid of a good deal of homely _naivete_. It can no more becompared with Tabachetti or Donatello than Hogarth can with Rembrandt orGiovanni Bellini; but as it does not transcend the limitations of itsage, so neither is it wanting in whatever merits that age possessed; andthere is no age without merits of some kind. There is no inscriptionsaying who made the figures, but tradition gives them to Pietro AureggioTermine, of Biella, commonly called Aureggio. This is confirmed by theirstrong resemblance to those in the _Dimora_ Chapel, in which there is aninscription that names Aureggio as the sculptor. 

The sixth chapel deals with the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. The Virgin is very small, but it must be remembered that she is onlyseven years old, and she is not nearly so small as she is at Crea, where, though a life-sized figure is intended, the head is hardly bigger than anapple. She is rushing up the steps with open arms towards the HighPriest, who is standing at the top. For her it is nothing alarming; itis the High Priest who appears frightened; but it will all come right intime. The Virgin seems to be saying, "Why, don't you know me? I'm theVirgin Mary. " But the High Priest does not feel so sure about that, andwill make further inquiries. The scene, which comprises some twentyfigures, is animated enough, and though it hardly kindles enthusiasm, still does not fail to please. It looks as though of somewhat older datethan the Birth of the Virgin chapel, and I should say shows more signs ofdirect Valsesian influence. In Marocco's book about Oropa it is ascribedto Aureggio, but I find it difficult to accept this. 

The seventh, and in many respects most interesting chapel at Oropa, showswhat is in reality a medieval Italian girl school, as nearly like thething itself as the artist could make it; we are expected, however, tosee in this the high-class kind of Girton College for young gentlewomenthat was attached to the Temple at Jerusalem, under the direction of theChief Priest's wife, or some one of his near female relatives. Here allwell-to-do Jewish young women completed their education, and hereaccordingly we find the Virgin, whose parents desired she should shine inevery accomplishment, and enjoy all the advantages their ample meanscommanded. 

I have met with no traces of the Virgin during the years between herPresentation in the Temple and her becoming head girl at Temple College. These years, we may be assured, can hardly have been other than eventful;but incidents, or bits of life, are like living forms--it is only hereand here, as by rare chance, that one of them gets arrested andfossilised; the greater number disappear like the greater number ofantediluvian molluscs, and no one can say why one of these flies, as itwere, of life should get preserved in amber more than another. Talk, indeed, about luck and cunning; what a grain of sand as against ahundredweight is cunning's share here as against luck's. What momentcould be more humdrum and unworthy of special record than the one chosenby the artist for the chapel we are considering? Why should this one getarrested in its flight and made immortal when so many worthier ones haveperished? Yet preserved it assuredly is; it is as though some fairy'swand had struck the medieval Miss Pinkerton, Amelia Sedley, and otherswho do duty instead of the Hebrew originals. It has locked them up assleeping beauties, whose charms all may look upon. Surely the hours arelike the women grinding at the mill--the one is taken and the other left, and none can give the reason more than he can say why Gallio should havewon immortality by caring for none of "these things. "

It seems to me, moreover, that fairies have changed their practice now inthe matter of sleeping beauties, much as shopkeepers have done in RegentStreet. Formerly the shopkeeper used to shut up his goods behind strongshutters, so that no one might see them after closing hours. Now heleaves everything open to the eye and turns the gas on. So the fairies, who used to lock up their sleeping beauties in impenetrable thickets, nowleave them in the most public places they can find, as knowing that theywill there most certainly escape notice. Look at De Hooghe; look at "ThePilgrim's Progress, " or even Shakespeare himself--how long they sleptunawakened, though they were in broad daylight and on the publicthoroughfares all the time. Look at Tabachetti, and the masterpieces heleft at Varallo. His figures there are exposed to the gaze of everypasser-by; yet who heeds them? Who, save a very few, even know of theirexistence? Look again at Gaudenzio Ferrari, or the "Danse des Paysans, "by Holbein, to which I ventured to call attention in the _UniversalReview_. No, no; if a thing be in Central Africa, it is the glory ofthis age to find it out; so the fairies think it safer to conceal their_proteges_ under a show of openness; for the schoolmaster is much abroad, and there is no hedge so thick or so thorny as the dulness of culture. 

It may be, again, that ever so many years hence, when Mr. Darwin's earth-worms shall have buried Oropa hundreds of feet deep, some one sinking awell or making a railway-cutting will unearth these chapels, and willbelieve them to have been houses, and to contain the _exuviae_ of theliving forms that tenanted them. In the meantime, however, let us returnto a consideration of the chapel as it may now be seen by any one whocares to pass that way. 

The work consists of about forty figures in all, not counting Cupids, andis divided into four main divisions. First, there is the large publicsitting-room or drawing-room of the College, where the elder young ladiesare engaged in various elegant employments. Three, at a table to theleft, are making a mitre for the Bishop, as may be seen from the model onthe table. Some are merely spinning or about to spin. One young lady, sitting rather apart from the others, is doing an elaborate piece ofneedlework at a tambour-frame near the window; others are making lace orslippers, probably for the new curate; another is struggling with aletter, or perhaps a theme, which seems to be giving her a good deal oftrouble, but which, when done, will, I am sure, be beautiful. One dearlittle girl is simply reading "Paul and Virginia" underneath the window, and is so concealed that I hardly think she can be seen from the outsideat all, though from inside she is delightful; it was with great regretthat I could not get her into any photograph. One most amiable youngwoman has got a child's head on her lap, the child having played itselfto sleep. All are industriously and agreeably employed in some way orother; all are plump; all are nice looking; there is not one Becky Sharpin the whole school; on the contrary, as in "Pious Orgies, " all ispious--or sub-pious--and all, if not great, is at least eminentlyrespectable. One feels that St. Joachim and St. Anne could not havechosen a school more judiciously, and that if one had daughter oneselfthis is exactly where one would wish to place her. If there is a faultof any kind in the arrangements, it is that they do not keep cats enough. The place is overrun with mice, though what these can find to eat I knownot. It occurs to me also that the young ladies might be kept a littlemore free of spiders' webs; but in all these chapels, bats, mice andspiders are troublesome. 

Off the main drawing-room on the side facing the window there is a dais, which is approached by a large raised semicircular step, higher than therest of the floor, but lower than the dais itself. The dais is, ofcourse, reserved for the venerable Lady Principal and theunder-mistresses, one of whom, by the way, is a little more _mondaine_than might have been expected, and is admiring herself in alooking-glass--unless, indeed, she is only looking to see if there is aspot of ink on her face. The Lady Principal is seated near a table, onwhich lie some books in expensive bindings, which I imagine to have beenpresented to her by the parents of pupils who were leaving school. Onehas given her a photographic album; another a large scrap-book, forillustrations of all kinds; a third volume has red edges, and ispresumably of a devotional character. If I dared venture anothercriticism, I should say it would be better not to keep the ink-pot on thetop of these books. The Lady Principal is being read to by the monitressfor the week, whose duty it was to recite selected passages from the mostapproved Hebrew writers; she appears to be a good deal outraged, possiblyat the faulty intonation of the reader, which she has long tried vainlyto correct; or perhaps she has been hearing of the atrocious way in whichher forefathers had treated the prophets, and is explaining to the youngladies how impossible it would be, in their own more enlightened age, fora prophet to fail of recognition. 

On the half-dais, as I suppose the large semicircular step between themain room and the dais should be called, we find, first, the monitressfor the week, who stands up while she recites; and secondly, the Virginherself, who is the only pupil allowed a seat so near to the augustpresence of the Lady Principal. She is ostensibly doing a piece ofembroidery which is stretched on a cushion on her lap, but I should saythat she was chiefly interested in the nearest of four pretty littleCupids, who are all trying to attract her attention, though they pay nocourt to any other young lady. I have sometimes wondered whether theobviously scandalised gesture of the Lady Principal might not be directedat these Cupids, rather than at anything the monitress may have beenreading, for she would surely find them disquieting. Or she may besaying, "Why, bless me! I do declare the Virgin has got another hamper, and St. Anne's cakes are always so terribly rich!" Certainly the hamperis there, close to the Virgin, and the Lady Principal's action may bewell directed at it, but it may have been sent to some other young lady, and be put on the sub-dais for public exhibition. It looks as if itmight have come from Fortnum and Mason's, and I half expected to find alabel, addressing it to "The Virgin Mary, Temple College, Jerusalem, " butif ever there was one the mice have long since eaten it. The Virginherself does not seem to care much about it, but if she has a fault it isthat she is generally a little apathetic. 

Whose the hamper was, however, is a point we shall never now certainlydetermine, for the best fossil is worse than the worst living form. Why, alas! was not Mr. Edison alive when this chapel was made? We might thenhave had a daily phonographic recital of the conversation, and anannouncement might be put outside the chapels, telling us at what hoursthe figures would speak. 

On either of side the main room there are two annexes opening out fromit; these are reserved chiefly for the younger children, some of whom, Ithink, are little boys. In the left-hand annex, behind the ladies whoare making a mitre, there is a child who has got a cake, and another hassome fruit--possibly given them by the Virgin--and a third child isbegging for some of it. The light failed so completely here that I wasnot able to photograph any of these figures. It was a dull Septemberafternoon, and the clouds had settled thick round the chapel, which isnever very light, and is nearly 4000 feet above the sea. I waited tillsuch twilight as made it hopeless that more detail could be got--and aqueer ghostly place enough it was to wait in--but after giving the platean exposure of fifty minutes, I saw I could get no more, and desisted. 

These long photographic exposures have the advantage that one iscompelled to study a work in detail through mere lack of otheremployment, and that one can take one's notes in peace without beingtempted to hurry over them; but even so I continually find I have omittedto note, and have clean forgotten, much that I want later on. 

In the other annex there are also one or two younger children, but itseems to have been set apart for conversation and relaxation more thanany other part of the establishment. 

I have already said that the work is signed by an inscription inside thechapel, to the effect that the sculptures are by Pietro Aureggio Terminedi Biella. It will be seen that the young ladies are exceedingly likeone another, and that the artist aimed at nothing more than a faithfulrendering of the life of his own times. Let us be thankful that he aimedat nothing less. Perhaps his wife kept a girls' school; or he may havehad a large family of fat, good-natured daughters, whose little ways hehad studied attentively; at all events the work is full of spontaneousincident, and cannot fail to become more and more interesting as the ageit renders falls farther back into the past. It is to be regretted thatmany artists, better known men, have not been satisfied with the humblerambitions of this most amiable and interesting sculptor. If he has leftus no laboured life-studies, he has at least done something for us whichwe can find nowhere else, which we should be very sorry not to have, andthe fidelity of which to Italian life at the beginning of the lastcentury will not be disputed. 

The eighth chapel is that of the _Sposalizio_, is certainly not byAureggio, and I should say was mainly by the same sculptor who did thePresentation in the Temple. On going inside I found the figures had comefrom more than one source; some of them are constructed so absolutely onValsesian principles, as regards technique, that it may be assumed theycame from Varallo. Each of these last figures is in three pieces, thatare baked separately and cemented together afterwards, hence they aremore easily transported; no more clay is used than is absolutelynecessary; and the off-side of the figure is neglected; they will befound chiefly, if not entirely, at the top of the steps. The otherfigures are more solidly built, and do not remind me in their businessfeatures of anything in the Valsesia. There was a sculptor, FrancescoSala, of Locarno (doubtless the village a short distance below Varallo, and not the Locarno on the Lago Maggiore), who made designs for some ofthe Oropa chapels, and some of whose letters are still preserved, butwhether the Valsesian figures in this present work are by him or not Icannot say. 

The statues are twenty-five in number; I could find no date or signature;the work reminds me of Montrigone; several of the figures are not at allbad, and several have horsehair for hair, as at Varallo. The effect ofthe whole composition is better than we have a right to expect from anysculpture dating from the beginning of the last century. 

The ninth chapel, the Annunciation, presents no feature of interest; noryet does the tenth, the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth. The eleventh, theNativity, though rather better, is still not remarkable. 

The twelfth, the Purification, is absurdly bad, but I do not know whetherthe expression of strong personal dislike to the Virgin which the HighPriest wears is intended as prophetic, or whether it is the result ofincompetence, or whether it is merely a smile gone wrong in the baking. It is amusing to find Marocco, who has not been strict aboutarchaeological accuracy hitherto, complain here that there is ananachronism, inasmuch as some young ecclesiastics are dressed as theywould be at present, and one of them actually carries a wax candle. Thisis not as it should be; in works like those at Oropa, where implicitreliance is justly placed on the earnest endeavours that have been sosuccessfully made to thoroughly and carefully and patiently ensure theaccuracy of the minutest details, it is a pity that even a single errorshould have escaped detection; this, however, has most unfortunatelyhappened here, and Marocco feels it his duty to put us on our guard. Heexplains that the mistake arose from the sculptor's having taken both hisgeneral arrangement and his details from some picture of the fourteenthor fifteenth century, when the value of the strictest historical accuracywas not yet so fully understood. 

It seems to me that in the matter of accuracy, priests and men of sciencewhether lay or regular on the one hand, and plain people whether lay orregular on the other, are trying to play a different game, and fail tounderstand one another because they do not see that their objects are notthe same. The cleric and the man of science (who is only the cleric inhis latest development) are trying to develop a throat with two distinctpassages--one that shall refuse to pass even the smallest gnat, andanother that shall gracefully gulp even the largest camel; whereas we menof the street desire but one throat, and are content that this shallswallow nothing bigger than a pony. Every one knows that there is nosuch effectual means of developing the power to swallow camels asincessant watchfulness for opportunities of straining at gnats, and thisshould explain many passages that puzzle us in the work both of ourclerics and our scientists. I, not being a man of science, stillcontinue to do what I said I did in "Alps and Sanctuaries, " and make it arule to earnestly and patiently and carefully swallow a few of thesmallest gnats I can find several times a day, as the best astringent forthe throat I know of. 

The thirteenth chapel is the Marriage Feast at Cana of Galilee. This isthe best chapel as a work of art; indeed, it is the only one which canclaim to be taken quite seriously. Not that all the figures are verygood; those to the left of the composition are commonplace enough; norare the Christ and the giver of the feast at all remarkable; but the tenor dozen figures of guests and attendants at the right-hand end of thework are as good as anything of their kind can be, and remind me sostrongly of Tabachetti that I cannot doubt they were done by some one whowas indirectly influenced by that great sculptor's work. It is notlikely that Tabachetti was alive long after 1640, by which time he wouldhave been about eighty years old; and the foundations of this chapel werenot laid till about 1690; the statues are probably a few years later;they can hardly, therefore, be by one who had even studied underTabachetti; but until I found out the dates, and went inside the chapelto see the way in which the figures had been constructed, I was inclinedto think they might be by Tabachetti himself, of whom, indeed, they arenot unworthy. On examining the figures I found them more heavilyconstructed than Tabachetti's are, with smaller holes for taking outsuperfluous clay, and more finished on the off-sides. Marocco says thesculptor is not known. I looked in vain for any date or signature. Possibly the right-hand figures (for the left-hand ones can hardly be bythe same hand) may be by some sculptor from Crea, which is at no verygreat distance from Oropa, who was penetrated by Tabachetti's influence;but whether as regards action and concert with one another, or as regardsexcellence in detail, I do not see how anything can be more realistic, and yet more harmoniously composed. The placing of the musicians in aminstrels' gallery helps the effect; these musicians are six in number, and the other figures are twenty-three. Under the table, between Christand the giver of the feast, there is a cat. 

The fourteenth chapel, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, is withoutinterest. 

The fifteenth, the Coronation of the Virgin, contains forty-six angels, twenty-six cherubs, fifty-six saints, the Holy Trinity, the Madonnaherself, and twenty-four innocents, making 156 statues in all. Of theseI am afraid there is not one of more than ordinary merit; the mostinteresting is a half-length nude life-study of Disma--the good thief. After what had been promised him it was impossible to exclude him, but itwas felt that a half-length nude figure would be as much as he couldreasonably expect. 

Behind the sanctuary there is a semi-ruinous and wholly valueless work, which shows the finding of the black image, which is now in the church, but is only shown on great festivals. 

This leads us to a consideration that I have delayed till now. The blackimage is the central feature of Oropa; it is the _raison d'etre_ of thewhole place, and all else is a mere incrustation, so to speak, around it. According to this image, then, which was carved by St. Luke himself, andthan which nothing can be better authenticated, both the Madonna and theinfant Christ were as black as anything can be conceived. It is notlikely that they were as black as they have been painted; no one yet everwas so black as that; yet, even allowing for some exaggeration on St. Luke's part, they must have been exceedingly black if the portrait is tobe accepted; and uncompromisingly black they accordingly are on most ofthe wayside chapels for many a mile around Oropa. Yet in the chapels wehave been hitherto considering--works in which, as we know, the mostpunctilious regard has been shown to accuracy--both the Virgin and Christare uncompromisingly white. As in the shops under the Colonnade wheredevotional knick-knacks are sold, you can buy a black china image or awhite one, whichever you like; so with the pictures--the black and whiteare placed side by side--_pagando il danaro si puo scegliere_. It restsnot with history or with the Church to say whether the Madonna and Childwere black or white, but you may settle it for yourself, whichever wayyou please, or rather you are required, with the acquiescence of theChurch, to hold that they were both black and white at one and the sametime. 

It cannot be maintained that the Church leaves the matter undecided, andby tolerating both types proclaims the question an open one, for sheacquiesces in the portrait by St. Luke as genuine. How, then, justifythe whiteness of the Holy Family in the chapels? If the portrait is notknown as genuine, why set such a stumbling-block in our paths as to showus a black Madonna and a white one, both as historically accurate, withina few yards of one another?

I ask this not in mockery, but as knowing that the Church must have anexplanation to give, if she would only give it, and as myself unable tofind any, even the most farfetched, that can bring what we see at Oropa, Loreto and elsewhere into harmony with modern conscience, eitherintellectual or ethical. 

I see, indeed, from an interesting article in the _Atlantic Monthly_ forSeptember 1889, entitled "The Black Madonna of Loreto, " that blackMadonnas were so frequent in ancient Christian art that "some of theearly writers of the Church felt obliged to account for it by explainingthat the Virgin was of a very dark complexion, as might be proved by theverse of Canticles which says, 'I am black, but comely, O ye daughters ofJerusalem. ' Others maintained that she became black during her sojournin Egypt. . . . Priests, of to-day, say that extreme age and exposure tothe smoke of countless altar-candles have caused that change incomplexion which the more naive fathers of the Church attributed to thepower of an Egyptian sun"; but the writer ruthlessly disposes of thissupposition by pointing out that in nearly all the instances of blackMadonnas it is the flesh alone that is entirely black, the crimson of thelips, the white of the eyes, and the draperies having preserved theiroriginal colour. The authoress of the article (Mrs. Hilliard) goes on totell us that Pausanias mentions two statues of the black Venus, and saysthat the oldest statue of Ceres among the Phigalenses was black. Sheadds that Minerva Aglaurus, the daughter of Cecrops, at Athens, wasblack; that Corinth had a black Venus, as also the Thespians; that theoracles of Dodona and Delphi were founded by black doves, the emissariesof Venus, and that the Isis Multimammia in the Capitol at Rome is black. 

Sometimes I have asked myself whether the Church does not intend tosuggest that the whole story falls outside the domain of history, and isto be held as the one great epos, or myth, common to all mankind;adaptable by each nation according to its own several needs;translatable, so to speak, into the facts of each individual nation, asthe written word is translatable into its language, but appertaining tothe realm of the imagination rather than to that of the understanding, and precious for spiritual rather than literal truths. More briefly, Ihave wondered whether she may not intend that such details as whether theVirgin was white or black are of very little importance in comparisonwith the basing of ethics on a story that shall appeal to black races aswell as to white ones. 

If so, it is time we were made to understand this more clearly. If theChurch, whether of Rome or England, would lean to some such view asthis--tainted though it be with mysticism--if we could see either greatbranch of the Church make a frank, authoritative attempt to bring itsteaching into greater harmony with the educated understanding andconscience of the time, instead of trying to fetter that understandingwith bonds that gall it daily more and more profoundly; then I, for one, in view of the difficulty and graciousness of the task, and in view ofthe great importance of historical continuity, would gladly sink much ofmy own private opinion as to the value of the Christian ideal, and wouldgratefully help either Church or both, according to the best of my veryfeeble ability. On these terms, indeed, I could swallow not a few camelsmyself cheerfully enough. 

Can we, however, see any signs as though either Rome or England will stirhand or foot to meet us? Can any step be pointed to as though eitherChurch wished to make things easier for men holding the opinions held bythe late Mr. Darwin, or by Mr. Herbert Spencer and Professor Huxley? Howcan those who accept evolution with any thoroughness accept suchdoctrines as the Incarnation or the Redemption with any but aquasi-allegorical and poetical interpretation? Can we conceivably acceptthese doctrines in the literal sense in which the Church advances them?And can the leaders of the Church be blind to the resistlessness of thecurrent that has set against those literal interpretations which sheseems to hug more and more closely the more religious life is awakened atall? The clergyman is wanted as supplementing the doctor and the lawyerin all civilised communities; these three keep watch on one another, andprevent one another from becoming too powerful. I, who distrust the_doctrinaire_ in science even more than the _doctrinaire_ in religion, should view with dismay the abolition of the Church of England, asknowing that a blatant bastard science would instantly step into hershoes; but if some such deplorable consummation is to be avoided inEngland, it can only be through more evident leaning on the part of ourclergy to such an interpretation of the Sacred History as the presence ofa black and white Madonna almost side by side at Oropa appears tosuggest. 

I fear that in these last paragraphs I may have trenched on dangerousground, but it is not possible to go to such places as Oropa withoutasking oneself what they mean and involve. As for the average Italianpilgrims, they do not appear to give the matter so much as a thought. They love Oropa, and flock to it in thousands during the summer; thePresident of the Administration assured me that they lodged, after afashion, as many as ten thousand pilgrims on the 15th of last August. Itis astonishing how living the statues are to these people, and how thewicked are upbraided and the good applauded. At Varallo, since I tookthe photographs I published in my book "Ex Voto, " an angry pilgrim hassmashed the nose of the dwarf in Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary, for noother reason than inability to restrain his indignation against one whowas helping to inflict pain on Christ. It is the real hair and thepainting up to nature that does this. Here at Oropa I found a paper onthe floor of the _Sposalizio_ Chapel, which ran as follows:--

"By the grace of God and the will of the administrative chapter of thissanctuary, there have come here to work --- ---, mason --- ---, carpenter, and --- --- plumber, all of Chiavazza, on the twenty-first dayof January 1886, full of cold (_pieni di freddo_). 

"They write these two lines to record their visit. They pray the BlessedVirgin that she will maintain them safe and sound from everythingequivocal that may befall them (_sempre sani e salvi da ogni equivoco lipossa accadere_). Oh, farewell! We reverently salute all the presentstatues, and especially the Blessed Virgin, and the reader. "

Through the _Universal Review_, I suppose, all its readers are toconsider themselves saluted; at any rate, these good fellows, in theeffusiveness of their hearts, actually wrote the above in pencil. I wassorely tempted to steal it, but, after copying it, left it in the ChiefPriest's hands instead. 

ART IN THE VALLEY OF SAAS {11}

Having been told by Mr. Fortescue, of the British Museum, that there weresome chapels at Saas-Fee which bore analogy to those at Varallo, described in my book "Ex Voto, " {12} I went to Saas during this lastsummer, and venture now to lay my conclusions before the reader. 

The chapels are fifteen in number, and lead up to a larger and singularlygraceful one, rather more than half-way between Saas and Saas-Fee. Thisis commonly but wrongly called the chapel of St. Joseph, for it isdedicated to the Virgin, and its situation is of such extreme beauty--thegreat Fee glaciers showing through the open portico--that it is in itselfworth a pilgrimage. It is surrounded by noble larches and overhung byrock; in front of the portico there is a small open space covered withgrass, and a huge larch, the stem of which is girt by a rude stone seat. The portico itself contains seats for worshippers, and a pulpit fromwhich the preacher's voice can reach the many who must stand outside. Thewalls of the inner chapel are hung with votive pictures, some of themvery quaint and pleasing, and not overweighted by those qualities thatare usually dubbed by the name of artistic merit. Innumerable wooden andwaxen representations of arms, legs, eyes, ears and babies tell of thecures that have been effected during two centuries of devotion, and canhardly fail to awaken a kindly sympathy with the long dead and forgottenfolks who placed them where they are. 

The main interest, however, despite the extreme loveliness of the St. Mary's Chapel, centres rather in the small and outwardly unimportantoratories (if they should be so called) that lead up to it. These beginimmediately with the ascent from the level ground on which the village ofSaas-im-Grund is placed, and contain scenes in the history of theRedemption, represented by rude but spirited wooden figures, each abouttwo feet high, painted, gilt, and rendered as life-like in all respectsas circumstances would permit. The figures have suffered a good dealfrom neglect, and are still not a little misplaced. With the assistance, however, of the Rev. E. J. Selwyn, English Chaplain at Saas-im-Grund, Ihave been able to replace many of them in their original positions, asindicated by the parts of the figures that are left rough-hewn andunpainted. They vary a good deal in interest, and can be easily sneeredat by those who make a trade of sneering. Those, on the other hand, whoremain unsophisticated by overmuch art-culture will find them full ofcharacter in spite of not a little rudeness of execution, and will besurprised at coming across such works in a place so remote from any art-centre as Saas must have been at the time these chapels were made. Itwill be my business therefore to throw what light I can upon thequestions how they came to be made at all, and who was the artist whodesigned them. 

The only documentary evidence consists in a chronicle of the valley ofSaas written in the early years of this century by the Rev. Peter Jos. Ruppen, and published at Sion in 1851. This work makes frequentreference to a manuscript by the Rev. Peter Joseph Clemens Lommatter, _cure_ of Saas-Fee from 1738 to 1751, which has unfortunately been lost, so that we have no means of knowing how closely it was adhered to. TheRev. Jos. Ant. Ruppen, the present excellent _cure_ of Saas-im-Grund, assures me that there is no reference to the Saas-Fee oratories in the"Actes de l'Eglise" at Saas, which I understand go a long way back; but Ihave not seen these myself. Practically, then, we have no moredocumentary evidence than is to be found in the published chronicle abovereferred to. 

We there find it stated that the large chapel, commonly, but as aboveexplained, wrongly called St. Joseph's, was built in 1687, and enlargedby subscription in 1747. These dates appear on the building itself, andare no doubt accurate. The writer adds that there was no actual edificeon this site before the one now existing was built, but there was amiraculous picture of the Virgin placed in a mural niche, before whichthe pious herdsmen and devout inhabitants of the valley worshipped underthe vault of heaven. {13} A miraculous (or miracle-working) picture wasalways more or less rare and important; the present site, therefore, seems to have been long one of peculiar sanctity. Possibly the name Feemay point to still earlier Pagan mysteries on the same site. 

As regards the fifteen small chapels, the writer says they illustrate thefifteen mysteries of the Psalter, and were built in 1709, eachhouseholder of the Saas-Fee contributing one chapel. He adds thatHeinrich Andenmatten, afterwards a brother of the Society of Jesus, wasan especial benefactor or promoter of the undertaking. One of thechapels, the Ascension (No. 12 of the series), has the date 1709 paintedon it; but there is no date on any other chapel, and there seems noreason why this should be taken as governing the whole series. 

Over and above this, there exists in Saas a tradition, as I was toldimmediately on my arrival, by an English visitor, that the chapels werebuilt in consequence of a flood, but I have vainly endeavoured to tracethis story to an indigenous source. 

The internal evidence of the wooden figures themselves--nothing analogousto which, it should be remembered, can be found in the chapel of1687--points to a much earlier date. I have met with no school ofsculpture belonging to the early part of the eighteenth century to whichthey can be plausibly assigned; and the supposition that they are thework of some unknown local genius who was not led up to and left nosuccessors may be dismissed, for the work is too scholarly to have comefrom any one but a trained sculptor. I refer of course to those figureswhich the artist must be supposed to have executed with his own hand, as, for example, the central figure of the Crucifixion group and those of theMagdalene and St. John. The greater number of the figures were probably, as was suggested to me by Mr. Ranshaw, of Lowth, executed by a localwoodcarver from models in clay and wax furnished by the artist himself. Those who examine the play of line in the hair, mantle, and sleeve of theMagdalene in the Crucifixion group, and contrast it with the greater partof the remaining draperies, will find little hesitation in concludingthat this was the case, and will ere long readily distinguish the twohands from which the figures have mainly come. I say "mainly, " becausethere is at least one other sculptor who may well have belonged to theyear 1709, but who fortunately has left us little. Examples of his workmay perhaps be seen in the nearest villain with a big hat in theFlagellation chapel, and in two cherubs in the Assumption of the Virgin. 

We may say, then, with some certainty, that the designer was a cultivatedand practised artist. We may also not less certainly conclude that hewas of Flemish origin, for the horses in the Journey to Calvary andCrucifixion chapels, where alone there are any horses at all, are ofFlemish breed, with no trace of the Arab blood adopted by Gaudenzio atVarallo. The character, moreover, of the villains is Northern--of theQuentin Matsys, Martin Schongauer type, rather than Italian; the same sub-Rubensesque feeling which is apparent in more than one chapel at Varallois not less evident here--especially in the Journey to Calvary andCrucifixion chapels. There can hardly, therefore, be a doubt that theartist was a Fleming who had worked for several years in Italy. 

It is also evident that he had Tabachetti's work at Varallo well in hismind. For not only does he adopt certain details of costume (I referparticularly to the treatment of soldiers' tunics) which are peculiar toTabachetti at Varallo, but whenever he treats a subject which Tabachettihad treated at Varallo, as in the Flagellation, Crowning with Thorns, andJourney to Calvary chapels, the work at Saas is evidently nothing but asomewhat modified abridgement of that at Varallo. When, however, as inthe Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and other chapels, thework at Varallo is by another than Tabachetti, no allusion is made to it. The Saas artist has Tabachetti's Varallo work at his finger-ends, butbetrays no acquaintance whatever with Gaudenzio Ferrari, Gio. Ant. Paracca, or Giovanni D'Enrico. 

Even, moreover, when Tabachetti's work at Varallo is being most obviouslydrawn from, as in the Journey to Calvary chapel, the Saas version differsmaterially from that at Varallo, and is in some respects an improvementon it. The idea of showing other horsemen and followers coming up frombehind, whose heads can be seen over the crown of the interposing hill, is singularly effective as suggesting a number of others that are unseen, nor can I conceive that any one but the original designer would followTabachetti's Varallo design with as much closeness as it has beenfollowed here, and yet make such a brilliantly successful modification. The stumbling, again, of one horse (a detail almost hidden, according toTabachetti's wont) is a touch which Tabachetti himself might add, butwhich no Saas woodcarver who was merely adapting from a reminiscence ofTabachetti's Varallo chapel would be likely to introduce. Theseconsiderations have convinced me that the designer of the chapels at Saasis none other than Tabachetti himself, who, as has been now conclusivelyshown, was a native of Dinant, in Belgium. 

The Saas chronicler, indeed, avers that the chapels were not built till1709--a statement apparently corroborated by a date now visible on onechapel; but we must remember that the chronicler did not write until acentury or so later than 1709, and though, indeed, his statement may havebeen taken from the lost earlier manuscript of 1738, we know nothingabout this either one way or the other. The writer may have gone by thestill existing 1709 on the Ascension chapel, whereas this date may infact have referred to a restoration, and not to an original construction. There is nothing, as I have said, in the choice of the chapel on whichthe date appears, to suggest that it was intended to govern the others. Ihave explained that the work is isolated and exotic. It is by one inwhom Flemish and Italian influences are alike equally predominant; by onewho was saturated with Tabachetti's Varallo work, and who can improveupon it, but over whom the other Varallo sculptors have no power. Thestyle of the work is of the sixteenth and not of the eighteenthcentury--with a few obvious exceptions that suit the year 1709exceedingly well. Against such considerations as these, a statement madeat the beginning of this century referring to a century earlier, and apromiscuous date upon one chapel, can carry but little weight. I shallassume, therefore, henceforward, that we have here groups designed in aplastic material by Tabachetti, and reproduced in wood by the best localwood-sculptor available, with the exception of a few figures cut by theartist himself. 

We ask, then, at what period in his life did Tabachetti design thesechapels, and what led to his coming to such an out-of-the-way place asSaas at all? We should remember that, according both to Fassola andTorrotti (writing in 1671 and 1686 respectively), Tabachetti {14} becameinsane about the year 1586 or early in 1587, after having just begun theSalutation chapel. I have explained in "Ex Voto" that I do not believethis story. I have no doubt that Tabachetti was declared to be mad, butI believe this to have been due to an intrigue, set on foot in order toget a foreign artist out of the way, and to secure the Massacre of theInnocents chapel, at that precise time undertaken, for Gio. Ant. Paracca, who was an Italian. 

Or he may have been sacrificed in order to facilitate the return of theworkers in stucco whom he had superseded on the Sacro Monte. He may havebeen goaded into some imprudence which was seized upon as a pretext forshutting him up; at any rate, the fact that when in 1587 he inherited hisfather's property at Dinant, his trustee (he being expressly stated to be"_expatrie_") was "_datif_, " "_dativus_, " appointed not by himself but bythe court, lends colour to the statement that he was not his own masterat the time; for in later kindred deeds, now at Namur, he appoints hisown trustee. I suppose, then, that Tabachetti was shut up in a madhouseat Varallo for a considerable time, during which I can find no trace ofhim, but that eventually he escaped or was released. 

Whether he was a fugitive, or whether he was let out from prison, hewould in either case, in all reasonable probability, turn his facehomeward. If he was escaping, he would make immediately for the Savoyfrontier, within which Saas then lay. He would cross the Baranca aboveFobello, coming down on to Ponte Grande in the Val Anzasca. He would goup the Val Anzasca to Macugnaga, and over the Monte Moro, which wouldbring him immediately to Saas. Saas, therefore, is the nearest and mostnatural place for him to make for, if he were flying from Varallo, andhere I suppose him to have halted. 

It so happened that on the 9th of September, 1589, there was one of thethree great outbreaks of the Mattmark See that have from time to timedevastated the valley of Saas. {15} It is probable that the chapels weredecided upon in consequence of some grace shown by the miraculous pictureof the Virgin, which had mitigated a disaster occurring so soon after theanniversary of her own Nativity. Tabachetti, arriving at this juncture, may have offered to undertake them if the Saas people would give him anasylum. Here, at any rate, I suppose him to have stayed till some timein 1590, probably the second half of it, his design of eventuallyreturning home, if he ever entertained it, being then interrupted by asummons to Crea near Casale, where I believe him to have worked with afew brief interruptions thenceforward for little if at all short of halfa century, or until about the year 1640. I admit, however, that theevidence for assigning him so long a life rests solely on the supposedidentity of the figure known as "Il Vecchietto, " in the Varallo Descentfrom the Cross chapel, with the portrait of Tabachetti himself in theEcce Homo chapel, also at Varallo. 

I find additional reason for thinking the chapels owe their origin to theinundation of September 9, 1589, in the fact that the 8th of September ismade a day of pilgrimage to the Saas-Fee chapels throughout the wholevalley of Saas. It is true the 8th of September is the festival of theNativity of the Virgin Mary, so that under any circumstances this wouldbe a great day, but the fact that not only the people of Saas, but thewhole valley down to Visp, flock to this chapel on the 8th of September, points to the belief that some special act of grace on the part of theVirgin was vouchsafed on this day in connection with this chapel. Abelief that it was owing to the intervention of St. Mary of Fee that theinundation was not attended with loss of life would be very likely tolead to the foundation of a series of chapels leading up to the placewhere her miraculous picture was placed, and to the more specialcelebration of her Nativity in connection with this spot throughout thevalley of Saas. I have discussed the subject with the Rev. Jos. Ant. Ruppen, and he told me he thought the fact that the great _fete_ of theyear in connection with the Saas-Fee chapels was on the 8th of Septemberpointed rather strongly to the supposition that there was a connectionbetween these and the recorded flood of September 9, 1589. 

Turning to the individual chapels they are as follows:--

1. The Annunciation. The treatment here presents no more analogy tothat of the same subject at Varallo than is inevitable in the nature ofthe subject. The Annunciation figures at Varallo have proved to be meredraped dummies with wooden heads; Tabachetti, even though he did theheads, which he very likely did, would take no interest in the Varallowork with the same subject. The Annunciation, from its very simplicityas well as from the transcendental nature of the subject, is singularlyhard to treat, and the work here, whatever it may once have been, is nowno longer remarkable. 

2. The Salutation of Mary by Elizabeth. This group, again, bears noanalogy to the Salutation chapel at Varallo, in which Tabachetti's sharewas so small that it cannot be considered as in any way his. It is notto be expected, therefore, that the Saas chapel should follow the Varalloone. The figures, four in number, are pleasing and well arranged. St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and St. Zacharias are all talking at once. TheVirgin is alone silent. 

3. The Nativity is much damaged and hard to see. The treatment bears noanalogy to that adopted by Gaudenzio Ferrari at Varallo. There is onepleasing young shepherd standing against the wall, but some figures haveno doubt (as in others of the chapels) disappeared, and those that remainhave been so shifted from their original positions that very little ideacan be formed of what the group was like when Tabachetti left it. 

4. The Purification. I can hardly say why this chapel should remind me, as it does, of the Circumcision chapel at Varallo, for there are morefigures here than space at Varallo will allow. It cannot be pretendedthat any single figure is of extraordinary merit, but amongst them theytell their story with excellent effect. Two, those of St. Joseph and St. Anna (?), that doubtless were once more important factors in the drama, are now so much in corners near the window that they can hardly be seen. 

5. The Dispute in the Temple. This subject is not treated at Varallo. Here at Saas there are only six doctors now; whether or no there wereoriginally more cannot be determined. 

6. The Agony in the Garden. Tabachetti had no chapel with this subjectat Varallo, and there is no resemblance between the Saas chapel and thatby D'Enrico. The figures are no doubt approximately in their originalpositions, but I have no confidence that I have rearranged themcorrectly. They were in such confusion when I first saw them that theRev. E. J. Selwyn and myself determined to rearrange them. They havedoubtless been shifted more than once since Tabachetti left them. Thesleeping figures are all good. St. James is perhaps a little prosaic. One Roman soldier who is coming into the garden with a lantern, andmotioning silence with his hand, does duty for the others that are tofollow him. I should think more than one of these figures is actuallycarved in wood by Tabachetti, allowance being made for the fact that hewas working in a material with which he was not familiar, and which nosculptor of the highest rank has ever found congenial. 

7. The Flagellation. Tabachetti has a chapel with this subject atVarallo, and the Saas group is obviously a descent with modification fromhis work there. The figure of Christ is so like the one at Varallo thatI think it must have been carved by Tabachetti himself. The man with thehooked nose, who at Varallo is stooping to bind his rods, is hereupright: it was probably the intention to emphasise him in the succeedingscenes as well as this, in the same way as he has been emphasised atVarallo, but his nose got pared down in the cutting of later scenes, andcould not easily be added to. The man binding Christ to the column atVarallo is repeated (_longo intervallo_) here, and the whole work is oneinspired by that at Varallo, though no single figure except that of theChrist is adhered to with any very great closeness. I think the nearermalefactor, with a goitre, and wearing a large black hat, is either anaddition of the year 1709, or was done by the journeyman of the localsculptor who carved the greater number of the figures. The man stoopingdown to bind his rods can hardly be by the same hand as either of the twoblack-hatted malefactors, but it is impossible to speak with certainty. The general effect of the chapel is excellent, if we consider thematerial in which it is executed, and the rudeness of the audience towhom it addresses itself. 

8. The Crowning with Thorns. Here again the inspiration is derived fromTabachetti's Crowning with Thorns at Varallo. The Christs in the twochapels are strikingly alike, and the general effect is that of aresiduary impression left in the mind of one who had known the VaralloFlagellation exceedingly well. 

9. Sta. Veronica. This and the next succeeding chapels are the mostimportant of the series. Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary at Varallo isagain the source from which the present work was taken, but, as I havealready said, it has been modified in reproduction. Mount Calvary isstill shown, as at Varallo, towards the left-hand corner of the work, butat Saas it is more towards the middle than at Varallo, so that horsemenand soldiers may be seen coming up behind it--a stroke that deserves thename of genius none the less for the manifest imperfection with which ithas been carried into execution. There are only three horses fullyshown, and one partly shown. They are all of the heavy Flemish typeadopted by Tabachetti at Varallo. The man kicking the fallen Christ andthe goitred man (with the same teeth missing), who are so conspicuous inthe Varallo Journey to Calvary, reappear here, only the kicking man hasmuch less nose than at Varallo, probably because (as explained) the nosegot whittled away and could not be whittled back again. I observe thatthe kind of lapelled tunic which Tabachetti, and only Tabachetti, adoptsat Varallo, is adopted for the centurion in this chapel, and indeedthroughout the Saas chapels this particular form of tunic is the mostusual for a Roman soldier. The work is still a very striking one, notwithstanding its translation into wood and the decay into which it hasbeen allowed to fall; nor can it fail to impress the visitor who isfamiliar with this class of art as coming from a man of extraordinarydramatic power and command over the almost impossible art of composingmany figures together effectively in all-round sculpture. Whether allthe figures are even now as Tabachetti left them I cannot determine, butMr. Selwyn has restored Simon the Cyrenian to the position in which heobviously ought to stand, and between us we have got the chapel intosomething more like order. 

10. The Crucifixion. This subject was treated at Varallo not byTabachetti but by Gaudenzio Ferrari. It confirms therefore my opinion asto the designer of the Saas chapels to find in them no trace of theVarallo Crucifixion, while the kind of tunic which at Varallo is onlyfound in chapels wherein Tabachetti worked again appears here. The workis in a deplorable state of decay. Mr. Selwyn has greatly improved thearrangement of the figures, but even now they are not, I imagine, quiteas Tabachetti left them. The figure of Christ is greatly better intechnical execution than that of either of the two thieves; the folds ofthe drapery alone will show this even to an unpractised eye. I do notthink there can be a doubt but that Tabachetti cut this figure himself, as also those of the Magdalene and St. John, who stand at the foot of thecross. The thieves are coarsely executed, with no very obviousdistinction between the penitent and the impenitent one, except thatthere is a fiend painted on the ceiling over the impenitent thief. Theone horse introduced into the composition is again of the heavy Flemishtype adopted by Tabachetti at Varallo. There is great difference in thecare with which the folds on the several draperies have been cut, somebeing stiff and poor enough, while others are done very sufficiently. Inspite of smallness of scale, ignoble material, disarrangement and decay, the work is still striking. 

11. The Resurrection. There being no chapel at Varallo with any of theremaining subjects treated at Saas, the sculptor has struck out a linefor himself. The Christ in the Resurrection Chapel is a carefullymodelled figure, and if better painted might not be ineffective. Threesoldiers, one sleeping, alone remain. There were probably other figuresthat have been lost. The sleeping soldier is very pleasing. 

12. The Ascension is not remarkably interesting; the Christ appears tobe, but perhaps is not, a much more modern figure than the rest. 

18. The Descent of the Holy Ghost. Some of the figures along the endwall are very good, and were, I should imagine, cut by Tabachettihimself. Those against the two side walls are not so well cut. 

14. The Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The two large cherubs here areobviously by a later hand, and the small ones are not good. The figureof the Virgin herself is unexceptionable. There were doubtless onceother figures of the Apostles which have disappeared; of these a singleSt. Peter (?), so hidden away in a corner near the window that it canonly be seen with difficulty, is the sole survivor. 

15. The Coronation of the Virgin is of later date, and has probablysuperseded an earlier work. It can hardly be by the designer of theother chapels of the series. Perhaps Tabachetti had to leave for Creabefore all the chapels at Saas were finished. 

Lastly, we have the larger chapel dedicated to St. Mary, which crowns theseries. Here there is nothing of more than common artistic interest, unless we except the stone altar mentioned in Ruppen's chronicle. Thisis of course classical in style, and is, I should think, very good. 

Once more I must caution the reader against expecting to findhighly-finished gems of art in the chapels I have been describing. Awooden figure not more than two feet high clogged with many coats ofpaint can hardly claim to be taken very seriously, and even those fewthat were cut by Tabachetti himself were not meant to have attentionconcentrated on themselves alone. As mere wood-carving the Saas-Feechapels will not stand comparison, for example, with the triptych ofunknown authorship in the Church of St. Anne at Gliss, close to Brieg. But, in the first place, the work at Gliss is worthy of Holbein himself:I know no wood-carving that can so rivet the attention; moreover it iscoloured with water-colour and not oil, so that it is tinted, notpainted; and, in the second place, the Gliss triptych belongs to a date(1519) when artists held neither time nor impressionism as objects, andhence, though greatly better than the Saas-Fee chapels as regards acertain Japanese curiousness of finish and _naivete_ of literaltranscription, it cannot even enter the lists with the Saas work asregards _elan_ and dramatic effectiveness. The difference between thetwo classes of work is much that between, say, John Van Eyck or Memlingand Rubens or Rembrandt, or, again, between Giovanni Bellini andTintoretto; the aims of the one class of work are incompatible with thoseof the other. Moreover, in the Gliss triptych the intention of thedesigner is carried out (whether by himself or no) with admirable skill;whereas at Saas the wisdom of the workman is rather of Ober-Ammergau thanof the Egyptians, and the voice of the poet is not a little drowned inthat of his mouthpiece. If, however, the reader will bear in mind thesesomewhat obvious considerations, and will also remember the patheticcircumstances under which the chapels were designed--for Tabachetti whenhe reached Saas was no doubt shattered in body and mind by his fouryears' imprisonment--he will probably be not less attracted to them thanI observed were many of the visitors both at Saas-Grund and Saas-Fee withwhom I had the pleasure of examining them. 

I will now run briefly through the other principal works in theneighbourhood to which I think the reader would be glad to have hisattention directed. 

At Saas-Fee itself the main altar-piece is without interest, as also onewith a figure of St. Sebastian. The Virgin and Child above the remainingaltar are, so far as I remember them, very good, and greatly superior tothe smaller figures of the same altar-piece. 

At Almagel, an hour's walk or so above Saas-Grund--a village, the name ofwhich, like those of the Alphubel, the Monte Moro, and more than oneother neighbouring site, is supposed to be of Saracenic origin--the mainaltar-piece represents a female saint with folded arms being beheaded bya vigorous man to the left. These two figures are very good. There aretwo somewhat inferior elders to the right, and the composition is crownedby the Assumption of the Virgin. I like the work, but have no idea whodid it. Two bishops flanking the composition are not so good. There aretwo other altars in the church: the right-hand one has some pleasingfigures, not so the left-hand. 

In St. Joseph's Chapel, on the mule-road between Saas-Grund and Saas-Fee, the St. Joseph and the two children are rather nice. In the churches andchapels which I looked into between Saas and Stalden, I saw many floridextravagant altar-pieces, but nothing that impressed me favourably. 

In the parish church at Saas-Grund there are two altar-pieces whichdeserve attention. In the one over the main altar the arrangement of theLast Supper in a deep recess half-way up the composition is very pleasingand effective; in that above the right-hand altar of the two that standin the body of the church there are a number of round lunettes, abouteight inches in diameter, each containing a small but spirited group ofwooden figures. I have lost my notes on these altar-pieces and can onlyremember that the main one has been restored, and now belongs to twodifferent dates, the earlier date being, I should imagine, about 1670. Asimilar treatment of the Last Supper may be found near Brieg in thechurch of Naters, and no doubt the two altar-pieces are by the same man. There are, by the way, two very ambitious altars on either side the mainarch leading to the chance in the church at Naters, of which the one onthe south side contains obvious reminiscences of Gaudenzio Ferrari's Sta. Maria frescoes at Varallo; but none of the four altar-pieces in the twotransepts tempted me to give them much attention. As regards the smalleraltar-piece at Saas-Grund, analogous work may be found at Cravagliana, half-way between Varallo and Fobello, but this last has suffered throughthe inveterate habit which Italians have of showing their hatred towardsthe enemies of Christ by mutilating the figures that represent them. Whether the Saas work is by a Valsesian artist who came over toSwitzerland, or whether the Cravagliana work is by a Swiss who had cometo Italy, I cannot say without further consideration and closerexamination than I have been able to give. The altar-pieces of Mairengo, Chiggiogna, and, I am told, Lavertezzo, all in the Canton Ticino, are bya Swiss or German artist who has migrated southward; but the reversemigration was equally common. 

Being in the neighbourhood, and wishing to assure myself whether thesculptor of the Saas-Fee chapels had or had not come lower down thevalley, I examined every church and village which I could hear of ascontaining anything that might throw light on this point. I was thus ledto Vispertimenen, a village some three hours above either Visp orStalden. It stands very high, and is an almost untouched example of amedieval village. The altar-piece of the main church is even morefloridly ambitious in its abundance of carving and gilding than the manyother ambitious altar-pieces with which the Canton Valais abounds. TheApostles are receiving the Holy Ghost on the first storey of thecomposition, and they certainly are receiving it with an overjoyedalacrity and hilarious ecstasy of _allegria spirituale_ which it wouldnot be easy to surpass. Above the village, reaching almost to the limitsbeyond which there is no cultivation, there stands a series of chapelslike those I have been describing at Saas-Fee, only much larger and moreambitious. They are twelve in number, including the church that crownsthe series. The figures they contain are of wood (so I was assured, butI did not go inside the chapels): they are life-size, and in some chapelsthere are as many as a dozen figures. I should think they belonged tothe later half of the last century, and here, one would say, sculpturetouches the ground; at least, it is not easy to see how cheapexaggeration can sink an art more deeply. The only things that at allpleased me were a smiling donkey and an ecstatic cow in the Nativitychapel. Those who are not allured by the prospect of seeing perhaps thevery worst that can be done in its own line, need not be at the pains ofclimbing up to Vispertimenen. Those, on the other hand, who may findthis sufficient inducement will not be disappointed, and they will enjoymagnificent views of the Weisshorn and the mountains near the Dom. 

I have already referred to the triptych at Gliss. This is figured inWolf's work on Chamonix and the Canton Valais, but a larger and clearerreproduction of such an extraordinary work is greatly to be desired. Thesmall wooden statues above the triptych, as also those above its moderncompanion in the south transept, are not less admirable than the triptychitself. I know of no other like work in wood, and have no clue whateveras to who the author can have been beyond the fact that the work ispurely German and eminently Holbeinesque in character. 

I was told of some chapels at Rarogne, five or six miles lower down thevalley than Visp. I examined them, and found they had been stripped oftheir figures. The few that remained satisfied me that we have had noloss. Above Brieg there are two other like series of chapels. Iexamined the higher and more promising of the two, but found not onesingle figure left. I was told by my driver that the other series, closeto the Pont Napoleon on the Simplon road, had been also stripped of itsfigures, and, there being a heavy storm at the time, have taken his wordfor it that this was so. 

THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE {16}

Three well-known writers, Professor Max Muller, Professor Mivart, and Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace have lately maintained that though the theory ofdescent with modification accounts for the development of all vegetablelife, and of all animals lower than man, yet that man cannot--not atleast in respect of the whole of his nature--be held to have descendedfrom any animal lower than himself, inasmuch as none lower than manpossesses even the germs of language. Reason, it is contended--moreespecially by Professor Max Muller in his "Science of Thought, " to whichI propose confining our attention this evening--is so inseparablyconnected with language, that the two are in point of fact identical;hence it is argued that, as the lower animals have no germs of language, they can have no germs of reason, and the inference is drawn that mancannot be conceived as having derived his own reasoning powers andcommand of language through descent from beings in which no germ ofeither can be found. The relations therefore between thought andlanguage, interesting in themselves, acquire additional importance fromthe fact of their having become the battle-ground between those who saythat the theory of descent breaks down with man, and those who maintainthat we are descended from some ape-like ancestor long since extinct. 

The contention of those who refuse to admit man unreservedly into thescheme of evolution is comparatively recent. The great propounders ofevolution, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck--not to mention a score ofothers who wrote at the close of the last and early part of this presentcentury--had no qualms about admitting man into their system. They havebeen followed in this respect by the late Mr. Charles Darwin, and by thegreatly more influential part of our modern biologists, who hold thatwhatever loss of dignity we may incur through being proved to be ofhumble origin, is compensated by the credit we may claim for havingadvanced ourselves to such a high pitch of civilisation; this bids usexpect still further progress, and glorifies our descendants more than itabases our ancestors. But to whichever view we may incline onsentimental grounds the fact remains that, while Charles Darwin declaredlanguage to form no impassable barrier between man and the lower animals, Professor Max Muller calls it the Rubicon which no brute dare cross, anddeduces hence the conclusion that man cannot have descended from anunknown but certainly speechless ape. 

It may perhaps be expected that I should begin a lecture on the relationsbetween thought and language with some definition of both these things;but thought, as Sir William Grove said of motion, is a phenomenon "soobvious to simple apprehension, that to define it would make it moreobscure. " {17} Definitions are useful where things are new to us, butthey are superfluous about those that are already familiar, andmischievous, so far as they are possible at all, in respect of all thosethings that enter so profoundly and intimately into our being that inthem we must either live or bear no life. To vivisect the more vitalprocesses of thought is to suspend, if not to destroy them; for thoughtcan think about everything more healthily and easily than about itself. It is like its instrument the brain, which knows nothing of any injuriesinflicted upon itself. As regards what is new to us, a definition willsometimes dilute a difficulty, and help us to swallow that which mightchoke us undiluted; but to define when we have once well swallowed is tounsettle, rather than settle, our digestion. Definitions, again, arelike steps cut in a steep slope of ice, or shells thrown on to a greasypavement; they give us foothold, and enable us to advance, but when weare at our journey's end we want them no longer. Again, they are usefulas mental fluxes, and as helping us to fuse new ideas with our olderones. They present us with some tags and ends of ideas that we havealready mastered, on to which we can hitch our new ones; but to multiplythem in respect of such a matter as thought, is like scratching the biteof a gnat; the more we scratch the more we want to scratch; the more wedefine the more we shall have to go on defining the words we have used inour definitions, and shall end by setting up a serious mental raw in theplace of a small uneasiness that was after all quite endurable. We knowtoo well what thought is, to be able to know that we know it, and I ampersuaded there is no one in this room but understands what is meant bythought and thinking well enough for all the purposes of this discussion. Whoever does not know this without words will not learn it for all thewords and definitions that are laid before him. The more, indeed, hehears, the more confused he will become. I shall, therefore, merelypremise that I use the word "thought" in the same sense as that in whichit is generally used by people who say that they think this or that. Atany rate, it will be enough if I take Professor Max Muller's owndefinition, and say that its essence consists in a bringing together ofmental images and ideas with deductions therefrom, and with acorresponding power of detaching them from one another. Hobbes, theProfessor tells us, maintained this long ago, when he said that all ourthinking consists of addition and subtraction--that is to say, inbringing ideas together, and in detaching them from one another. 

Turning from thought to language, we observe that the word is derivedfrom the French _langue_, or _tongue_. Strictly, therefore, it means_tonguage_. This, however, takes account of but a very small part of theideas that underlie the word. It does, indeed, seize a familiar andimportant detail of everyday speech, though it may be doubted whether thetongue has more to do with speaking than lips, teeth and throat have, butit makes no attempt at grasping and expressing the essentialcharacteristic of speech. Anything done with the tongue, even though itinvolve no speaking at all, is _tonguage_; eating oranges is as muchtonguage as speech is. The word, therefore, though it tells us in parthow speech is effected, reveals nothing of that ulterior meaning which isnevertheless inseparable from any right use of the words either "speech"or "language. " It presents us with what is indeed a very frequentadjunct of conversation, but the use of written characters, or the finger-speech of deaf mutes, is enough to show that the word "language" omitsall reference to the most essential characteristics of the idea, which inpractice it nevertheless very sufficiently presents to us. I hopepresently to make it clear to you how and why it should do so. The wordis incomplete in the first place, because it omits all reference to theideas which words, speech or language are intended to convey, and therecan be no true word without its actually or potentially conveying anidea. Secondly, it makes no allusion to the person or persons to whomthe ideas are to be conveyed. Language is not language unless it notonly expresses fairly definite and coherent ideas, but unless it alsoconveys these ideas to some other living intelligent being, either man orbrute, that can understand them. We may speak to a dog or horse, but notto a stone. If we make pretence of doing so we are in reality onlytalking to ourselves. The person or animal spoken to is half thebattle--a half, moreover, which is essential to there being any battle atall. It takes two people to say a thing--a sayee as well as a sayer. Theone is as essential to any true saying as the other. A. May have spoken, but if B. Has not heard, there has been nothing said, and he must speakagain. True, the belief on A. 's part that he had a _bona fide_ sayee inB. , saves his speech qua him, but it has been barren and left no fertileissue. It has failed to fulfil the conditions of true speech, whichinvolve not only that A. Should speak, but also that B. Should hear. True, again, we often speak of loose, incoherent, indefinite language;but by doing so we imply, and rightly, that we are calling that languagewhich is not true language at all. People, again, sometimes talk tothemselves without intending that any other person should hear them, butthis is not well done, and does harm to those who practise it. It isabnormal, whereas our concern is with normal and essentialcharacteristics; we may, therefore, neglect both delirious babblings, andthe cases in which a person is regarding him or herself, as it were, fromoutside, and treating himself as though he were some one else. 

Inquiring, then, what are the essentials, the presence of whichconstitutes language, while their absence negatives it altogether, wefind that Professor Max Muller restricts them to the use of grammaticalarticulate words that we can write or speak, and denies that anything canbe called language unless it can be written or spoken in articulate wordsand sentences. He also denies that we can think at all unless we do soin words; that is to say, in sentences with verbs and nouns. Indeed hegoes so far as to say upon his title-page that there can be noreason--which I imagine comes to much the same thing as thought--withoutlanguage, and no language without reason. 

Against the assertion that there can be no true language without reason Ihave nothing to say. But when the Professor says that there can be noreason, or thought, without language, his opponents contend, as it seemsto me, with greater force, that thought, though infinitely aided, extended and rendered definite through the invention of words, nevertheless existed so fully as to deserve no other name thousands, ifnot millions of years before words had entered into it at all. Words, they say, are a comparatively recent invention, for the fuller expressionof something that was already in existence. 

Children, they urge, are often evidently thinking and reasoning, thoughthey can neither think nor speak in words. If you ask me to definereason, I answer as before that this can no more be done than thought, truth or motion can be defined. Who has answered the question, "What istruth?" Man cannot see God and live. We cannot go so far back uponourselves as to undermine our own foundations; if we try to do we toppleover, and lose that very reason about which we vainly try to reason. Ifwe let the foundations be, we know well enough that they are there, andwe can build upon them in all security. We cannot, then, define reasonnor crib, cabin and confine it within a thus-far-shalt-thou-go-and-no-further. Who can define heat or cold, or night or day? Yet, so long aswe hold fast by current consent, our chances of error for want of betterdefinition are so small that no sensible person will consider them. Inlike manner, if we hold by current consent or common sense, which is thesame thing, about reason, we shall not find the want of an academicdefinition hinder us from a reasonable conclusion. What nurse or motherwill doubt that her infant child can reason within the limits of its ownexperience, long before it can formulate its reason in articulatelyworded thought? If the development of any given animal is, as ouropponents themselves admit, an epitome of the history of its wholeanterior development, surely the fact that speech is an accomplishmentacquired after birth so artificially that children who have gone wild inthe woods lose it if they have ever learned it, points to the conclusionthat man's ancestors only learned to express themselves in articulatelanguage at a comparatively recent period. Granted that they learn tothink and reason continually the more and more fully for having done so, will common sense permit us to suppose that they could neither think norreason at all till they could convey their ideas in words?

I will return later to the reason of the lower animals, but will now dealwith the question what it is that constitutes language in the mostcomprehensive sense that can be properly attached to it. I have saidalready that language to be language at all must not only convey fairlydefinite coherent ideas, but must also convey them to another livingbeing. Whenever two living beings have conveyed and received ideas, there has been language, whether looks or gestures or words spoken orwritten have been the vehicle by means of which the ideas have travelled. Some ideas crawl, some run, some fly; and in this case words are thewings they fly with, but they are only the wings of thought or of ideas, they are not the thought or ideas themselves, nor yet, as Professor MaxMuller would have it, inseparably connected with them. Last summer I wasat an inn in Sicily, where there was a deaf and dumb waiter; he had beenborn so, and could neither write nor read. What had he to do with wordsor words with him? Are we to say, then, that this most active, amiableand intelligent fellow could neither think nor reason? One day I had hadmy dinner and had left the hotel. A friend came in, and the waiter sawhim look for me in the place I generally occupied. He instantly came upto my friend, and moved his two forefingers in a way that suggested twopeople going about together, this meant "your friend"; he then moved hisforefingers horizontally across his eyes, this meant, "who wears dividedspectacles"; he made two fierce marks over the sockets of his eyes, thismeant, "with the heavy eyebrows"; he pulled his chin, and then touchedhis white shirt, to say that my beard was white. Having thus identifiedme as a friend of the person he was speaking to, and as having a whitebeard, heavy eyebrows, and wearing divided spectacles, he made a munchingmovement with his jaws to say that I had had my dinner; and finally, bymaking two fingers imitate walking on the table, he explained that I hadgone away. My friend, however, wanted to know how long I had been gone, so he pulled out his watch and looked inquiringly. The man at onceslapped himself on the back, and held up the five fingers of one hand, tosay it was five minutes ago. All this was done as rapidly as though ithad been said in words; and my friend, who knew the man well, understoodwithout a moment's hesitation. Are we to say that this man had nothought, nor reason, nor language, merely because he had not a singleword of any kind in his head, which I am assured he had not; for, as Ihave said, he could not speak with his fingers? Is it possible to denythat a dialogue--an intelligent conversation--had passed between the twomen? And if conversation, then surely it is technical and pedantic todeny that all the essential elements of language were present. The signsand tokens used by this poor fellow were as rude an instrument ofexpression, in comparison with ordinary language, as going on one's handsand knees is in comparison with walking, or as walking compared withgoing by train; but it is as great an abuse of words to limit the word"language" to mere words written or spoken, as it would be to limit theidea of a locomotive to a railway engine. This may indeed pass inordinary conversation, where so much must be suppressed if talk is to begot through at all, but it is intolerable when we are inquiring about therelations between thought and words. To do so is to let words become asit were the masters of thought, on the ground that the fact of theirbeing only its servants and appendages is so obvious that it is generallyallowed to go without saying. 

If all that Professor Max Muller means to say is, that no animal but mancommands an articulate language, with verbs and nouns, or is ever likelyto command one (and I question whether in reality he means much more thanthis), no one will differ from him. No dog or elephant has one word forbread, another for meat, and another for water. Yet, when we watch a cator dog dreaming, as they often evidently do, can we doubt that the dreamis accompanied by a mental image of the thing that is dreamed of, muchlike what we experience in dreams ourselves, and much doubtless like themental images which must have passed through the mind of my deaf and dumbwaiter? If they have mental images in sleep, can we doubt that waking, also, they picture things before their mind's eyes, and see them much aswe do--too vaguely indeed to admit of our thinking that we actually seethe objects themselves, but definitely enough for us to be able torecognise the idea or object of which we are thinking, and to connect itwith any other idea, object, or sign that we may think appropriate?

Here we have touched on the second essential element of language. Welaid it down, that its essence lay in the communication of an idea fromone intelligent being to another; but no ideas can be communicated at allexcept by the aid of conventions to which both parties have agreed toattach an identical meaning. The agreement may be very informal, and maypass so unconsciously from one generation to another that its existencecan only be recognised by the aid of much introspection, but it will bealways there. A sayer, a sayee, and a convention, no matter what, agreedupon between them as inseparably attached to the idea which it isintended to convey--these comprise all the essentials of language. Wherethese are present there is language; where any of them are wanting thereis no language. It is not necessary for the sayee to be able to speakand become a sayer. If he comprehends the sayer--that is to say, if heattaches the same meaning to a certain symbol as the sayer does--if he isa party to the bargain whereby it is agreed upon by both that any givensymbol shall be attached invariably to a certain idea, so that in virtueof the principle of associated ideas the symbol shall never be presentwithout immediately carrying the idea along with it, then all theessentials of language are complied with, and there has been true speechthough never a word was spoken. 

The lower animals, therefore, many of them, possess a part of our ownlanguage, though they cannot speak it, and hence do not possess it sofully as we do. They cannot say "bread, " "meat, " or "water, " but thereare many that readily learn what ideas they ought to attach to thesesymbols when they are presented to them. It is idle to say that a catdoes not know what the cat's-meat man means when he says "meat. " The catknows just as well, neither better nor worse than the cat's-meat mandoes, and a great deal better than I myself understand much that is saidby some very clever people at Oxford or Cambridge. There is more trueemployment of language, more _bona fide_ currency of speech, between asayer and a sayee who understand each other, though neither of them canspeak a word, than between a sayer who can speak with the tongues of menand of angels without being clear about his own meaning, and a sayee whocan himself utter the same words, but who is only in imperfect agreementwith the sayer as to the ideas which the words or symbols that he uttersare intended to convey. The nature of the symbols counts for nothing;the gist of the matter is in the perfect harmony between sayer and sayeeas to the significance that is to be associated with them. 

Professor Max Muller admits that we share with the lower animals what hecalls an emotional language, and continues that we may call theirinterjections and imitations language if we like, as we speak of thelanguage of the eyes or the eloquence of mute nature, but he warns usagainst mistaking metaphor for fact. It is indeed mere metaphor to talkof the eloquence of mute nature, or the language of winds and waves. There is no intercommunion of mind with mind by means of a covenantedsymbol; but it is only an apparent, not a real, metaphor to say that twopairs of eyes have spoken when they have signalled to one anothersomething which they both understand. A schoolboy at home for theholidays wants another plate of pudding, and does not like to applyofficially for more. He catches the servant's eye and looks at thepudding; the servant understands, takes his plate without a word, andgets him some. Is it metaphor to say that the boy asked the servant todo this, or is it not rather pedantry to insist on the letter of a bondand deny its spirit, by denying that language passed, on the ground thatthe symbols covenanted upon and assented to by both were uttered andreceived by eyes and not by mouth and ears? When the lady drank to thegentleman only with her eyes, and he pledged with his, was there noconversation because there was neither noun nor verb? Eyes are verbs, and glasses of wine are good nouns enough as between those who understandone another. Whether the ideas underlying them are expressed andconveyed by eyeage or by tonguage is a detail that matters nothing. 

But everything we say is metaphorical if we choose to be captious. Scratch the simplest expressions, and you will find the metaphor. Writtenwords are handage, inkage and paperage; it is only by metaphor, orsubstitution and transposition of ideas, that we can call them language. They are indeed potential language, and the symbols employed presupposenouns, verbs, and the other parts of speech; but for the most part it isin what we read between the lines that the profounder meaning of anyletter is conveyed. There are words unwritten and untranslatable intoany nouns that are nevertheless felt as above, about and underneath thegross material symbols that lie scrawled upon the paper; and the deeperthe feeling with which anything is written the more pregnant will it beof meaning which can be conveyed securely enough, but which loses ratherthan gains if it is squeezed into a sentence, and limited by the parts ofspeech. The language is not in the words but in the heart-to-heartnessof the thing, which is helped by words, but is nearer and farther thanthey. A correspondent wrote to me once, many years ago, "If I couldthink to you without words you would understand me better. " But surelyin this he was thinking to me, and without words, and I did understandhim better . . . So it is not by the words that I am too presumptuouslyventuring to speak to-night that your opinions will be formed ormodified. They will be formed or modified, if either, by something thatyou will feel, but which I have not spoken, to the full as much as byanything that I have actually uttered. You may say that this borders onmysticism. Perhaps it does, but their really is some mysticism innature. 

To return, however, to _terra firma_. I believe I am right in sayingthat the essence of language lies in the intentional conveyance of ideasfrom one living being to another through the instrumentality of arbitrarytokens or symbols agreed upon, and understood by both as being associatedwith the particular ideas in question. The nature of the symbol chosenis a matter of indifference; it may be anything that appeals to humansenses, and is not too hot or too heavy; the essence of the matter liesin a mutual covenant that whatever it is it shall stand invariably forthe same thing, or nearly so. 

We shall see this more easily if we observe the differences betweenwritten and spoken language. The written word "stone, " and the spokenword, are each of them symbols arrived at in the first instancearbitrarily. They are neither of them more like the other than they areto the idea of a stone which rises before our minds, when we either seeor hear the word, or than this idea again is like the actual stoneitself, but nevertheless the spoken symbol and the written one each alikeconvey with certainty the combination of ideas to which we have agreed toattach them. 

The written symbol is formed with the hand, appeals to the eye, leaves amaterial trace as long as paper and ink last, can travel as far as paperand ink can travel, and can be imprinted on eye after eye practically _adinfinitum_ both as regards time and space. 

The spoken symbol is formed by means of various organs in or about themouth, appeals to the ear, not the eye, perishes instantly withoutmaterial trace, and if it lives at all does so only in the minds of thosewho heard it. The range of its action is no wider than that within whicha voice can be heard; and every time a fresh impression is wanted thetype must be set up anew. 

The written symbol extends infinitely, as regards time and space, therange within which one mind can communicate with another; it gives thewriter's mind a life limited by the duration of ink, paper, and readers, as against that of his flesh and blood body. On the other hand, it takeslonger to learn the rules so as to be able to apply them with ease andsecurity, and even then they cannot be applied so quickly and easily asthose attaching to spoken symbols. Moreover, the spoken symbol admits ofa hundred quick and subtle adjuncts by way of action, tone andexpression, so that no one will use written symbols unless either for thespecial advantages of permanence and travelling power, or because he isincapacitated from using spoken ones. This, however, is hardly to thepoint; the point is that these two conventional combinations of symbols, that are as unlike one another as the Hallelujah Chorus is to St. Paul'sCathedral, are the one as much language as the other; and we thereforeinquire what this very patent fact reveals to us about the more essentialcharacteristics of language itself. What is the common bond that unitesthese two classes of symbols that seem at first sight to have nothing incommon, and makes the one raise the idea of language in our minds asreadily as the other? The bond lies in the fact that both are a set ofconventional tokens or symbols, agreed upon between the parties to whomthey appeal as being attached invariably to the same ideas, and becausethey are being made as a means of communion between one mind andanother, --for a memorandum made for a person's own later use is nothingbut a communication from an earlier mind to a later and modified one; itis therefore in reality a communication from one mind to another as muchas though it had been addressed to another person. 

We see, therefore, that the nature of the outward and visible sign towhich the inward and spiritual idea of language is attached does notmatter. It may be the firing of a gun; it may be an old semaphoretelegraph; it may be the movements of a needle; a look, a gesture, thebreaking of a twig by an Indian to tell some one that he has passed thatway: a twig broken designedly with this end in view is a letter addressedto whomsoever it may concern, as much as though it had been written outin full on bark or paper. It does not matter one straw what it is, provided it is agreed upon in concert, and stuck to. Just as the lowestforms of life nevertheless present us with all the essentialcharacteristics of livingness, and are as much alive in their own humbleway as the most highly developed organisms, so the rudest intentional andeffectual communication between two minds through the instrumentality ofa concerted symbol is as much language as the most finished oratory ofMr. Gladstone. I demur therefore to the assertion that the lower animalshave no language, inasmuch as they cannot themselves articulate agrammatical sentence. I do not indeed pretend that when the cat callsupon the tiles it uses what it consciously and introspectively recognisesas language; it says what it has to say without introspection, and in theordinary course of business, as one of the common forms of courtship. Itno more knows that it has been using language than M. Jourdain knew hehad been speaking prose, but M. Jourdain's knowing or not knowing wasneither here nor there. 

Anything which can be made to hitch on invariably to a definite idea thatcan carry some distance--say an inch at the least, and which can berepeated at pleasure, can be pressed into the service of language. Mrs. Bentley, wife of the famous Dr. Bentley of Trinity College, Cambridge, used to send her snuff-box to the college buttery when she wanted beer, instead of a written order. If the snuff-box came the beer was sent, butif there was no snuff-box there was no beer. Wherein did the snuff-boxdiffer more from a written order, than a written order differs from aspoken one? The snuff-box was for the time being language. It soundsstrange to say that one might take a pinch of snuff out of a sentence, but if the servant had helped him or herself to a pinch while carrying itto the buttery this is what would have been done; for if a snuff-box cansay "Send me a quart of beer, " so efficiently that the beer is sent, itis impossible to say that it is not a _bona fide_ sentence. As for therecipient of the message, the butler did not probably translate the snuff-box into articulate nouns and verbs; as soon as he saw it he just wentdown into the cellar and drew the beer, and if he thought at all, it wasprobably about something else. Yet he must have been thinking withoutwords, or he would have drawn too much beer or too little, or have spiltit in the bringing it up, and we may be sure that he did none of thesethings. 

You will, of course, observe that if Mrs. Bentley had sent the snuff-boxto the buttery of St. John's College instead of Trinity, it would nothave been language, for there would have been no covenant between sayerand sayee as to what the symbol should represent, there would have beenno previously established association of ideas in the mind of the butlerof St. John's between beer and snuff-box; the connection was artificial, arbitrary, and by no means one of those in respect of which an impromptubargain might be proposed by the very symbol itself, and assented towithout previous formality by the person to whom it was presented. Morebriefly, the butler of St. John's would not have been able to understandand read it aright. It would have been a dead letter to him--a snuff-boxand not a letter; whereas to the butler of Trinity it was a letter andnot a snuff-box. 

You will also note that it was only at the moment when he was looking atit and accepting it as a message that it flashed forth from snuff-box-hood into the light and life of living utterance. As soon as it hadkindled the butler into sending a single quart of beer, its force wasspent until Mrs. Bentley threw her soul into it again and charged it anewby wanting more beer, and sending it down accordingly. 

Again, take the ring which the Earl of Essex sent to Queen Elizabeth, butwhich the queen did not receive. This was intended as a sentence, butfailed to become effectual language because the sensible material symbolnever reached those sentient organs which it was intended to affect. Abook, again, however full of excellent words it may be, is not languagewhen it is merely standing on a bookshelf. It speaks to no one, unlesswhen being actually read, or quoted from by an act of memory. It ispotential language as a lucifer-match is potential fire, but it is nomore language till it is in contact with a recipient mind, than a matchis fire till it is struck, and is being consumed. 

A piece of music, again, without any words at all, or a song with wordsthat have nothing in the world to do with the ideas which it isnevertheless made to convey, is often very effectual language. Muchlying, and all irony depends on tampering with covenanted symbols, andmaking those that are usually associated with one set of ideas convey bya sleight of mind others of a different nature. That is why irony isintolerably fatiguing unless very sparingly used. Take the song whichBlondel sang under the window of King Richard's prison. There was notone syllable in it to say that Blondel was there, and was going to helpthe king to get out of prison. It was about some silly love affair, butit was a letter all the same, and the king made language of what wouldotherwise have been no language, by guessing the meaning, that is to sayby perceiving that he was expected to enter then and there into a newcovenant as to the meaning of the symbols that were presented to him, understanding what this covenant was to be, and acquiescing in it. 

On the other hand, no ingenuity can torture language into being a fitword to use in connection with either sounds or any other symbols thathave not been intended to convey a meaning, or again in connection witheither sounds or symbols in respect of which there has been no covenantbetween sayer and sayee. When we hear people speaking a foreignlanguage--we will say Welsh--we feel that though they are no doubt usingwhat is very good language as between themselves, there is no languagewhatever as far as we are concerned. We call it lingo, not language. TheChinese letters on a tea-chest might as well not be there, for all thatthey say to us, though the Chinese find them very much to the purpose. They are a covenant to which we have been no parties--to which ourintelligence has affixed no signature. 

We have already seen that it is in virtue of such an understood covenantthat symbols so unlike one another as the written word "stone" and thespoken word alike at once raise the idea of a stone in our minds. Seehow the same holds good as regards the different languages that passcurrent in different nations. The letters p, i, e, r, r, e convey theidea of a stone to a Frenchman as readily as s, t, o, n, e do toourselves. And why? because that is the covenant that has been struckbetween those who speak and those who are spoken to. Our "stone" conveysno idea to a Frenchman, nor his "pierre" to us, unless we have done whatis commonly called acquiring one another's language. To acquire aforeign language is only to learn and adhere to the covenants in respectof symbols which the nation in question has adopted and adheres to. 

Till we have done this we neither of us know the rules, so to speak, ofthe game that the other is playing, and cannot, therefore, play together;but the convention being once known and assented to, it does not matterwhether we raise the idea of a stone by the word "lapis, " or by "lithos, ""pietra, " "pierre, " "stein, " "stane" or "stone"; we may choose whatsymbols written or spoken we choose, and one set, unless they are ofunwieldy length will do as well as another, if we can get other people tochoose the same and stick to them; it is the accepting and sticking tothem that matters, not the symbols. The whole power of spoken languageis vested in the invariableness with which certain symbols are associatedwith certain ideas. If we are strict in always connecting the samesymbols with the same ideas, we speak well, keep our meaning clear toourselves, and convey it readily and accurately to any one who is alsofairly strict. If, on the other hand, we use the same combination ofsymbols for one thing one day and for another the next, we abuse oursymbols instead of using them, and those who indulge in slovenly habitsin this respect ere long lose the power alike of thinking and ofexpressing themselves correctly. The symbols, however, in the firstinstance, may be anything in the wide world that we have a fancy for. They have no more to do with the ideas they serve to convey than moneyhas with the things that it serves to buy. 

The principle of association, as every one knows, involves that whenevertwo things have been associated sufficiently together, the suggestion ofone of them to the mind shall immediately raise a suggestion of theother. It is in virtue of this principle that language, as we so callit, exists at all, for the essence of language consists, as I have saidperhaps already too often, in the fixity with which certain ideas areinvariably connected with certain symbols. But this being so, it is hardto see how we can deny that the lower animals possess the germs of ahighly rude and unspecialised, but still true language, unless we alsodeny that they have any ideas at all; and this I gather is what ProfessorMax Muller in a quiet way rather wishes to do. Thus he says, "It is easyenough to show that animals communicate, but this is a fact which hasnever been doubted. Dogs who growl and bark leave no doubt in the mindsof other dogs or cats, or even of man, of what they mean, but growlingand barking are not language, nor do they even contain the elements oflanguage. " {18}

I observe the Professor says that animals communicate without saying whatit is that they communicate. I believe this to have been because if hesaid that the lower animals communicate their ideas, this would be toadmit that they have ideas; if so, and if, as they present everyappearance of doing, they can remember, reflect upon, modify these ideasaccording to modified surroundings, and interchange them with oneanother, how is it possible to deny them the germs of thought, language, and reason--not to say a good deal more than the germs? It seems to methat not knowing what else to say that animals communicated if it was notideas, and not knowing what mess he might not get into if he admittedthat they had ideas at all, he thought it safer to omit his accusativecase altogether. 

That growling and barking cannot be called a very highly specialisedlanguage goes without saying; they are, however, so much diversified incharacter, according to circumstances, that they place a considerablenumber of symbols at an animal's command, and he invariably attaches thesame symbol to the same idea. A cat never purrs when she is angry, norspits when she is pleased. When she rubs her head against any oneaffectionately it is her symbol for saying that she is very fond of him, and she expects, and usually finds that it will be understood. If shesees her mistress raise her hand as though to pretend to strike her, sheknows that it is the symbol her mistress invariably attaches to the ideaof sending her away, and as such she accepts it. Granted that thesymbols in use among the lower animals are fewer and less highlydifferentiated than in the case of any known human language, andtherefore that animal language is incomparably less subtle and lesscapable of expressing delicate shades of meaning than our own, thesedifferences are nevertheless only those that exist between highlydeveloped and inchoate language; they do not involve those thatdistinguish language from no language. They are the differences betweenthe undifferentiated protoplasm of the amoeba and our own complexorganisation; they are not the differences between life and no life. Inanimal language as much as in human there is a mind intentionally makinguse of a symbol accepted by another mind as invariably attached to acertain idea, in order to produce that idea in the mind which it isdesired to affect--more briefly, there is a sayer, a sayee, and acovenanted symbol designedly applied. Our own speech is vertebrated andarticulated by means of nouns, verbs, and the rules of grammar. A dog'sspeech is invertebrate, but I do not see how it is possible to deny thatit possesses all the essential elements of language. 

I have said nothing about Professor R. L. Garner's researches into thelanguage of apes, because they have not yet been so far verified andaccepted as to make it safe to rely upon them; but when he lays it downthat all voluntary sounds are the products of thought, and that, if theyconvey a meaning to another, they perform the functions of human speech, he says what I believe will commend itself to any unsophisticated mind. Icould have wished, however, that he had not limited himself to sounds, and should have preferred his saying what I doubt not he would readilyaccept--I mean, that all symbols or tokens of whatever kind, ifvoluntarily adopted as such, are the products of thought, and perform thefunctions of human speech; but I cannot too often remind you that nothingcan be considered as fulfilling the conditions of language, except avoluntary application of a recognised token in order to convey a more orless definite meaning, with the intention doubtless of thus purchasing asit were some other desired meaning and consequent sensation. It isastonishing how closely in this respect money and words resemble oneanother. Money indeed may be considered as the most universal andexpressive of all languages. For gold and silver coins are no more moneywhen not in the actual process of being voluntarily used in purchase, than words not so in use are language. Pounds, shillings and pence arerecognised covenanted tokens, the outward and visible signs of an inwardand spiritual purchasing power, but till in actual use they are onlypotential money, as the symbols of language, whatever they may be, areonly potential language till they are passing between two minds. It isthe power and will to apply the symbols that alone gives life to money, and as long as these are in abeyance the money is in abeyance also; thecoins may be safe in one's pocket, but they are as dead as a log tillthey begin to burn in it, and so are our words till they begin to burnwithin us. 

The real question, however, as to the substantial underlying identitybetween the language of the lower animals and our own, turns upon thatother question whether or no, in spite of an immeasurable difference ofdegree, the thought and reason of man and of the lower animals isessentially the same. No one will expect a dog to master and express thevaried ideas that are incessantly arising in connection with humanaffairs. He is a pauper as against a millionaire. To ask him to do sowould be like giving a street-boy sixpence and telling him to go and buyhimself a founder's share in the New River Company. He would not evenknow what was meant, and even if he did it would take several millions ofsixpences to buy one. It is astonishing what a clever workman will dowith very modest tools, or again how far a thrifty housewife will make avery small sum of money go, or again in like manner how many ideas anintelligent brute can receive and convey with its very limitedvocabulary; but no one will pretend that a dog's intelligence can everreach the level of a man's. What we do maintain is that, within its ownlimited range, it is of the same essential character as our own, and thatthough a dog's ideas in respect of human affairs are both vague andnarrow, yet in respect of canine affairs they are precise enough andextensive enough to deserve no other name than thought or reason. Wehold moreover that they communicate their ideas in essentially the samemanner as we do--that is to say, by the instrumentality of a code ofsymbols attached to certain states of mind and material objects, in thefirst instance arbitrarily, but so persistently, that the presentation ofthe symbol immediately carries with it the idea which it is intended toconvey. Animals can thus receive and impart ideas on all that mostconcerns them. As my great namesake said some two hundred years ago, they know "what's what, and that's as high as metaphysic wit can fly. "And they not only know what's what themselves, but can impart to oneanother any new what's-whatness that they may have acquired, for they arenotoriously able to instruct and correct one another. 

Against this Professor Max Muller contends that we can know nothing ofwhat goes on in the mind of any lower animal, inasmuch as we are notlower animals ourselves. "We can imagine anything we like about whatpasses in the mind of an animal, " he writes, "we can know absolutelynothing. " {19} It is something to have it in evidence that he conceivesanimals as having a mind at all, but it is not easy to see how they canbe supposed to have a mind, without being able to acquire ideas, andhaving acquired, to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them. Surelythe mistake of requiring too much evidence is hardly less great than thatof being contented with too little. We, too, are animals, and can nomore refuse to infer reason from certain visible actions in their casethan we can in our own. If Professor Max Muller's plea were allowed, weshould have to deny our right to infer confidently what passes in themind of any one not ourselves, inasmuch as we are not that person. Wenever, indeed, can obtain irrefragable certainty about this or any othermatter, but we can be sure enough in many cases to warrant our stakingall that is most precious to us on the soundness of our opinion. Moreover, if the Professor denies our right to infer that animals reason, on the ground that we are not animals enough ourselves to be able to forman opinion, with what right does he infer so confidently himself thatthey do not reason? And how, if they present every one of thoseappearances which we are accustomed to connect with the communication ofan idea from one mind to another, can we deny that they have a languageof their own, though it is one which in most cases we can neither speaknor understand? How can we say that a sentinel rook, when it sees a manwith a gun and warns the other rooks by a concerted note which they allshow that they understand by immediately taking flight, should not becredited both with reason and the germs of language?

After all, a professor, whether of philology, psychology, biology, or anyother ology, is hardly the kind of person to whom we should appeal onsuch an elementary question as that of animal intelligence and language. We might as well ask a botanist to tell us whether grass grows, or ameteorologist to tell us if it has left off raining. If it is necessaryto appeal to any one, I should prefer the opinion of an intelligentgamekeeper to that of any professor, however learned. The keepers, again, at the Zoological Gardens, have exceptional opportunities forstudying the minds of animals--modified, indeed, by captivity, but stillminds of animals. Grooms, again, and dog-fanciers, are to the full asable to form an intelligent opinion on the reason and language of animalsas any University Professor, and so are cats'-meat men. I haverepeatedly asked gamekeepers and keepers at the Zoological Gardenswhether animals could reason and converse with one another, and havealways found myself regarded somewhat contemptuously for having evenasked the question. I once said to a friend, in the hearing of a keeperat the Zoological Gardens, that the penguin was very stupid. The man wasfurious, and jumped upon me at once. "He's not stupid at all, " said he;"he's very intelligent. "

Who has not seen a cat, when it wishes to go out, raise its fore paws onto the handle of the door, or as near as it can get, and look round, evidently asking some one to turn it for her? Is it reasonable to denythat a reasoning process is going on in the cat's mind, whereby sheconnects her wish with the steps necessary for its fulfilment, and alsowith certain invariable symbols which she knows her master or mistresswill interpret? Once, in company with a friend, I watched a cat playingwith a house-fly in the window of a ground-floor room. We were in thestreet, while the cat was inside. When we came up to the window she gaveus one searching look, and, having satisfied herself that we had nothingfor her, went on with her game. She knew all about the glass in thewindow, and was sure we could do nothing to molest her, so she treated uswith absolute contempt, never even looking at us again. 

The game was this. She was to catch the fly and roll it round and roundunder her paw along the window-sill, but so gently as not to injure itnor prevent it from being able to fly again when she had done rolling it. It was very early spring, and flies were scarce, in fact there was notanother in the whole window. She knew that if she crippled this one, itwould not be able to amuse her further, and that she would not readilyget another instead, and she liked the feel of it under her paw. It wassoft and living, and the quivering of its wings tickled the ball of herfoot in a manner that she found particularly grateful; so she rolled itgently along the whole length of the window-sill. It then became thefly's turn. He was to get up and fly about in the window, so as torecover himself a little; then she was to catch him again, and roll himsoftly all along the window-sill, as she had done before. 

It was plain that the cat knew the rules of her game perfectly well, andenjoyed it keenly. It was equally plain that the fly could not make heador tail of what it was all about. If it had been able to do so it wouldhave gone to play in the upper part of the window, where the cat couldnot reach it. Perhaps it was always hoping to get through the glass, andescape that way; anyhow, it kept pretty much to the same pane, no matterhow often it was rolled. At last, however, the fly, for some reason oranother, did not reappear on the pane, and the cat began lookingeverywhere to find it. Her annoyance when she failed to do so wasextreme. It was not only that she had lost her fly, but that she couldnot conceive how she should have ever come to do so. Presently she noteda small knot in the woodwork of the sill, and it flashed upon her thatshe had accidentally killed the fly, and that this was its dead body. Shetried to move it gently with her paw, but it was no use, and for the timeshe satisfied herself that the knot and the fly had nothing to do withone another. Every now and then, however, she returned to it as thoughit were the only thing she could think of, and she would try it again. She seemed to say she was certain there had been no knot there before--shemust have seen it if there had been; and yet, the fly could hardly havegot jammed so firmly into the wood. She was puzzled and irritated beyondmeasure, and kept looking in the same place again and again, just as wedo when we have mislaid something. She was rapidly losing temper anddignity when suddenly we saw the fly reappear from under the cat'sstomach and make for the window-pane, at the very moment when the catherself was exclaiming for the fiftieth time that she wondered where thatstupid fly ever could have got to. No man who has been hunting twentyminutes for his spectacles could be more delighted when he suddenly findsthem on his own forehead. "So that's where you were, " we seemed to hearher say, as she proceeded to catch it, and again began rolling it verysoftly without hurting it, under her paw. My friend and I both noticedthat the cat, in spite of her perplexity, never so much as hinted that wewere the culprits. The question whether anything outside the windowcould do her good or harm had long since been settled by her in thenegative, and she was not going to reopen it; she simply cut us dead, andthough her annoyance was so great that she was manifestly ready to laythe blame on anybody or anything with or without reason, and though shemust have perfectly well known that we were watching the whole affairwith amusement, she never either asked us if we had happened to see sucha thing as a fly go down our way lately, or accused us of having taken itfrom her--both of which ideas she would, I am confident, have been verywell able to convey to us if she had been so minded. 

Now what are thought and reason if the processes that were going throughthis cat's mind were not both one and the other? It would be childish tosuppose that the cat thought in words of its own, or in anything likewords. Its thinking was probably conducted through the instrumentalityof a series of mental images. We so habitually think in words ourselvesthat we find it difficult to realise thought without words at all; ourdifficulty, however, in imagining the particular manner in which the catthinks has nothing to do with the matter. We must answer the questionwhether she thinks or no, not according to our own ease or difficulty inunderstanding the particular manner of her thinking, but according as heraction does or does not appear to be of the same character as otheraction that we commonly call thoughtful. To say that the cat is notintelligent, merely on the ground that we cannot ourselves fathom herintelligence--this, as I have elsewhere said, is to make intelligencemean the power of being understood, rather than the power ofunderstanding. This nevertheless is what, for all our boastedintelligence, we generally do. The more we can understand an animal'sways, the more intelligent we call it, and the less we can understandthese, the more stupid do we declare it to be. As for plants--whosepunctuality and attention to all the details and routine of theirsomewhat restricted lines of business is as obvious as it is beyond allpraise--we understand the working of their minds so little that by commonconsent we declare them to have no intelligence at all. 

Before concluding I should wish to deal a little more fully withProfessor Max Muller's contention that there can be no reason withoutlanguage, and no language without reason. Surely when two practisedpugilists are fighting, parrying each other's blows, and watching keenlyfor an unguarded point, they are thinking and reasoning very subtly thewhole time, without doing so in words. The machination of theirthoughts, as well as its expression, is actual--I mean, effectuated andexpressed by action and deed, not words. They are unaware of any logicalsequence of thought that they could follow in words as passing throughtheir minds at all. They may perhaps think consciously in words now andagain, but such thought will be intermittent, and the main part of thefighting will be done without any internal concomitance of articulatedphrases. Yet we cannot doubt that their action, however much we maydisapprove of it, is guided by intelligence and reason; nor should wedoubt that a reasoning process of the same character goes on in the mindsof two dogs or fighting-cocks when they are striving to master theiropponents. 

Do we think in words, again, when we wind up our watches, put on ourclothes, or eat our breakfasts? If we do, it is generally aboutsomething else. We do these things almost as much without the help ofwords as we wink or yawn, or perform any of those other actions that wecall reflex, as it would almost seem because they are done withoutreflection. They are not, however, the less reasonable because wordless. 

Even when we think we are thinking in words, we do so only in halfmeasure. A running accompaniment of words no doubt frequently attendsour thoughts; but, unless we are writing or speaking, this accompanimentis of the vaguest and most fitful kind, as we often find out when we tryto write down or say what we are thinking about, though we have a fairlydefinite notion of it, or fancy that we have one, all the time. Thethought is not steadily and coherently governed by and moulded in words, nor does it steadily govern them. Words and thought interact upon andhelp one another, as any other mechanical appliances interact on and helpthe invention that first hit upon them; but reason or thought, for themost part, flies along over the heads of words, working its ownmysterious way in paths that are beyond our ken, though whether some ofour departmental personalities are as unconscious of what is passing, asthat central government is which we alone dub with the name of "we" or"us, " is a point on which I will not now touch. 

I cannot think, then, that Professor Max Muller's contention that thoughtand language are identical--and he has repeatedly affirmed this--willever be generally accepted. Thought is no more identical with languagethan feeling is identical with the nervous system. True, we can no morefeel without a nervous system than we can discern certain minuteorganisms without a microscope. Destroy the nervous system, and wedestroy feeling. Destroy the microscope, and we can no longer see theanimalcules; but our sight of the animalcules is not the microscope, though it is effectuated by means of the microscope, and our feeling isnot the nervous system, though the nervous system is the instrument thatenables us to feel. 

The nervous system is a device which living beings have graduallyperfected--I believe I may say quite truly--through the will and powerwhich they have derived from a fountain-head, the existence of which wecan infer, but which we can never apprehend. By the help of this device, and in proportion as they have perfected it, living beings feel ever withgreater definiteness, and hence formulate their feelings in thought withmore and more precision. The higher evolution of thought has reacted onthe nervous system, and the consequent higher evolution of the nervoussystem has again reacted upon thought. These things are as power anddesire, or supply and demand, each one of which is continuallyoutstripping, and being in turn outstripped by the other; but, in spiteof their close connection and interaction, power is not desire, nordemand supply. Language is a device evolved sometimes by leaps andbounds, and sometimes exceedingly slowly, whereby we help ourselves aliketo greater ease, precision, and complexity of thought, and also to moreconvenient interchange of thought among ourselves. Thought found rudeexpression, which gradually among other forms assumed that of words. These reacted upon thought, and thought again on them, but thought is nomore identical with words than words are with the separate letters ofwhich they are composed. 

To sum up, then, and to conclude. I would ask you to see the connectionbetween words and ideas, as in the first instance arbitrary. No doubt insome cases an imitation of the cry of some bird or wild beast wouldsuggest the name that should be attached to it; occasionally the sound ofan operation such as grinding may have influenced the choice of theletters g, r, as the root of many words that denote a grinding, grating, grasping, crushing, action; but I understand that the number of words dueto direct imitation is comparatively few in number, and that they havebeen mainly coined as the result of connections so far-fetched andfanciful as to amount practically to no connection at all. Once chosen, however, they were adhered to for a considerable time among the dwellersin any given place, so as to become acknowledged as the vulgar tongue, and raise readily in the mind of the inhabitants of that place the ideaswith which they had been artificially associated. 

As regards our being able to think and reason without words, the Duke ofArgyll has put the matter as soundly as I have yet seen it stated. "Itseems to me, " he wrote, "quite certain that we can and do constantlythink of things without thinking of any sound or word as designatingthem. Language seems to me to be necessary for the progress of thought, but not at all for the mere act of thinking. It is a product of thought, an expression of it, a vehicle for the communication of it, and anembodiment which is essential to its growth and continuity; but it seemsto me altogether erroneous to regard it as an inseparable part ofcogitation. "

The following passages, again, are quoted from Sir William Hamilton inProfessor Max Muller's own book, with so much approval as to lead one tosuppose that the differences between himself and his opponents are inreality less than he believes them to be:--

"Language, " says Sir W. Hamilton, "is the attribution of signs to ourcognitions of things. But as a cognition must have already been therebefore it could receive a sign, consequently that knowledge which isdenoted by the formation and application of a word must have preceded thesymbol that denotes it. A sign, however, is necessary to give stabilityto our intellectual progress--to establish each step in our advance as anew starting-point for our advance to another beyond. A country may beoverrun by an armed host, but it is only conquered by the establishmentof fortresses. Words are the fortresses of thought. They enable us torealise our dominion over what we have already overrun in thought; tomake every intellectual conquest the base of operations for others stillbeyond. "

"This, " says Professor Max Muller, "is a most happy illustration, " and heproceeds to quote the following, also from Sir William Hamilton, which hedeclares to be even happier still. 

"You have all heard, " says Sir William Hamilton, "of the process oftunnelling through a sandbank. In this operation it is impossible tosucceed unless every foot, nay, almost every inch of our progress besecured by an arch of masonry before we attempt the excavation ofanother. Now language is to the mind precisely what the arch is to thetunnel. The power of thinking and the power of excavation are notdependent on the words in the one case or on the mason-work in the other;but without these subsidiaries neither could be carried on beyond itsrudimentary commencement. Though, therefore, we allow that everymovement forward in language must be determined by an antecedent movementforward in thought, still, unless thought be accompanied at each point ofits evolutions by a corresponding evolution of language, its furtherdevelopment is arrested. "

Man has evolved an articulate language, whereas the lower animals seem tobe without one. Man, therefore, has far outstripped them in reasoningfaculty as well as in power of expression. This, however, does not barthe communications which the lower animals make to one another frompossessing all the essential characteristics of language, and as a matterof fact, wherever we can follow them we find such communicationseffectuated by the aid of arbitrary symbols covenanted upon by the livingbeings that wish to communicate, and persistently associated with certaincorresponding feelings, states of mind, or material objects. Humanlanguage is nothing more than this in principle, however much further theprinciple has been carried in our own case than in that of the loweranimals. 

This being admitted, we should infer that the thought or reason on whichthe language of men and animals is alike founded differs as between menand brutes in degree but not in kind. More than this cannot be claimedon behalf of the lower animals, even by their most enthusiastic admirer. 

THE DEADLOCK IN DARWINISM {20}--PART I

It will be readily admitted that of all living writers Mr. Alfred RusselWallace is the one the peculiar turn of whose mind best fits him to writeon the subject of natural selection, or the accumulation of fortunate butaccidental variations through descent and the struggle for existence. Hismind in all its more essential characteristics closely resembles that ofthe late Mr. Charles Darwin himself, and it is no doubt due to this factthat he and Mr. Darwin elaborated their famous theory at the same time, and independently of one another. I shall have occasion in the course ofthe following article to show how misled and misleading both thesedistinguished men have been, in spite of their unquestionable familiaritywith the whole range of animal and vegetable phenomena. I believe itwill be more respectful to both of them to do this in the most out-spokenway. I believe their work to have been as mischievous as it has beenvaluable, and as valuable as it has been mischievous; and higher, whetherpraise or blame, I know not how to give. Nevertheless I would in theoutset, and with the utmost sincerity, admit concerning Messrs. Wallaceand Darwin that neither can be held as the more profound andconscientious thinker; neither can be put forward as the more ready toacknowledge obligation to the great writers on evolution who had precededhim, or to place his own developments in closer and more conspicuoushistorical connection with earlier thought upon the subject; neither isthe more ready to welcome criticism and to state his opponent's case inthe most pointed and telling way in which it can be put; neither is themore quick to encourage new truth; neither is the more genial, generousadversary, or has the profounder horror of anything even approachingliterary or scientific want of candour; both display the same inimitablepower of putting their opinions forward in the way that shall best ensuretheir acceptance; both are equally unrivalled in the tact that tells themwhen silence will be golden, and when on the other hand a whole volume offacts may be advantageously brought forward. Less than the foregoingtribute both to Messrs. Darwin and Wallace I will not, and more I cannotpay. 

Let us now turn to the most authoritative exponent of latter-dayevolution--I mean to Mr. Wallace, whose work, entitled "Darwinism, "though it should have been entitled "Wallaceism, " is still so farDarwinistic that it develops the teaching of Mr. Darwin in the directiongiven to it by Mr. Darwin himself--so far, indeed, as this can beascertained at all--and not in that of Lamarck. Mr. Wallace tells us, onthe first page of his preface, that he has no intention of dealing evenin outline with the vast subject of evolution in general, and has onlytried to give such an account of the theory of natural selection as mayfacilitate a clear conception of Darwin's work. How far he has succeededis a point on which opinion will probably be divided. Those who find Mr. Darwin's works clear will also find no difficulty in understanding Mr. Wallace; those, on the other hand, who find Mr. Darwin puzzling arelittle likely to be less puzzled by Mr. Wallace. He continues:--

"The objections now made to Darwin's theory apply solely to theparticular means by which the change of species has been brought about, not to the fact of that change. "

But "Darwin's theory"--as Mr. Wallace has elsewhere proved that heunderstands--has no reference "to the fact of that change"--that is tosay, to the fact that species have been modified in course of descentfrom other species. This is no more Mr. Darwin's theory than it is thereader's or my own. Darwin's theory is concerned only with "theparticular means by which the change of species has been brought about";his contention being that this is mainly due to the natural survival ofthose individuals that have happened by some accident to be born mostfavourably adapted to their surroundings, or, in other words, throughaccumulation in the common course of nature of the more lucky variationsthat chance occasionally purveys. Mr. Wallace's words, then, in realityamount to this, that the objections now made to Darwin's theory applysolely to Darwin's theory, which is all very well as far as it goes, butmight have been more easily apprehended if he had simply said, "There areseveral objections now made to Mr. Darwin's theory. "

It must be remembered that the passage quoted above occurs on the firstpage of a preface dated March 1889, when the writer had completed histask, and was most fully conversant with his subject. Nevertheless, itseems indisputable either that he is still confusing evolution with Mr. Darwin's theory, or that he does not know when his sentences have pointand when they have none. 

I should perhaps explain to some readers that Mr. Darwin did not modifythe main theory put forward, first by Buffon, to whom it indisputablybelongs, and adopted from him by Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and many otherwriters in the latter half of the last century and the earlier years ofthe present. The early evolutionists maintained that all existing formsof animal and vegetable life, including man, were derived in course ofdescent with modification from forms resembling the lowest now known. 

Mr. Darwin went as far as this, and farther no one can go. The point atissue between him and his predecessors involves neither the main fact ofevolution, nor yet the geometrical ratio of increase, and the strugglefor existence consequent thereon. Messrs. Darwin and Wallace have eachthrown invaluable light upon these last two points, but Buffon, as earlyas 1756, had made them the keystone of his system. "The movement ofnature, " he then wrote, "turns on two immovable pivots: one, theillimitable fecundity which she has given to all species: the other, theinnumerable difficulties which reduce the results of that fecundity. "Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck followed in the same sense. They thus admitthe survival of the fittest as fully as Mr. Darwin himself, though theydo not make use of this particular expression. The dispute turns notupon natural selection, which is common to all writers on evolution, butupon the nature and causes of the variations that are supposed to beselected from and thus accumulated. Are these mainly attributable to theinherited effects of use and disuse, supplemented by occasional sportsand happy accidents? Or are they mainly due to sports and happyaccidents, supplemented by occasional inherited effects of use anddisuse?

The Lamarckian system has all along been maintained by Mr. HerbertSpencer, who, in his "Principles of Biology, " published in 1865, showedhow impossible it was that accidental variations should accumulate atall. I am not sure how far Mr. Spencer would consent to being called aLamarckian pure and simple, nor yet how far it is strictly accurate tocall him one; nevertheless, I can see no important difference in the mainpositions taken by him and by Lamarck. 

The question at issue between the Lamarckians, supported by Mr. Spencerand a growing band of those who have risen in rebellion against theCharles-Darwinian system on the one hand, and Messrs. Darwin and Wallacewith the greater number of our more prominent biologists on the other, involves the very existence of evolution as a workable theory. For it isplain that what Nature can be supposed able to do by way of choice mustdepend on the supply of the variations from which she is supposed tochoose. She cannot take what is not offered to her; and so again shecannot be supposed able to accumulate unless what is gained in onedirection in one generation, or series of generations, is little likelyto be lost in those that presently succeed. Now variations ascribedmainly to use and disuse can be supposed capable of being accumulated, for use and disuse are fairly constant for long periods among theindividuals of the same species, and often over large areas; moreover, conditions of existence involving changes of habit, and thus oforganisation, come for the most part gradually; so that time is givenduring which the organism can endeavour to adapt itself in the requisiterespects, instead of being shocked out of existence by too sudden change. Variations, on the other hand, that are ascribed to mere chance cannot besupposed as likely to be accumulated, for chance is notoriouslyinconstant, and would not purvey the variations in sufficiently unbrokensuccession, or in a sufficient number of individuals, modified similarlyin all the necessary correlations at the same time and place to admit oftheir being accumulated. It is vital therefore to the theory ofevolution, as was early pointed out by the late Professor Fleeming Jenkinand by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that variations should be supposed to have adefinite and persistent principle underlying them, which shall tend toengender similar and simultaneous modification, however small, in thevast majority of individuals composing any species. The existence ofsuch a principle and its permanence is the only thing that can besupposed capable of acting as rudder and compass to the accumulation ofvariations, and of making it hold steadily on one course for eachspecies, till eventually many havens, far remote from one another, aresafely reached. 

It is obvious that the having fatally impaired the theory of hispredecessors could not warrant Mr. Darwin in claiming, as he mostfatuously did, the theory of evolution. That he is still generallybelieved to have been the originator of this theory is due to the factthat he claimed it, and that a powerful literary backing at once cameforward to support him. It seems at first sight improbable that thosewho too zealously urged his claims were unaware that so much had beenwritten on the subject, but when we find even Mr. Wallace himself asprofoundly ignorant on this subject as he still either is, or affects tobe, there is no limit assignable to the ignorance or affected ignoranceof the kind of biologists who would write reviews in leading journalsthirty years ago. Mr. Wallace writes:--

"A few great naturalists, struck by the very slight difference betweenmany of these species, and the numerous links that exist between the mostdifferent forms of animals and plants, and also observing that a greatmany species do vary considerably in their forms, colours and habits, conceived the idea that they might be all produced one from the other. The most eminent of these writers was a great French naturalist, Lamarck, who published an elaborate work, the _Philosophie Zoologique_, in whichhe endeavoured to prove that all animals whatever are descended fromother species of animals. He attributed the change of species chiefly tothe effect of changes in the conditions of life--such as climate, food, &c. ; and especially to the desires and efforts of the animals themselvesto improve their condition, leading to a modification of form or size incertain parts, owing to the well-known physiological law that all organsare strengthened by constant use, while they are weakened or evencompletely lost by disuse . . . 

"The only other important work dealing with the question was thecelebrated 'Vestiges of Creation, ' published anonymously, but nowacknowledged to have been written by the late Robert Chambers. "

None are so blind as those who will not see, and it would be waste oftime to argue with the invincible ignorance of one who thinks Lamarck andBuffon conceived that all species were produced from one another, moreespecially as I have already dealt at some length with the earlyevolutionists in my work, "Evolution, Old and New, " first published tenyears ago, and not, so far as I am aware, detected in serious error oromission. If, however, Mr. Wallace still thinks it safe to presume sofar on the ignorance of his readers as to say that the only two importantworks on evolution before Mr. Darwin's were Lamarck's _PhilosophieZoologique_ and the "Vestiges of Creation, " how fathomable is theignorance of the average reviewer likely to have been thirty years ago, when the "Origin of Species" was first published? Mr. Darwin claimedevolution as his own theory. Of course, he would not claim it if he hadno right to it. Then by all means give him the credit of it. This wasthe most natural view to take, and it was generally taken. It was not, moreover, surprising that people failed to appreciate all the niceties ofMr. Darwin's "distinctive feature" which, whether distinctive or no, wasassuredly not distinct, and was never frankly contrasted with the olderview, as it would have been by one who wished it to be understood andjudge upon its merits. It was in consequence of this omission thatpeople failed to note how fast and loose Mr. Darwin played with hisdistinctive feature, and how readily he dropped it on occasion. 

It may be said that the question of what was thought by the predecessorsof Mr. Darwin is, after all, personal, and of no interest to the generalpublic, comparable to that of the main issue--whether we are to acceptevolution or not. Granted that Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck borethe burden and heat of the day before Mr. Charles Darwin was born, theydid not bring people round to their opinion, whereas Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace did, and the public cannot be expected to look beyond this broadand indisputable fact. 

The answer to this is, that the theory which Messrs. Darwin and Wallacehave persuaded the public to accept is demonstrably false, and that theopponents of evolution are certain in the end to triumph over it. Paley, in his "Natural Theology, " long since brought forward far too muchevidence of design in animal organisation to allow of our setting downits marvels to the accumulations of fortunate accident, undirected bywill, effort and intelligence. Those who examine the main facts ofanimal and vegetable organisation without bias will, no doubt, ere longconclude that all animals and vegetables are derived ultimately fromunicellular organisms, but they will not less readily perceive that theevolution of species without the concomitance and direction of mind andeffort is as inconceivable as is the independent creation of everyindividual species. The two facts, evolution and design, are equallypatent to plain people. There is no escaping from either. According toMessrs. Darwin and Wallace, we may have evolution, but are on no accountto have it as mainly due to intelligent effort, guided by ever higher andhigher range of sensations, perceptions, and ideas. We are to set itdown to the shuffling of cards, or the throwing of dice without the play, and this will never stand. 

According to the older men, cards did indeed count for much, but playcounted for more. They denied the teleology of the time--that is to say, the teleology that saw all adaptation to surroundings as part of a plandevised long ages since by a quasi-anthropomorphic being who schemedeverything out much as a man would do, but on an infinitely vaster scale. This conception they found repugnant alike to intelligence andconscience, but, though they do not seem to have perceived it, they leftthe door open for a design more true and more demonstrable than thatwhich they excluded. By making their variations mainly due to effort andintelligence, they made organic development run on all-fours with humanprogress, and with inventions which we have watched growing up from smallbeginnings. They made the development of man from the amoeba part andparcel of the story that may be read, though on an infinitely smallerscale, in the development of our most powerful marine engines from thecommon kettle, or of our finest microscopes from the dew-drop. 

The development of the steam-engine and the microscope is due tointelligence and design, which did indeed utilise chance suggestions, butwhich improved on these, and directed each step of their accumulation, though never foreseeing more than a step or two ahead, and often not somuch as this. The fact, as I have elsewhere urged, that the man who madethe first kettle did not foresee the engines of the _Great Eastern_, orthat he who first noted the magnifying power of the dew-drop had noconception of our present microscopes--the very limited amount, in fact, of design and intelligence that was called into play at any onepoint--this does not make us deny that the steam-engine and microscopeowe their development to design. If each step of the road was designed, the whole journey was designed, though the particular end was notdesigned when the journey was begun. And so is it, according to theolder view of evolution, with the development of those living organs, ormachines, that are born with us, as part of the perambulating carpenter'schest we call our bodies. The older view gives us our design, and givesus our evolution too. If it refuses to see a quasi-anthropomorphic Godmodelling each species from without as a potter models clay, it gives usGod as vivifying and indwelling in all His creatures--He in them, andthey in Him. If it refuses to see God outside the universe, it equallyrefuses to see any part of the universe as outside God. If it makes theuniverse the body of God, it also makes God the soul of the universe. Thequestion at issue, then, between the Darwinism of Erasmus Darwin and theneo-Darwinism of his grandson, is not a personal one, nor anything like apersonal one. It not only involves the existence of evolution, but itaffects the view we take of life and things in an endless variety of mostinteresting and important ways. It is imperative, therefore, on thosewho take any interest in these matters, to place side by side in theclearest contrast the views of those who refer the evolution of speciesmainly to accumulation of variations that have no other inception thanchance, and of that older school which makes design perceive and developstill further the goods that chance provides. 

But over and above this, which would be in itself sufficient, thehistorical mode of studying any question is the only one which willenable us to comprehend it effectually. The personal element cannot beeliminated from the consideration of works written by living persons forliving persons. We want to know who is who--whom we can depend upon tohave no other end than the making things clear to himself and hisreaders, and whom we should mistrust as having an ulterior aim on whichhe is more intent than on the furthering of our better understanding. Wewant to know who is doing his best to help us, and who is only trying tomake us help him, or to bolster up the system in which his interests arevested. There is nothing that will throw more light upon these pointsthan the way in which a man behaves towards those who have worked in thesame field with himself, and, again, than his style. A man's style, asBuffon long since said, is the man himself. By style, I do not, ofcourse, mean grammar or rhetoric, but that style of which Buffon againsaid that it is like happiness, and _vient de la douceur de l'ame_. Whenwe find a man concealing worse than nullity of meaning under sentencesthat sound plausibly enough, we should distrust him much as we should afellow-traveller whom we caught trying to steal our watch. We oftencannot judge of the truth or falsehood of facts for ourselves, but wemost of us know enough of human nature to be able to tell a good witnessfrom a bad one. 

However this may be, and whatever we may think of judging systems by thedirectness or indirectness of those who advance them, biologists, havingcommitted themselves too rashly, would have been more than human if theyhad not shown some pique towards those who dared to say, first, that thetheory of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace was unworkable; and secondly, thateven though it were workable it would not justify either of them inclaiming evolution. When biologists show pique at all they generallyshow a good deal of pique, but pique or no pique, they shunned Mr. Spencer's objection above referred to with a persistency more unanimousand obstinate than I ever remember to have seen displayed even byprofessional truth-seekers. I find no rejoinder to it from Mr. Darwinhimself, between 1865 when it was first put forward, and 1882 when Mr. Darwin died. It has been similarly "ostrichised" by all the leadingapologists of Darwinism, so far at least as I have been able to observe, and I have followed the matter closely for many years. Mr. Spencer hasrepeated and amplified it in his recent work, "The Factors of OrganicEvolution, " but it still remains without so much as an attempt at seriousanswer, for the perfunctory and illusory remarks of Mr. Wallace at theend of his "Darwinism" cannot be counted as such. The best proof of itsirresistible weight is that Mr. Darwin, though maintaining silence inrespect to it, retreated from his original position in the direction thatwould most obviate Mr. Spencer's objection. 

Yet this objection has been repeatedly urged by the more prominent anti-Charles-Darwinian authorities, and there is no sign that the Britishpublic is becoming less rigorous in requiring people either to reply toobjections repeatedly urged by men of even moderate weight, or to letjudgment go by default. As regards Mr. Darwin's claim to the theory ofevolution generally, Darwinians are beginning now to perceive that thiscannot be admitted, and either say with some hardihood that Mr. Darwinnever claimed it, or after a few saving clauses to the effect that thistheory refers only to the particular means by which evolution has beenbrought about, imply forthwith thereafter none the less that evolution isMr. Darwin's theory. Mr. Wallace has done this repeatedly in his recent"Darwinism. " Indeed, I should be by no means sure that on the first pageof his preface, in the passage about "Darwin's theory, " which I havealready somewhat severely criticised, he was not intending evolution by"Darwin's theory, " if in his preceding paragraph he had not so clearlyshown that he knew evolution to be a theory of greatly older date thanMr. Darwin's. 

The history of science--well exemplified by that of the developmenttheory--is the history of eminent men who have fought against light andhave been worsted. The tenacity with which Darwinians stick to theiraccumulation of fortuitous variations is on a par with the like tenacityshown by the illustrious Cuvier, who did his best to crush evolutionaltogether. It always has been thus, and always will be; nor is itdesirable in the interests of Truth herself that it should be otherwise. Truth is like money--lightly come, lightly go; and if she cannot hold herown against even gross misrepresentation, she is herself not worthholding. Misrepresentation in the long run makes Truth as much as itmars her; hence our law courts do not think it desirable that pleadersshould speak their _bona fide_ opinions, much less that they shouldprofess to do so. Rather let each side hoodwink judge and jury as bestit can, and let truth flash out from collision of defence and accusation. When either side will not collide, it is an axiom of controversy that itdesires to prevent the truth from being elicited. 

Let us now note the courses forced upon biologists by the difficulties ofMr. Darwin's distinctive feature. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace, as is wellknown, brought the feature forward simultaneously and independently ofone another, but Mr. Wallace always believed in it more firmly than Mr. Darwin did. Mr. Darwin as a young man did not believe in it. He wrotebefore 1889, "Nature, by making habit omnipotent and its effectshereditary, has fitted the Fuegian for the climate and productions of hiscountry, " {21} a sentence than which nothing can coincide more fully withthe older view that use and disuse were the main purveyors of variations, or conflict more fatally with his own subsequent distinctive feature. Moreover, as I showed in my last work on evolution, {22} in theperoration to his "Origin of Species, " he discarded his accidentalvariations altogether, and fell back on the older theory, so that thebody of the "Origin of Species" supports one theory, and the perorationanother that differs from it _toto coelo_. Finally, in his latereditions, he retreated indefinitely from his original position, edgingalways more and more continually towards the theory of his grandfatherand Lamarck. These facts convince me that he was at no time a thorough-going Darwinian, but was throughout an unconscious Lamarckian, thoughever anxious to conceal the fact alike from himself and from his readers. 

Not so with Mr. Wallace, who was both more outspoken in the firstinstance, and who has persevered along the path of Wallaceism just as Mr. Darwin with greater sagacity was ever on the retreat from Darwinism. Mr. Wallace's profounder faith led him in the outset to place his theory infuller daylight than Mr. Darwin was inclined to do. Mr. Darwin justwaved Lamarck aside, and said as little about him as he could, while inhis earlier editions Erasmus Darwin and Buffon were not so much as named. Mr. Wallace, on the contrary, at once raised the Lamarckian spectre, anddeclared it exorcised. He said the Lamarckian hypothesis was "quiteunnecessary. " The giraffe did not "acquire its long neck by desiring toreach the foliage of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching itsneck for this purpose, but because any varieties which occurred among itsantitypes with a longer neck than usual at once secured a fresh range ofpasture over the same ground as their shorter-necked companions, and onthe first scarcity of food were thus enabled to outlive them. " {23}

"Which occurred" is evidently "which happened to occur" by some chance oraccident unconnected with use and disuse. The word "accident" is neverused, but Mr. Wallace must be credited with this instance of a desire togive his readers a chance of perceiving that according to his distinctivefeature evolution is an affair of luck, rather than of cunning. Whetherhis readers actually did understand this as clearly as Mr. Wallacedoubtless desired that they should, and whether greater development atthis point would not have helped them to fuller apprehension, we need notnow inquire. What was gained in distinctness might have been lost indistinctiveness, and after all he did technically put us upon our guard. 

Nevertheless he too at a pinch takes refuge in Lamarckism. In relationto the manner in which the eyes of soles, turbots, and other flat-fishtravel round the head so as to become in the end unsymmetrically placed, he says:--

"The eyes of these fish are curiously distorted in order that both eyesmay be upon the upper side, where alone they would be of any use. . . . Now if we suppose this process, which in the young is completed in a fewdays or weeks, to have been spread over thousands of generations duringthe development of these fish, those usually surviving _whose eyesretained more and more of the position into which the young fish tried totwist them_ [italics mine], the change becomes intelligible. " {24} Whenit was said by Professor Ray Lankester--who knows as well as most peoplewhat Lamarck taught--that this was "flat Lamarckism, " Mr. Wallacerejoined that it was the survival of the modified individuals that did itall, not the efforts of the young fish to twist their eyes, and thetransmission to descendants of the effects of those efforts. But this, as I said in my book, "Evolution, Old and New, " {25} is like saying thathorses are swift runners, not by reason of the causes, whatever theywere, that occasioned the direct line of their progenitors to varytowards ever greater and greater swiftness, but because their more slow-going uncles and aunts go away. Plain people will prefer to say that themain cause of any accumulation of favourable modifications consistsrather in that which brings about the initial variations, and in the factthat these can be inherited at all, than in the fact that the unmodifiedindividuals were not successful. People do not become rich because thepoor in large numbers go away, but because they have been lucky, orprovident, or more commonly both. If they would keep their wealth whenthey have made it they must exclude luck thenceforth to the utmost oftheir power, and their children must follow their example, or they willsoon lose their money. The fact that the weaker go to the wall does notbring about the greater strength of the stronger; it is the consequenceof this last and not the cause--unless, indeed, it be contended that aknowledge that the weak go to the wall stimulates the strong to exertionswhich they would not otherwise so make, and that these exertions produceinheritable modifications. Even in this case, however, it would be theexertions, or use and disuse, that would be the main agents in themodification. But it is not often that Mr. Wallace thus backslides. Hispresent position is that acquired (as distinguished from congenital)modifications are not inherited at all. He does not indeed put his faithprominently forward and pin himself to it as plainly as could be wished, but under the heading, "The Non-Heredity of Acquired Characters, " hewrites as follows on p. 440 of his recent work in reference to ProfessorWeismann's Theory of Heredity:--

"Certain observations on the embryology of the lower animals are held toafford direct proof of this theory of heredity, but they are tootechnical to be made clear to ordinary readers. A logical result of thetheory is the impossibility of the transmission of acquired characters, since the molecular structure of the germ-plasm is already determinedwithin the embryo; and Weismann holds that there are no facts whichreally prove that acquired characters can be inherited, although theirinheritance has, by most writers, been considered so probable as hardlyto stand in need of direct proof. 

"We have already seen in the earlier part of this chapter that manyinstances of change, imputed to the inheritance of acquired variations, are really cases of selection. "

And the rest of the remarks tend to convey the impression that Mr. Wallace adopts Professor Weismann's view, but, curiously enough, though Ihave gone through Mr. Wallace's book with a special view to thisparticular point, I have not been able to find him definitely committinghimself either to the assertion that acquired modifications never areinherited, or that they sometimes are so. It is abundantly laid downthat Mr. Darwin laid too much stress on use and disuse, and a residuaryimpression is left that Mr. Wallace is endorsing Professor Weismann'sview, but I have found it impossible to collect anything that enables meto define his position confidently in this respect. 

This is natural enough, for Mr. Wallace has entitled his book"Darwinism, " and a work denying that use and disuse produced any effectcould not conceivably be called Darwinism. Mr. Herbert Spencer hasrecently collected many passages from "The Origin of Species" and from"Animals and Plants under Domestication, " {26} which show how largely, after all, use and disuse entered into Mr. Darwin's system, and we knowthat in his later years he attached still more importance to them. Itwas out of the question, therefore, that Mr. Wallace should categoricallydeny that their effects were inheritable. On the other hand, thetemptation to adopt Professor Weismann's view must have been overwhelmingto one who had been already inclined to minimise the effects of use anddisuse. On the whole, one does not see what Mr. Wallace could do, otherthan what he has done--unless, of course, he changed his title, or hadbeen no longer Mr. Wallace. 

Besides, thanks to the works of Mr. Spencer, Professor Mivart, ProfessorSemper, and very many others, there has for some time been a growingperception that the Darwinism of Charles Darwin was doomed. Use anddisuse must either do even more than is officially recognised in Mr. Darwin's later concessions, or they must do a great deal less. If theycan do as much as Mr. Darwin himself said they did, why should they notdo more? Why stop where Mr. Darwin did? And again, where in the name ofall that is reasonable did he really stop? He drew no line, and on whatprinciple can we say that so much is possible as effect of use anddisuse, but so much more impossible? If, as Mr. Darwin contended, disusecan so far reduce an organ as to render it rudimentary, and in many casesget rid of it altogether, why cannot use create as much as disuse candestroy, provided it has anything, no matter how low in structure, tobegin with? Let us know where we stand. If it is admitted that use anddisuse can do a good deal, what does a good deal mean? And what is theproportion between the shares attributable to use and disuse and tonatural selection respectively? If we cannot be told with absoluteprecision, let us at any rate have something more definite than thestatement that natural selection is "the most important means ofmodification. "

Mr. Darwin gave us no help in this respect; and worse than this, hecontradicted himself so flatly as to show that he had very littledefinite idea upon the subject at all. Thus in respect to thewinglessness of the Madeira beetles he wrote:--

"In some cases we might easily put down to disuse modifications ofstructure, which are wholly or mainly due to natural selection. Mr. Wollaston has discovered the remarkable fact that 200 beetles, out of the550 species (but more are now known) inhabiting Madeira, are so fardeficient in wings that they cannot fly; and that of the 29 endemicgenera no less than 23 have all their species in this condition! Severalfacts, --namely, that beetles in many parts of the world are frequentlyblown out to sea and perish; that the beetles in Madeira, as observed byMr. Wollaston, lie much concealed until the wind lulls and the sunshines; that the proportion of wingless beetles is larger on the exposedDesertas than in Madeira itself; and especially the extraordinary fact, so strongly insisted on by Mr. Wollaston, that certain large groups ofbeetles, elsewhere excessively numerous, which absolutely require the useof their wings are here almost entirely absent;--these severalconsiderations make me believe that the wingless condition of so manyMadeira beetles is mainly due to the action of natural selection, _combined probably with disuse_ [italics mine]. For during manysuccessive generations each individual beetle which flew least, eitherfrom its wings having been ever so little less perfectly developed orfrom indolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving, from notbeing blown out to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles which mostreadily took to flight would oftenest have been blown to sea, and thusdestroyed. " {27}

We should like to know, first, somewhere about how much disuse was ableto do after all, and moreover why, if it can do anything at all, itshould not be able to do all. Mr. Darwin says: "Any change in structureand function which can be effected by small stages is within the power ofnatural selection. " "And why not, " we ask, "within the power of use anddisuse?" Moreover, on a later page we find Mr. Darwin saying:--

"_It appears probable that disuse has been the main agent in renderingorgans rudimentary_ [italics mine]. It would at first lead by slow stepsto the more and more complete reduction of a part, until at last it hasbecome rudimentary--as in the case of the eyes of animals inhabiting darkcaverns, and of the wings of birds inhabiting oceanic islands, which haveseldom been forced by beasts of prey to take flight, and have ultimatelylost the power of flying. Again, an organ, useful under certainconditions, might become injurious under others, _as with the wings ofbeetles living on small and exposed islands_; and in this case naturalselection will have aided in reducing the organ, until it was renderedharmless and rudimentary [italics mine]. " {28}

So that just as an undefined amount of use and disuse was introduced onthe earlier page to supplement the effects of natural selection inrespect of the wings of beetles on small and exposed islands, we havehere an undefined amount of natural selection introduced to supplementthe effects of use and disuse in respect of the identical phenomena. Inthe one passage we find that natural selection has been the main agent inreducing the wings, though use and disuse have had an appreciable sharein the result; in the other, it is use and disuse that have been the mainagents, though an appreciable share in the result must be ascribed tonatural selection. 

Besides, who has seen the uncles and aunts going away with the uniformitythat is necessary for Mr. Darwin's contention? We know that birds andinsects do often get blown out to sea and perish, but in order toestablish Mr. Darwin's position we want the evidence of those who watchedthe reduction of the wings during the many generations in the course ofwhich it was being effected, and who can testify that all, or theoverwhelming majority, of the beetles born with fairly well-developedwings got blown out to sea, while those alone survived whose wings werecongenitally degenerate. Who saw them go, or can point to analogouscases so conclusive as to compel assent from any equitable thinker?

Darwinians of the stamp of Mr. Thiselton Dyer, Professor Ray Lankester, or Mr. Romanes, insist on their pound of flesh in the matter ofirrefragable demonstration. They complain of us for not bringing forwardsome one who has been able to detect the movement of the hour-hand of awatch during a second of time, and when we fail to do so, declaretriumphantly that we have no evidence that there is any connectionbetween the beating of a second and the movement of the hour-hand. Whenwe say that rain comes from the condensation of moisture in theatmosphere, they demand of us a rain-drop from moisture not yetcondensed. If they stickle for proof and cavil on the ninth part of ahair, as they do when we bring forward what we deem excellent instancesof the transmission of an acquired characteristic, why may not we, too, demand at any rate some evidence that the unmodified beetles actually didalways, or nearly always, get blown out to sea, during the reductionabove referred to, and that it is to this fact, and not to the masterlyinactivity of their fathers and mothers, that the Madeira beetles owetheir winglessness? If we began stickling for proof in this way, ouropponents would not be long in letting us know that absolute proof isunattainable on any subject, that reasonable presumption is our highestcertainty, and that crying out for too much evidence is as bad asaccepting too little. Truth is like a photographic sensitised plate, which is equally ruined by over and by under exposure, and the justexposure for which can never be absolutely determined. 

Surely if disuse can be credited with the vast powers involved in Mr. Darwin's statement that it has probably "been the main agent in renderingorgans rudimentary, " no limits are assignable to the accumulated effectsof habit, provided the effects of habit, or use and disuse, are supposed, as Mr. Darwin supposed them, to be inheritable at all. Darwinians haveat length woke up to the dilemma in which they are placed by the mannerin which Mr. Darwin tried to sit on the two stools of use and disuse, andnatural selection of accidental variations, at the same time. The knellof Charles-Darwinism is rung in Mr. Wallace's present book, and in thegeneral perception on the part of biologists that we must either assignto use and disuse such a predominant share in modification as to make itthe feature most proper to be insisted on, or deny that themodifications, whether of mind or body, acquired during a singlelifetime, are ever transmitted at all. If they can be inherited at all, they can be accumulated. If they can be accumulated at all, they can beso, for anything that appears to the contrary, to the extent of thespecific and generic differences with which we are surrounded. The onlything to do is to pluck them out root and branch: they are as a cancerwhich, if the smallest fibre be left unexcised, will grow again, and killany system on to which it is allowed to fasten. Mr. Wallace, therefore, may well be excused if he casts longing eyes towards Weismannism. 

And what was Mr. Darwin's system? Who can make head or tail of theinextricable muddle in which he left it? The "Origin of Species" in itslatest shape is the reduction of hedging to an absurdity. How did Mr. Darwin himself leave it in the last chapter of the last edition of the"Origin of Species"? He wrote:--

"I have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which havethoroughly convinced me that species have been modified during a longcourse of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the naturalselection of numerous, successive, slight, favourable variations; aidedin an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse ofparts, and in an unimportant manner--that is, in relation to adaptivestructures whether past or present--by the direct action of externalconditions, and by variations which seem to us in our ignorance to arisespontaneously. It appears that I formerly underrated the frequency andvalue of these latter forms of variation, as leading to permanentmodifications of structure independently of natural selection. "

The "numerous, successive, slight, favourable variations" above referredto are intended to be fortuitous, accidental, spontaneous. It is theessence of Mr. Darwin's theory that this should be so. Mr. Darwin'ssolemn statement, therefore, of his theory, after he had done his best orhis worst with it, is, when stripped of surplusage, as follows:--

"The modification of species has been mainly effected by accumulation ofspontaneous variations; it has been aided in an important manner byaccumulation of variations due to use and disuse, and in an unimportantmanner by spontaneous variations; I do not even now think thatspontaneous variations have been very important, but I used once to thinkthem less important than I do now. "

It is a discouraging symptom of the age that such a system should havebeen so long belauded, and it is a sign of returning intelligence thateven he who has been more especially the _alter ego_ of Mr. Darwin shouldhave felt constrained to close the chapter of Charles-Darwinism as aliving theory, and relegate it to the important but not very creditableplace in history which it must henceforth occupy. It is astonishing, however, that Mr. Wallace should have quoted the extract from the "Originof Species" just given, as he has done on p. 412 of his "Darwinism, "without betraying any sign that he has caught its driftlessness--fordrift, other than a desire to hedge, it assuredly has not got. Thebattle now turns on the question whether modifications of eitherstructure or instinct due to use or disuse are ever inherited, or whetherthey are not. Can the effects of habit be transmitted to progeny at all?We know that more usually they are not transmitted to any perceptibleextent, but we believe also that occasionally, and indeed notinfrequently, they are inherited and even intensified. What are ourgrounds for this opinion? It will be my object to put these forward inthe following number of the _Universal Review_. 

THE DEADLOCK IN DARWINISM--PART II {29}

At the close of my article in last month's number of the _UniversalReview_, I said I would in this month's issue show why the opponents ofCharles-Darwinism believe the effects of habits acquired during thelifetime of a parent to produce an effect on their subsequent offspring, in spite of the fact that we can rarely find the effect in any onegeneration, or even in several, sufficiently marked to arrest ourattention. 

I will now show that offspring can be, and not very infrequently is, affected by occurrences that have produced a deep impression on theparent organism--the effect produced on the offspring being such asleaves no doubt that it is to be connected with the impression producedon the parent. Having thus established the general proposition, I willproceed to the more particular one--that habits, involving use and disuseof special organs, with the modifications of structure therebyengendered, produce also an effect upon offspring, which, though seldomperceptible as regards structure in a single, or even in severalgenerations, is nevertheless capable of being accumulated in successivegenerations till it amounts to specific and generic difference. I havefound the first point as much as I can treat within the limits of thispresent article, and will avail myself of the hospitality of the_Universal Review_ next month to deal with the second. 

The proposition which I have to defend is one which no one till recentlywould have questioned, and even now, those who look most askance at it donot venture to dispute it unreservedly; they every now and then admit itas conceivable, and even in some cases probable; nevertheless they seekto minimise it, and to make out that there is little or no connectionbetween the great mass of the cells of which the body is composed, andthose cells that are alone capable of reproducing the entire organism. The tendency is to assign to these last a life of their own, apart from, and unconnected with that of the other cells of the body, and to cheapenall evidence that tends to prove any response on their part to the pasthistory of the individual, and hence ultimately of the race. 

Professor Weismann is the foremost exponent of those who take this line. He has naturally been welcomed by English Charles-Darwinians; for if hisview can be sustained, then it can be contended that use and disuseproduce no transmissible effect, and the ground is cut from underLamarck's feet; if, on the other hand, his view is unfounded, theLamarckian reaction, already strong, will gain still further strength. The issue, therefore, is important, and is being fiercely contested bythose who have invested their all of reputation for discernment inCharles-Darwinian securities. 

Professor Weismann's theory is, that at every new birth a part of thesubstance which proceeds from parents and which goes to form the newembryo is not used up in forming the new animal, but remains apart togenerate the germ-cells--or perhaps I should say "germ-plasm"--which thenew animal itself will in due course issue. 

Contrasting the generally received view with his own, Professor Weismannsays that according to the first of these "the organism produces germ-cells afresh again and again, and that it produces them entirely from itsown substance. " While by the second "the germ-cells are no longer lookedupon as the product of the parent's body, at least as far as theiressential part--the specific germ-plasm--is concerned; they are ratherconsidered as something which is to be placed in contrast with the _toutensemble_ of the cells which make up the parent's body, and thegerm-cells of succeeding generations stand in a similar relation to oneanother as a series of generations of unicellular organisms arising by acontinued process of cell-division. " {30}

On another page he writes:--

"I believe that heredity depends upon the fact that a small portion ofthe effective substance of the germ, the germ-plasm, remains unchangedduring the development of the ovum into an organism, and that this partof the germ-plasm serves as a foundation from which the germ-cells of thenew organism are produced. There is, therefore, continuity of the germ-plasm from one generation to another. One might represent the germ-plasmby the metaphor of a long creeping root-stock from which plants arise atintervals, these latter representing the individuals of successivegenerations. " {31}

Mr. Wallace, who does not appear to have read Professor Weismann's essaysthemselves, but whose remarks are, no doubt, ultimately derived from thesequel to the passage just quoted from page 266 of Professor Weismann'sbook, contends that the impossibility of the transmission of acquiredcharacters follows as a logical result from Professor Weismann's theory, inasmuch as the molecular structure of the germ-plasm that will go toform any succeeding generation is already predetermined within the stillunformed embryo of its predecessor; "and Weismann, " continues Mr. Wallace, "holds that there are no facts which really prove that acquiredcharacters can be inherited, although their inheritance has, by mostwriters, been considered so probable as hardly to stand in need of directproof. " {32}

Professor Weismann, in passages too numerous to quote, shows that herecognises this necessity, and acknowledges that the non-transmission ofacquired characters "forms the foundation of the views" set forth in hisbook, p. 291. 

Professor Ray Lankester does not commit himself absolutely to this view, but lends it support by saying (_Nature_, December 12, 1889): "It ishardly necessary to say that it has never yet been shown experimentallythat _anything_ acquired by one generation is transmitted to the next(putting aside diseases). "

Mr. Romanes, writing in _Nature_, March 18, 1890, and opposing certaindetails of Professor Weismann's theory, so far supports it as to say that"there is the gravest possible doubt lying against the supposition thatany really inherited decrease is due to the inherited effects of disuse. "The "gravest possible doubt" should mean that Mr. Romanes regards it as amoral certainty that disuse has no transmitted effect in reducing anorgan, and it should follow that he holds use to have no transmittedeffect in its development. The sequel, however, makes me uncertain howfar Mr. Romanes intends this, and I would refer the reader to the articlewhich Mr. Romanes has just published on Weismann in the _ContemporaryReview_ for this current month. 

The burden of Mr. Thiselton Dyer's controversy with the Duke of Argyll(see _Nature_, January 16, 1890, _et seq. _) was that there was noevidence in support of the transmission of any acquired modification. Theorthodoxy of science, therefore, must be held as giving at any rate aprovisional support to Professor Weismann, but all of them, includingeven Professor Weismann himself, shrink from committing themselves to theopinion that the germ-cells of any organisms remain in all casesunaffected by the events that occur to the other cells of the sameorganism, and until they do this they have knocked the bottom out oftheir case. 

From among the passages in which Professor Weismann himself shows adesire to hedge I may take the following from page 170 of his book:--

"I am also far from asserting that the germ-plasm which, as I hold, istransmitted as the basis of heredity from one generation to another, isabsolutely unchangeable or totally uninfluenced by forces residing in theorganism within which it is transformed into germ-cells. I am alsocompelled to admit it as conceivable that organisms may exert a modifyinginfluence upon their germ-cells, and even that such a process is to acertain extent inevitable. The nutrition and growth of the individualmust exercise some influence upon its germ-cells . . . "

Professor Weismann does indeed go on to say that this influence must beextremely slight, but we do not care how slight the changes produced maybe provided they exist and can be transmitted. On an earlier page (p. 101) he said in regard to variations generally that we should not expectto find them conspicuous; their frequency would be enough, if they couldbe accumulated. The same applies here, if stirring events that occur tothe somatic cells can produce any effect at all on offspring. A verysmall effect, provided it can be repeated and accumulated in successivegenerations, is all that even the most exacting Lamarckian will ask for. 

Having now made the reader acquainted with the position taken by theleading Charles-Darwinian authorities, I will return to ProfessorWeismann himself, who declares that the transmission of acquiredcharacters "at first sight certainly seems necessary, " and that "itappears rash to attempt to dispense with its aid. " He continues:--

"Many phenomena only appear to be intelligible if we assume thehereditary transmission of such acquired characters as the changes whichwe ascribe to the use or disuse of particular organs, or to the directinfluence of climate. Furthermore, how can we explain instinct ashereditary habit, unless it has gradually arisen by the accumulation, through heredity, of habits which were practised in succeedinggenerations?" {33}

I may say in passing that Professor Weismann appears to suppose that theview of instinct just given is part of the Charles-Darwinian system, foron page 889 of his book he says "that many observers had followed Darwinin explaining them [instincts] as inherited habits. " This was not Mr. Darwin's own view of the matter. He wrote:--

"If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited--and I think itcan be shown that this does sometimes happen--then the resemblancebetween what originally was a habit and an instinct becomes so close asnot to be distinguished. . . But it would be the most serious error tosuppose that the greater number of instincts have been acquired by habitin one generation, and then transmitted by inheritance to succeedinggenerations. It can be clearly shown that the most wonderful instinctswith which we are acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of manyants, could not possibly have been thus acquired. "--["Origin of Species, "ed. , 1859, p. 209. ]

Again we read: "Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken of as actionswhich have become inherited solely from long-continued and compulsoryhabit, but this, I think, is not true. "--_Ibid. _, p. 214. 

Again: "I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative caseof neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of inherited habit, asadvanced by Lamarck. "--["Origin of Species, " ed. 1872, p. 283. ]

I am not aware that Lamarck advanced the doctrine that instinct isinherited habit, but he may have done so in some work that I have notseen. 

It is true, as I have more than once pointed out, that in the latereditions of the "Origin of Species" it is no longer "the _most_ serious"error to refer instincts generally to inherited habit, but it stillremains "a serious error, " and this slight relaxation of severity doesnot warrant Professor Weismann in ascribing to Mr. Darwin an opinionwhich he emphatically condemned. His tone, however, is so offhand, thatthose who have little acquaintance with the literature of evolution wouldhardly guess that he is not much better informed on this subject thanthemselves. 

Returning to the inheritance of acquired characters, Professor Weismannsays that this has never been proved either by means of directobservation or by experiment. "It must be admitted, " he writes, "thatthere are in existence numerous descriptions of cases which tend to provethat such mutilations as the loss of fingers, the scars of wounds, &c. , are inherited by the offspring, but in these descriptions the previoushistory is invariably obscure, and hence the evidence loses allscientific value. "

The experiments of M. Brown-Sequard throw so much light upon thequestion at issue that I will quote at some length from the summary givenby Mr. Darwin in his "Variation of Animals and Plants underDomestication. " {34} Mr. Darwin writes:--

"With respect to the inheritance of structures mutilated by injuries oraltered by disease, it was until lately difficult to come to any definiteconclusion. " [Then follow several cases in which mutilations practisedfor many generations are not found to be transmitted. ] "Notwithstanding, "continues Mr. Darwin, "the above several negative cases, we now possessconclusive evidence that the effects of operations are sometimesinherited. Dr. Brown-Sequard gives the following summary of hisobservations on guinea-pigs, and this summary is so important that I willquote the whole:--

"'1st. Appearance of epilepsy in animals born of parents having beenrendered epileptic by an injury to the spinal cord. 

"'2nd. Appearance of epilepsy also in animals born of parents havingbeen rendered epileptic by the section of the sciatic nerve. 

"'3rd. A change in the shape of the ear in animals born of parents inwhich such a change was the effect of a division of the cervicalsympathetic nerve. 

"'4th. Partial closure of the eyelids in animals born of parents inwhich that state of the eyelids had been caused either by the section ofthe cervical sympathetic nerve or the removal of the superior cervicalganglion. 

"'5th. Exophthalmia in animals born of parents in which an injury to therestiform body had produced that protrusion of the eyeball. Thisinteresting fact I have witnessed a good many times, and I have seen thetransmission of the morbid state of the eye continue through fourgenerations. In these animals modified by heredity, the two eyesgenerally protruded, although in the parents usually only one showedexophthalmia, the lesion having been made in most cases only on one ofthe corpora restiformia. 

"'6th. Haematoma and dry gangrene of the ears in animals born of parentsin which these ear-alterations had been caused by an injury to therestiform body near the nib of the calamus. 

"'7th. Absence of two toes out of the three of the hind leg, andsometimes of the three, in animals whose parents had eaten up their hind-leg toes which had become anaesthetic from a section of the sciatic nervealone, or of that nerve and also of the crural. Sometimes, instead ofcomplete absence of the toes, only a part of one or two or three wasmissing in the young, although in the parent not only the toes but thewhole foot was absent (partly eaten off, partly destroyed byinflammation, ulceration, or gangrene). 

"'8th. Appearance of various morbid states of the skin and hair of theneck and face in animals born of parents having had similar alterationsin the same parts, as effects of an injury to the sciatic nerve. '

"It should be especially observed that Brown-Sequard has bred duringthirty years many thousand guinea-pigs from animals which had not beenoperated upon, and not one of these manifested the epileptic tendency. Nor has he ever seen a guinea-pig born without toes, which was not theoffspring of parents which had gnawed off their own toes owing to thesciatic nerve having been divided. Of this latter fact thirteeninstances were carefully recorded, and a greater number were seen; yetBrown-Sequard speaks of such cases as one of the rarer forms ofinheritance. It is a still more interesting fact, 'that the sciaticnerve in the congenitally toeless animal has inherited the power ofpassing through all the different morbid states which have occurred inone of its parents from the time of the division till after its reunionwith the peripheric end. It is not, therefore, simply the power ofperforming an action which is inherited, but the power of performing awhole series of actions, in a certain order. '

"In most of the cases of inheritance recorded by Brown-Sequard only oneof the two parents had been operated upon and was affected. He concludesby expressing his belief that 'what is transmitted is the morbid state ofthe nervous system, ' due to the operation performed on the parents. "

Mr. Darwin proceeds to give other instances of inherited effects ofmutilations:--

"With the horse there seems hardly a doubt that exostoses on the legs, caused by too much travelling on hard roads, are inherited. Blumenbachrecords the case of a man who had his little finger on the right handalmost cut off, and which in consequence grew crooked, and his sons hadthe same finger on the same hand similarly crooked. A soldier, fifteenyears before his marriage, lost his left eye from purulent ophthalmia, and his two sons were microphthalmic on the same side. "

The late Professor Rolleston, whose competence as an observer no one islikely to dispute, gave Mr. Darwin two cases as having fallen under hisown notice, one of a man whose knee had been severely wounded, and whosechild was born with the same spot marked or scarred, and the other of onewho was severely cut upon the cheek, and whose child was born scarred inthe same place. Mr. Darwin's conclusion was that "the effects ofinjuries, especially when followed by disease, or perhaps exclusivelywhen thus followed, are occasionally inherited. "

Let us now see what Professor Weismann has to say against this. Hewrites:--

"The only cases worthy of discussion are the well-known experiments uponguinea-pigs conducted by the French physiologist, Brown-Sequard. But theexplanation of his results is, in my opinion, open to discussion. Inthese cases we have to do with the apparent transmission of artificiallyproduced malformations . . . All these effects were said to betransmitted to descendants as far as the fifth or sixth generation. 

"But we must inquire whether these cases are really due to heredity, andnot to simple infection. In the case of epilepsy, at any rate, it iseasy to imagine that the passage of some specific organism through thereproductive cells may take place, as in the case of syphilis. We are, however, entirely ignorant of the nature of the former disease. Thissuggested explanation may not perhaps apply to the other cases; but wemust remember that animals which have been subjected to such severeoperations upon the nervous system have sustained a great shock, and ifthey are capable of breeding, it is only probable that they will produceweak descendants, and such as are easily affected by disease. Such aresult does not, however, explain why the offspring should suffer fromthe same disease as that which was artificially induced in the parents. But this does not appear to have been by any means invariably the case. Brown-Sequard himself says: 'The changes in the eye of the offspring wereof a very variable nature, and were only occasionally exactly similar tothose observed in the parents. '

"There is no doubt, however, that these experiments demand carefulconsideration, but before they can claim scientific recognition, theymust be subjected to rigid criticism as to the precautions taken, thenature and number of the control experiments, &c. 

"Up to the present time such necessary conditions have not beensufficiently observed. The recent experiments themselves are onlydescribed in short preliminary notices, which, as regards their accuracy, the possibility of mistake, the precautions taken, and the exactsuccession of individuals affected, afford no data on which a scientificopinion can be founded" (pp. 81, 82). 

The line Professor Weismann takes, therefore, is to discredit the facts;yet on a later page we find that the experiments have since been repeatedby Obersteiner, "who has described them in a very exact and unprejudicedmanner, " and that "the fact"--(I imagine that Professor Weismann intends"the facts")--"cannot be doubted. "

On a still later page, however, we read:--

"If, for instance, it could be shown that artificial mutilationspontaneously reappears in the offspring with sufficient frequency toexclude all possibilities of chance, then such proof [_i. E. _, thatacquired characters can be transmitted] would be forthcoming. Thetransmission of mutilations has been frequently asserted, and has beeneven recently again brought forward, but all the supposed instances havebroken down when carefully examined" (p. 390). 

Here, then, we are told that proof of the occasional transmission ofmutilations would be sufficient to establish the fact, but on p. 267 wefind that no single fact is known which really proves that acquiredcharacters can be transmitted, "_for the ascertained facts which seem topoint to the transmission of artificially produced diseases cannot beconsidered as proof_" [Italics mine. ] Perhaps; but it was mutilation inmany cases that Professor Weismann practically admitted to have beentransmitted when he declared that Obersteiner had verifiedBrown-Sequard's experiments. 

That Professor Weismann recognises the vital importance to his own theoryof the question whether or no mutilations can be transmitted under anycircumstances, is evident from a passage on p. 425 of his work, on whichhe says: "It can hardly be doubted that mutilations are acquiredcharacters; they do not arise from any tendency contained in the germ, but are merely the reaction of the body under certain externalinfluences. They are, as I have recently expressed it, purelysomatogenic characters--viz. , characters which emanate from the body(_soma_) only, as opposed to the germ-cells; they are, therefore, characters that do not arise from the germ itself. 

"If mutilations must necessarily be transmitted" [which no one that Iknow of has maintained], "or even if they might occasionally betransmitted" [which cannot, I imagine, be reasonably questioned], "apowerful support would be given to the Lamarckian principle, and thetransmission of functional hypertrophy or atrophy would thus becomehighly probable. "

I have not found any further attempt in Professor Weismann's book to dealwith the evidence adduced by Mr. Darwin to show that mutilations, iffollowed by diseases, are sometimes inherited; and I must leave it to thereader to determine how far Professor Weismann has shown reason forrejecting Mr. Darwin's conclusion. I do not, however, dwell upon thesefacts now as evidence of a transmitted change of bodily form, or ofinstinct due to use and disuse or habit; what they prove is that the germ-cells within the parent's body do not stand apart from the other cells ofthe body so completely as Professor Weismann would have us believe, butthat, as Professor Hering, of Prague, has aptly said, they echo with moreor less frequency and force to the profounder impressions made upon othercells. 

I may say that Professor Weismann does not more cavalierly wave aside themass of evidence collected by Mr. Darwin and a host of other writers, tothe effect that mutilations are sometimes inherited, than does Mr. Wallace, who says that, "as regards mutilations, it is generally admittedthat they are not inherited, and there is ample evidence on this point. "It is indeed generally admitted that mutilations, when not followed bydisease, are very rarely, if ever, inherited; and Mr. Wallace's appeal tothe "ample evidence" which he alleges to exist on this head, is much asthough he should say that there is ample evidence to show that the daysare longer in summer than in winter. "Nevertheless, " he continues, "afew cases of apparent inheritance of mutilations have been recorded, andthese, if trustworthy, are difficulties in the way of the theory. " . . . "The often-quoted case of a disease induced by mutilation being inherited(Brown-Sequard's epileptic guinea-pigs) has been discussed by ProfessorWeismann and shown to be not conclusive. The mutilation itself--asection of certain nerves--was never inherited, but the resultingepilepsy, or a general state of weakness, deformity, or sores, wassometimes inherited. It is, however, possible that the mere injuryintroduced and encouraged the growth of certain microbes, which, spreading through the organism, sometimes reached the germ-cells, andthus transmitted a diseased condition to the offspring. " {35}

I suppose a microbe which made guinea-pigs eat their toes off wascommunicated to the germ-cells of an unfortunate guinea-pig which hadbeen already microbed by it, and made the offspring bite its toes offtoo. The microbe has a good deal to answer for. 

On the case of the deterioration of horses in the Falkland Islands aftera few generations, Professor Weismann says:--

"In such a case we have only to assume that the climate which isunfavourable, and the nutriment which is insufficient for horses, affectnot only the animal as a whole but also its germ-cells. This wouldresult in the diminution in size of the germ-cells, the effects upon theoffspring being still further intensified by the insufficient nourishmentsupplied during growth. But such results would not depend upon thetransmission by the germ-cells of certain peculiarities due to theunfavourable climate, which only appear in the full-grown horse. "

But Professor Weismann does not like such cases, and admits that hecannot explain the facts in connection with the climatic varieties ofcertain butterflies, except "by supposing the passive acquisition ofcharacters produced by the direct influence of climate. "

Nevertheless in his next paragraph but one he calls such cases"doubtful, " and proposes that for the moment they should be left aside. He accordingly leaves them, but I have not yet found what other moment heconsidered auspicious for returning to them. He tells us that "newexperiments will be necessary, and that he has himself already begun toundertake them. " Perhaps he will give us the results of theseexperiments in some future book--for that they will prove satisfactory tohim can hardly, I think, be doubted. He writes:--

"Leaving on one side, for the moment, these doubtful and insufficientlyinvestigated cases, we may still maintain that the assumption thatchanges induced by external conditions in the organism as a whole arecommunicated to the germ-cells after the manner indicated in Darwin'shypothesis of pangenesis, is wholly unnecessary for the explanation ofthese phenomena. Still we cannot exclude the possibility of such atransmission occasionally occurring, for even if the greater part of theeffects must be attributable to natural selection, there might be asmaller part in certain cases which depends on this exceptional factor. "

I repeatedly tried to understand Mr. Darwin's theory of pangenesis, andso often failed that I long since gave the matter up in despair. I didso with the less unwillingness because I saw that no one else appeared tounderstand the theory, and that even Mr. Darwin's warmest adherentsregarded it with disfavour. If Mr. Darwin means that every cell of thebody throws off minute particles that find their way to the germ-cells, and hence into the new embryo, this is indeed difficult of comprehensionand belief. If he means that the rhythms or vibrations that go onceaselessly in every cell of the body communicate themselves with greateror less accuracy or perturbation, as the case may be, to the cells thatgo to form offspring, and that since the characteristics of matter aredetermined by vibrations, in communicating vibrations they in effectcommunicate matter, according to the view put forward in the last chapterof my book "Luck or Cunning, " {36} then we can better understand it. Ihave nothing, however, to do with Mr. Darwin's theory of pangenesisbeyond avoiding the pretence that I understand either the theory itselfor what Professor Weismann says about it; all I am concerned with isProfessor Weismann's admission, made immediately afterwards, that thesomatic cells may, and perhaps sometimes do, impart characteristics tothe germ-cells. 

"A complete and satisfactory refutation of such an opinion, " hecontinues, "cannot be brought forward at present"; so I suppose we mustwait a little longer, but in the meantime we may again remark that, if weadmit even occasional communication of changes in the somatic cells tothe germ-cells, we have let in the thin end of the wedge, as Mr. Darwindid when he said that use and disuse did a good deal towardsmodification. Buffon, in his first volume on the lower animals, {37}dwells on the impossibility of stopping the breach once made by admissionof variation at all. "If the point, " he writes, "were once gained, thatamong animals and vegetables there had been, I do not say severalspecies, but even a single one, which had been produced in the course ofdirect descent from another species; if, for example, it could be onceshown that the ass was but a degeneration from the horse--then there isno farther limit to be set to the power of Nature, and we should not bewrong in supposing that with sufficient time she could have evolved allother organised forms from one primordial type. " So with use and disuseand transmission of acquired characteristics generally--once show that asingle structure or instinct is due to habit in preceding generations, and we can impose no limit on the results achievable by accumulation inthis respect, nor shall we be wrong in conceiving it as possible that allspecialisation, whether of structure or instinct, may be due ultimatelyto habit. 

How far this can be shown to be probable is, of course, another matter, but I am not immediately concerned with this; all I am concerned with nowis to show that the germ-cells not unfrequently become permanentlyaffected by events that have made a profound impression upon the somaticcells, in so far that they transmit an obvious reminiscence of theimpression to the embryos which they go subsequently towards forming. This is all that is necessary for my case, and I do not find thatProfessor Weismann, after all, disputes it. 

But here, again, comes the difficulty of saying what Professor Weismanndoes, and what he does not, dispute. One moment he gives all that iswanted for the Lamarckian contention, the next he denies common-sense thebare necessaries of life. For a more exhaustive and detailed criticismof Professor Weismann's position, I would refer the reader to anadmirably clear article by Mr. Sidney H. Vines, which appeared in_Nature_, October 24, 1889. I can only say that while reading ProfessorWeismann's book, I feel as I do when I read those of Mr. Darwin, and of agood many other writers on biology whom I need not name. I become like afly in a window-pane. I see the sunshine and freedom beyond, and buzz upand down their pages, ever hopeful to get through them to the fresh airwithout, but ever kept back by a mysterious something, which I feel butcannot either grasp or see. It was not thus when I read Buffon, ErasmusDarwin, and Lamarck; it is not thus when I read such articles as Mr. Vines's just referred to. Love of self-display, and the want ofsingleness of mind that it inevitably engenders--these, I suppose, arethe sins that glaze the casements of most men's minds; and from these, nomatter how hard he tries to free himself, nor how much he despises them, who is altogether exempt?

Finally, then, when we consider the immense mass of evidence referred tobriefly, but sufficiently, by Mr. Charles Darwin, and referred to withoutother, for the most part, than off-hand dismissal by Professor Weismannin the last of the essays that have been recently translated, I do notsee how any one who brings an unbiased mind to the question can hesitateas to the side on which the weight of testimony inclines. ProfessorWeismann declares that "the transmission of mutilations may be dismissedinto the domain of fable. " {38} If so, then, whom can we trust? What isthe use of science at all if the conclusions of a man as competent as Ireadily admit Mr. Darwin to have been, on the evidence laid before himfrom countless sources, is to be set aside lightly and without giving theclearest and most cogent explanation of the why and wherefore? When wesee a person "ostrichising" the evidence which he has to meet, as clearlyas I believe Professor Weismann to be doing, we shall in nine cases outof ten be right in supposing that he knows the evidence to be too strongfor him. 

THE DEADLOCK IN DARWINISM--PART III

Now let me return to the recent division of biological opinion into twomain streams--Lamarckism and Weismannism Both Lamarckians andWeismannists, not to mention mankind in general, admit that the betteradapted to its surroundings a living form may be, the more likely it isto outbreed its compeers. The world at large, again, needs not to betold that the normal course is not unfrequently deflected through thefortunes of war; nevertheless, according to Lamarckians andErasmus-Darwinians, habitual effort, guided by ever-growingintelligence--that is to say, by continued increase of power in thematter of knowing our likes and dislikes--has been so much the mainfactor throughout the course of organic development, that the rest, though not lost sight of, may be allowed to go without saying. According, on the other hand, to extreme Charles-Darwinians and Weismannists, habit, effort and intelligence acquired during the experience of any one lifegoes for nothing. Not even a little fraction of it endures to thebenefit of offspring. It dies with him in whom it is acquired, and theheirs of a man's body take no interest therein. To state this doctrineis to arouse instinctive loathing; it is my fortunate task to maintainthat such a nightmare of waste and death is as baseless as it isrepulsive. 

The split in biological opinion occasioned by the deadlock to whichCharles-Darwinism has been reduced, though comparatively recent, widensrapidly. Ten years ago Lamarck's name was mentioned only as a byword forextravagance; now, we cannot take up a number of _Nature_ without seeinghow hot the contention is between his followers and those of Weismann. This must be referred, as I implied earlier, to growing perception thatMr. Darwin should either have gone farther towards Lamarckism or not sofar. In admitting use and disuse as freely as he did, he gaveLamarckians leverage for the overthrow of a system based ostensibly onthe accumulation of fortunate accidents. In assigning the lion's shareof development to the accumulation of fortunate accidents, he temptedfortuitists to try to cut the ground from under Lamarck's feet by denyingthat the effects of use and disuse can be inherited at all. When thepublic had once got to understand what Lamarck had intended, and whereinMr. Charles Darwin had differed from him, it became impossible forCharles-Darwinians to remain where they were, nor is it easy to see whatcourse was open to them except to cast about for a theory by which theycould get rid of use and disuse altogether. Weismannism, therefore, isthe inevitable outcome of the straits to which Charles-Darwinians werereduced through the way in which their leader had halted between twoopinions. 

This is why Charles-Darwinians, from Professor Huxley downwards, havekept the difference between Lamarck's opinions and those of Mr. Darwin somuch in the background. Unwillingness to make this understood is nowheremanifested more clearly than in Dr. Francis Darwin's life of his father. In this work Lamarck is sneered at once or twice, and told to go away, but there is no attempt to state the two cases side by side; from which, as from not a little else, I conclude that Dr. Francis Darwin hasdescended from his father with singularly little modification. 

Proceeding to the evidence for the transmissions of acquired habits, Iwill quote two recently adduced examples from among the many that havebeen credibly attested. The first was contributed to _Nature_ (March 14, 1889) by Professor Marcus M. Hartog, who wrote:--

"A. B. Is moderately myopic and very astigmatic in the left eye;extremely myopic in the right. As the left eye gave such bad images fornear objects, he was compelled in childhood to mask it, and acquired thehabit of leaning his head on his left arm for writing, so as to blindthat eye, or of resting the left temple and eye on the hand, with theelbow on the table. At the age of fifteen the eyes were equalised by theuse of suitable spectacles, and he soon lost the habit completely andpermanently. He is now the father of two children, a boy and a girl, whose vision (tested repeatedly and fully) is emmetropic in both eyes, sothat they have not inherited the congenital optical defect of theirfather. All the same, they have both of them inherited his earlyacquired habit, and need constant watchfulness to prevent their hidingthe left eye when writing, by resting the head on the left forearm orhand. Imitation is here quite out of the question. 

"Considering that every habit involves changes in the proportionaldevelopment of the muscular and osseous systems, and hence probably ofthe nervous system also, the importance of inherited habits, natural oracquired, cannot be overlooked in the general theory of inheritance. Iam fully aware that I shall be accused of flat Lamarckism, but a nicknameis not an argument. "

To this Professor Ray Lankester rejoined (_Nature_, March 21, 1889):--

"It is not unusual for children to rest the head on the left forearm orhand when writing, and I doubt whether much value can be attached to thecase described by Professor Hartog. The kind of observation which hisletter suggests is, however, likely to lead to results either for oragainst the transmission of acquired characters. An old friend of minelost his right arm when a schoolboy, and has ever since written with hisleft. He has a large family and grandchildren, but I have not heard ofany of them showing a disposition to left-handedness. "

From _Nature_ (March 21, 1889) I take the second instance communicated byMr. J. Jenner-Weir, who wrote as follows:--

"Mr. Marcus M. Hartog's letter of March 6th, inserted in last week'snumber (p. 462), is a very valuable contribution to the growing evidencethat acquired characters may be inherited. I have long held the viewthat such is often the case, and I have myself observed several instancesof the, at least I may say, apparent fact. 

"Many years ago there was a very fine male of the _Capra megaceros_ inthe gardens of the Zoological Society. To restrain this animal fromjumping over the fence of the enclosure in which he was confined, a long, and heavy chain was attached to the collar round his neck. He wasconstantly in the habit of taking this chain up by his horns and movingit from one side to another over his back; in doing this he threw hishead very much back, his horns being placed in a line with the back. Thehabit had become quite chronic with him, and was very tiresome to lookat. I was very much astonished to observe that his offspring inheritedthe habit, and although it was not necessary to attach a chain to theirnecks, I have often seen a young male throwing his horns over his backand shifting from side to side an imaginary chain. The action wasexactly the same as that of his ancestor. The case of the kid of thisgoat appears to me to be parallel to that of child and parent given byMr. Hartog. I think at the time I made this observation I informed Mr. Darwin of the fact by letter, and he did not accuse me of 'flatLamarckism. '"

To this letter there was no rejoinder. It may be said, of course, thatthe action of the offspring in each of these cases was due to accidentalcoincidence only. Anything can be said, but the question turns not onwhat an advocate can say, but on what a reasonably intelligent anddisinterested jury will believe; granted they might be mistaken inaccepting the foregoing stories, but the world of science, like that ofcommerce, is based on the faith or confidence, which both creates andsustains them. Indeed the universe itself is but the creature of faith, for assuredly we know of no other foundation. There is nothing sogenerally and reasonably accepted--not even our own continuedidentity--but questions may be raised about it that will shortly proveunanswerable. We cannot so test every sixpence given us in change as tobe sure that we never take a bad one, and had better sometimes be cheatedthan reduce caution to an absurdity. Moreover, we have seen from theevidence given in my preceding article that the germ-cells issuing from aparent's body can, and do, respond to profound impressions made on thesomatic-cells. This being so, what impressions are more profound, whatneeds engage more assiduous attention than those connected withself-protection, the procuring of food, and the continuation of thespecies? If the mere anxiety connected with an ill-healing woundinflicted on but one generation is sometimes found to have so impressedthe germ-cells that they hand down its scars to offspring, how much moreshall not anxieties that have directed action of all kinds from birthtill death, not in one generation only but in a longer series ofgenerations than the mind can realise to itself, modify, and indeedcontrol, the organisation of every species?

I see Professor S. H. Vines, in the article on Weismann's theory referredto in my preceding article, says Mr. Darwin "held that it was not thesudden variations due to altered external conditions which becomepermanent, but those slowly produced by what he termed 'the accumulativeaction of changed conditions of life. '" Nothing can be more soundlyLamarckian, and nothing should more conclusively show that, whatever elseMr. Darwin was, he was not a Charles-Darwinian; but what evidence otherthan inferential can from the nature of the case be adduced in support ofthis, as I believe, perfectly correct judgment? None know better thanthey who clamour for direct evidence that their master was right intaking the position assigned to him by Professor Vines, that they cannotreasonably look for it. With us, as with themselves, modificationproceeds very gradually, and it violates our principles as much as theirown to expect visible permanent progress, in any single generation, orindeed in any number of generations of wild species which we have yet hadtime to observe. Occasionally we can find such cases, as in that of_Branchipus stagnalis_, quoted by Mr. Wallace, or in that of the NewZealand Kea whose skin, I was assured by the late Sir Julius von Haast, has already been modified as a consequence of its change of food. Herewe can show that in even a few generations structure is modified underchanged conditions of existence, but as we believe these cases to occurcomparatively rarely, so it is still more rarely that they occur when andwhere we can watch them. Nature is eminently conservative, and fixity oftype, even under considerable change of conditions, is surely moreimportant for the well-being of any species than an over-ready power ofadaptation to, it may be, passing changes. There could be no steadyprogress if each generation were not mainly bound by the traditions ofthose that have gone before it. It is evolution and not incessantrevolution that both parties are upholding; and this being so, rapidvisible modification must be the exception, not the rule. I have quoteddirect evidence adduced by competent observers, which is, I believe, sufficient to establish the fact that offspring can be and is sometimesmodified by the acquired habits of a progenitor. I will now proceed tothe still more, as it appears to me, cogent proof afforded by generalconsiderations. 

What, let me ask, are the principal phenomena of heredity? There must bephysical continuity between parent, or parents, and offspring, so thatthe offspring is, as Erasmus Darwin well said, a kind of elongation ofthe life of the parent. 

Erasmus Darwin put the matter so well that I may as well give his wordsin full; he wrote:--

"Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is termed a newanimal, but is in truth a branch or elongation of the parent, since apart of the embryon animal is, or was, a part of the parent, andtherefore, in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new at thetime of its production; and therefore it may retain some of the habits ofthe parent system. 

"At the earliest period of its existence the embryon would seem toconsist of a living filament with certain capabilities of irritation, sensation, volition, and association, and also with some acquired habitsor propensities peculiar to the parent; the former of these are in commonwith other animals; the latter seem to distinguish or produce the kind ofanimal, whether man or quadruped, with the similarity of feature or formto the parent. " {39}

Those who accept evolution insist on unbroken physical continuity betweenthe earliest known life and ourselves, so that we both are and are notpersonally identical with the unicellular organism from which we havedescended in the course of many millions of years, exactly in the sameway as an octogenarian both is and is not personally identical with themicroscopic impregnate ovum from which he grew up. Everything both isand is not. There is no such thing as strict identity between any twothings in any two consecutive seconds. In strictness they are identicaland yet not identical, so that in strictness they violate a fundamentalrule of strictness--namely, that a thing shall never be itself and notitself at one and the same time; we must choose between logic and dealingin a practical spirit with time and space; it is not surprising, therefore, that logic, in spite of the show of respect outwardly paid toher, is told to stand aside when people come to practice. In practiceidentity is generally held to exist where continuity is only brokenslowly and piecemeal, nevertheless, that occasional periods of even rapidchange are not held to bar identity, appears from the fact that no onedenies this to hold between the microscopically small impregnate ovum andthe born child that springs from it, nor yet, therefore, between theimpregnate ovum and the octogenarian into which the child grows; for bothovum and octogenarian are held personally identical with the newbornbaby, and things that are identical with the same are identical with oneanother. 

The first, then, and most important element of heredity is that thereshould be unbroken continuity, and hence sameness of personality, betweenparents and offspring, in neither more nor less than the same sense asthat in which any other two personalities are said to be the same. Therepetition, therefore, of its developmental stages by any offspring mustbe regarded as something which the embryo repeating them has already doneonce, in the person of one or other parent; and if once, then, as manytimes as there have been generations between any given embryo nowrepeating it, and the point in life from which we started--say, forexample, the amoeba. In the case of asexually and sexually producedorganisms alike, the offspring must be held to continue the personalityof the parent or parents, and hence on the occasion of every freshdevelopment, to be repeating something which in the person of its parentor parents it has done once, and if once, then any number of times, already. 

It is obvious, therefore, that the germ-plasm (or whatever the fancy wordfor it may be) of any one generation is as physically identical with thegerm-plasm of its predecessor as any two things can be. The differencebetween Professor Weismann and, we will say, Heringians consists in thefact that the first maintains the new germ-plasm when on the point ofrepeating its developmental processes to take practically no cognisanceof anything that has happened to it since the last occasion on which itdeveloped itself; while the latter maintain that offspring takes much thesame kind of account of what has happened to it in the persons of itsparents since the last occasion on which it developed itself, as peoplein ordinary life take of things that happen to them. In daily lifepeople let fairly normal circumstances come and go without much heed asmatters of course. If they have been lucky they make a note of it andtry to repeat their success. If they have been unfortunate but haverecovered rapidly they soon forget it; if they have suffered long anddeeply they grizzle over it and are scared and scarred by it for a longtime. The question is one of cognisance or non-cognisance on the part ofthe new germs, of the more profound impressions made on them while theywere one with their parents, between the occasion of their last precedingdevelopment, and the new course on which they are about to enter. Thosewho accept the theory put forward independently by Professor Hering ofPrague (whose work on this subject is translated in my book, "UnconsciousMemory") {40} and by myself in "Life and Habit, " {41} believe incognizance, as do Lamarckians generally. Weismannites, and with them theorthodoxy of English science, find non-cognisance more acceptable. 

If the Heringian view is accepted, that heredity is only a mode ofmemory, and an extension of memory from one generation to another, thenthe repetition of its development by any embryo thus becomes only therepetition of a lesson learned by rote; and, as I have elsewhere said, our view of life is simplified by finding that it is no longer anequation of, say, a hundred unknown quantities, but of ninety-nine only, inasmuch as two of the unknown quantities prove to be substantiallyidentical. In this case the inheritance of acquired characteristicscannot be disputed, for it is postulated in the theory that each embryotakes note of, remembers and is guided by the profounder impressions madeupon it while in the persons of its parents, between its present and lastpreceding development. To maintain this is to maintain use and disuse tobe the main factors throughout organic development; to deny it is to denythat use and disuse can have any conceivable effect. For the detailedreasons which led me to my own conclusions I must refer the reader to mybooks, "Life and Habit" {42} and "Unconscious Memory, " {42} theconclusions of which have been often adopted, but never, that I haveseen, disputed. A brief _resume_ of the leading points in the argumentis all that space will here allow me to give. 

We have seen that it is a first requirement of heredity that there shallbe physical continuity between parents and offspring. This holds goodwith memory. There must be continued identity between the personremembering and the person to whom the thing that is remembered happened. We cannot remember things that happened to some one else, and in ourabsence. We can only remember having heard of them. We have seen, however, that there is as much _bona-fide_ sameness of personalitybetween parents and offspring up to the time at which the offspring quitsthe parent's body, as there is between the different states of the parenthimself at any two consecutive moments; the offspring therefore, beingone and the same person with its progenitors until it quits them, can beheld to remember what happened to them within, of course, the limitationsto which all memory is subject, as much as the progenitors can rememberwhat happened earlier to themselves. Whether it does so remember canonly be settled by observing whether it acts as living beings commonly dowhen they are acting under guidance of memory. I will endeavour to showthat, though heredity and habit based on memory go about in differentdresses, yet if we catch them separately--for they are never seentogether--and strip them there is not a mole nor strawberry-mark, nortrick nor leer of the one, but we find it in the other also. 

What are the moles and strawberry-marks of habitual action, or actionsremembered and thus repeated? First, the more often we repeat them themore easily and unconsciously we do them. Look at reading, writing, walking, talking, playing the piano, &c. ; the longer we have practisedany one of these acquired habits, the more easily, automatically andunconsciously, we perform it. Look, on the other hand, broadly, at thethree points to which I called attention in "Life and Habit":--

I. That we are most conscious of and have most control over such habitsas speech, the upright position, the arts and sciences--which areacquisitions peculiar to the human race, always acquired after birth, andnot common to ourselves and any ancestor who had not become entirelyhuman. 

II. That we are less conscious of and have less control over eating anddrinking [provided the food be normal], swallowing, breathing, seeing, and hearing--which were acquisitions of our prehuman ancestry, and forwhich we had provided ourselves with all the necessary apparatus beforewe saw light, but which are still, geologically speaking, recent. 

III. That we are most unconscious of and have least control over ourdigestion and circulation--powers possessed even by our invertebrateancestry, and, geologically speaking, of extreme antiquity. 

I have put the foregoing very broadly, but enough is given to show thereader the gist of the argument. Let it be noted that disturbance anddeparture, to any serious extent, from normal practice tends to induceresumption of consciousness even in the case of such old habits asbreathing, seeing, and hearing, digestion and the circulation of theblood. So it is with habitual actions in general. Let a player be neverso proficient on any instrument, he will be put out if the normalconditions under which he plays are too widely departed from, and willthen do consciously, if indeed he can do it at all, what he had hithertobeen doing unconsciously. It is an axiom as regards actions acquiredafter birth, that we never do them automatically save as the result oflong practice; the stages in the case of any acquired facility, theinception of which we have been able to watch, have invariably been froma nothingness of ignorant impotence to a little somethingness of highlyself-conscious, arduous performance, and thence to theunselfconsciousness of easy mastery. I saw one year a poor blind lad ofabout eighteen sitting on a wall by the wayside at Varese, playing theconcertina with his whole body, and snorting like a child. The next yearthe boy no longer snorted, and he played with his fingers only; the yearafter that he seemed hardly to know whether he was playing or not, itcame so easily to him. I know no exception to this rule. Where is theintricate and at one time difficult art in which perfect automatic easehas been reached except as the result of long practice? If, then, wherever we can trace the development of automatism we find it to havetaken this course, is it not most reasonable to infer that it has takenthe same even when it has risen in regions that are beyond our ken? Oughtwe not, whenever we see a difficult action performed, automatically tosuspect antecedent practice? Granted that without the considerations inregard to identity presented above it would not have been easy to seewhere a baby of a day old could have had the practice which enables it todo as much as it does unconsciously, but even without theseconsiderations it would have been more easy to suppose that the necessaryopportunities had not been wanting, than that the easy performance couldhave been gained without practice and memory. 

When I wrote "Life and Habit" (originally published in 1877) I said inslightly different words:--

"Shall we say that a baby of a day old sucks (which involves the wholeprinciple of the pump and hence a profound practical knowledge of thelaws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises itsblood--millions of years before any one had discovered oxygen--sees andhears, operations that involve an unconscious knowledge of the factsconcerning optics and acoustics compared with which the consciousdiscoveries of Newton are insignificant--shall we say that a baby can doall these things at once, doing them so well and so regularly withoutbeing even able to give them attention, and yet without mistake, andshall we also say at the same time that it has not learnt to do them, andnever did them before?

"Such an assertion would contradict the whole experience of mankind. "

I have met with nothing during the thirteen years since the foregoing waspublished that has given me any qualms about its soundness. From thepoint of view of the law courts and everyday life it is, of course, nonsense; but in the kingdom of thought, as in that of heaven, there aremany mansions, and what would be extravagance in the cottage orfarmhouse, as it were, of daily practice, is but common decency in thepalace of high philosophy, wherein dwells evolution. If we leaveevolution alone, we may stick to common practice and the law courts;touch evolution and we are in another world; not higher, not lower, butdifferent as harmony from counterpoint. As, however, in the mostabsolute counterpoint there is still harmony, and in the most absoluteharmony still counterpoint, so high philosophy should be still in touchwith common sense, and common sense with high philosophy. 

The common-sense view of the matter to people who are not over-curiousand to whom time is money, will be that a baby is not a baby until it isborn, and that when born it should be born in wedlock. Nevertheless, asa sop to high philosophy, every baby is allowed to be the offspring ofits father and mother. 

The high-philosophy view of the matter is that every human being is stillbut a fresh edition of the primordial cell with the latest additions andcorrections; there has been no leap nor break in continuity anywhere; theman of to-day is the primordial cell of millions of years ago as truly ashe is the himself of yesterday; he can only be denied to be the one ongrounds that will prove him not to be the other. Every one is bothhimself and all his direct ancestors and descendants as well; therefore, if we would be logical, he is one also with all his cousins, no matterhow distant, for he and they are alike identical with the primordialcell, and we have already noted it as an axiom that things which areidentical with the same are identical with one another. This ispractically making him one with all living things, whether animal orvegetable, that ever have existed or ever will--something of all whichmay have been in the mind of Sophocles when he wrote:--

 "Nor seest thou yet the gathering hosts of ill That shall en-one thee both with thine own self And with thine offspring. "

And all this has come of admitting that a man may be the same person fortwo days running! As for sopping common sense it will be enough to saythat these remarks are to be taken in a strictly scientific sense, andhave no appreciable importance as regards life and conduct. True theydeal with the foundations on which all life and conduct are based, butlike other foundations they are hidden out of sight, and the sounder theyare, the less we trouble ourselves about them. 

What other main common features between heredity and memory may we notebesides the fact that neither can exist without that kind of physicalcontinuity which we call personal identity? First, the development ofthe embryo proceeds in an established order; so must all habitual actionsbased on memory. Disturb the normal order and the performance isarrested. The better we know "God save the Queen, " the less easily canwe play or sing it backwards. The return of memory again depends on thereturn of ideas associated with the particular thing that isremembered--we remember nothing but for the presence of these, and whenenough of these are presented to us we remember everything. So, if thedevelopment of an embryo is due to memory, we should suppose the memoryof the impregnate ovum to revert not to yesterday, when it was in thepersons of its parents, but to the last occasion on which it was animpregnate ovum. The return of the old environment and the presence ofold associations would at once involve recollection of the course thatshould be next taken, and the same should happen throughout the wholecourse of development. The actual course of development presentsprecisely the phenomena agreeable with this. For fuller treatment ofthis point I must refer the reader to the chapter on the abeyance ofmemory in my book "Life and Habit, " already referred to. 

Secondly, we remember best our last few performances of any given kind, so our present performance will probably resemble some one or other ofthese; we remember our earlier performances by way of residuum only, butevery now and then we revert to an earlier habit. This feature of memoryis manifested in heredity by the way in which offspring commonlyresembles most its nearer ancestors, but sometimes reverts to earlierones. Brothers and sisters, each as it were giving their own version ofthe same story, but in different words, should generally resemble eachother more closely than more distant relations. And this is whatactually we find. 

Thirdly, the introduction of slightly new elements into a method alreadyestablished varies it beneficially; the new is soon fused with the old, and the monotony ceases to be oppressive. But if the new be too foreign, we cannot fuse the old and the new--nature seeming to hate equally toowide a deviation from ordinary practice and none at all. This factreappears in heredity as the beneficial effects of occasional crossing onthe one hand, and on the other, in the generally observed sterility ofhybrids. If heredity be an affair of memory, how can an embryo, say of amule, be expected to build up a mule on the strength of but twomule-memories? Hybridism causes a fault in the chain of memory, and itis to this cause that the usual sterility of hybrids must be referred. 

Fourthly, it requires many repeated impressions to fix a method firmly, but when it has been engrained into us we cease to have much recollectionof the manner in which it came to be so, or indeed of any individualrepetition, but sometimes a single impression, if prolonged as well asprofound, produces a lasting impression and is liable to return withsudden force, and then to go on returning to us at intervals. As ageneral rule, however, abnormal impressions cannot long hold their ownagainst the overwhelming preponderance of normal authority. This appearsin heredity as the normal non-inheritance of mutilations on the one hand, and on the other as their occasional inheritance in the case of injuriesfollowed by disease. 

Fifthly, if heredity and memory are essentially the same, we shouldexpect that no animal would develop new structures of importance afterthe age at which its species begins ordinarily to continue its race; forwe cannot suppose offspring to remember anything that happens to theparent subsequently to the parent's ceasing to contain the offspringwithin itself. From the average age, therefore, of reproduction, offspring should cease to have any farther steady, continuous memory tofall back upon; what memory there is should be full of faults, and assuch unreliable. An organism ought to develop as long as it is backed bymemory--that is to say, until the average age at which reproductionbegins; it should then continue to go for a time on the impetus alreadyreceived, and should eventually decay through failure of any memory tosupport it, and tell it what to do. This corresponds absolutely withwhat we observe in organisms generally, and explains, on the one hand, why the age of puberty marks the beginning of completed development--ariddle hitherto not only unexplained but, so far as I have seen, unasked;it explains, on the other hand, the phenomena of old age--hithertowithout even attempt at explanation. 

Sixthly, those organisms that are the longest in reaching maturity shouldon the average be the longest-lived, for they will have received the mostmomentous impulse from the weight of memory behind them. This harmoniseswith the latest opinion as to the facts. In his article on Weismann inthe _Contemporary Review_ for May 1890, Mr. Romanes writes: "ProfessorWeismann has shown that there is throughout the metazoa a generalcorrelation between the natural lifetime of individuals composing anygiven species, and the age at which they reach maturity or first becomecapable of procreation. " This, I believe, has been the conclusiongenerally arrived at by biologists for some years past. 

Lateness, then, in the average age of reproduction appears to be theprinciple underlying longevity. There does not appear at first sight tobe much connection between such distinct and apparently disconnectedphenomena as 1, the orderly normal progress of development; 2, atavismand the resumption of feral characteristics; 3, the more ordinaryresemblance _inter se_ of nearer relatives; 4, the benefit of anoccasional cross, and the usual sterility of hybrids; 5, theunconsciousness with which alike bodily development and ordinaryphysiological functions proceed, so long as they are normal; 6, theordinary non-inheritance, but occasional inheritance of mutilations; 7, the fact that puberty indicates the approach of maturity; 8, thephenomena of middle life and old age; 9, the principle underlyinglongevity. These phenomena have no conceivable bearing on one anotheruntil heredity and memory are regarded as part of the same story. Identify these two things, and I know no phenomenon of heredity that doesnot immediately become infinitely more intelligible. Is it conceivablethat a theory which harmonises so many facts hitherto regarded as withouteither connection or explanation should not deserve at any rateconsideration from those who profess to take an interest in biology?

It is not as though the theory were unknown, or had been condemned by ourleading men of science. Professor Ray Lankester introduced it to Englishreaders in an appreciative notice of Professor Hering's address, whichappeared in _Nature_, July 18, 1876. He wrote to the _Athenaeum_, March24, 1884, and claimed credit for having done so, but I do not believe hehas ever said more in public about it than what I have here referred to. Mr. Romanes did indeed try to crush it in _Nature_, January 27, 1881, butin 1883, in his "Mental Evolution in Animals, " he adopted its mainconclusion without acknowledgment. The _Athenaeum_, to my unboundedsurprise, called him to task for this (March 1, 1884), and since thattime he has given the Heringian theory a sufficiently wide berth. Mr. Wallace showed himself favourably enough disposed towards the view thatheredity and memory are part of the same story when he reviewed my book"Life and Habit" in _Nature_, March 27, 1879, but he has never sincebetrayed any sign of being aware that such a theory existed. Mr. HerbertSpencer wrote to the _Athenaeum_ (April 5, 1884), and claimed the theoryfor himself, but, in spite of his doing this, he has never, that I haveseen, referred to the matter again. I have dealt sufficiently with hisclaim in my book, "Luck or Cunning. " {43} Lastly, Professor Heringhimself has never that I know of touched his own theory since the singleshort address read in 1870, and translated by me in 1881. Every one, even its originator, except myself, seems afraid to open his mouth aboutit. Of course the inference suggests itself that other people have moresense than I have. I readily admit it; but why have so many of ourleaders shown such a strong hankering after the theory, if there isnothing in it?

The deadlock that I have pointed out as existing in Darwinism will, Idoubt not, lead ere long to a consideration of Professor Hering's theory. English biologists are little likely to find Weismann satisfactory forlong, and if he breaks down there is nothing left for them but Lamarck, supplemented by the important and elucidatory corollary on his theoryproposed by Professor Hering. When the time arrives for this to obtain ahearing it will be confirmed, doubtless, by arguments clearer and moreforcible than any I have been able to adduce; I shall then be delightedto resign the championship which till then I shall continue, as for someyears past, to have much pleasure in sustaining. Heretofore mysatisfaction has mainly lain in the fact that more of our prominent menof science have seemed anxious to claim the theory than to refute it; inthe confidence thus engendered I leave it to any fuller considerationwhich the outline I have above given may incline the reader to bestowupon it. 

Footnotes:

{1} Published in the _Universal Review_, July 1888. 

{2} Published in the _Universal Review_, December 1890. 

{3} Published in the _Universal Review_, May 1889. As I have severaltimes been asked if the letters here reprinted were not fabricated byButler himself, I take this opportunity of stating that they areauthentic in every particular, and that the originals are now in mypossession. --R. A. S. 

{4} An address delivered at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895. 

{5} "The Foundations of Belief, " by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour. Longmans, 1895, p. 48. 

{6} Published in the _Universal Review_, November 1888. 

{7} Since this essay was written it has been ascertained by CavaliereFrancesco Negri, of Casale Monferrato, that Tabachetti died in 1615. If, therefore, the Sanctuary of Montrigone was not founded until 1631, it isplain that Tabachetti cannot have worked there. All the latestdiscoveries about Tabachetti's career will be found in Cavaliere Negri'spamphlet "Il Santuario di Crea" (Alessandria, 1902). See also note on p. 154. --R. A. S. 

{8} Published in the _Universal Review_, December 1889. 

{9} Longmans & Co. , 1890. 

{10} Longmans & Co. , 1890. 

{11} Published in the _Universal Review_, November 1890. 

{12} Longmans & Co. , 1890. 

{13} M. Ruppen's words run: "1687 wurde die Kapelle zur hohen Stiegegebaut, 1747 durch Zusatz vergrossert und 1755 mit Orgeln ausgestattet. Anton Ruppen, ein geschickter Steinhauer mid Maurermeister leitete denKapellebau, und machte darin das kleinere Altarlein. Bei der hohenStiege war fruher kein Gebetshauslein; nur ein wunderthatiges Bildleinder Mutter Gottes stand da in einer Mauer vor dem fromme Hirten und vielandachtiges Volk unter freiem Himmel beteten. 

"1709 wurden die kleinen Kapellelein die 15 Geheimnisse des Psaltersvorstelland auf dem Wege zur hohen Stiege gebaut. Jeder Haushalter desViertels Fee ubernahm den Bau eines dieser Geheimnisskapellen, und einbesonderer Gutthater dieser frommen Unternehmung war HeinrichAndenmatten, nachher Bruder der Geselischaft Jesu. "

{14} The story of Tabachetti's incarceration is very doubtful. CavaliereF. Negri, to whose book on Tabachetti and his work at Crea I have alreadyreferred the reader, does not mention it. Tabachetti left his nativeDinant in 1585, and from that date until his death in 1615 he appears tohave worked chiefly at Varallo and Crea. There is a document inexistence stating that in 1588 he executed a statue for the hermitage ofS. Rocco, at Crea, which, if it is to be relied on, disposes both of theincarceration and of the visit to Saas. It is possible, however, thatthe date is 1598, in which case Butler's theory of the visit to Saas mayhold good. In 1590 Tabachetti was certainly at Varallo, and again in1594, 1599, and 1602. He died in 1615, possibly during a visit toVarallo, though his home at that time was Costigliole, near Asti. --R. A. S. 

{15} This is thus chronicled by M. Ruppen: "1589 den 9 September wareine Wassergrosse, die viel Schaden verursachte. Die Thalstrasse, dievon den Steinmatten an bis zur Kirche am Ufer der Visp lag, wurde ganzzerstort. Man ward gezwungen eine neue Strasse in einiger Entfernung vomWasser durch einen alten Fussweg auszuhauen welche vier und einerhalbenViertel der Klafter, oder 6 Schuh und 9 Zoll breit soilte. " (p. 43). 

{16} A lecture delivered at the Working Men's College in Great OrmondStreet, March 15, 1890; rewritten and delivered again at the SomervilleClub, February 13, 1894. 

{17} "Correlation of Forces": Longmans, 1874, p. 15. 

{18} "Three Lectures on the Science of Language, " Longmans, 1889, p. 4. 

{19} "Science of Thought, " Longmans, 1887, p. 9. 

{20} Published in the _Universal Review_, April, May, and June 1890. 

{21} "Voyages of the _Adventure_ and _Beagle_, " iii. P. 237. 

{22} "Luck, or Cunning, as the main means of Organic Modification?"(Longmans), pp. 179, 180. 

{23} _Journals of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society_ (Zoology, vol. Iii. ), 1859, p. 61. 

{24} "Darwinism" (Macmillan, 1889), p. 129. 

{25} Longmans, 1890, p. 376. 

{26} See _Nature_, March 6, 1890. 

{27} "Origin of Species, " sixth edition, 1888, vol. I. P. 168. 

{28} "Origin of Species, " sixth edition, 1888, vol. Ii. P. 261. 

{29} Mr. J. T. Cunningham, of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Plymouth, has called my attention to the fact that I have ascribed toProfessor Ray Lankester a criticism on Mr. Wallace's remarks upon theeyes of certain fiat-fish, which Professor Ray Lankester was, in reality, only adopting--with full acknowledgment--from Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham has left it to me whether to correct my omission publicly ornot, but he would so plainly prefer my doing so that I consider myselfbound to insert this note. Curiously enough I find that in my book"Evolution Old and New, " I gave what Lamarck actually said upon the eyesof flat-fish, and having been led to return to the subject, I may as wellquote his words. He wrote:--

"Need--always occasioned by the circumstances in which an animal isplaced, and followed by sustained efforts at gratification--can not onlymodify an organ--that is to say, augment or reduce it--but can change itsposition when the case requires its removal. 

"Ocean fishes have occasion to see what is on either side of them, andhave their eyes accordingly placed on either side of their head. Somefishes, however, have their abode near coasts on submarine banks andinclinations, and are thus forced to flatten themselves as much aspossible in order to get as near as they can to the shore. In thissituation they receive more light from above than from below, and find itnecessary to pay attention to whatever happens to be above them; thisneed has involved the displacement of their eyes, which now take theremarkable position which we observe in the case of soles, turbots, plaice, &c. The transfer of position is not even yet complete in thecase of these fishes, and the eyes are not, therefore, symmetricallyplaced; but they are so with the skate, whose head and whole body areequally disposed on either side a longitudinal section. Hence the eyesof this fish are placed symmetrically upon the uppermost_side_. "--_Philosophie Zoologique_, tom. I. , pp. 250, 251. Edition C. Martins. Paris, 1873. 

{30} "Essays on Heredity, " &c. , Oxford, 1889, p. 171. 

{31} "Essays on Heredity, " &c. , Oxford, 1889, p. 266. 

{32} "Darwinism, " 1889, p. 440. 

{33} Page 83. 

{34} Vol. I. P. 466, &c. Ed. 1885. 

{35} "Darwinism, " p. 440. 

{36} Longmans, 1890. 

{37} Tom. Iv. P. 383. Ed. 1753. 

{38} Essays, &c. , p. 447. 

{39} "Zoonomia, " 1794, vol. I. P. 480. 

{40} Longmans, 1890. 

{41} Longmans, 1890. 

{42} Longmans, 1890. 

{43} Longmans, 1890.