NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CCCXXXVIII. JANUARY, 1885. YITUPERATJON IN POLITICS. IN an ideal method of popular government candidates for office would be selected for their faculty for public business, their good sense, their probity, and their proved purpose to sacrifice personal interests and ambition to a constitutional and impartial administration of their trust; the ordinary presump- tion being that they who are least anxious for the office are worthiest of the trust. An election campaign would consist of a temperate discussion, addressed to the intelligence of the people, of any questions of statesmanship and policy involved in the pending issue, with only such criticism of the private character of the candidate as might relate to his convictions and qualifications in those particulars. The election itself would then be a fair expression, under the provisions of law, of the choice of every citizen entitled to suffrage. Whatever capacities or accomplishments, virtues or graces, might be found in the candidate beyond the mark thus designated, must be regarded as advantages rather than as essentials to his fitness; and whatever defects he might have in other respects would be occasions of understood regret rather than subjects for gratui- tous gossip or public attack. It is assumed that moral decency VOL. CXL.NO. 338. 1 2 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. is included in probity. It is also assumed that experience has shown political parties to be a general convenience for carrying on the practical operations of the governmental system. They are not the creature of the state, but of exigencies in the state that may be local or transient. They are a foe to good govern- ment when they substitute subordinate ends for the order and welfare of society; they are a usurpation when they invade personal independence of thought or action; they are unpatriotic when they coerce political conduct to the damage of personal manhood; and they are an impertinence when they undertake to dictate to the judgment or conscience of the individual voter. Vituperation in politics is largely due to party in politics. All the personal animosities between politicians in the whole country would not go very far to produce the venom discharged from press and platform in the course of a presidential election; nor would it be distilled or diffused to any considerable extent by the mere heating and antagonizing force of differences of opinion on great matters of public concern. It is true that some of these, pertaining to both domestic and foreign policy, so affect material industries and profits as to engage passion as well as reason and arouse a polemical temper. Regarded, how- ever, purely as subjects of national legislation, or as studies in political economy, it cannot be supposed that State rights and federal centralization, internal revenue or improvements, the tariff or the currency, could ever provoke more than a moderate amount of angry abuse. Into other questions, like slavery, repudiation, Mormonism, and the regulation of the sale of liquors, a moral sentiment enters that is not unlikely to find vent in immoral speech. Yet it can hardly be doubted that reasonable limits would be set to all this sort of evil but for the instigation of that peculiar element in the social nature which we call party-spirit. It is one of the ways in which man in com- binations is worse than man by himself. Just as zeal for a sect in religion substitutes itself for faith in the Original of all relig- ious light and life, becoming at once provincial and quarrel- some, so servitude to a political party, with all its behests and devices, displaces loyalty to the supreme seat of truth and right in the nation, and is fatal to patriotism. Party is made a power of itself, irrespective of the principle that created it, standing somewhere between the sphere of personal accountability and the law of the land. It takes on authority, claims rights, issues VITUPERATION IN POLITICS. 3 commands, exercises privileges. Among the latter is the liberty of hatred and misrepresentation, the privilege of being a corn- mon scold. Here is an advocate before an unsworn bench and jury, unrestrained by the decencies of the court-room. What wonder if it sometimes sinks to vulgarity? If it is said that these dangers are obviated by the circumstance that parties are set over against one another, so that they neutralize each others wrongs, there is nevertheless a residuum of mischief, a part from the question directly in hand, in an injury done to the manners and character of the people. Without pretending that politics can be altogether detached from parties, thoughtful men, in proportion as they are patriotic, will weigh that injury. In view of the magnitude of this evil, as lately shown in the United States, one casts about in a spirit of judicial fairness to find some possible palliation. Allow, then, that in the masculine encounters of debate hard blows must be given and taken, that robust contestants cannot always be expected to glove their hands or polish their blades, and that wounded sensibilities are not to complain if the campaign does not always move To the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders. Allow also that, under the glamour of the strife, to the eye of his opponent a candidate for office is partially dehumanizedand passes for the time into the order of insensates. Allow, further ,that there is a widely accepted theory that, except for the immediate politi- cal purpose, the objurgative language is divested of its usually offensive meaning, being by common consent canceled after election. These extenuatious are admissible but they are, after all, much too slender to save the vituperative habit from being an abomination. As most germane to the subject-matter, among the counts of this reproach stands first a degradation of the business of gov- ernment itself. Inevitably men recognize a reciprocal relation between high place and him who holds it, between rule and ruler, between official authority and the personage wielding it. Republics have not yet exterminated the reverence that hedges about the person of a sovereign, nor is it best that, while changing the names and forms of power, they should abolish this salutary respect. Whatever lowers the height or cheapens the dignity of the chiefemperor or presidenttouches the 4 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIEIV. sanctity of law and impairs the awfulness of its execution, so long as the higher instincts of mankind continue as they are. Despotic Ca3sars or criminal presidents may have to be reckoned with terribly in the name of justice or liberty; but even regicide and impeachment ought to be managed with a certain decorum. Honor the king. Little service is done to history or morality by pictures of the vices and foibles of crown or court. Scotts capital representation of the weakness of royalty, in the Fort- unes of Nigel, hardly leaves the sweet taste in the mouth with which one ordinarily turns from his pages. If an empire is dis- honored with its throne, so is a democracy with its leaders; and there are better ways of making such leaders what they ought to be than vilifying their reputations. St. Paul was writing for the subjects of no particular kind of government, and like both a statesman and a gentleman, no less than an apostle, when he directed one of his juniors: Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, as if political vituperation were the very thing he had in mind. The standing of the presidency itself before the world, whether or not it is loftier than any kingship, has not been elevated by the canvass just closed, for ribaldry can elevate nothing. Whichever of the principal candidates might have prevailed, it must take more than four years of blameless living and administrative integrity to clear him of all marks and memories of the needless smirches with which ferocious pens and a prostituted art have blotted his name. Coarsely done or cleverly done, that cruel business has now, so soon, no approval in the conscience or kind-heartedness of the doers. It is even doubtful if the letters of Junius, unique contribution as they were to literature, classical as their invective is, raised the tone of British public life, or really changed the general estimate of North or Mansfield, Lord Granby or the Duke of Grafton. What shall be said of the lampoons of London, Paris, and New York? In this country, more than in any on earth, each citizen has a vital share in the common stock of national credit; here is a universal motive for the maintenance of that credit, and one means of maintaining it is to be jealous of the good repute of its chosen representatives. How much the political character of the country suffers from the ordeal of defamation to which all candidates for elective offices are exposed, begins to VITUPERATION IN POLITICS. 5 appear. A well-bred and self-respecting person need not be very fastidious to decline a race where the prize, if gained, is no offset to the bespattering on the course; or a post where his service to his constituents mnst be crippled by the malign false- hoods heaped on him before he reaches it. At almost any time in the past thirty years there have been statesmen and scholars in these States, whose names could be easily spoken, and enough of them to furnish a cabinet, if not a senate, who have silently preferred a clean retirement to a calumnious publicity. Neither property nor education, commerce nor manufactures, legislature nor judiciary, can afford to dispense with the strongest minds and ripest wisdom at the reckless pleasure of a few unscrupulous orators, editors, or preachers. It may be answered, that brave men should be equal to martyrdom. We are not dealing at present with the victims, bnt with the tormentors. During the presidential struggle ending in 1868 the writer of this was in conversation in Massachusetts with one of the most earnest and successful ministers in the land, who lived in one of the Middle States, and had extensive opportunities to know men as well as things accurately. Mention being casually made of Horatio Seymour, whose name was then before the people, the minister said, speaking without the least hesitation, positively and em- phatically: Mr. Seymour, sir, is a bad man; I refer not to his politics, but to his character. He is a copperhead, to be sure; but that is not what I mean now. He is a thoroughly bad man. Not many months afterward the hearer of this perfectly sincere slander had abundant knowledge that Mr. Seymours private life was and had been as nearly faultless as that of any Christian man within his acquaintance, and that the confidence reposed in him by those who knew him was absolute and unbounded. Other lines of life furnish no parallel to this traducement. In parliamentary assemblies, at the bar, on the exchange, on the street, in all the intercourse of civilized communities, a common law of civility condemns and restrains even personalities that are not slanderous, much more scurrility. Neighbors or strangers are not apt to assail each other rancorously with tongue or types on account of divergences of opinion on other subjects; and yet those differences continually divide men, as to their real interests, far more widely than almost any in politics. How is it that so rational an undertaking as a choice of rulers opens the sluice-ways? What can be the secret of 6 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. this affinity for poison in the process of reducing to practice a theory of political economy? Why should the fact that the friends of a fellow-citizen have thought him worthy to take up a grave and august duty suddenly develop the brutal side of our constitution, stimulate the relish for human vivisection, uncover again in the highest type the claws and stings of in- ferior animals, and rouse in mild-mannered husbands and fathers, sitting at desks or standing on platforms, the savagery that has been slumbering since the days of Hengist and Horsa? It looks like an exception to the unities of nature. It is a puzzle that might well exercise the wits of the masters of journalism for four years to come, North and South, East and West. A story of Samuel Ward, the Sam Ward of English dinner-tables, the most perfect gentleman of either hemisphere, is pertinent. In a company of clever people, who were talking of horses, as Englishmen occasionally do after dinner, Professor Huxley observed that the modern horse is without question a descendant of the ancient mesohippus; to which remark Mr. Ward replied that it was very sad, but the scandal never would have come out if the horse hadnt been running for something. Suppose we apply a test of sincerity. The struggle of 1884 has been attended with an unprecedented display of moral sensibility in two directions; in fact, it has created an original moral classification. As a singular effect of the nominations, it has been discovered that all Republicans have an intense horror of personal impurity, and that all Democrats abominate fraud and falsehood. That there should be just this uniform coincidence between the line dividing two great political par- ties and the line between two familiar forms of iniquity is what no sagacity could have foreseen. What can be the hid- den tie between free trade and veracity, or chastity and pro- tection? The two parties committed themselves on the ethical issue with a distinctness and emphasis that could leave no manner of misunderstanding. They declared themselves in every possible way in which opinion and conviction and passion can be expressed. What must follow? Whichever candidate was elected we should expect to see a new era of cleanliness and integrity. As the vote was close, just about one-half of the nation hereafter will be faultlessly chaste, and the other half incorruptibly honest. Dissolute or sensual Republicans VITUPERATION IN POLITICS. 7 whether editors, publishers, speech-makers, or office-holders will be patterns of domestic virtue. Lying, sordid, unscrupu- lous Democrats will disappear. People will say of man or woman, He is as trustworthy as a Democrat, or She is as modest as a Republican. The city of Washington will be transformed, unless the country has been for four mouths the theater of hypocrisy, and the canvass a din of sound and fury signifying nothing. Something might be said of the insult put by the scur- rilous style of political controversy upon the cause of good letters. Literary purity in America has many perils. Not the least of them lies in the rapidity and immensity of com- position and declamation in our periodical elections. News- paper writing favors some rhetorical merits, notably energy, conciseness, and vividness; and we have some fine specimens of editorial ability. It cannot be believed that the masters in that responsible calling will permit the disgraceful mistakes of the past year to be repeated. They will hardly consent, by constant extravagance of epithets and expletives in personal and partisan detraction, to destroy actual distinctions, to sub- merge the lights and shades of language nuder an effusion of words so superlative as to be meaningless, or to disfigure their style with slang. It would seem reasonable to hope that a cor- responding standard of taste, if not the rule of right, must forbid intrusion into those private quarters where either the bad traits imputed do not touch the administration of the office for which the candidate is set up, or where condemnation cannot be justi- fied till a judicial tribunal has pronounced sentence. The Almighty has often used rough instruments for rough work, thrashing guilty nations with jagged flails; but he reserves the ultimate judgment of men to his own omniscience. Apologies have been sometimes made for profane swearing, on the ground that a sound of strength in it carries compulsion, commanding obedience on the part of minds so low as to be insensible to any decorous address. Some such pretext may be thought to excuse violence or acerbity in polemics. It is a ffimsy defense, and it puts an undeserved contempt on even the worst of our kind. Men of any intellectual or moral rank whatever are not convinced or converted or corrected by wrath. They who are farthest astray or farthest down will see through the shallowness of those opponents who vilify only because they are 8 THE YORTH AMERWAY RE VIE W vile, or use 111th to fight with because they have no other ammu- nition. But charity forbids us to vituperate even the vitu- perators. To a degree deplorable and extraordinary we have had a political campaign of dirt and disgust. Let the dirt fall to dirt4 The disgust ought to remain to admonish us when the temptation returns. Nobody is the better, wiser, happier for all the scandals. Were there any actual service to any party in obloquy, the benefit on one side would offset the benefit on the other, like two successive torch-light processions with their pyrotechnics, leaving nothing but a bad smell in the air. It is not well to be reading every day, for four or five months, columns of the most explicit and dogmatic accusations, which at best make only an impression of unreality, exciting a frequent suspicion that we are being fooled, and, for the time, expelling from the mind every generous sentiment and every noble thought4 According to their natural or acquired moral aver- sions, men and women will feel special indignation either at sins of the will or sins of impulse, at rapacity or lust, at Marlborough or William Wycherley, at Sunderland or Henry Sidney. It will be safe to allow history and God to make up the final award for each of them. It will not be safe at all to construct standards of moral judgment out of our partisan predilections, or to let political prejudice instead of certified evidence determine our utterances about the living or the dead. F. D. HUNTINGTON. FROIJDES LIFE OF CARLYLE. Tnn greatest master of English prose within our generation intrusted the story of his life to one of the most skillful of living writers. The material for judging Thomas Carlyle is ample in- deed: thirty octavo volumes of his own, four volumes by his biog. rapher, two volumes of his Reminiscences, three volumes of his wifes letters, diaries, notes, personal anecdotes, gossip, portraits. Never was man~neither Johnson, Voltaire, Goethe, nor Byron more familiar, more interesting. We know now, perhaps, all of importance that we are ever likely to know. Sartor stands be- fore us at last as mere man. The philosopher of clothes has strip- ped off his own, to show us that he stands a son of Adam, assur- edly not ashamed, as bare before the world as when he came into it nearly ninety years ago. Have we gained so very much by all this volume of biograph- ical matter? Do we know Thomas Carlyle really better for it, more truly than we knew him from his books forty years ago, and from the passing glimpses of him and tales about him that we in London used to have while he was with us? It may be doubted. The man is in substance what we knew him and judged him to be. The biographies and autobiographies, the unroofing of his home and the unveiling of his hearth, the letters, journals, and recorded sayings, are intensely interesting. But they have told us things that we would rather not have heard. Those who loved him and those who loved her have been shocked, amazed, ashamed, in turn. Those who love good men and good women, those who honor great intellects, those who reverence human nature, have been wounded to the heart. Foul odors, as from a charnel-house, have been suddenly opened on us. We feel as if, in obedience to a call of duty, which we had never knowingly un- dertaken, we had been forced to stand beside some post mortem dissection of one we revered; as if the diaries of his very physi. 9

FROIJDES LIFE OF CARLYLE. Tnn greatest master of English prose within our generation intrusted the story of his life to one of the most skillful of living writers. The material for judging Thomas Carlyle is ample in- deed: thirty octavo volumes of his own, four volumes by his biog. rapher, two volumes of his Reminiscences, three volumes of his wifes letters, diaries, notes, personal anecdotes, gossip, portraits. Never was man~neither Johnson, Voltaire, Goethe, nor Byron more familiar, more interesting. We know now, perhaps, all of importance that we are ever likely to know. Sartor stands be- fore us at last as mere man. The philosopher of clothes has strip- ped off his own, to show us that he stands a son of Adam, assur- edly not ashamed, as bare before the world as when he came into it nearly ninety years ago. Have we gained so very much by all this volume of biograph- ical matter? Do we know Thomas Carlyle really better for it, more truly than we knew him from his books forty years ago, and from the passing glimpses of him and tales about him that we in London used to have while he was with us? It may be doubted. The man is in substance what we knew him and judged him to be. The biographies and autobiographies, the unroofing of his home and the unveiling of his hearth, the letters, journals, and recorded sayings, are intensely interesting. But they have told us things that we would rather not have heard. Those who loved him and those who loved her have been shocked, amazed, ashamed, in turn. Those who love good men and good women, those who honor great intellects, those who reverence human nature, have been wounded to the heart. Foul odors, as from a charnel-house, have been suddenly opened on us. We feel as if, in obedience to a call of duty, which we had never knowingly un- dertaken, we had been forced to stand beside some post mortem dissection of one we revered; as if the diaries of his very physi. 9 10 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W cians and surgeons had been read to us. They have shown us the very entrails of our dead friend. Expede Hannibalem, quot libras in duce summo Inyenje& ? And yet, now that we have gone through all this, do we really know him better ~ Is there anything essential that we did not already know ~ Of essential, no thing. It is the Thomas Carlyle we knew all our livesgreat prose-poet, potent inspirer of high purposes, master of literary painting, a type of indomitable courage. His own newly published words are full of the old force, but they add nothing to onr sense of his genius. The anec- dotes and the revelations have a ghastly interest that is difficult to resist. He holds us with his glittering eye; we listen like a three-years child; the mariner hath his will. We must all stand and hear the tale even if we shudder. But the tale tells us noth- ing that we did not know. And yet, perhaps, to the multitude and the thoughtless, the new biographical instrument through which we are bidden to look at our old master may prove a hindrance and a source of error. Those who can use the human microscope will under- stand the exaggeration and distortion it presents. The rugosi- ties of the surface, the anatomical details it reveals, will not disgust them. But the many will be puzzled and misled. Such was the imaginative hypertrophy in which Carlyles great brain habitually worked, such the Rabelaisian redundancy of his humor, such the punctilious piety of his literary executor, that his memory has been subjected to a wholly abnormal examina- tion. Jeremy Bentham, in the interest of mankind and to the furtherance of science, left his body to be dealt with by the surgeons, and then to be preserved to the gaze of the world in the museum of University College. Thomas Carlyle has chosen to leave his life and his home, his aches and his sores, his grumblings and his washing-bills, to the impartial verdict of posterity. In Mr. Froude he has found a trustee who is ready to carry out his wishes without flinching. The Shakes- pearean wealth of imagery that Carlyle carried about with him into every detail of the supper-table or the wardrobe, the scrup- ulosity of the disciple, and his abundant power as a colorist, have contrived to present a series of pictures that, to those not accustomed to the methods of psychological portrait-painting, FROUDES LIFE OF CARL YLE. 11 may give the effect of a caricature. It is as if the living body of Thomas Carlyle were subjected to the resources of modern science, and the untrained public were called in to stand at the instruments. The microphone is used to enlarge his speech. The grunt or the psha that escapes the best of us at times is heard, by Mr. Froudes scientific appliances, as the roariug of a wounded buffalo. The old mans laugh, which in life was so cheery, comes up to us as out of a phonograph, harsh as the mockery of the devils that Dante heard in Malebolge. The oxy- hydrogen microscope is applied to the pimples on his chin or the warts on his thumb, and they loom to us as big as wens or cancers. The electric light is thrown upon the bared nerve; the photograph reveals the excoriations or callosities of every inch of skin. Poor Swift suffered something of the kind, and Rous- seau; and one cannot but regret that, to a brain so far more sane, to a nature so far more robust than theirs, it has been needful to apply a somewhat similar resource. As we read these letters and diaries, these tales of Carlyle and of his wife, on which art has thrown a light so dazzling, and a magnifying power so peculiar, we feel as if we were caught up again into the bewildering realm of Brobdingnag. Husband and wife rail at each other like giants and giantesses in a fairy tale; when they have a tiff, it stuns us like the Tower of BabeL The giants head is the size of a house, with warts like a camels hump, and a hide like an elephants. Bugs as big as hedge-hogs crawl over his bed. Cocks and hens as large as ostriches crow and scream with the power of a steam-whistle. The giant clears his throat with the sound of an express train; and if his stomach aches, his groaning is as loud as the roaring of a cow that has lost her calf. We know, if the world does not, that all this is an optical and acoustic effect of the oxy-hydrogen or electric mag- nifier, of the combination of literary telephone, microphone, and phonograph. But though we know better than to take it all as literal, we are not raised or purified by it. We do not know our fine old master any better, we do not love him more, we do not feel him to be a greater, more creative soul. No, rather con- trariwise. Thomas Carlyle stands out to us in these posthumous volumes substantially the man we found him in the thirty volumes of his works. Somewhat darker, fiercer, more inhuman in his ill moods, perhaps; more cruel in little things than we 12 TILE NOI?TH AMEI?ICAN 1i~E ViEW~ could suppose; more petulant and unmanly at times, with uglier domestic skeletons than we ever suspected. All this is clear and naked. He and his trustee will have it so. They have forced us to pry into his vitals, one might almost say into his boils and blains. And the world has turned aside shuddering. But this is not all the man, nor the true man; much of it we see to be morbid anatomy; much of it is mere literary exaggeration. Let us look calmly at the whole tale, and weigh the whole thirty- nine volumes in the mass, and we see still a very great nature; a very noble life, however unlovely; a very memorable work done, passing though it be, leaving no fruit behind. But in the end the man stands out, of solid worth and indomitable will; capable of great generosity, of sincere love; faithful, truthful, simple, kindly, in the main, in all the greater duties; and of heroic courage in the task to which his life was so passionately dedicated from his youth. This is the substance, mixed as we now see it, from first to last, with really ferocious habits in smaller things, strange coarseness of fiber, an egoism hardly sane, and laughable weakness in the petty ills of existence. That imagination of his, as powerful in its sphere as any recorded in our literature, is now seen to be part of his breath and life. The poets eye rolls in a fine frenzy night and day incessantly, as he tosses on his bed or eats his porridge, or walks abroad. Carlyle lives in one waking vision; houses, factories, fields and mountains glared at him like phantoms in Ilades; men and women around him gibbered with the hollow voices of ghosts; the ordinary sounds of our daily life a barking dog, a crowing cock, the rattle of wheels, and the tradesmans call seemed to him the din of a nightmare. Carlyle walked about London like Dante in the streets of Verona, gnawing his own heart and dreaming dreams of Inferno. To both the passers-by might have said, See! there goes the man who has seen hell! And that marvelous gift of language we see in his journals and letters to be the very skin of his body; the style itself part of his very mind, which he could no more put off than he could put off his Annandale accent. We see it shaping every word he uttered or spoke, to his wife, his mother, the most trivial phrase, the most solemn records of his heart, all stand in the irrepressible Carlylese. Carlylese is not a wholly satisfactory, never a pleasing tongue; the finest Carlylese is never equal to fine English; and yet it is one of the most potent instruments FROUDES LIFE OF CARL YLE. 13 ever used by articulate Englishman. And here we see it grow- ing upon him, mastering him, deforming his very thought at last; becoming in the end a fetish to him, a mannerism or habit, as unpleasant as that of cursing or spitting. The essential thing, perhaps the only thing, about a writer that concerns the public is how he wrote his books. And in this biography we see Carlyle at work, full of zeal and endurance. He was a great and powerful worker. Yet even here let us not exaggerate. Compared with the really great students of the world, Carlyle was almost an amateur. Littr4, with his authen- tic sixteen hours of work each day, an ordinary German pro- fessor, scores of scholars and students, much exceed his utmost limits. Indeed, the book gives us rather the impression of very frequent holidays and an immense range of social entertainment. It is the same with his material resources. Carlyle lived and worked in poverty, in most honorable poverty, most nobly ac~epted and even welcomed. There is nothing finer in literary history than the stern resolution with which he clung to a life of simplicity. Yet here, again, one must not exaggerate. His real difficulties about money lasted at most four or five years. During the greater part of his life he had nearly all that he seriously needed. At no time did his mode of living fall below the standard of comfort to which he had been accustomed to his full manhood. It would have been regarded as luxurious by his father and his mother, his sisters, and his entire family. A man that kept a horse to ride almost all through life ; made annual tours to Scotland, at times to Wales, Ireland, Germany, or the Mediterranean; whose friends gave him horses, wine, books, houses, when ever they were needed; to whom the most delightful homes in England were always open; whom so many persons, both friends and strangers, served freely for love, was never in poverty. To those who recall how many men of genius have labored in real want, in absolute neglect, sick, friendless, op- pressed, and hungry, it is not pleasant to read these howls of rage and despair from a man that was well fed, well housed, well received, married to a noble woman, welcomed by all that is great, powerful, and cultured, surfeited with all that wealth could offer him, and bored by the attentions of a crowd of devoted friends. And this miserable tale of his married life is all clear now; neither so sacred and profound as his biographer thinks, nor so 14 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. evil as some in their first anger declared. That Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh were two people of deep natures, both strong, proud, generous, and sensitive, is most clear; that she had a most acute brain, and he unique genius; that they both vehe- mently resolved to do their duty in their homes; that both were capable of deep affection ; that each had for the other a solid esteem and a keen admiration, deepening perhaps at last into love, and finally, on his side, into a passion of remorse and regret,aJ.l this is clear to all men. Nor is it less clear that their married life from the first day had an unwholesome side that it was often a kind of torture to one, and sometimes to both; that it was broken by prolonged spasms of jealousy and unhap- piness; dimmed by frequent separation, in fact, and by life-long lukewarmness in heart. It is all most plain; he has forced us to stand and listen to his sobs of remorse and pity. It is a cruel story; why can we not be spared? What right or what duty have we to be called in so long after death to sit in judgment pn these full hearts beating with such wrath, and poured out with so much hot indignation, to listen over again to the bitter speecli, to watch the tragic misunderstanding growing up between two fine spirits that earnestly sought to love and to cherish? Why need we be summoned to the castigation of this posthumous penance? Is it the right of every man who may have written some great books to fling into the street the inner sanctities of his hearth, his wifes letters, diaries, clothes, and marriage bed, his pots and his pans, the rag-basket of his sores, and the scrib- blings of his ill-humors; calling on men, women, and children to take warning in the name of Gods truth and mans shame? And can it be the duty of a friend to whom the revolting office is committed to pour forth this mass of domestic lumber and cast clothing in such quantity that an untrue effect is produced on the reader? Few are the homes without their skeleton, or the lives that have nothing unseemly within them. And when the skeleton is made to dance before our eyes with wondrous literary juggling, and the unseemly thing is painted by the hand of Spagnoletto or Goya, a moral wound is inflicted on the conscience of men. Let us correct this impression produced by unwholesome art. We have the most certain witness to prove that the married life of Carlyle was not the failure and wreck which these volumes might incline not a few to believe. If it never reached the FROUDES LIFE OF CARL YLE. 15 highest and most lovely region of married happiness, and at times came perilously close to married misery, it was in the main the worthy effort after happiness of two just spirits, too much resembling each other to be happy in their own marriage, each perhaps too faulty to be perfectly happy in any marriage. It is a tale of millions of homes, somewhat below the chosen few, far above the actual wrecks czTh~vov & ()~vov ~ rb ~ ~ v~x& rw. What have we to do with this? And yet, perhaps it is as well that now and then the veil should be lifted from the fireside, and from off the human heart of man and wife. It is a mystery that no poet and no romance has ever solved. What depths and infinite windings are there in the heart and life of man! Can we ever hear enough as to the sources of happiness and misery, of love and despair? Do we not learn much when we have the mysteries unbared; when we watch the harsh word and look cutting into the nerves of the other; when we trace the gathering volume of irri- tation and offense, the wanderings of two hearts, each too proud to speak the little word that would end it all; when we see a good and humane soul blindly groping toward a pit, blundering into undesigned wrong from which certain agony must come? In a book, or on the stage, we follow all this with emotion and almost with delight. In real life it is too horrible, too unfathomable, too humiliating to human nature to suffer us to look on steadily. The real tales of this sort are to be guessed at for the most part. Let us, too, pass reverently, keeping silence even from good words. Such a drama of real life these volumes reveal to us, true and literal, recorded by one of the greatest dramatists in our language, out of things known only to him and to one other. The remorse of Thomas Carlyle is a tragedy more painful than %Edipns or Lear; it is so homely, photo- graphic, realistic in its incidents. Memory is more potent than imao~ination; and the memory of one of the most imaginative of modern men is an instrument of terrible power. How a great man and a good woman can torture each other and themselves for the lack of certain humanities, and by reason of certain morbid egoisms, all this has been told us by a master of liter- ary picturing; a tale clearer to his vision than any beheld in the minds eye of Shakespeare himself. And oh, the pity of it! that it is one of Shakespeares kith and kin who thus bares his head in the storm and tears out his own heart for us to see. 16 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE 17. It is not art, this. No, nor truth, nor human nature. It needs must be that offenses come, but woe to him by whom they come. If it be that such an autopsy of the personal and domestic life of our fellow-men is ever desirable, why, we may ask, need the subject be a man that has written famous books? The great writers are seldom great characters their homes are rarely ex- amples; their surroundings often unworthy. Their mode of existence is usually abnormal, and they do not, as a rule, triumph over its perils. Exaggeration by themselves and by their friends is almost a consequence of their literary distinction. They lead, for the most part, lives unwholesomely stimulated on one side, and these lives are recorded with disproportioned minuteness and needless coloring. It is true that mankind crave for these over-elaborated portraits; but morality and society in no way gain by satisfying the demand for their manufacture. Truth! truth! what things are done in thy name, as Madame Roland said of liberty. Because a man has written some very extraordinary books, the world craves to know how the writer of them lived. And so they ransack his drawers when he is dead; and every crude word he ever flung upon paper, or growled out in his sulks, is published to mankind. Even the secret thoughts of his wife, the sentences of grief, anger, mis- understanding, wrung from her in tears in the silence of her chamber, become literary property and go through several editions. What right has any man (no leave given) to publish the innermost wailing of a womans heart, which she herself kept secret from every eye, even from her husbands? And every scurrilous phrase, calumny, or caricature that ever slipped from the eminent writer is to be added to the literature of our country, in the name of truth and to the eternal confusion of cant. Better cant itself than the washings and offscourings of these pots and pans, where the eminent writer flung the orts of his household. That a master of gibes and flouts, the greatest, perhaps, in our modern history, should get into the habit of painting caricatures of every man, woman, and child that ever crossed his path, was bad enough. But to publish all these ill-natured scrawls, as soon as he is dead, is hardly a work of moral duty. This man, we read more than once, is a compound of frog and viper; that one is an inferior kind of Robespierre; Macaulay is a squat, low-browed, commonplace~~ object; Wordsworth FROUDES LIFE OF CARL YLE. 17 is a small, diluted man, a contemptibiity; Coleridge, a weltering, ineffectual being ~ Keatss poems are dead dog; Keble, author of the Christizan Year, is a little ape; Car- dinal Newman has not the intellect of a moderate-sized rabbit; Pickwick is lowest trash; Charles Lamb is a pitiful ~ a despicable abortion ~); the Saturday Reviewer is a dirty puppy; Mill is a poor, frozen, mechanical being, a logicchopping engine. The most memorable thing about Grote is his spout mouth; ab out Bright his cock-nose. Gladstone is one of the contemptiblest men, a spectral kind of phantasm, nothing in him but forms and ~ And this is Truth! Say rather, that it is serving round a famous mans spittoon. If this mere spittle were in truth Car- lyles mind, one would hold it as rancid and as false as any on record. But it is not his real mind. Carlyle, one of the greatest caricaturists that ever lived, got into a mental habit like that with which we see persons afflicted who, under nervous excite- ment, involuntarily gibber and make faces at strangers. Carlyle was incessantly making faces at everybody. The professional caricaturist (poor devil) goes about the world scrawling on his shirt-sleeve grotesque sketches of everything he sees. And so this master of nicknames jots down his buffooneries wholesale. But all this is really cant, a vile habit, a trick that became his master and not a little disfigures his veracity. And that other trick of cursing and be fouling the entire human raceman, woman, and child, horse or dog, cock or hen, all that cross the Carlylian orbit, are bespattered with a torrent of Ernulphuss cursing, which begins by being silly, and ends by becoming sickening. A maid-servant is never spoken of but as a puddle, a scandalous randy,~~ a sluttish harlot~~ a man- servant is always a ~(fiunkey.~~ The valet that brings him hot water and brushes his clothes is a fiunkey of the devil. This uniform brutality toward servants is a very evil sign. People that are always quarreling with those who serve them in their homes have assuredly something wrong with them ill-con- ditioned, we say. The world at large is a dusty fuliginous chaos; Europe a huge suppuration~~ society a festering dung-heap, and so on. I find emptiness and chagrin, he cries; I can reverence no existing man. To how many things is one tempted to say with slow emphasis, Du galgenaas (thou gallows-carrion ). There is some relief to me in a word VOL. CXL.NO. 338. 2 18 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W~ like that. Alas! what a melancholy cant i~ here! A noble spirit, in its musings, fretting itself into a temper like nothing in this world but that of the street Arab or hungry coster- monger, whose every sentence contains an oath and names that we only express by a blank. That any human soul could sink to the point of finding pleasure in calling men and things thou gallows-carrion is pitiful enough! But solemnly to record it and print it as a typical thought! 0 Thomas, Thomas, thou wast a rugged, stormy soul in life! But it would be a deep wrong to think this crazy venom, worthy of some literary Quilp, was the truth about thee! Let us shut up this waste-basket of a great mans spleen; it gives no true picture of his inner nature. As he said himself, the world will never know my life; and to his biographer he said, Forbear, poor fool ~ For all the talk about truth and scorn of concealment, there are blanks and reticences and material suppression of important fact. Even in this heap of dirty linen there are things kept covered. It is droll to think what was the line below which outrage, disgust, and public scandal were thought to lie. Thomas Carlyle is strong enough to bear much, and his memory will bear even this. Scores and scores of men that knew him well still walk the earth. They tell us of a generous, hearty, simple man of genius, manly in his bearing, in his happier moods friendly and even dignified. The present writer can remember him in extreme old age, quite a model of courteous and cheery repose, most ready to give, open of access, simple, fatherly, nay, patriarchal. That this venerable and stately elder had had his hours of darkness was indeed most clear. But oh, that, as he said, his bewildered wrestlings~~ could have been buried there! We gain nothing new, nothing true in the inner sense. It is like hanging out his old clothes on a waxen image of the man. What then, in sooth, is the meaning of these strange contra- dictions? What is the riddle of a nature that seems to have poured forth its last drop only to puzzle us more? Here is a man with poetic gifts of the first rank, a born artist, yet whose art is a perpetual torment to him, having to the last something uncouth and abortive in all its creations. Here is a man with an insight that at times touches that of Tacitus, Bacon, or Goethe, yet whose gift ends in a wearisome knack of caricature. Here is one of the great masters of the English tongue, who FROUDES LIFE OF CARLYLE. 19 finally settles into a tiresome mannerism. A man, one would think, of really religions nature, whose religion it is hardly pos- sible to put into words, who with God, devil, hell, and damnation as often on his lips as on a carters, appears now to have denied that any of these had practical effect on human affairs in any literal sense. And so one who has written some of the most powerful books of this century, and deeply stirred the mind of the last generation, has passed away without leaving more than a chapter in the history of literature, without fonud- ing anything, leaving behind him to carry on his work two or three men that have just learned to mimic his cloudy jeremiads. We can all see now that he really, in his heart, believed in nothing. All beliefs, demonstrations, certainties of other peo- ple he swept away. There were hundreds and thousands, he thinks, of greater men than Newton. Everything like a system, a set of doctrines, a few coherent principles, even, was all mere cant, windbags, shams,inanities. The old Hebrew belief was Houndsdltch; the modern belief in realities was atheism. Carlyle, like Descartes, made a tabula rasa of all belief. He then interpreted cogito ergo sum to mean, I think, therefore Jam; no one else thinks, therefore all others are shams. But Carlyle, being not a philosopher, but a prose poet, could get no further. Having come out of Houndsditch himself, he hugged the rags of Houndsditch to his dying day round his brawny limbs. The Bible continued to serve him with horrible expletives and apocalyptic tropes. Calvinism had bred in him the moody, dogged, mystical temper of the Cameronian peasant. He flung off the creed, but he kept the temper. Metaphysics, of the Kantian or Hegeian kind, he rejected, also, retaining, unluckily, the key to the cloudland, the Ich and the Nicht-Jich, the bare idea of absolute and transcendental. Hence Carlyle, rejecting at once all theologies, all philosophies, all syntheses alike, and bound by his very ideal to ridicule the possibility of any the- ology, any philosophy, any synthesis, was forced into a creed that at last got stereotyped into the simple words, I believe in Thomas Carlyle; which faith, unless a man keep, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And so it was that a man, by nature of noble sincerity and unselfishness, of keen vision and profound yearning after good- ness and truth, came, by the power of a gloomy superstition, to reach such heights of maniacal egoism, such depths of corrosive 20 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. inhumanity, as he and his friends have scattered through these posthumous volumes. And with all this raving about atheists and unbelievers, Thomas Carlyle stands pilloried on the pedestal that he so laboriously framed for himself, as of all modern Englishmen the one most utterly naked of any intelligible belief. For neither he nor his biographer can get any further in any definite proposition than that this earth was tophet, and Thomas Carlyle the only wise man in it. There is not in these volumes one philosophic, religious, or social doctrine nothing constructive, directing, or fruitful. There is railing, mockery, and imprecation of a truly Gargantuan kind; but what of real, humane, positive, or systematic? Words, words, pictures, tropes, sublimities enough to make the major and the minor prophets; but nothing to hold on to, to work with, or to teach. It comes out that this flux of talk about devil, hell, tophet, and heaven, is all allegory or image. Thomas Carlyle never believed that the devil really made the cocks crow or spoiled his porridge, or that his good friends and neighbors would end in everlasting fire. No! nor that God specially interposed for him to enable him to finish his chapter or digest his dinner, or that all the petty trifles of his life were the peculiar work of His unspeakable mercy. All this was cant, trick of irreverent speech, habit of bilious self-absorption, nothing else. The Immensities and Unspeakabilities come at last to this. One might as well say the Brutalities, and the Self-idolatries, and the Utter Nonsensicalities. For at the close of his long life Carlyle found out at last that God does nothing. Au otiose God, then, surveying unmoved this dusty, fuliginous chaos, is the residuum of all this furious apostrophizing. Wreck, failure, hopelessness,these are the words that the faithful disciple inscribes on his masters grave. The greatest will and courage cannot help the man that obstinately defies his fellow-men. The grandest literary genius will enable no man to solve de novo by his own single insight the problems of phi- losophy and life. The most passionate yearning after right will not suffice to him who resolves to seek right by the light of his own unaided conscience. And thus the great brain and the fine nature of Carlyle end in an egoism that comes perilously near to mania. No thinker indeed he, if by thinking we mean the coherent working out of complex questions to practical results. None but a few literary dreamers even call him thinker. And it FROUDES LIFE OF CARLYLE. 21 is not given to poets or to prophets to teach us philosophy, nor duty, nor truth. Nay, the sons of the prophet can do little now but show us how hopelessly their master ended, when he pre- tended to teach as well as to picture, to astonish, or to stimulate. What a pitiful tale it is! A grand imaginatiou stinging itself to death, like a scorpion, in its frenzy of self-absorption; a generous heart turned to gall because it had lost its way, lost all hope of finding a way; an influence, a master of speech, a glorious inciter to great things; an influence, deeper doubtless than Coleridge, higher than Johnson, but how much lower than the mighty Burke! Let us think of him sadly and kindly, lying amongst the Annan- dale peasants from whom he came forth and of whom he was ever one. Compare the cruel storms in the life of this lost soul with the serene humanity of those whom he nicknamed atheists. Read the autobiography of Hume, and see how a really great thinker could die, with sweetness, hope, and love in every tone. Or read the memoirs of Gibbon, or the life of Turgot, of Adam Smith, of Condorcet. Or, lastly, compare these fuliginous rail- ings and wailings with the manly, self-possessed, simple story told by the magnanimous spirit of John Mill. They found peace; while the wild spirit that in life covered them with his mockery, went tossing down to his last rest in an agony of scorn, hate, and despair. Wa, wa, he tells us the dying Frankish King cried, who is this mighty power which pulls down the strongest P Wa, wa, wails Thomas Carlyle, recognizing a power too strong to be resisted. That power is humanity, the human race, which his long life was devoted to deriding, and which now, in his death, still honors him as a brother of rare genius and mighty purpose. FREDERIC HARRISON. THE REUNITED UNION. ALTHOUGH the last gnu in the war for the restoration of the Union was fired nearly twenty years ago, and the dead and buried Confederacy has not since then given any sign of life, we have had a Union rather in name than in spirit. At the close of the period of reconstruction, the Northern States claimed for themselves, and to them was cheerfully as well as prudently conceded, a certain ascendency in Federal affairs other than that of numbers. The Southern States took a back seat in Congress, having no seat at all in any other department of the government. Mr. Carlisles elevation to the Speakership of the national House of Representatives was a timid step in advance. But even this was rendered possible only by the diversion from sectional politics that attended the discussion of the tariff. The election of Mr. Cleveland to the Presidency sweeps away all sectional distinctions and lines. It brings the South back into the Union and the Administration. It gives it The opportunity, which it ought to embrace, of impressing itself upon the national policy. It invests it with actual power and the responsibility that belongs to power, and bids it show its Teal character as a political entity and force. On the use it thus makes of its chance for good or ill will depend an answer to the question whether we shall, or shall not, have a revival of sectionalism in our future politics. As long as the South existed by a species of sufferance, and the North stood at once as the source and resource of national- ity, sectionalism senseless and selfish, insincere and exacting sprang from the nature of the case, and was inevitable. The temptation it offered to demagogues on both sides of the line could not be resisted. Nothing was easier than the fabrica. tion of campaign material, where the average politicians stock. in.trade consisted of a system of cross.petitions, of indictments 22

THE REUNITED UNION. ALTHOUGH the last gnu in the war for the restoration of the Union was fired nearly twenty years ago, and the dead and buried Confederacy has not since then given any sign of life, we have had a Union rather in name than in spirit. At the close of the period of reconstruction, the Northern States claimed for themselves, and to them was cheerfully as well as prudently conceded, a certain ascendency in Federal affairs other than that of numbers. The Southern States took a back seat in Congress, having no seat at all in any other department of the government. Mr. Carlisles elevation to the Speakership of the national House of Representatives was a timid step in advance. But even this was rendered possible only by the diversion from sectional politics that attended the discussion of the tariff. The election of Mr. Cleveland to the Presidency sweeps away all sectional distinctions and lines. It brings the South back into the Union and the Administration. It gives it The opportunity, which it ought to embrace, of impressing itself upon the national policy. It invests it with actual power and the responsibility that belongs to power, and bids it show its Teal character as a political entity and force. On the use it thus makes of its chance for good or ill will depend an answer to the question whether we shall, or shall not, have a revival of sectionalism in our future politics. As long as the South existed by a species of sufferance, and the North stood at once as the source and resource of national- ity, sectionalism senseless and selfish, insincere and exacting sprang from the nature of the case, and was inevitable. The temptation it offered to demagogues on both sides of the line could not be resisted. Nothing was easier than the fabrica. tion of campaign material, where the average politicians stock. in.trade consisted of a system of cross.petitions, of indictments 22 THE REUNITED UNION. 23 and rebuttals, of crimination and recrimination. It saved to the Cheap Johns of our public life the labor of research, by sub- stituting lurid inventions and quack nostrums for the legitimate objects of legislation. Thus every act of lawlessness in the South was promoted to an affair of state, and a premium was put upon disturbance. It was an exceeding cold day when an insurrection could not be extracted out of a fisticuff. Treason became a locality. The Senator from Oshkosh played his most sectional trump directly into the hand of the statesman from Eureka, who raked in the trick and returned the lead, and then the two, having saved the country, went peacefully down-stairs to luncheon. It is more than surmised by well-informed per- sons that a most famous debate between two famous party leaders, who respectively dragged the North and South up and down the aisles of the House by the hair of the head, was, as a witty spectator described it, a simple matter of gate-money.~ That half a generation of this sort of shamming should have raised up a real hobgoblin in the fears of people who believed it all in earnest, is not to be wondered at. Indeed, to the extent that these mock-heroics occasionally proposed serious measures and involved thoughtful, patriotic, and conscientious statesmen, they worked a positive injury to legislation and society. But their true character may be best shown by their failure to keep the people apart. In spite of them, national assemblies and con- vocations continued to be held, and it was found that sectional differences existed only within party lines, and those only in opposing party lines, neither party recognizing any sectional distinctions within itself. To Republicans, disloyalty in the South was limited to Democrats. Meanwhile, religious, com- mercial, scientific, and professional associations, composed of representatives from every part of the country and from all classes, met and deliberated and adjourned without discovering a lack of homogeneity or any signs of public danger. During six consecutive years the national House of Representatives was Democratic. During two years both houses of Congress were Democratic. The country was slowly but surely preparing for a change of parties. It was making a series of trial-trips, as it were, and it must be owned that its experience proved encour- aging, for no ill ensued. On the contrary, the closing in of party lines brought the Republicans to a sense of accountability, and produced a long-wanted poise and balance of power. 24 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. At last the national campaign of 1884 is over, the election contest has been decided, and Grover Cleveland is conceded the Presidency by all parties. He will be inaugurated without resistance of any sort, or from any quarter, on the 4th of next March. Thus, after twenty-four years absence, the Democratic party will return to power, and after twenty-four years posses- sion, the Republican party will surrender an empire to its polit- ical adversary. The value of this event to ourselves and our system of government is inestimable. It will strengthen the belief in free institutions and popular forms all over the world. It will give a guarantee of stability and order at home to many generations. It is the crowning triumph, among a succession of triumphs, to the wearing qualities of the Constitution and the solidarity of the Union. Serious and many have been the shocks that the republic has sustained since we, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect nnion, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to our- selves and our posterity,~~ abandoned the confederation that served a provisional purpose after the Revolutionary war, and entered the present national compact. Unfortunately, the organic law, as it originally stood, recognized an institution that, logically opposed to all for which the Union professed to exist, was sure, soon or late, to strike a blow at its life. The war of secession was made possible by the very virtues of those who framed the Constitution, and arose out of a weak but patriotic spirit of compromise, which shirked questions that ought to have been settled. The overthrow of the Confederacy saved the Union, but it left the Constitution suspended, like Mohammeds coffin, in mid-air. The measures of reconstruction that ensued put a sharp strain upon the republican system, and a disputed Presidential election came nigh turning the victory of the Union into a national disaster. Rescued from ruin by the Electoral Commission, the Government now, for a third time in its history, survives extreme menace and peril, and gives to nations and the ages conclusive proof of its elasticity and power. It would be idle to deny and foolish to try to obscure the circumstance that the change of parties has come about largely through the instrumentality of the South, which in 1861 with- drew from the Union, and in 1865 was compelled to return to it THE REUNITED UNION. 25 by force of arms. As an isolated fact, this seems strange indeed. It would be stranger still if the real character of the Sonth answered the description honestly believed and maintained by many good people at the North. But in truth it does not. There has been, and there is, a moral no less than a physical revolution in both the old sections of the country. Neither is what it was. In many respects the two are improved in their conditions, political and material, and, there remaining no longer any bar to their perfect union, the lessons of the epoch of misunderstanding and misadventure from which we are emerg- ing will be found not to have been set in vain. Particularly is this true of the South. The issues that produced secession are all passed away. The men who led the secession movement no longer appear upon the scene. A fresh crop of ideas has sprung up in the South. A new body of public men has come to the front. These were not responsible for the mistakes of their fathers, and, except to be loyal to their ~ memory and motives, are nowise con- cerned to defend that which they have no mind to repeat. The North has mistaken a manly and filial sentiment in the South for a covert and treasonable political design. This has been the occasion of a deal of mutual misconception and not a little crim- ination and recrimination. The South will presently have the opportunity to dispel this error. It will prove itself a conserv- ative bulwark to the Administration, in Congress, in the Cabinet, and throughout the civil service. For the Southern people sincerely love their country. They are true to its free institu- tions. They feel keenly the stigma that they have been made to bear so long, and their present exultation springs largely from a sense of moral emancipation. At last they think they will be able to give liostages to fortune. Everybody knows that under the shadow of a belief in the impregnability of the Republican position in the national Government great abuses have intrenched themselves. There being an equal portion of human nature in all political bodies, it could hardly have been otherwise. The circumstances of our last campaign pointed the moral and adorned the tale of these abuses, and the decision that has been reached is the proclama- tion of a prevailing impression that more danger is to be ap- prehended from wasteful and dishonest men in office than from men lately engaged in rebellion. It is a manifesto from 26 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. the people to the people, claiming their own again. It is a decree of judgment against the party that had begun to think itself the state, and a warning to those who are intrusted with power not to misuse it In short,it is both a civil service order and a restoration of the disunited Union, and upon the sincerity with which this construction is put upon it, and the success with which its provisions, actual and implied, are executed, will depend the length of the Democratic tenure. The end of the late national campaign was signalized by the extraordinary spectacle of a defeated candidate for President assembling his neighbors and friends about him to hear from his lips a passionate exclamation against all who opposed his elec- tion. Denuded of oratorical redundancy and translated into plain English, Mr. Blames indictment charged that the result of the contest had been achieved by the union of four Northern States, whose loyalty he did not hesitate to question, with a South made solid by the subjection of its negro population. He asserted that the chiefs of the rebellion had regained possession of the Government by a system of intimidation that made the vote of a white man at the South double the value of the vote of a white man at the North. He declared that this unequal state of affairs raised a question that dwarfed all other questions, and he appealed to the manhood of the North to join him in a movement to avert what he described as a great national danger. He did not specify a remedy in detail, but his general plan em- braced a solid North against a solid South, and flatly contra- dicted the pacific policy laid down in his letter accepting the Republican nomination for President. The unreasonable character, the half statement and false argument, of the sectional delusion have never been put more sharply and clearly than they are in this splenetic outcry of a beaten aspirant. It ignores the facts of current political history with the most child-like disregard of the popular intelligence. For example, in the eleven ex-Confederate States, casting ninety- four electoral votes, there are only three Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina in which the negroes are in a majority, so that if Mr. Blames assumption were correct, that the negroes are all Republicans, they could not, had they all voted for him, have given him more than twentysix electoral votes, or ten fewer than New York threw against him, and four fewer than were given against him by Indiana, Connecticut, and New Jersey. The THE REUNITED UNION. 27 majority of negroes in Louisiana was in 1880 but twenty-nine thousand in over nine hundred thousand, or but three per cent.; moreover, the negro vote was divided there, and there is not a particle of evidence to show that there was any intimidation. If he had obtained the votes of Mississippi and South Carolina, he would still have lost the Presidency by the votes of disaffected Republicans in the State of New York. As to the complaint that the election of Mr. Cleveland rehabilitates the Sonthern Confederacy by restoring its chiefs to power, it is to be said in answer that none of those who were directly responsible for the secession movement or its consequences, are now upon the stage of public affairs. If there be one, he is Senator Isham 0-. Harris, of Tennessee, whom the Republicans of the United States Senate proposed, the Democrats concurring, to elect unanimously to the Presidency of the Senate. After all, however, these are immaterial suggestions, which spring from a querulous temper, and not from any real appre- hension or belief; for no man has cultivated close relations with the persons he assails more assiduously than Mr. Blame him- self. The only question he raises that is worthy of attention relates to the actual political condition of the Southern States, and the remedy he proposes of a solid North against the alleged encroachments and power of the solid South. Unfortunately for Mr. Blames argument, it is neither tangible nor original. During ten years we had an application of this sectional policy. There was a solid North. Neither Mr. Blame nor any one else can hope to make it more solid. The Republican party, repre- senting this solid North, had absolute control, and it did what- ever it pleased with the South. The Constitution offered no obstacle to the thorough and radical scheme of reconstruction adopted by the Republican leaders. The Southern States were put under the dominion of the black population, organized and led by a few whites, backed by the whole power of the Govern- ment. The responsible, tax-paying elements of society were outlawed. In a word, the bottom was put upon the top of the political edifice. What was the result? Interminable conflict, ruinous corruption; a Moses in South Carolina, a Kellogg in Louisiana. The rotten fabric crumbled and fell of its own weight. It was out of nature and out of joint, and it could not exist. Gradually natural conditions prevailed, and ever since there has been a steady increase of prosperity and decrease of 28 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. violence. No civilized community loves crime for its own sake. Nor has the South reached a millennium of peace and quiet any more than the North. But as to law and order, the South can to-day challenge comparison with the North. Extended to its logical conclusion, Mr. Blames argument looks either to the forcible restoration of the negro to rulership in the Southern States, or the destruction of Statehood at the South, and the substitution of provincial forms of government in room of it, with a military governor, a standing army, and martial law for each separate province. If Mr. Blames scheme does not embrace the one or other of these propositions, it has no practical purpose, and his speech may be dismissed as the incendiary harangue of a disappointed applicant for office. In the meantime, it is to be borne in mind by those who seek the truth, that the present relation of the white and black populations of the South is a race, not a politi- cal question. In States where the whites are in a great majority, there is no issue at all, and the blacks fare better than they do in any of the Northern States. In the black-majority States, or close States, all issues are decided by race laws. The stronger race will govern; the weaker cannot. The trial was made, and we saw what came of it. Depopulate South Carolina of its whites, repeople it with white men made in the image and iu the spirit of Mr. Blame, and the result will be the same. The savage multitude will assert the power of numbers, the trained minority will meet it with the artifices of civilization, and the savage will go to the wall. Society will find its level somehow, and, until Mr. Blame can make an African the equal of an Anglo-Saxon, he will not materially change the situation of any community where the blacks outnumber the whites. The outcry of Mr. Blame, and the support that a few excited journals have given it, take their origin in partisan arrogance, stimulated by unexpected defeat. It is, in effect, a pretense that the party to which they belong has a prescriptive right to rule the country. It is, by implication, an assault upon the patriotism and capacity of a majority of the people of the United States. In this character it is as great a treason to the spirit of republican institutes as secession was to the Union. If it be true, reconstruction was a blunder and a crime, and the States of the South ought to have been retained as conquered territory, and should be now held by force of arms. If it be THE 1i~EUNITED UNION. 29 true, there is a radical, generic difference between the people of the North and the South, which will stand as a perpetual obstacle to real union. It is not true, and Mr. Blame is a living example that it is not. Born in western Pennsylvania, and receiving his first and strongest impression from Kentucky, he has shown himself the most representative and popular citizen of Maine. During thirty years Mississippis three foremost party leaders were Northern men: Sargent S. Prentiss, from Maine; John A. Quitman, from New York~ and Robert J. Walker, from Penn- sylvania. One of the most powerful of the secession leaders, John Slidell, went to Louisiana from New York. The govern- ment at Washington levied war against the Confederacy for the restoration of the Union. It succeeded, and, unless it stultified its professions and annihilated the republic, it was bound to rely upon the self-governing capacity and the personal integrity of the Southern people. Its reliance was not misplaced. In the coming years the South will contribute the most conservative elements of political thought and action to the Government. The man who has fought for his country knows only half how to value it. To comprehend its full value, he must have lost it. Many disappointments will follow the election of Mr. Cleve- land, who, if he were ten times a statesman, could not fill the expectation of his supporters. This, however, is merely to say that party reverses seldom realize the fears of the defeated, just as party triumphs never attain the hopes of the victors. Two errors the change of parties will undoubtedly expose. The one that the Republican party is alone qualified to govern; the other, that the South cannot be trusted. The incidents of ad- ministration may be left to take care of themselves. The Union is itself again. HENRY WATTERSON. WIlLIAM HERSCHELS STAR SURVEYS. Ocelorum perrupit claustra.Herachepa Epit~p1& . AMONG the researches that I should wish to live to see under- taken by astronomers, and especially by the astronomers of America, who have shown so much originality in kindred in- quiries, I regard with particular interest the survey of the stel- lar depths, in accordance with the original ideas of Sir William Herschel, but on principles such as he by no means supposed to be correct when he began his labors. It has been unfortunate for the work of research in this direction, that Herschels ideas and results during forty years of observation have been dealt with, by astronomers who came after him, as though they had been pre- sented in a single treatise, and indicated his views at some one given time. In a sense, there is something singularly appro- priate to the grand subject with which he dealt, in this particu- lar quality of the picture that we have received from his hands. The starlit heavens present a similar diversity in regard to time. We find it difficult, nay, impossible, to conceive that the stars as we see them are not as they actually are, nor even as they were at any given time. We do not see any star in its true place, even after correction has been made for such effects as are produced by atmospheric refraction and aberration of light. For each star is rushing swiftly through space, changing its apparent position in the celestial sphere, and although, owing to the enormous dis- tance of each star, the apparent movement is not perceptible by ordinary eye-sight in less than hundreds of years, yet as light takes many years in reaching us from any star, it remains strictly true that the position apparently occupied by a star is not its real position, but one that it occupied long ago. Again, we do not see any star with its real light at the moment, but with that (by no means necessarily the same, even in amount) which it emitted 30

WIlLIAM HERSCHELS STAR SURVEYS. Ocelorum perrupit claustra.Herachepa Epit~p1& . AMONG the researches that I should wish to live to see under- taken by astronomers, and especially by the astronomers of America, who have shown so much originality in kindred in- quiries, I regard with particular interest the survey of the stel- lar depths, in accordance with the original ideas of Sir William Herschel, but on principles such as he by no means supposed to be correct when he began his labors. It has been unfortunate for the work of research in this direction, that Herschels ideas and results during forty years of observation have been dealt with, by astronomers who came after him, as though they had been pre- sented in a single treatise, and indicated his views at some one given time. In a sense, there is something singularly appro- priate to the grand subject with which he dealt, in this particu- lar quality of the picture that we have received from his hands. The starlit heavens present a similar diversity in regard to time. We find it difficult, nay, impossible, to conceive that the stars as we see them are not as they actually are, nor even as they were at any given time. We do not see any star in its true place, even after correction has been made for such effects as are produced by atmospheric refraction and aberration of light. For each star is rushing swiftly through space, changing its apparent position in the celestial sphere, and although, owing to the enormous dis- tance of each star, the apparent movement is not perceptible by ordinary eye-sight in less than hundreds of years, yet as light takes many years in reaching us from any star, it remains strictly true that the position apparently occupied by a star is not its real position, but one that it occupied long ago. Again, we do not see any star with its real light at the moment, but with that (by no means necessarily the same, even in amount) which it emitted 30 WILLIAM HERSCHELS STAR SURVEYS. 31 many years ago. Even this is difficult to conceive; but this is little. Each star tells us of its history at a particular time, cor- responding to its distance. Yonder bright star shows us its posi- tion and luster a score of years since; the Less brilliant orb appar- ently close by, lies so much farther off that we must assign the news it brings us to at least a century ago. But many even of the brightest stars lie at such greater distances; while, when we pass to the fainter stars, we must often have to consider lightjourneys of many hundreds or even many thousands of years. If we re- gard the telescopic view of the heavens as the real view pre- sented to the eye, at least, to the minds eye of science,we must recognize, in the case of the faintest stars seen by the most powerful telescopes, such vast distances that light cannot have come to us from those stars in less than hundreds of thou- sands, perhaps millions of years. So that the scientific view of the universe of stars has as wide a range in time as in space. We have no picture of the galaxy as it actually is, or even as it was, but of different parts inextricably intermingled, and at different, and very widely different, periods of time. But science enables us to correct the mistaken idea that in the stellar heavens we see the universe of stars as it is at this very time. Though the mind may never be enabled to conceive the reality, and is, indeed, hopelessly unable even to approach the conception, yet the reason has been convinced long since that the stellar heavens tell the amazing story of vast realms of space and enormous durations of time, which modern astronomy has in part been able to read. It is not very wonderful, but it is interesting and significant, that the labors of the man that has done most to bring, the great problem of the star-depths before us should have been misin- terpreted somewhat as we are so apt to misinterpret the heavens themselves. Writers even so able as Humboldt and Arago take statements from this and that part of Sir William Herschels long series of papers, and set them side by side in the same page, or even in the same paragraph; nay, I have seen such statements wrought into a single sentence, when in reality they belong to entirely different parts of Herschels process of inquiry, or even present entirely distinct views on the particular matter to which they relate. Although my chief work has long been to try to put myself in the position of those who are apt to make mis- takes, in order that I may be the more successful in correcting 32 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. such errors, I had not conceived it possible that so gross a mis- take should have been made. Sir William Herschel suggested, in the course of his career as an observer of the stars, two entirely distinct methods of gauging the star-depths. They were so different in character, that to take but one point of differ- ence one depended on the use of one and the same telescope throughout, while the other required that a series of telescopes of gradually increasing power should be employed. Yet, not only have superficial readers overlooked the characteristic dif- ference between the two methods, and the reason why one method gave place to the other, but even those that have pro- fessedly undertaken the work of analyzing and abstracting the labors of the great astronomer of Slough, have fallen into the same preposterous mistake. I know of only one, Wilhelm Struve of Pulkova, who has clearly recognized and insisted upon the difference between the two systems of space-gauging that were employed by Sir William Herschel at the beginning and toward the close of his marvelous series of observations. Even Struve failed to recognize clearly that Herschel never did more than sketch in outline the results that would have followed from his second method of ganging, interpreted in a way that seemed to him likely to be sound and just. Herschel was too old to do more; and, apart from this, it may be said that he left those who came after him not only to apply the method fully, but even to interpret satisfactorily the few results that he had himself been able to collect. Every one knows the nature of the system of star-gauging that Herschel at first adopted; in fact, it is the only one about which the great majority of students of astronomy know anything. It was the method suggested originally by Wright of Durham. Supposing all the stars visible in the telescope to belong to a certain system of stars tolerably uniform in size and distribution throughout (our sun being one of them), it is easily seen that if the telescope we use brings into view all parts, even the remotest, of this star-system, we can determine the shape of the system with considerable accuracy. For, in whatever direction we turn the telescope, we shall see a number of stars, greater or less, according as the boundary of the stellar system in that direction is farther or nearer. Wright of Durham applied this method of gauging, with a telescope of moderate power, with results closely resembling those that are presented to this day as among WILLIAM HERSCHELS STAR SURVEYS. 33 the chief triumphs of Sir William Herschels entire series of labors. Wright found so many stars in the direction of the Milky Way, compared with the numbers seen in those parts of the sky that are free from milky light, that he was forced to assign a much greater extension to the stellar system in the direction of the Milky Way than elsewhere. Forced, at least, when we consider the assumption on which his inquiry had been based; for of course there were several other available explana- tions of the observed facts. Thus Wright was led to enunciate the theory, commonly attributed to Sir William Herschel, that the stellar system has the shape of a gigantic fiat disk of stars, tolerably uniform in distribution. The Milky Way being divided into two streams along a part of its course as known to Wright, it was necessary to assume that the disk was cloven throughout half of its extent. Sir William Herschel, making a more careful survey on the same plan, but with a much more powerful telescope, found that while in a sense this cloven fiat disk theory was supported by the results he obtained, it was yet necessary to assign a much more complex figure to the stellar system, so long as the results of his gauges were interpreted in accordance with the assumptions suggested by Wright. It became clear that on these assump- tions the bounding surfaces of the fiat star-system were by no means smooth. Instead of a section of the stellar system through its center (near our sun) and at right angles to its median plane being bounded by straight lines, the outline must be of the most irregular form. Herschel drew one of these sections, which presented a shape somewhat like that of a long, dentate leaf. He appears not to have been at all struck by the peculiarities of outline thus presented, when he was considering only a section of the stellar system. It is obvious that a system of stars forming a sort of island universe might be expected to present many irregularities of shape, and a section athwart the middle of such a system might as probably be shaped like a toothed leaf as in any other way. But as the work of survey went on, Herschel began to find that not only the particular cross-sections, but the system itself, presented peculiarities of form, and that these were related in too special a way to the position of the observer on the earth to be easily explicable as really belonging to the system of stars. Consider,for instance, such a case as the following: Over a VOL. CXL.NO. 338. 3 34 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. certain region of the heavens, nearly circular, Herschel found that his star-gangings invariably gave high numbers, while over the region all aronnd this nearly circular space they as sys~ T _______________ tematically gave very low numbers. Thus, if we suppose A, B,. ID, E to represent such a circular region, having its center at C, Herschel found that within the boundary A, B, ID, E he always had fields of view rich in stars; while so soon as he directed the telescope to points outside of A, B, D, E, he found not more than perhaps four or five stars, instead of hundreds, in each field of view. The meaning of this result if the assumptions adopted by Wright and Herschel are accepted is obvious. Herschel himself never hesitated in recognizing this meaning; yet those who quote Herschel constantly, and regard with intense disfavor the idea that he could, under any circumstances, have made a mistake about the stellar universe, overlook the direct result of his observations, the result pointed out by himself and frankly accepted. If within a small circular or roughly rounded space, such as A,B,D, E, many stars can be counted in every field of view, while over the whole space L, N, N, K, outside of A, B, ID, E, few stars are seen, and if a great number of stars seen in any direction indicate a correspondingly great extension of the stellar system in that direction, then, of course, it follows inevitably that the stellar system extends toward the region A, B,ID,E very much farther than toward any of the region around A,B,D, E. If the stars over the space A, B, D, E were uniformly distributed, the conclusion would be that a cylindrical projection or rod-shaped extension of the stellar system existed in the direction toward C, ~he center of this rounded, rich region of stars. If, on the other hand, as Herschel found to be almost invariably the case, the stars, though rich over the whole region A E\ C 13 D WILLIAM HERSCHELS STAR SURVEYS. 35 A, B, D, E, were much more closely aggregated near the center~ C, than toward the edge, the conclusion would be that there was a conical projection of enormous length compared with its breadth, having its axis directed toward C. In neither case could the conclusion be regarded as reasonably likely, scarcely even within the bounds of probability. It would be strange enough to imagine a star-system of vast extent, with long cylin- drical or conical projections extending from portions of the central group, the extensions being many times longer than the diameter of the parts of the central mass (the cloven flat disk of stars) from which they sprang. Nay, this would not only be strange, but altogether inadmissible when dynamical laws are taken into account. But if we overlook the strangeness and the unscientific nature of such a supposition, we find another and overwhelming difficulty in the peculiarity that every one of these strangely projecting cylinders and cones of stars must be conceived as having its axis directed exactly toward the solar system, from a member of which we make our observations. Our sun is, by the very assumption on which the system of numerical star-gauging depends, but one among millions of suns forming a system of stars. There is no reason whatever for supposing that he lies at the center of the system, or, indeed, that the system is of such form as to have a center of figure,~~ which, of course, can only exist in the case of a symmetrical system. On the contrary, there are abundant reasons in the com- plex form and various degrees of brightness of the Milky Way, and in the general superiority of luster found within its southern portions, for believing that the system of stars (if, indeed, the Milky Way represents its richer parts) is exceedingly complex in shape, and the sun eccentrically placed within its limits. Yet, as seen from this casual starfor in looking from the earth we get, to all intents and purposes, the same view of the stellar depths as if we looked from the sun all the strange projecting spikes of stars (I can think of no more suitable name) are fore- shortened into the appearance of round star-clusters! This is absolutely incredible. There can be no doubt or question as to the significance of the observed facts, if the assumption on which the star-counting method depended is accepted, and it is scarcely possible to enter- tam any doubt or question as to the absolute inadmissibility of the result thus obtained. If the greater the number of stars seen 36 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W in any field of view, the greater is the extension of the star-system in the direction of those stars, there must be enormous spike- shaped projections of stars wherever clustering aggregations are seen, along the Milky Way or elsewhere; while the existence of such projections, always directed exactly toward the sun, cannot be admitted as possible by any reasoning mind. Sir William Herschel, at any rate, felt no doubt on the subject. He saw at once, that since the principle he had assumed in the beginning of his star-gauging by the counting method led to a result that was manifestly preposterous, the principle that had seemed so reasonable must be rejected as unsound. Repeatedlywe find him saying that a long-continued examination of the star-sys- tem has convinced him that the idea of uniformity of distribution, which he had imagined at the beginning, must be given up as inadmissible. He remarks that he has satisfied himself that the stars in the Milky Way are distributed very differently from those in our neighborhood. He understood the real meaning of the clustering aggregations of the stars along the Milky Way, regarding these as manifestly real clusters of stars, not stellar projections. It would indeed matter little if Herschel had failed to recog- nize the meaning of what he had himself observed. Had he so failed, we should have found but another instance among hun- dreds known to us of the inaptitude of even the keenest observers to analyze their observations, and educe the full mean- ing of what they have discovered. Herschel differed from the rank and file of mere observersthe writing army of science in the power he possessed in this respect, until approaching the end of his wonderful observing career. But had he in this case failed to reason right as in later years we find he actually failed this should in no sense influence our judgment respecting facts that are as elearly before us as they were before him. We know that the assumption he first adopted would compel us to assign to the star-system a shape that is antecedently unlikely even as a shape, and is rendered utterly inconceivable when we take into account the peculiar relation of all its most marked features to the sun. If we saw a number of grains scattered over a surface at random, and found that as they fell they arranged themselves iu the form of a star, all the radiations of the star-form being directed exactly toward a certain mark on the surface, we should be absolutely certain that there were WILLIAM HERSCHELS STAR SURVEYS. 37 peculiarities in the snrface, differences of level, or the like, which bronght about this result. It could not possibly be acci- dental. We should feel as certain that there cannot be multitu- dinous radiating streams of stars, all extending straight from our sun, nnless there is some special peculiarity in our snn to cause this singular conformation of the star-system. And since we know certainly that no such peculiarity exists, we cannot but reject decisively the belief that the star-system is so shaped. It could make no difference whatever in our conclusion that Sir William Herschel had failed to notice the inference directly deducible from his observations. But, as a matter of fact, the elder Herschel accepted the rich clustering regions along the Milky Way as in reality what they appeared to be, that is, aa clusters, not as projecting streams of uniformly strewn stars. Of course, the principle that he had assumed as the basis of this system of star-gaugingthe principle of generally uniform distributionhad to be abandoned in at least these special cases. Probably Herschel was not prepared to admit that it must be given up altogether. This seems much clearer in our time, with our vastly increased knowledge about the stars,than it could have been to Herschel, keen though his insight into such matters unquestionably was. But Herschel went on at this time with a series of sidereal observations of the widest scope and the most diverse character. He had practically the whole field of stellar and nebular re- search; the universe was all before him where to choose, a noble but truly a bewildering scene. So far as observational work was concerned, he could hardly go wrong, let him un- dertake what portion of the survey he might. Again and. again he sent to the Royal Society the results of fresh series of observations now a thousand or so of new nebuhe discovered by him in his sweeps~~ of the mighty dome of the heavens; anon the survey of regions containing hundreds of thousands of stars; then an inquiry into the distribution of nebula~ and stars; and all this work went on in company with the observa- tion of sun, moon, planets, and comets, the construction of new telescopes by hundreds, the study of many complex physical problems, and other scientific inquiries of minor importance. As these labors went on, and clearer ideas of the constitution of the heavens presented themselves, Herschel must have begun to see that the system of gauging the galaxy by counting stars 38 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. was utterly inadequate. With all the various orders of star- clusters and nebulous masses, how could he longer imagine that mere numerical wealth of stars, or of points of light looking like stars, indicated enormous extension in the direction of the line of sight toward such regions? Distance, indeed, he felt to be indicated by the close aggregation of multitudinous points of light. But the vast distance that he recognized in some of these clusters of stars was something entirely different from the long array of stars in particular directions that he had originally assumed as the explanation of great wealth of stars in such directions. His original idea of the structure of the stellar universe had not included the conception of star-clusters, either of the larger sort, such as he had found in parts of the Milky Way, or of the smaller kind, rounded, elliptical, irregular, ring- shaped, and other forms of small clusters, which sometimes he was disposed to regard as external stellar universes, at others as fragmentary portions of our own galaxy. It was a natural outcome of such observations as these, and of the doubts they inevitably cast on Herschels original method of star-gauging (or rather of the conviction forced upon him that the principle of that method was untrustworthy), that Herschel should be led to devise another method. I wish specially to show that the method he now adopted was entirely different from the other, insomuch that it is among the marvels of misapprehension that the study of science brings before us that this method should be confounded with the earlier system. But I wish also to show how naturally the new method of star- gauging arose out of the observations on which Sir William Herschel had been engaged since his earlier star-gauging had shown him that the universe of stars is not constituted as at first he supposed it to be. Let us take the latter point first. Among the nebulie Herschel had found all orders of what he called resolvability.~ Some of them are clusters so coarse in texture that it was not easy to draw a line of distinction between them and the more clustering portions of the galaxy itself. I may notice in passing a feature that was not known to him, viz., that the nebula3 of this coarsely clustering type are more numerous upon and in the neighborhood of the Milky Way than over the rest of the heavens. Others, again, are compact clusters, still easily re- solved into stars with a telescope of moderate power. Then WILLIAM HERSCHELS STAR SURVEYS. 39 there are others so difficult to be resolved into stars, that until powerful telescopes were applied they presented the appearance of round or elliptical cloud-like spots. Yet others are still finer in their starry texture, so that only a few of the most powerful telescopes in the world will resolve them into discrete points of light. And lastly, so far as the nebuke of regular shape are concerned, there are some that have not yet been resolved into stars by any telescope. It is noteworthy that, arranging the nebuke into classes in the order of their resolv- ability, those most easily separated into stars show the most marked tendency to aggregation along the Milky Way, and are irregular in shape. Those that come next in order are nearly circular, and thongh still showing a certain increase of wealth toward the Milky Way, are found in tolerable frequency else- where over the star-sphere. The nebnla~ that are resolvable with difficulty, on the other hand, are elliptical, and are absent alto- gether from the Milky Way. These points are manifestly asso- ciated with the great problem of the constitution of our galaxy, though not directly related to Sir William Herschels observations. In fact, though he noticed the remarkable cir- cumstance that the nebultu cluster near the northern pole of the Milky Way (that is, near the point farthest on the northern heaven from the central line of the Milky Way), he did not recognize the manner in which this peculiarity is associated with the character of the nebulae, and he supposed that the nebula~ are rich along a ring-shaped region akin to the Milky Way, but at right angles to it, and formed of star-clouds instead of stars. Recognizing these diversities in the structure of nebuhe, Herschel was naturally led to regard them as due to differences of distance. He supposed the coarser clusters to be the nearer, and the finer in stellar texture to be the more remote. All nebula~ might fairly be regarded, at that stage of the inquiry, as farther away than the stars forming our own sidereal system, even to the farthermost parts of the galaxy. Herschel does indeed speak of the possibility that toward the side of our fiat sidereal system, as he viewed it, there might be room for the nearer approach of the parts of a former single great nebula, as though the nebul~n seen clustering in great numbers over the wings, shoulders, and head of Virgo might be but the parts of a former nebula of gigantic proportions. But this notion seems not to have been more than a passing idea with him, or to have 40 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. mucli influenced the development of his views. The idea gradu- ally gained force, on the contrary, that in the greater or less telescopic power needed to resolve a nebula, or a group of stars, we may find evidence of the greater or less distance of the object so scrutinized. So soon as this idea had taken firm root in his mind, which was not till toward the end of his observing career, he proceeded to put to use this means (as he supposed) of determining distance. I refrain from saying that he put it to the test, for I have no evidence that he consciously did so. He seems to have taken it for granted that the visibility of a star as a separate point of light, by a telescope of given power, was in itself a test of distance. He stated the principle, and showed how it might be applied to stars, star-groups, star- clusters, and nebula~ of various orders; then he proceeded to employ it as a means, first, of measuring the scale on which the stellar system is constructed, then of determining its shape, and lastly, of ascertaining the distances of the nebula. And now to show how entirely distinct was this method of gauging the star-depths from that which Sir William Herschel had before employed. We may call the first method star-gauging by enumeration; the second, star-ganging by resolution. In the first method, the same telescope (a powerful one) was to be applied to different parts of the star-depths, the number of stars counted, and, as the number was greater or less, the limits of the stellar system in the given direction were assumed to be farther away or nearer. What was taken for granted in this method was, first, that the stellar system is formed of stars generally uniform in distribution throughout the system; secondly, that the telescope employed was powerful enough (it was eighteen inches in diam- eter) to reach to the limits of the system; thirdly, that there are no vacant spaces in the system. In the second method, different telescopes, ranging in power from the weakest in use to the most powerful he could make, were directed to each region examined, until the whole region had, if possible, been resolved into stars well defined on a black background, without any trace of milky nebulosity. What was assumed in this method was, first, that the sidereal system is formed of stars not differing greatly from one another in size; secondly, that in the various clustering regions throughout the sidereal system the average distances between stars are tolerably uniform, or, in other words, that what may be called the stellar WILLIAM HERSOHELS STAR SURVEYS~ 41 texture of each part of the system is the same throughout, though there may be vacant spaces in some parts, and clustering aggregations of various forms in others; thirdly, that any part of the system that the most powerful telescope he employed failed to resolve, lay at a distance beyond the gauging or fathom- ing range of that telescope. To bring the two methods more clearly into contrast, note that In Herschels first method of gang- In Herschels second method of ing, it was essential that one and gauging, it was essential that a series the same telescope should be used of telescopes differing in power should throughout the work. be employed. The comparisons made related to The comparisons made related to different fields of view, seen with the the same field of view, seen with same light-gathering powers. different light-gathering powers. The inference deduced related to The inference deduced related to the extension along the line of sight the distance of objects seen with the of the objects connected with the one different telescopes employed. telescope employed. Had Herschel been a younger man when he thought of the second method of gauging the star-depths, it is probable lie would have felt from the beginning that the method was one to be tested before it could be trusted. He would have been pre- pared to find that while, if his assumptions were sound, his results would have such and such a meaning, it was at least possible that his results might show that his assumptions were altogether inadmissible, and therefore that his new method of star-gauging was altogether unsound. But Herschel was nearly seventy-nine years old when he began to employ his second system of star-gauging, and though he still possessed much of his skill as an observer, he had lost much of that versatility of mind which had enabled him not only to observe skillfully, but so to analyze his results as to see whether they were consistent with the assumptions by which they were to be interpreted. Can we wonder if at that advanced age Herschel was content to work resolutely at the task on which he had entered, without consid- ering very closely or thoughtfully the question whether the principle by which he proposed to interpret his results was sound or otherwise? It had seemed to him so reasonable as to appear almost unquestionable ; we do not find a line or a word tending to show that he ever questioned it. The principles on which the ftrst method of star-gauging had been based had seemed to him 42 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. equally unquestionable at first; but lie had found them to be unsound by noting that his observations interpreted by means of them led to absurdities. The observations made in accord- ance with the second method of gauging led in like manner, if interpreted by means of the principles on which that system was based, to absurdities. But this, his attention being directed too exclusively to the results themselves, he failed to recognize. Herschel began this new work of star-gauging by examining individual stars. It is clear that the principle of the method is applicable to a star as readily as to a star-cluster. If we can determine the average distance of those stars that we can just see with the naked eye on a dark and clear night, and stars generally throughout the stellar system have the same mean size (by which I mean that the average for a thou- sand stars in any one part of the system is the same as for a thousand stars in any other part of the system), then, of course, a telescope increasing the light-gathering power of the eye fourfold will just show a star twice as far away; one increasing that power ninefold will just show a star three times as far away, and so forth. It was by observations made in this way that Herschel was led to the belief that among the stars shown by his most powerful telescopes are some that are thousands of years light-journey from the earth. Singularly enough, the very evidence that shows in this case that the principle of the new method of star-gauging failed, has shown that the same result can be inferred that Herschel based on that principle. We know now, for example, that many of the brightest starsas Sirius, Capella, Vega, Areturus, and Aldebaran are much farther away than some as 61 Cygni that are barely ~risible to the naked eye on the darkest and clearest night, instead of these being (as they should, if the principle of the new method were sound) fully a hundred times farther off. We cannot, then, any longer assume, as Herschel did, that the faintest stars seen with his largest telescopes, are thousands of times farther away than those forming our con- stellations. They may be relatively near, and look small because they really are much smaller than their fellows. But while, on the one hand, we cannot now suppose faint stars to be necessarily far away, we are precluded, on the other hand, from inferring that bright stars are necessarily near. Since it is certain that WILLIAM HERSCHELS STAR SURVEYS. 43 many of the brightest among the stars visible to the naked eye are really farther away than many of those that are barely discerned, we may infer, with considerable confidence, that the same holds in the case of the field of view of the mightiest tele- scope yet made. Now, the faintest stars seen in such a field are those that would be the brightest in fields of view obtained by penetrating still more deeply into space. Among them, therefore, must be some farther away than those yet fainter stars; among them, in fact, are probably stars like Sirius, Canopus, and Alpha Centauri, which owe their brightness to real vastness, and lie at depths remoter than the daring conception even of the elder Herschel has suggested. But it is when we turn to the study of star-clusters that we recognize at once how thoroughly the principle of the new method of star-gauging was disproved, and how important, nevertheless, are the results that Herschels observations on the new plan established. If he had found that each cluster, whether in the Milky Way or of the nature of a star-cloud, had been resolved by tlie application of a certain telescopic power, or of powers ranging between tolerably close limits, he might logically have been content to believe that his principle was sound. An easily resolved cluster would be set relatively near, and one resolved with difficulty would be set far away. But as a matter of fact, he met with a very different result in many cases; and a single case of the kind would have sufficed to dispose of the principle he had adopted. He found clustering regions (rounded in form) that were partly resolved by even his weakest telescopes, and more and more resolved on each increase of telescopic power, until he brought into action his very largest telescope; but even with this instrument, milky nebulosity still remained. This peculiarity would be limited to a certain rounded space, in some cases not so large as the disk of the fuli moon.* Nichol says of these regions, What wonder if even Herschel shrank back appalled in the presence of these unfath- omable abysms? Herschel himself spoke less turgidly. He simply says, When I have been unable to resolve the Milky * Herschel him3elf does not dwell on this particular point, though it could not possibly have escaped his attention; but any telescopist can ascertain for himself that all round the unfathomable regions noted by Herschel are regions that even moderate telescopic power will completely resolve. 44 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Way with my most powerful telescopes, it has been because the Milky Way is unfathomable. * Now, this observation, interpreted by the principle of the second method of star-ganging, leads to precisely the same absurdity to which Herschel had been led by his first method, and still more definitely, though not qnite so obviously. All round one of these regions that he found unfathomable, the star- depths were easily fathomed, and therefore in those directions the stellar system had no great extension. But in the direction of these unfathomable regions the star-system had an enormous extension, if the principle of the new method could be trusted. The case is precisely the same as though a surveyor of the depths of ocean found that all over a large area of the sea bottom, save one spot, a few yards perhaps in length and breadth, he reached bottom with a hundred fathoms or so, while at that spot he could not reach bottom with a line of two or three thousand fathoms; except that, marvelous as such a deep and narrow hole reaching straight down two or three miles, but only a few yards across, would seem to the observer taking such soundings, it would be easy to explain, compared with the sidereal phenomenon that Herschel had before him. We can imagine causes for a deep vertical hole in the earths crust, but we can neither imagine any cause for a straight star-chasm projection of the galaxy in a direction exactly from the sun, nor admit the possibility that such a projection could continue if it had ever existed. That there should be several such projections would be simply impos- sible, even if we admitted the possibility of the existence of one. But this result, which thus conclusively proved that the prin- ciple of the new method of star-gauging was unsound, estab- lished nevertheless a most interesting fact. Since the clustering regions that yielded in part to HerseliePs weakest telescopes, but not wholly even to his most powerful instruments, could not * Struve was led into a singular mistake by this sentence (which T quote from memory, but correctly in essentials). He wrote it out probably in Ger- man, Weun Ich, etc.; or if not, he simply understood it as if the English word when were equivalent to the German wenn ; for in his Etudes dAstronomie Stellaire he writes the sentence with the word Si for when, making the statement, which Herschel applied to those parts only of the Milky Way that he could not fathom, relate apparently to the whole of the Milky Way, and suggesting consequently an infinitely extending flat, galactic disk for Herschels finite one. WILLIAM HERSCHELS STAR SURVEYS. 45 possibly be long, straight, projections similarly constituted throughout their length, it follows that they must be clustering aggregations presenting a wide variety of stellar texture. There must be larger stars separated by wide intervals, stars not so large and separated by intervals not so wide, and stars smaller and smaller in real size and set more and more closely, till even with llerschePs most powerful telescope, they could not be separately discerned. In other words, instead of penetrating more and more deeply into space, as he supposed, he was in reality scruti- nizing more and more closely the stellar structure of one and the same region of space. This variety of feature within clustering regions of the Milky Way would have appeared strange to Herschel (in fact, the idea scarcely presented itself to him), but in our time it appears the most natural thing in the world. The analogy of the solar sys- tem, as known to us, snggests precisely such variety of structure in the greater system that Herschel was studying. Analyzed by optical powers varying in range from unaided vision to the keenest telescopic scrutiny yet available, the solar system pre- sents a constant increase of complexity. The eyes see sun, moon, and a few planets; the telescope reveals more planets, some really as large as Uranus and Neptune, but faint through vastness of distance; others nearer than Saturn and Jupiter, but looking faint because small; and yet others associated with the larger planets as dependent orbs; more and more bodies come into view with closer and closer scrutiny of the solar domain; yet portions still remain nuresolved, such as the Zodiacal region, where astronomers more than suspect that millions of millions of nerolites and meteorites are traveling around the central orb. With this knowledge for our guidance, it seems as strange to the thoughtful student of the heavens in our time to regard the stellar system as generally uniform throughout in texture, as the diversity of texture that we recognize in the solar system would have appeared to Herschel. Observations of star-clouds regarded by Herschel as external galaxies, should have led him (and doubtless would in earlier years) to a similar conclusion. It is true that in many of these systems there is an apparent uniformity of stellar texture con- sistent with the idea that they are formed of stars of about the same size, and strewn with general uniformity through the whole region occupied by the star-cloud. Most probably, indeed, 46 THE NOBTH AMEI?ICAN I?EVIEW. the consideration of these features encouraged Herschel in the belief that our own galaxy is similarly uniform in texture. Moreover, in comparing one star-cloud with another, Herschel was not necessarily led to recognize the possibility that, even as one star differs from another in glory, so the nebula) may differ much from one another in structure, regarding them for a moment as he did, that is, as external galaxies. But there was a simple yet absolutely fatal objection, in the results that he obtained, to the theory that ran through all his work at this time, viz., that not only is the texture of our own galaxy uniform throughout the extent of the stellar system, but the same sort of star-texture exists, with considerable general uniformity, among all the island universes within our ken. Herbert Spencer was the first to note this objection; but it occurred independently to me (it is, indeed, obvious) in 1867, when I had not as yet read a line of his works. That it did not occur to Herschel himself, shows clearly how unready, in his extreme old age, he had become to analyze his results as he had in earlier years. Herschel had found parts of our galaxy unfathomable, which showed that, in accordance with his assumptions, the outermost extensions of the galaxy are beyond the resolving power of his mightiest telescope. But the nebula), if they are external galaxies, must lie hundreds of times farther away than the outermost parts of our own galaxy. For each one of them, from its observed size, is known to lie at a distance exceeding hundreds of times its own diameterthat is the diameter of our galaxy, on the assumption that galaxies are all of about the same size. Thus, then, we have this absurd result, that, whereas parts of our uniformly textured galaxy, at a distance of half its diameter, are irresolvable by the most power- ful of HersehePs telescopes, many similar galaxies, hundreds of times farther awaycorresponding to the diminution of their light tens of thousands of times are resolvable with telescopes of much smaller power! Manifestly the principle of the second gauging method fails here again for the third time, and most hopelessly. Whether the star-clouds are external galaxies or not, the principle that Herschel had adopted for their interpretation, and in order to bring them into comparison with our own stellar system, must be given up. But we know now I venture to, speak of it as certain, though many suppose it to be but a theory of my own that WILLIAM HERSCHELS STAR SURVEYS. 47 the nebula3 are part and parcel of our own galaxy. Herschels results went far to prove this, and had he but analyzed them he would have seen as niuch. Not only does our galaxy differ greatly in texture in its various parts, but it is as varied even in constitution as our solar system, or, rather, it is doubtless infinitely more varied in reality, but presents obviously to us the evidence of only about the same degree of variety. As in the solar system there are large planets and small ones, so in the stellar system there are stars of many orders of real size; as in the former we have streams of tiny bodies, like the asteroids, so in the galaxy we find streams of small stars, as in the Milky Way; as in the solar domain there are meteor-clouds and comets partly or wholly gaseous in structure, so in the great galaxy to which our sun belongs there are clouds of star-dust and mighty masses of nebulous matter (chiefly gaseous), like the Orion nebula. I may hereafter give a brief sketch here of the evidence respecting the architecture of the stellar heavens already ob- tained by astronomers. In such a sketch the work of the Hersehels would hold a prominent place. I may also show the methods of survey that commend themselves for future employ- ment. My present object has been, first, to show how entirely distinct were the two methods of star-gauging that many who suppose they know something of Herschels work have hope. lessly confounded together; secondly, to point out how thor- oughly the application of each disproved the assumptions on which either had been based; and lastly to show how, never- theless, the results obtained by each method threw useful light on the great problem that Sir William Herschel, first of all men, successfully attacked by observational methods. RICHARD A. PROCTOR. AMERICAN LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. Tm~ organization of labor is a question of massive pro- portions; that of labor organizations and their character, aims, and purposes, is one of more distinct and limited boundaries. The first belongs to the domain of speculative, evolutionary, and historical philosophy; the latter must deal with such facts as are accessible to the diligent student and inquirer, with the additional obligation of relating them as comprehensively as may be to a movement which, however vague and indefinite as yet in its proportions and properties, embraces issues fundamental to a just civilization and as broad as the very existence of an equitable social order. Such organizations, as distinguished from the more portentous movements that are prefigured to the mental shallowness of the sciolist who ventures to call himself a thinker, or to the aifrighted consciousness of the unrefiecting conservative, under the terrible names of Socialism, Communism, or that latter phase of horror, Anarchism, shadows, all of them, that await only the illumination of free and fair debate to make them lose their more formidable aspects, are almost entirely a product of that Anglo-Saxon civilization which constantly strives to adjust without revolutionary strain and to achieve without destructive violence and disorder. Germany, the earlier home of the mediawal trade guilds, is permeated with political socialism. The skilled wage-workers of France are but just beginning to turn their attention to efforts at trade organization. Chambres 5yndical, or trades-unions in the English sense, have but recently obtained a permanent foothold among the artisans of that country. Revolutionary and political aspects are still the most prominent features of French industrial discussion. In Spain, the Black Band, ~ with its programme of overthrow, is the only one of impor- 48

AMERICAN LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. Tm~ organization of labor is a question of massive pro- portions; that of labor organizations and their character, aims, and purposes, is one of more distinct and limited boundaries. The first belongs to the domain of speculative, evolutionary, and historical philosophy; the latter must deal with such facts as are accessible to the diligent student and inquirer, with the additional obligation of relating them as comprehensively as may be to a movement which, however vague and indefinite as yet in its proportions and properties, embraces issues fundamental to a just civilization and as broad as the very existence of an equitable social order. Such organizations, as distinguished from the more portentous movements that are prefigured to the mental shallowness of the sciolist who ventures to call himself a thinker, or to the aifrighted consciousness of the unrefiecting conservative, under the terrible names of Socialism, Communism, or that latter phase of horror, Anarchism, shadows, all of them, that await only the illumination of free and fair debate to make them lose their more formidable aspects, are almost entirely a product of that Anglo-Saxon civilization which constantly strives to adjust without revolutionary strain and to achieve without destructive violence and disorder. Germany, the earlier home of the mediawal trade guilds, is permeated with political socialism. The skilled wage-workers of France are but just beginning to turn their attention to efforts at trade organization. Chambres 5yndical, or trades-unions in the English sense, have but recently obtained a permanent foothold among the artisans of that country. Revolutionary and political aspects are still the most prominent features of French industrial discussion. In Spain, the Black Band, ~ with its programme of overthrow, is the only one of impor- 48 AMERICAN LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. 49 tance. Italy and Austria have witnessed some efforts in the direction of protection and amelioration, but there is no very great or distinctive force therein. Russia is as yet out of this pale; but it holds forces, active or inert, that set it aside from the general drift of the more limited movement to be discussed in these pages. The ]Jliir* and the Artelt are to be considered from another stand-point. Belgium, of all European countries, is the only industrial community that has really taken hold practi- cally of the labor movement and organization as it is under- stood, spoken of, and written about in Great Britain, the original home of that system of labor partnership ~ com- monly called trades-unions. The American student in this field will find no easy task before him, especially if his inquiries have been preceded by anything like an exhaustive study of the English labor move- ment. In Great Britain, indifference or active antagonism has been quite thoroughly overcome, and the public opinion of the land is at least intelligent, and has some commensurate idea of the issues involved. The British labor organizations have become a power not to be lightly considered. Thoughtful scholars, sympathetic politicians, and aspiring leaders, all alike find it of interest to debate, consider, or affiliate, with the labor movement and its leaders. But in the United States the whole movement has hardly reached the stage of toleration. It seems difficult for the great body of well-meaning, native-born citizens of mature years, who are not of the wage-earning order, to understand how enormous have been the changes in the very framework of industrial life, and in the simplest and most primal facts affecting the social conditions in which the wage- workers, especially of the great cities and manufacturing sec- tions of the land, now find themselves, year by year, more and more completely environed. The successful middle-aged Amer- ican carries within his memory, as a rule, associations as to his own early struggles quite at variance with those that would now wait on him were he about to enter the arena of competition, armed only with such forces as his natural physical powers, partial training, and moderately developed mental capacities, * The Russian village and land commune. t The guilds of artisans and workers that exist in all Russian trades and occupations, outside of agriculture. ~ See Thorold Rogerss Work and Wages. VOL. CXL.NO. 338. 4 50 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. might afford him at this time. Failing to put himself in the other mans place, the matured man of business is almost invariably narrow and unjust in his estimate of the motives and aims of the labor-union organizer. There is also a justifiable feeling against the effort to make metes and bounds in the way of class distinctions. A little fact passing under my observation will sharply illus- trate this. Some years since, while visiting Europe, I made the acquaintance of an American manufacturer. He was an elderly gentleman of great force of character and remarkable business ability. Though a man of the utmost personal kindness, he was absolutely brutal in his hostility to all labor movements. From what he said, there could be no question that he had expended and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, during nearly fifty years of active business life, in embittered con- test with the skilled laborers that he employed by hundreds. Yet he could but acknowledge, as he set forth the grounds of the struggle from his own stand-points, when a deliberate outsider called his attention to the laches he himself acknowl- edged, that the larger portion would have been wholly avoided by a recognition of the fact that labor was not a commodity to be dealt with as so much pig-iron or bar-lead. Again, he was evidently proud of the fact that his large fortune and extended business sphere had been the product of his own exertions. Indeed, he was the pioneer in, and almost the creator of, a great industry. A few years later the writer met this fellow-traveler again. He had just retired from business, after half a cent- ury of constant activity, transferring to his sons his furnaces, forges, and large shops. The value of these was estimated at one million dollars, and he had retired with a fortune of equal amount. In the course of conversation he said that he began life at eighteen on a borrowed capital of twenty-five dollars, employing a younger brother to assist him at the forge. This statement was given in proof of an assertion he was fond of making, to the effect that every man could succeed if he would, in this country, as he himself had done. Setting aside the no~ sequitur contained in the assertion of every mans succeeding, the old gentleman was asked: What amount would be required nowadays to start a young man in this business, ~ that he might begin with something like the equality of effort and reasonable enterprise that attended your own earliest venture? AMERICAN LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. 51 The question rather confused our friend, but he rallied in a moment, and with amused frankness acknowledged that, with the appliances and machinery now required, nothing less than a capital of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars would be needed to make even a moderate venture possible. How much is expressed in these two sums, and what portentons changes they imply! That the direct interests of labor, political, social, economic, and ethical, are becoming a matter of the largest public concern, is seen in the fact that, in some form or other, under one or the other shibboleth, the opinions and attitude of the wage-working industrials was the chief anxietyfelt during the exciting pollti- cal contest that has just closed. More positively than ever,-~- though it may be a question with many whether it has been more wisely, the interests of labor, as a distinct series of issues,have be en the one supreme topic of debate. This is a fact to be hailed with great relief by those who clearly perceive that the only way to prevent anarchy is to drag its possible cause into the forum; that to find remedy for evils affecting the body-politic, or any portion thereof, there must be open. debate and amicable consideration. Deep-seated discontent cannot ex- ist without as deep-seated causes. To understand these, we must probe and examine. This, then, is the era upon which we are entering. As a contribution to the greater debate that impends, the following facts and statements are presented, premising, however, that the statistics as to membership, etc., of the organizations under review are, much to the writers regret, not of that assured authenticity which is required for a complete understanding. This much may be truthfully said of them, that they are within the bounds of fact, that no effort has been avoided to obtain more accurate data, and that they have at least the value of intelligent conjectural and analytical presenta- tion. The difficulty encountered by the writer in his efforts to secure rellable statistics of labor organizations offers a vivid proof of the bitter spirit of antagonism that prevails. The friendly motive with which this information was sought has been acknowledged by all the officers of societies with whom corre- spondence was had, yet in several of the more important bodies such as the iron and steel workers, the granite-cutters, or the Knights of Laborall definite data were refused, on the distinct ground that the publication of their number, funds, THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. dues, expenditures, etc., would be the placing of weapons in the hands of employers, to be used to the injury of the trades- unionists. In striking contrast with this is the spirit with which such inquiries are now met in England. The great trades organ- izations therein, numbering in the aggregate, as represented in their annual congress, a membership of over two million per- sons, are always ready to give information and to make public the facts relative to membership, funds, expenditures, etc. Of course, they do not make their administrative details or policy matters for public oversight, any more than do the directors of a bank give to the enterprising reporter the reason why they may have refused to negotiate a line of loans. However, diligent inquiry has enabled the writer to present the following approxi- mate table and statements, relating to trades and labor organ- izations within the United States, in the qualified sense employed in this paper: Trades Organizations. INTERNATIONAL BODIES (e) Estimated. Iron and Steel Workers 42,000 (e) Engineers (British) 5,000 (e) Carpenters (British) .... 7,000 (e) Typographical Union 11,930 (o) Seamens Union 7,000 (e) Cigarmakers Union . 14,000 (o) Coopers Union 7,000 (e) Bricklayers and Masons 12,000 (o) Granite-cutters . 6,000 (o) Glass-workers 7,000 (e) Furniture-workers 9,000 (o) Locomotive Engineers 12,200 (o) Locomotive Firemen 12,000 (o) Railroad Conductors 7,000 (e) Railroad Brakemen and Employ6s.. 18,000 (e) Knights of Labor (Federation) 150,000 (e) International Workiugmens Assn.. 20,000 (e) NATIONAL BODIES. Iron-molders Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners. Plasterers Plumbers Tinsmiths Laborers (chiefly building trades)... Horseshoers (includes Blacksmiths.) Boiler-makers & Iron-Ship-builders.. 14,000(e) 7,000(o) 7,000 (e) 3,000 (c) 3,000 (e) 25,000 (e) 19,000 (e) 17,000 (e) Headquarters. Pittsburg, Pa. New York & London. New York & London. St. Louis, Mo. Chicago, Ill. New York. Cleveland, 0. Cincinnati, 0. Quincy, Mass. Pittsburg, Pa. New York. Cleveland, 0. Terre Haute, md. Not known. Philadelphia. Philadelphia. San Francisco, Cal. Pittsburg, Pa. New York. New York. New York. New York. Baltimore, Md. Not known. AMERICAN LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. 53 (o)OfflCidi~ (e) Estimated. 1,700 (e) 8,000 (e) 2,000 (e) 3,000 (e) 10,000 (e) Trades Organizations. NATIONAL BODIES. Stationary Engineers Metal-workers Ship-carpenters German Typographical Union Telegraphers, Operators and Linemen Coal Miners, State and National. ... 60,000 (e) 9,000 (o) 5,000 (e) 5,000 (e) 1,200 (e) 18,000 (e) 3,500 (e) 1,500 (e) 3,000 (e) 10,000 (e) 12,000 (e) 2,500 (e) 2,000 (e) Progressive Cigarmakers Mule-spinners (cotton factories) Cotton Weavers (cotton factories).. Silk Weavers Tailors N U Upholsterers Harness-makers Paper-hangers House-painters Shoemakers, Lasters, etc Bakers Brewers There are small trades, locally organized, chiefly in the large cities, whose number is difficult to ascertain, and many of whom 75,000 (e) are federated with trades assem- blies and central labor unions. J They may be understated at The Socialistic Labor Party (Amer- ican) and the Social Democrats may be estimated at ) Total estimate 611,530 Headquarters. New York. Philadelphia, Pa. Not known. New York. Pittsburg and points in different States. New York. Fall River, Mass. Fall River, Mass. Paterson, N. J. Philadelphia, Pa. New York. Not known. New York. New York. Not known. New York. New York. Baltimore, New 25,000 (e) .. York, and Chicago. The foregoing table is not put forward as anytliing but an approximate statement of the numbers embraced within well- known labor organizations. Some deductions must be made for those who are members of more than one organization, as are, for instance, many of the Knights of Labor, the Interna- tionale, or the Socialist Labor party. Probably fifty thousand duplications are thus given. But there are numerous bodies, small in number, perhaps, which should fairly come within the scope of an estimate, but about which so little is known that it is preferable to make no statement. It will not be an exaggera- tion, however, to claim a practical unity, mainly of the direct trades-union character, of at least six hundred thousand mem- bers. Leaving out of the count, then, the agricultural laborers, THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. 54 nearly four millions in number, and also the laboring force employed in commerce, stores, and trading generally, the domes- tic help and the other miscellaneous wage-workers, the following figures will give all the pursuits with which organizations in the foregoing table are in any way affiliated. They are taken from the Federal census of 1880, and embrace those employed in the occupations that have in some sort come to be associated in the minds of economists and students with the term industrials, as contradistiuguished from agricultural, trading, and domestic employments. According to the census, there were employed at wages in mechanical and manufacturing establishments the following: Males above sixteen years, 2,019,035; males below sixteen years, 181,921; females above sixteen years, 531,639: In mines, males above 16 195,968 In mines, males below 16 24,507 In quarrying, males above 16 38,945 In quarrying, males below 16 728 In petroleum wells, adult males 11,477 In petroleum refineries, etc., males above 16 9,498 In petroleum refineries, etc., males below 16 346 In petroleum refineries, etc., females above 16 25 RAILROAD EMPLOYJiS RECEIVING WAGES FOR MECHANICAL ENGI NEERING AND SUCH OTHER SKILLED LABOR. Trainmen. Locomotive engineers, adult males 18,977 Trainmen. Conductors, adult males 12,419 Trainmen. Firemen, and all others, adult males 48,254 Trackmcn. Layers, repairers, etc., adult males 122,486 Shopmen. Machinists, adult males 22,766 Shopmen. Carpenters, adult males 23,202 Shopmen. Other mechanics and laborers, adult males 43,746 Shopmen. Miscellaneous day-wage men, adult males 51,619 IN NAVIGATION. Seamen and others employed in United States waters 55~453 Seamen and others employed in State waters 636 Seamen and others employed on canals 722 Telegraph and telephone employ~s (about one-fourth females) ... 18,286 Total 2,932,785 By the foregoing statistics it will be seen that on a moderate presentation the trades-unions and other labor organizations AMERICAN LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. 55 embrace fully one in five of the skilled wage-workers engaged in the above-named great branches of industry. This esti- mate will not, however, cover the ratio of their infinence, espe- cially in the large centers of activity. The artisans, mechanics, and laborers that remain without their pale are mainly those employed in the rnral districts and the smaller towns, or in those sections and occnpations that are bnt just beginning to comprehend the great changes produced by the transfer of economic forces from an agricultural civilization to one of a more pnrely indnstrial character. Snch, for instance, are the artisans of the villages, wherein a workman may yet readily pass from being a hired man to a self-employing position; or the operatives in newly opened factory districts like those of the Sonth; or, to come nearer home, of that portion, for instance, of central New York, wherein dnring a few years past many of the towns and villages have begnn their transition from trading. points to factory and mechanical centers. In the larger cities and local centers of indnstrial life, many of the great trades- nnions will be fonnd to have bronght nearly every member of the different crafts within their several folds. This is almost entirely tine of occnpations like the bnilding trades, and of the printers, fnrnitnre-workers, etc., in which the laborers are still handicraftsmen, so far as their skill is concerned; or of great pnrsnits like those of the glass or iron workers, wherein machinery can be employed only as an adjnnct to and not a snperseder of man and his trained capacity in a given direction. The employments in which protective mntnalism finds it diffi- cult to organize effeetnally, are snch as the cotton, woolen, and shoe factories, wherein the use of machinery has made mere human tenders of the operatives employed; or in snch industries as the making of garments, wherein light-handed and compara- tively unskilled labor, snch as that of women and children, em- bodies the very worst features of an utterly selfish competition, and leaves the workers almost entirely at the mercy of sweaters~ and ~ In other great occnpations, like that of mining, the employ6s of which in England and Scot- land are among the best organized, best paid, and most intelli- gent of wage-workers and trades-unionists, canses are at work within the United States, such as arise from corporate power and monopoly combinations, bringing under one direction the owner- ship of mines and railroads, transportation and traffic, produc 56 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE WT. tion and distribution, that have heretofore prevented any effectual protective organization of such labor, and which, in all probability, will continue so to do, until the time comes when society clearly perceives the need of its resuming the functions now exercised by irresponsible corporations. The table already given indicates the existence of organiza- tions differing in character or method, and presumably, in some cases, in aims also. Those grouped as international unions are, with a few exceptions, confined to this hemisphere, and aim only at trades-union results. The exceptions are the local and national affiliates of the amalgamated engineers and carpenters, bodies whose general head-quarters are in England, and whose membership is almost wholly British. The international charac- teristics of the others, with such exceptions as are indicated, are designed to cover the workers in Canada, Mexico, the West Indies, and Central America. The glass-workers, whether they are organized as part of the Knights of Labor or in a separate body, have recently made connection with their fellow-craftsmen in Belgium and England. The international organizations that are something more than protective, and look toward ameliorative or reconstructive pro- cesses, as remedies for the acknowledged evils of a merely com- petitive life, embraced within the table, are the Knights of Labor, the International Workingmens Association, whether in the Red, or Karl Marx mold, or in the Black, or Baku- nine form, and the Social Democratic party, as shaped by Lasalle originally, and having affiliations with the German socialists on the one side, and the British radicals, of whom Hyndman and Morris the poet are now the leaders and repre- sentatives, on the other. It is not proposed to discuss the organization, aims, and character of these latter bodies and movements, as they belong to another aspect of this subject, and should be considered under the more ample field of the organization of labor. But they are widely influencing the opinions of intelligent and organized workmen, and in a marked degree affecting the views of many that are not so classified. It will be found, on close inquiry, that the representative men of the International, for instance, in this country, are quite as often lawyers, writers, followers of professional pursuits, or engaged in commercial occupations, as they are affiliates of the wage-working avocations. The Social Democrats have, also, a considerable admixture of the same social grades, while what is AMERICAN LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. 57 herein classified as the Socialistic Labor party seems to be almost wholly related to the wage-working pursuits. It is con- fined to a few of the large cities. The International is more widely extended, and one of its chief centers of action is the city of San Francisco, in which a monthly magazine, under the title of Truth, is published. One, and probably the most extreme publication, in English, of the anarchist ~ school, is that of Justice, a weekly, edited by Mr. Tucker. Another international body with constructive aims deserves more than mere mention, because its organization and movement is of an American character, and proceeds on the lines that seem. to be necessary to our political life and republican spirit. The Knights of Labor is a secret but not oath-bound association. It is both federal and national, federative by the trades and pursuits it brings under its shield, and national by reason of the extent and purpose of its organization. Its international phase is but just budding, having grown especially out of an affiliated trade, the window-glass-workers, and their efforts to prevent a disastrous competition in wages by the importation of Belgium workers. This was met by organizing local assemblies of this trade in England and Belgium. The exact membership of- the Knights of Labor is not given; but about four thou- sand five hundred local assemblies are reported, and as many of them contain from one hundred to several hundred mem- bers, it is not an exaggeration to say that they will average about thirty-five members each. The federal character of the body is obtained, so far as developed, by the unity of differ- ent trades under the control of separate district assemblies, and by the general organization, under the same form, of mixed and trades assemblies governed by districts formed through civic and local needs. For instance, the window-glass-workers, wherever located, are all Knights of Labor, and the several local bodies are under the direction of their district assembly at Pittsbnrg. The shoemakers are also affiliated or federated in this way, the largest body being under a district assembly in Massachusetts. The coal-miners in many sections are similarly organized, and so with other trades. Cigarette-makers are generally enrolled in this body. There are many local assemblies of printers, book- binders, carpenters, bakers, and other occupations, also, not largely related to or connected with trades-unions in the definite sense. Mixed local assemblies are made up of different occupa- tions. All persons that work for a living are eligible to mem~ 58 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. bership, except lawyers, bankers, and liquor-sellers. The National Assembly, which meets at cities selected by the assembly preceding, has contained in the last two sessions delegates whose occupations embraced medicine, the pulpit, journalism, teaching, manufacturing, trading, and many of the skilled and prominent trades and handicrafts. The present ex- ecutive body is more distinctly confined to tradesmen, in the labor sense, than others that have preceded it. The order makes no distinction of sex or race. It is actively pushing its organiza- tion among the colored workers, and with the woman indus- trials of the cities. It is opposed to strikes, is non-partisan though political (in the agitating sense), and its platform of principles favors c& iperation, though at present there is no distinctive movement in that direction. On the contrary, a spirit of hostility toward such efforts has been developed, owing probably to the active endeavors of the State Socialists, who predominate largely in New York City, Chicago, Cincinnati, and San Francisco. Trades-unionism proper has recently become a more marked element and force within the Knights of Labor, the chief success of which has heretofore been found in taking up and organizing the trades and occupations that are some- what, perhaps necessarily, neglected by the large trade-unions. The value of the order to the labor movement in the United States is in this direction, and also in the manner in which it compels a recognition of a unity of interests among all grades of laborers. The platform annexed covers with sufficient accuracy the general ameliorative demands of all the labor organizations and of leading representatives. 1. To bring within the fold of organization every department of produc- tive industry, making knowledge a stand-point for action, and industrial, moral worth, not wealth, the true standard of individual and national greatness. 2. To secure to the toilers a proper share of the wealth that they create; more of the leisure that rightfully belongs to them; more society advan- tages; more of the benefits, privileges, and emoluments of the world; in a word, all those rights and privileges necessary to make them capable of enjoying, appreciating, defending, and perpetuating the blessing of good government. 3. To arrive at the true condition of the productive masses in their educational, moral, and financial condition, by demanding from various governments the establishment of bureaus of labor statistics. 4. The establishment of co6pcrative institutions productive and distribu- ~tive. AMERICAN LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. 59 5. The reserving of the public lands, the heritage of the people, for the actual settler. Not another acre for railroads or corporations. 6. The abrogation of all the laws that do not bear equally upon capital and labor; the removal of unjust technicalities of justice; and the adopting of measures providing for the health and safety of those engaged in mining, manufacturing, and building pursuits. 7. The enactment of laws to compel chartered corporations to pay their employ& ~s weekly, in full, for labor performed the preceding week, in the lawful money of the country. 8. The enactment of laws giving mechanics and laborers the first lien on their work for their full wages. 9. The abolishment of the contract system on national, State, and munic- ipal work. 10. The substitution of arbitration for strikes, whenever and wherever employers and employ6s are willing to meet on equitable grounds. 11. The prohibitiou of the employment, in workshops, mines, and facto- ries, of children that have not attained their fourteenth year. 12. To abolish the system of letting out by contract the labor of convicts in our prisons and reformatory institutions. 13. To secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work. 14. The reduction of the hours of labor to eight per day, so that the laborers may have more time for society enjoyment and intellectual improve- ment, and be enabled to reap the advantages conferred by the labor-saving machinery which their brains have created. 15. To prevail on governments to establish a purely national circulating medium, issued directly to the people, without the intervention of any system of banking corporation, which money shall be a legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private. It is not to be asserted, however, that compliance with these demands would satisfy. The careful study of the evidence taken in New York last autumn (1883) by the U. S. Senate Committee on Education and Labor, of which Senator Blair of New Hampshire is chairman, will convince one that the larger number of the thinking men in the labor ranks are more or less imbued with such socialist ideas as the Henry George state ownership and control of the land; the Karl Marx assertion of a common property in railroads, telegraphs, and banks, as well as in the land, mines, and waters; or in the Lasalle doctrine of the duty and right of the state to own and organize the great machinery of industrial pursuits, so as to prevent the existence of capitalists as a class and of capitalism as the controlling force in economic life and order. Another phase of labor organization, and a very marked one, is the tendency toward federation. Early in October, 1884, the fourth annual session of the Federation of Organized Trades 60 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. and Labor Unions met in Chicago. Article II. of its Constitu- tion sets forth the following objects: SECTION 1. The encouragement and formation of trades and labor unions. SEc. 2. The encouragement and formation of trades and labor assem- blies or councils. SEC. 3. The encouragement and formation of State and provincial federations of trades and labor unions. SEC. 4. The encouragement and formation of national and interna-. tional trades-unions. SEC. 5. To secure legislation favorable to the interests of the industrial classes. Its platform, or declaration of principles, is more compre- hensive even than that of the Knights of Labor, but does not differ essentially from that document. It demands eight hours as a days work; asks for national and State incorporation of trades-unions; favors obligatory education of all children, and the prohibition of their employment nuder the age of fourteen; the enactment of uniform apprentice laws; opposes bitterly all contract convict labor, and the truck or goods system in pay- ment of wages; demands laws giving the workman a first jien upon property, the product of his labor; the abrogation of all so-called conspiracy laws; the establishment of a national bureau of labor and statistics; the prohibition of the importa- tion of alien labor; opposes government contracts on public works ; favors the adoption by States of an employers liability act, and urges all labor bodies to vote only for labor legislators. This body had representatives, at its last meeting, of the machinists, printers, carpenters, coopers, cigarmakers, iron- molders, lake seamen, masons, granite-cutters, and of local trades assemblies and central unions, as well as of the Knights of Labor. It aims to take the same position in American labor organization that the British Trades Congress does toward labor affairs in that country. Besides this body, which seems to be gradually taking shape as labors central and national expo- nent and representative, there are in all of the large cities,. in many important towns, and in some States, deliberative and representative bodies, with legislative powers, in which are embraced many small trades and unions not yet nationalized. The most important of these is the Central Labor Union of New York City, in which nearly one hundred thousand wage- AMERICAN LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. 61 workers are represented. Tliere are State assemblies in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, and probably two or three other States. I The whole movement is undergoing a rapid and healthy change. It is coming out of the twilight of separatism into the daylight of united action and public discussion. It has a litera- ture of its own, fugitive as yet, perhaps, but of an extent and character that will surprise those who have made no examina- tion of the subject. There are seventeen monthly journals, pub- lished by the executives of as many unions and societies. In addition to these special organs, there is one daily, The La- borer, of Haverhill, Mass.; and several weeklies, The Crafts- man, the Labor Tribune, and others, published at Washington and Pittsburg, which are distinctively the organs of the great trades, such as the printers, miners, iron and steel workers, iron-molders, glass-workers, etc. The two great organizations of cigarmakers publish monthly journals, and both are remark- ably well edited. The locomotive engineers and firemen issue handsome monthly magazines. The Carpenters Brotherhood also issues a well-edited monthly. The Knights of Labor issue the Journal of United Labor. In addition to these and others, there are nearly four hundred weeklies that are in sympathy with the labor organizations in some one or all of their methods. Recently a large number of these papers have formed a Labor Press Association. They do not use the wires as yet, but by a judicious use of the mails are able to supply one another with a great deal of interesting news, much of it of value as showing the condition of labor, the places where the market is crowded, or the trades in which men are needed. All this has grown out of a feeling that the ordinary press is hostile and presents the action of labor from the point of antagonism. There are four German dailies, one each in New York and Philadelphia, and two in Chicago. There is also a weekly supporting the anarch- istic agitation, and a German monthly published in San Fran- cisco. The internationalist organ is the German Arbeiter- Zeitung of Chicago, while that of the Social Democrats is the Volks-Zeitung of New York. In this paper only the facts in relation to American labor organizations have been rapidly and perhaps imperfectly out- lined. Enough has been presented, though, to show the character and significance of the labor movement, and to show that it is 62 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W essentially peaceful and law-abiding. It is, however, absolutely necessary for the well-being of society itself that a more candid and generous attitude should be taken than has heretofore been held toward what is known somewhat loosely, not to say ilip- pantly, as the Labor Movement. It must not be forgotten that the men of labor are of necessity the conservators and de- fenders of order, and that their disaffection must threaten in a serious degree the very existence of the present form of society and civilization. Capital apparently fails to recall the fact that from the ranks of labor come the constable and the soldier, by whose services and sacrifice it is, in the last resort, alone secure. RICHARD J. Hn~oN. SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND CHRIST. WITHIN certain limits, all the grand ethical and religions reforms of history have mnch the same characteristics. If this sounds like a paradox, it is only to those who are accustomed to believe iu history as a continuous rectilinear progress. Unless the course of events runs in cycles, as was the belief of the Greeks, nothing seems truer than the assertion that different epochs have different problems in ascending scales of complexity, or else win successive victories over a constantly diminishing sum of difficulties. But whatever progress is, it certainly is not so much rectilinear as spiral, because humanity advances only by a series of reactions against an ever-pressing environment. If life be defined as the successive adaptation of internal states in correspondence with external changes, each spiritual reform, though with different phases, will present the same species of efforts to break through the narrowing bonds of the material, under whatever name it may be known, whether as fate or nature, theology or science. The moral effort will be made, the advancing forces will be thrown back for a century, only to return in newer armor and under a different standard to the beleaguered town of Mansoul. The history of all religions is much the same, and so is the history of practical ethics. Religion, which, like philosophy, begins in wonder and awe, always tends to become stereotyped in set formularities; that is to say, it gradually traces forms that excited its worship as the unknown, until by means of dogmas it becomes the known, the explored, the familiar. Ethics, which has its origin in the most ordinary experiences of life and conduct, gradually swells in volume till it becomes identified with all the rules of a transcendental religion. Then some one that does not believe in this apotheosis of ethics leads a revolt against the religious ritual with which it has become 63

SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND CHRIST. WITHIN certain limits, all the grand ethical and religions reforms of history have mnch the same characteristics. If this sounds like a paradox, it is only to those who are accustomed to believe iu history as a continuous rectilinear progress. Unless the course of events runs in cycles, as was the belief of the Greeks, nothing seems truer than the assertion that different epochs have different problems in ascending scales of complexity, or else win successive victories over a constantly diminishing sum of difficulties. But whatever progress is, it certainly is not so much rectilinear as spiral, because humanity advances only by a series of reactions against an ever-pressing environment. If life be defined as the successive adaptation of internal states in correspondence with external changes, each spiritual reform, though with different phases, will present the same species of efforts to break through the narrowing bonds of the material, under whatever name it may be known, whether as fate or nature, theology or science. The moral effort will be made, the advancing forces will be thrown back for a century, only to return in newer armor and under a different standard to the beleaguered town of Mansoul. The history of all religions is much the same, and so is the history of practical ethics. Religion, which, like philosophy, begins in wonder and awe, always tends to become stereotyped in set formularities; that is to say, it gradually traces forms that excited its worship as the unknown, until by means of dogmas it becomes the known, the explored, the familiar. Ethics, which has its origin in the most ordinary experiences of life and conduct, gradually swells in volume till it becomes identified with all the rules of a transcendental religion. Then some one that does not believe in this apotheosis of ethics leads a revolt against the religious ritual with which it has become 63 64 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W~ identified; lie cares more to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly, than for all the gorgeous ceremonial of worship and sacrifice. By bringing back ethics to its simplest elements, he also desires to restore religion to its primitive attitude of wonder and awe; he desires to take the shoes from off his feet in religious veneration, while he mixes with his fellow-beings in the every-day garb of sympathy and affection. When religions are reformed, it is usually in pursuance of an ethical idea of the simplest and most catholic character. For general outlines, this statement will hold true of each of the three great ethical reformers, Buddha, Socrates, and Christ, though more obviously of the first and last than of the Greek moralist. The religious problem was more present to the mind of Buddha and Christ than it was to Socrates, who had to combat the forces of sophistry, skepticism, and dogmatic mate- rialism, as well as the anthromorphic conceptions of Hellenic religion. But Buddha had a purely ethical mission, besides his antagonism to Brahmanical theology; and Christ combined with his attack on Pharisaism and Hebraic ritual the advocacy of socialistic ideas and democratic championship. Absolutely different as were the local circumstances in the midst of which the three reformers appeared, it is curious to note how many parallel points there were in their lives. Gotama, the Buddha, lived about five hundred years before the Christian era; Soc- rates, a century later. There is all the difference in the world between Gotamas yellow-clad mendicant monks and Socratess band of philosophical adherents, while the early Christian dis- ciples possessed characteristics alien to both philosophers and monks. And yet they treat their founders life and character in precisely similar fashion. While the actual Socrates is depicted in Xenophons Memorabilia, the ideal Socrates gains his apotheosis in Platos dialogues. Historical criticism enables us to distinguish between the Christ of the Synoptic Gospel and the central figure of the Johannian Gospel; and in similar fashion the glorified and wonderful Buddha of the Lalita Vistara, the standard Sanskrit work of the northern Buddhists, finds his real and more humble counterpart in the Gotama of the Pati Pitakas. Socrates has his early mission conveyed to him in the answer of the oracle; Gotama learns to know his task while under the Bo-tree; Christ passes his initiatory ordeal in the SOCRATES, B UDDIIA, AND ChRIST. 65 desert. Christ is tempted of the devil after a long fast; Buddha sustains a protracted conflict with Mara, the Prince of Dark- ness, before the final victory is gained. Gotama promulgates his doctrine in opposition to the official ritualism of the Brah- mans; Christ is the free-thinking reformer, as compared with the dead formalism of the Scribes and Pharisees; Socrates has as his foes sophists, demagogues, and those who accused him of introducing new divinities. All these reformers refuse to incorporate in their systems any physical or metaphysical theories ; all alike start with common topics of everyday life, with parables from nature and apologues of unvarnished sim- plicity. Socrates finds that Critias, his own pupil, consents to his death; Christ is betrayed by his own disciple; Gotamas Judas Iscariot is called Devadatta. The favorite Pho~do, with whose hair Socrates is playing, reminds one of John, who leaned on Jesus heart; and Buddha, too, had his beloved disciple in Aranda. There are points in the death-story of Gotama that remind the reader now of Socrates, now of Christ. He dismisses his disciples at VesMi, much as Christ sends away his disciples and faces the agony at Gethsemane alone. Not one of the female disciples is near the Master when .he is dying, just as Socrates says, 0 Crito, let some one lead this woman home, when Xanthippe appears in his prison. Hearken, ye monks, I say unto you, exclaims Buddha, all earthly things are tran- sitory. Strive on without ceasing, watch and pray,~~ says Christ to the chosen three, lest ye enter into temptation. Not so, Aranda,~~ says Buddha, weep not, sorrow not. And Socrates, too, when he has drunk the cup and hears his friends weeping, upbraids them: What is this strange outcry? Be quiet, and have patience. It is needless, perhaps, to add the extraordinary resemblance between the subsequent histories of Buddhism and Christianity as religious systems; a fact, of course, to which the Socratic system, not being primarily a religion, can afford no parallel. In later times, Buddha, like Christ, is born of a pure virgin, and becomes a universal monarch. In the course of fifteen hun- dred years, Roman Catholicism and Tibetan Lamaism, the lineal descendants of Christ and Buddha, have become sacer- dotal and sacramental systems; each with its bells and rosaries and images and holy water; each with its services in dead lan- guages, with choirs and processions and creeds and incense, in VOL. CXL.NO. 338. 5 66 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. which the laity are spectators only. Each has its idols and relics and symbols, its reverence to the Virgin and Child, its shrines and pilgrimages, its monasteries and cathedrals. In the services of each, the priest reverently swallows a material thing, and believes himself to have swallowed a part of the Divine Nature. Each is ruled over by a pope with a triple tiara, -the earthly representative of an eternal spirit in the heavens.* Bnt we are not concerned here with the subsequent develop- ments, so much as with the main characteristics of spiritual and ethical reform at the time when they were first inaugurated. Whatever else they may be or may not be, all reforms possess one common feature: they are all animated by a pure zeal for hnmanity as such, divested of all those integuments, metaphysi- cal, theological, or scientific, with which man is forever seeking to cover his assumed nakedness. When man first reasoned him- self into the belief that he was naked, then was the beginning of woe, the fall from the primal Eden. For then began the slowly wrought edifices of doctrine, that taught man that he needed adventitious aids to work out his own salvation. He was an atom in a iesistlessly whirling stream of fates, a plaything in the hands of jealous and omnipotent gods, a single defenseless unit, against which were ranged the forces of nature and an unseen, omnipresent, supra-mundane realm. Before his imagi- nation were ever looming forces and agencies, unknown, terrific, soul-subduing, with whom he must make his peace by whatever means, on pain of some dim, fantastic, immeasurable punish- ment. And so come on him the locust army of philosophers and priests and metaphysicians, to eat up every green shoot of nat- ural feeling and simple, nureasoned activity. When the ethical reformer appears, his first effort is to recall man to what he is in and by himself as a single spiritual unit; his second is then to attempt to adjust his relations with those around him; his third, to wage truceless war with the official teachers of the time. He cannot help the polemical attitude, for drastic meas- ures are required; and if he does not attack the established authorities they force on the battle, because they see that their privileges are being threatened. But the opposition attitude is only the necessary consequence, and not the essential element, of the reform. The first step is to enable man to see for him- Rhys Davids Hibbert Lectures, p. 193. SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND CHRIST. 67 self, and so knowledge, however understood, is the indispensable prerequisite. Then come the simple maxims of charity and benevolence, the simple duties that are the earliest tasks of a man who knows himself, and knows what he has to do. To give sight to the blind, to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, and the opening of prisons to those that are bound,these are the first words of every new gospel. The special circumstances of the case naturally determine the character of the knowledge to be imparted. When Gotama began his mission he was preaching to born pessimists. The one certain fact in the world was its endless misery. Thereon men had built refinement of torture, in the beliefs that accompanied the early Animism of the Aryan race: that the soul passed from body to body in a course of transmigration. It was not apparently a necessary part of the early creed, which taught that man had a soul; at all events, it seems likely that the Aryans learned the doctrine of metempsychosis after their incur- sion into the Indian peninsula, though we cannot point to the time when they were not Animists. But the vista of future sufferings that was thus opened before their eyes was a burden too heavy to be borne. It is bad enough for the modern pes- simist, who limits suffering to the world we know; but the ancient pessimist was in a worse case, when to the present life was added another and yet another worldly existence, in which the dreary drama of torture was to be enacted anew. Further ingenuities were due to the priests with their complicated ritual of sacrifices and bodily mortifications. From this net-work of pains and penalties, it was Gotamas desire to deliver much- enduring man. All suffering, he said, arises from ignorance: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shali set you free. Gotamas measures to secure this freedom were drastic enough. No mortifications in the first place, no such belief in soul as the Brahmanical creed involved, and lastly only such limited credence in trausmigration as would allow for the last- ing effects of conduct and character. (Karma.) The story that details Gotamas antagonism to self-mortification is picturesquely placed at the very opening of his career. In the wood of Uruvela, he is said to have lived in the severest discipline, tongue pressed against palate, holding his breath, and deny- ing himself nourishment. But no illumination came. His body is attenuated by self-inflicted pain, but he finds himself no 68 THE NORTH AMERICAN REYIEW~ nearer his goal. So he sees tliat self-mortification cannot lead to enlightenment, and he takes nourishment again freely, to regain his former strength. Now there were five ascetics living in the neighborhood, who were astonished at his persistence in the faith of asceticism; but when they saw that he had deserted the good cause, they with one consent abandoned him as a cast- away. To these, after the victorious sojourn under the Tree of Knowledge, comes Gotama, and preaches to them the sermon at Benares, which corresponds to Christs Sermon on the Mount. The sequel is told in the Mahavagga, I., 610 ff.: The Exalted One came to Benares, to the deer-park Isipatara, where the five ascetics dwelt. Then the five ascetics saw the Exalted One ap- proaching from a distance. When they saw him, they said to one another: Friends, yonder comes the ascetic Gotama, who lives in self-indulgence, who has given up his quest, and returned to self-indulgence. We shall show him no respect, not rise up before him, not take his alms-bowl and his cloak from him; but we shall give him a scat, and lie can sit down, if he likes. But the nearer and nearer the Exalted One came to the five ascetics, the less could the five ascetics abide by their resolution. They went up to the Exalted One. One took from him his alms-bowl and cloak; another brought him a scat; a third gave him water to wash his feet, and a footstool. Then the five ascetics saidto the Exalted One: If thou hast not been able, friend Gotama, by those mortifications of the body, to attain superhuman perfection, the full supremacy of the knowledge and contemplation of sacred things, how will thou now, when thou livest in self-indulgence, attain such perfec- tion? Then the Exalted One spake to the five ascetics, saying: There arc two extremes, 0 monks, from which he who leads a religious life must abstain. One is a life of pleasure, devoted to desire and enjoyment: that is base, ignoble, unspiritual, unworthy, unreal. The other is a life of mortifi- cation: it is gloomy, unworthy, unreal. The perfect one, 0 monks, is re- moved from both these extremes, and has discovered the way that lies between them, the middle way, which enlightens the eyes, enlightens the mind, which leads to rest, to knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nirvana. (Oldenbergs Buddha, ff. 125127.) There is much in this story that runs parallel with the Gospel narratives of Christ. There is the disdain of the ascetic for the mere human being. The Son of Man cometh eating and drink- ing, and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. There is the contrast with the ascetic John, who came neither eating nor drinking; and there is the justification that wisdom has for her children, Be ye not of a sad countenance, as the hypocrites. But there is also the further parallel with Socrates: on the one side, SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND CHRIST. 69 Antisthenes with the Cynics; on the other, the Cyrenaic Aristippus with the doctrine of pleasure; and half-way between the extremes is Socrates, neither ascetic nor voluptuary, with his counsels of ow~ppo~6v-~ (sobriety) and p.~tpL6t-~ (moderation), and his life-long exemplification of the Hellenic text p.-qa~v & -~~ (nothing in excess). In this, as in other matters, the ethical re- former is the true humanist. The two other doctrines of Buddha that have been mentioned may be taken together, as they both seem to have been formu- lated in direct antagonism to Brahman metaphysics. The older philosophy recognized .Ailman, in the same way that German transcendentalism envisages the self, or Ego, or the conscious- ness. It was the Alman, for instance, that made the world, much as the understanding makes the world, according to Kant, or the world arises in consciousness, according even to so em- pirical a thinker as Mr. Lewes. With this Alman there was an ultimate fusion of the Brahma, or Word, just as the Neo- Platonic Logos both was with God and was God, and the coalition of the two amounted to the one identical, absolute self- consciousness, as it would be phrased by Hegelianism. From all this verbose and mystical metaphysic Buddha turned away. To him there was no Ego in the sense of an underlying unity of con- sciousness, no self or soul in the autological or religious meaning of the word. Buddha takes up a position on this question that resembles that of ilume in facing the spiritualistic hypothesis of Berkeleys experience, indeed, testifies to states of consciousness that come and go in quick succession; but where shall we find in experience any testimony to the underlying subject? A see- ing, a hearing, a conceiving, above all a suffering, take place; but where is the existence that may be regarded as the seer, the hearer, the sufferer? Everything is changing, is in flux, in movement; it~v~c~ ~p~t is a truth for Buddha, as well as for his Ephesian contemporary, ileracleitus. The object of this disbelief in the identity of the self is very probably theological; there can be no doubt that, once granted the existence of the soul as a separate entity, there is large room for theological dogma with regard to its being, its origin, and its destiny. Provision at once has to be made for securing its sanctity by sacrificial offerings and all the ritual of purification; it is held to be contaminated by the body, which is thenceforward regarded as the prison-house of a diviner being.. Its. fate in a 70 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. future world affords endless exercise for ingenious combinations of torture and ecstasy, such as have pleased the theological mind in all ages. But the immediate effect of Buddhas nega- tive doctrine is to throw doubt upon the possibility of that transmigration of souls which was so cherished a doctrine among the Brahmans. For if there be no identical Ego, or per- sonality, how can it be conceived to change from body to body? And if transmigration be denied, is not the morality that is fed by belief in a future life largely impaired? The device of Buddha was to retain the lasting effects of action and character, while he dispensed with the ordinary theory of metempsychosis. This is the doctrine of Harma, or moral retribution, which is in some respects not unlike the modern doctrine of heredity. Whatever a man reaps, that also he has 50W11, may be taken as the text of Buddhas teaching on this point; for actions never lose their proper effects, and if there be suffering now, it must be because, either in the present life or in a past generation, there has been sin. Nature, as we should say, never forgives; sin always entails punishment, not by any theological law, but simply by a natural law. The effects of an action go on in ever-widen- ing circles, a long series of results dates, by the mandate of necessities, from so me primal source of good or evil act. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that Buddha seems to have intended to impress upon his hearers. Do not talk about your ~ he would seem to have said, its history and its dangers; do not relieve yourself of all responsibility for single acts by believing in a self whose purity can be restored by sacrifice and oblation. And do not picture your souls destiny in future ages. These are problems that do not come within the sphere of practical ethics. Realize this, however, that no single act you do is devoid of consequences that are incurable. If you are unhappy, it is the fault of certain acts in the past. Do not pro- long the dreary chain of suffering by fresh sin; learn to get rid of passion and desire; care not so much for the worlds pleas- ures; know that no peace can be gained except by him who feels that life can offer him nothing to tempt his longing, or feed his active ambition. Come unto me, and I will give you rest. The difference between such teaching and that of Christ is measured rather by the new religious ideas that Christ set be- fore men, than by any large divergence in the strictly ethical SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND CHRIST. 71 view. It is true that very different motives for unworldliness are presented by the later teacher. In Christianity the stress is laid upon the necessity of a present duty to be perfect, in prepara- tion for a better world, where there are many mansions; while in the early Buddhism there is the simultaneous recognition that the world is unreal, and that yet there is no other but only Nirvana. In either case, however, if we confine ourselves strictly to the ethical aspects, the difference is one of degree rather than of kind. The tenets of both are more or less ascetic; the neces- sity for rest is equally enforced by both; while the restlessness of ambition and of desire are stigmatized in equal terms. Christ told his disciples not to allow themselves to take thought, just as he rebuked Martha for being troubled about many things, and as Paul told his converts to be careful for nothing. And no moralist has painted the workings of lust and passion, vanity and ostentation, more powerfully than is done in the Sermon on the Mount. The futility of external rites, when desires are as yet unextinguished, is exactly in the spirit of Buddhas diatribe against sacrifice and self~mortification.* In the case both of the Indian and the Christian reformer, the contention is clean against the ethics of theology, the practical outcome being to affirm the sanctity of daily acts, the ineffaceable character of sin, the necessity of pure motives and unselfish desires, rather than the entire annihilation of the present in the view of a stupen- dous future. Here, too, Socrates has essentially the same lesson. Life, he said, consists not in the abundance of things a man possesses; it is not a continuous grubbing and grasping, an eternal attempt to outdo your neighbor. It is mans duty to get an internal harmony of some kind, a just equipoise of his facul- ties, so that desire may learn to be controlled by reason. And the same figure is used. Buddha compares the only moral life to a musical instrument, whose strings must not be either too tense or too loose; and similarly the Platonic Socrates, in the first book of the ~~Republic,~~ compares the just and virtuous man to a musician who will not try to screw his pegs up higher than a rival, but only aim at the just mean. * In the matter of purity, both make much the same point. He who looks upon a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her in his heart, says Christ. The monk that lowers himself to touch a womans hand with corrupt thoughts, the order inflicts on him degradatio~i, says Buddha. 72 TIlE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEIF The problems of life and thought that Socrates had to face were as different as were the characters respectively of Greek and Indian; and yet the one common note of all ethical reforms, that which we have called their essential humanism, is even clearer in his case than in those of Buddha and Christ. Whatever be the sins and sorrows of humanity, deliverance is only reached by the human beings rising to the full height of his humanity, extending his view to every member of the common family, and carefully eliminating the excessive importance of the super.. natural factor and the nameless terror of the unseen and un- known. Just as Christ, in a striking text, told his disciples not to say, Lo here or Lo there, for the kingdom of God was within them, so Socrates turned from the recognized agencies of the supernatural sacrifice and augury and superstitious rites to that inwardness of judgment which is the very essence of the modern view of conscience. Like a chain of blind men,~~ said Buddha, is the discourse of the Brahmans; he that is in front sees nothing, he that is in the middle sees nothing, he that is behind sees nothing. What then? Is not the faith of the Brahmans vain? * This anticipates by five hundred years Christs re- buke of the Scribes, as blind leaders of the blind. In smiliar fashion, Plato represented Socrates as discrediting, with bitter irony, the mythology of his country with its crying heroes and lying warriors and adulterous gods. But Socrates is not so much concerned with theology as he is with the scientific and practical thought of the day. The early philosophy of Greece had re- sulted in the creation of an impersonal nature, which was every- where dwarfing humanity by the dull iron weight of material necessity and physical law. Especially had the Atomist philos- ophy of Leucippus and Democritus produced a conception of the Kosmos that reduced everything ~ life, death, the soul, and the material form to combinations and dissolutions of primordial atoms. Where, in the ceaseless whirl of warring molecules, could room be found for human thought and will and duty? What, indeed, in this view of things, was morality but convention, as opposed to the drear reality of nature? Right and wrong, good and evil, what were they but the tem- porary enactment, for base utilitarian purposes, of those states that, in alternate analysis, were themselves nothing but the chance and temporary coagulation of masses of adhering atoms? Cauktsultanta (Majjhima N.). SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND CHRIST. 73 And in close company with materialism came its twin sister, skepticism, expressing itself in the ingenious analysis of the sophists to show that all morality was relative to the individual, and that whatever seemed to a man to be true was true for him. And after skepticism its handmaid, that debasing cynicism which holds that there is nothing new and nothing true, and it does not much matter; and then ~last scene in this eventful historythe inevitable pessimist Hegesias 6 ~Z-4~v~to~ with his Old World plaint that life is not worth living. It is instructive for a modern age, beset by much the same phantoms, to observe the Socratic procedure. Buddha had declared war with windy Brahmanical metaphysics. Christ would have no discussion with the Scribes on a future state, and referred men back to mundane duties. Socrates professed his entire dissidence with conjectural physics. He had read the doctrines of natural philosophers, but he would have nothing to do with them. Even Anaxagoras, who had made the world de. pend on intelligence, is rejected by Socrates as soon as he brings in material agencies. For him the pressing problem is man, and ethics the only study. He would even converse, Xenophon tells us in the Memorabilia, about human affairs, asking what was pious and what impious, what honorable and what base, what just and what unjust, what was self-control and what madness, what was courage and what cowardice, what was a city and what a politician, who was the born leader of men and what the proper way of governing them. When men knew these things, he called them free-born and honorable; and when they knew them not, he thought them rightly styled slaves. For the sophists, with their skeptical disintegration of opinions, and their cynical reference of morals to individual relativity of judg- ment, he had another method of argument. Which is most characteristic of humanity,~~ he asked, its endless diversity of opinions, or those stable judgments that are founded on careful comparison of instances and methodical inferences ~ How shall we define the human being, by his views and notions and fancies, or by his reason and thought I If opinion leads to difference among men, let thought show in all men its essential identity. In all opinions, let us find the common ground, the underlying unity, the scientific definition; and so shall we base ethics on sure foundations and make logic the instrument to universal truth. Here, as elsewhere, the reformer is the mediator between men, 74 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. the healer of discords, the advocate of unity. He will include in the range of discussion nothing but what has reference to human interests, but he will extend those interests till they include the whole of humanity. If Christ represents the spiritual side of this enthusiasm for humanity, by preaching the common brother- hood of men in view of a common relation to a Divine Father, Socrates represents the intellectual side, by laying stress on the unity of all men in the common ideas of thought and the universal laws of intelligence. The difference between them is not so much a difference of method as the necessity for meeting different problems. Socrates had to cure an intellectual disease, while Christ had to remove the burden of theological intolerance. Even in logical method, a tolerable parallel might be made out between Socrates and Buddha. Gotama, too, seems to have proceeded by the same maicutic method of dialectics that is usually associated with the name of the Athenian philosopher; and with him, as with Socrates, the interlocutor is generally reduced to simple Yes and No, overcome by the triumphant course of his questioners argument. The metaphor of the lute has been referred to before,but the story is so Socratic that it may be transcribed in full. Buddha has a conversation with a young man named Sona (Mah& vagga, V., 1-15 seq.), who, after trying ascetic observances to the full, and becoming aware of their fruitlessness, is minded to fall back on a life of enjoyment. The story proceeds thus: flow is it, Sona, were you able to play the lute before you left home ? Yes, sire What do you think, then, Sona, if the strings of your lute are too tightly strung; will the lute give out the proper tone and be lit to play? It will not, sire. And what do you think, Sona, if the strings of your lute be strung too slack; will the lute then give out the proper tone and be fit to play? It will not, sire. But how, Sona, if the strings of your lute be not strung too tight or too slack; if they have the proper degree of tension; will the lute then give out the proper sound and be fit to play? Yes, sire. In the same way, Sona, energy too much strained tends to excessive zeal, and energy too much relaxed tends to apathy. Therefore, Sona, cultivate in yourself the mean of energy, and press on to the mean in your mental powers, and place this before you as your aim. The moral of the story is clearly the same as that conveyed by the well-known incident of the aged apostle found playing with a tame partridge. In fact, the method of proving spiritual truth by means of analogies drawn from daily life was common SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND CHRIST. 75 to Buddha, Socrates, and Christ. I will show you a parable, says Buddha. By a parable many a wise man perceives the meaning of what is being said. And his parables are often drawn from the same sources as those with which we are familiar in the Gospels. There is a parable of the sower, wherein the teacher declares that the seed he sows is faith, and good works are the rain that fertilizes it. There is a parable of a mustard-seed, though with a different application from Christs. There is a parable of the tares, which in Buddhist terminology is the tirana-grass, so noxious a weed in a rice-field. And there is a parable of the flood that comes down suddenly and carries away the careless sleeper. Buddhas preaching of deliverance is compared to the work of a physician; and an elaborate parable compares the tempter that tries to lure men to false paths, and the deliverer that leads them back to the way of salvation. The following sentences, too, have a curiously familiar sound: What men call treasure, when laid up in a deep pit, profits nothing, and may easily be lost; but the real treasure is that laid up by man or woman through charity and piety, temperance and self-control. The treasure thus hid is secure, and passes not away; though he leave the fleeting riches of the world, this man takes with him a treasure that no wrong of others and no thief can steal. For never in this world does hatred cease by hatred; hatred ceases by love; this is always its nature. Let us live happily, then, not hating those that hate us; let us live free from hatred among men that hate. Let a man overcome anger by kindness, evil by good.~~ An- ger, drunkenness, obstinacy, bigotry, deception, envy, self-praise, dispar- aging others, highmindedness, evil communications, these constitute uncleanness; not, verily, the eating of flesh. Neither abstinence from fish or flesh, nor going naked, nor shaving the head, nor matted hair, nor dirt, nor a rough garment, nor sacrifices to Agni (fire) will cleanse a man not free from delusions. To abhor and cease from sin, abstinence from strong drink, not to be weary in well-doing, these are the greatest blessing. Reverence and lowliness, contentment and gratitude, the hearing of the law at due seasons, this is the greatest blessing. To be long-suffering and meek, to associate with the peaceful, religious talk at due seasons, this is the greatest blessing. After Buddha had gone, Saripulta (who is the St. Paul, as Aranda is the St. John, and Moggattama the St. Peter of Buddhism) becomes the Prime Minister, and his body-guard are clad in metaphorical armor, such as St. Paul himself de- scribed in his Roman prison. The saints are to take earnest 76 TIlE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. meditation as their breast-plate, continual mindfulness as their shield, patience as a staff, the Dhamma or true doctrine as a sword, and the insight of apostleship as a gem to adorn their helmet. For it was a battle they had to fight, a victory they had to win, under a leader who had himself gone on in front to show the way. If the death of Buddha seems wanting in dignity, as com- pared with the tragic deaths of Socrates and Christ, it is yet not devoid of a certain simple pathos, which almost approaches nobility. Buddha, having looked his last at Ves~ii, journeys on to Kusinhr~, and on the way contracts the sickness that was to terminate his life. Aranda, the beloved disciple, is with him to attend his last hours, and to his ears are communicated the final speeches of the Master: Whoever, Aranda, male disciple or female follower, lay-brother or lay- sister, lives in the truth in matters both great and small, these bring to the Perfect One the highest honor, glory, praise, and credit. Therefore, Aranda, must ye practise thinking, Let us live in the truth in matters great and small. But Aranda went into the house and wept, saying, I am not yet free from infirmities, I have not yet reached the goal, and my master, who takes pity on me, will soon enter into Nirvana. Then Buddha sent one of the disciples to him, saying, Go, 0 disciple, and say to Aranda in my name, The Master wishes to speak with thee, friend. Thereupon Aranda went in to the Master, bowed himself before him, and sat down beside him. But Buddha said to him, Not so, Aranda, weep not, sorrow not. Have I not ere this said to thee, that from all that man loves and from all that man enjoys, from that must man part, give it up, tear himself from it? How can it be, Aranda, that that which is born, grows, is made, which is subject to decay, should not pass away? That cannot be. But thou, Aranda, hast long honored the Perfect One, in love and kindness, with cheerfulness, loyally and unwearyingly, in thought, word, and deed. Thou hast done well, Aranda; only strive on, soon wilt thou be free from impurities. Buddha, shortly before his departure, said to Aranda: It may be, Aranda, that ye shall say, the world has lost its master. We have no master more. Ye must not think thus, Aranda. The law, Aranda, and the ordinance, which I have taught and preached unto you, these are your master, when I am gone hence. And to his disciples he said: Hearken, 0 disciples, I charge ye; everything that cometh into being passeth away. Strive without ceasing. These were his last words. (Mah~parinibb& na Sulta, from which Dr. Olbenberg quotes, p. 202.) So died Buddha, at the age of eighty years, about four hun- dred and eighty years before the Christian era; and toward sunrise the nobles of Kusinara burned his body before the city SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND CHRIST. 77 gates, with all the honors that are shown to the relics of uni- versal monarchs. If a]l this lacks the solemn interest of Socrates discoursing on the immortality of the soul in his Athenian prison, as it cer- tainly falls far short of the tragic grandeur of Christ dying on the cross, it yet illustrates the calmness with which humanity, to those who can understand its nature and limits, can face its own instant dissolution. The appropriate parallel to these last words of Buddha are the words of Socrates to his Athenian judges, in Platos Apology, or Christs discourse to his dis- ciples at the conclusion of the Last Supper. To Buddha, expect- ing the passionless tranquillity of Nirv& na; to Socrates, wavering between the alternative that death is the seeing of the happy heroes of the olden time, or else a long sleep and the best of sleeps; to Christ, looking back to a completed lifes duty with the confidence that it is finished,there could be no sting in death, no victory for the grave. For humanity creates its own terrors, and it is in the power of humanity to banish them or to rise above them. W. L. COURTNEY. THE INCREASE OF WEAITII. WHEN some future historian describes the progress of the nineteenth century, he will doubtless be struck by the enor- mous increase of wealth, especially in the interval between 1850 and the present date. In a single generation the countries of Europe have doubled their capital, while the increase of population has hardly exceeded thirty per cent. In other words, wealth has grown three times faster than population. It was laid down by MeCulloch, in 1825, that nations required sixty years to double their capital, except the United States, which doubled in twenty-five years. Probably if society had remained in the condition that it was in when MeCulloch wrote, the increase would not have passed his estimates; but the introduction of railways, steamers, telegraphs, etc., has given such facilities for rapid accumulation, that the United Kingdom has doubled since 1845, France since 1856, and the United States since 1864. To observe the increase more closely, let us take the wealth and population of the three countries at various epochs: Wealth in Millions of Doll rs. Population. Great United Great United Date Britain. Pranee States Britain. France. States. 1830 16,890 10,650 24,030,000 82,100,000 12,900,000 1860 25,300 15,850 8,430 27,200,000 35,700,000 23,200,000 1870 34,400 26,200 35,370 31,300,000 37,300,000 38,600,000 1884 45,300 41,700 61,670 36,200,000 38,200,000 66,600,000 In fifty-four years Great Britain has almost trebled her wealth; while France has very nearly quadrupled hers; and in thirty-four years the United States have seen their capital multiply sixfold. As these three countries have been the great- est accumulators in recent years, it is worth while to study their simultaneous growth in wealth under very opposite cir.. 78

THE INCREASE OF WEAITII. WHEN some future historian describes the progress of the nineteenth century, he will doubtless be struck by the enor- mous increase of wealth, especially in the interval between 1850 and the present date. In a single generation the countries of Europe have doubled their capital, while the increase of population has hardly exceeded thirty per cent. In other words, wealth has grown three times faster than population. It was laid down by MeCulloch, in 1825, that nations required sixty years to double their capital, except the United States, which doubled in twenty-five years. Probably if society had remained in the condition that it was in when MeCulloch wrote, the increase would not have passed his estimates; but the introduction of railways, steamers, telegraphs, etc., has given such facilities for rapid accumulation, that the United Kingdom has doubled since 1845, France since 1856, and the United States since 1864. To observe the increase more closely, let us take the wealth and population of the three countries at various epochs: Wealth in Millions of Doll rs. Population. Great United Great United Date Britain. Pranee States Britain. France. States. 1830 16,890 10,650 24,030,000 82,100,000 12,900,000 1860 25,300 15,850 8,430 27,200,000 35,700,000 23,200,000 1870 34,400 26,200 35,370 31,300,000 37,300,000 38,600,000 1884 45,300 41,700 61,670 36,200,000 38,200,000 66,600,000 In fifty-four years Great Britain has almost trebled her wealth; while France has very nearly quadrupled hers; and in thirty-four years the United States have seen their capital multiply sixfold. As these three countries have been the great- est accumulators in recent years, it is worth while to study their simultaneous growth in wealth under very opposite cir.. 78 THE INCREASE OF WEALTH. 79 cumstances. The average wealth per inhabitant has been as follows: Year Great Britain. Prance. United States. 1830 $704 $333 1850 948 443 $363 1870 1,103 703 916 1884 1,249 1,092 931 Notwithstanding the calamities of war and phylloxera, France has accumulated more rapidly than Great Britain; but since 1850 the population of the United Kingdom has risen thirty- three per cent., against seven per cent. in France. Moreover, Great Britain has sent out just 6,000,000 emigrants in that interval, of whom 2,100,000 have gone to British colonies, to create new centers of wealth, industry, and commerce, in close connection with the mother country. When these considera- tions are taken into account, it will be found that the accumu- lations of the British people have been equal to those of the French. It is manifest that when population increases rapidly, as in Great Britain and the United States, however prodigious the increase of wealth, there may be only a trifling rise in the ratio per inhabitant. Thus we see that the United States have been doubling capital in twenty years; yet the average per inhabitant is only fifteen dollars higher than in 1870, while the rise in France has been almost four hundred dollars a head. It would be easy to prove, nevertheless, that the advpnce in the United States has been healthiera fact that few Frenchmen will deny. A country progressing at once in wealth and popu- lation must be prosperous, whereas one increasing only in either must be the reverse. In France, wealth accumulates; in Russia, population. If France grew men faster and wealth more slowly, and Russia the reverse, it would be better for both. The annual accumulations since 1830 show as follows: Millions of Dollars. Dollars per Inhabitant. Great United Great United Period. Britain. France. States. Britain. Prance. States. 183050 446 260 17 8 1850-70 430 520 1,350 15 14 44 1870-84 780 1,107 1,164 23 29 25 In forty years, ending with 1870, the average accumulations in the United Kingdom showed little change, unless indeed a 80 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE TV. slight decline after the adoption of free trade and more general use of steam locomotion. We must, however, make allowance for the Crimean war, which cost England $350,000,000, and the effects of the cotton famine, which were far more injurious. But how are we to explain an average increment of twenty-three dollars a head in the fourteen years ending with 1884, the period in which we have heard so much of trade depression, falling prices, and commercial loss? Have these complaints been imaginary, or is the increase of wealth fictitious? On this point there is no room for doubt, seeing that the income-tax returns have risen since 1870 from 445,000,000 to 585,000,000, an increase of thirty-two per cent. We are still as far as ever from explaining the causes of such unexampled prosperity. Some may ascribe it to the Franco-German war, or the Suez canal; others to the board schools, or the increased production of coal; others to the greater industry or thrift of the people. But I am inclined to think it is due to the increase of British shipping, British banking, and British colonial industries. The shipping of the United Kingdom (without the colonial) has risen in late years as follows: Year Fesse~s. Tons, nominal~ Tons, carrying-power. 1850 25,984 3,565,000 3,950,000 1870 22,180 5,691,000 9,720,000 1881 19,311 6,490,000 18,110,000 The carrying~power* almost doubled between 1870 and 1881, although the nominal tonnage had risen but slightly. Hence we find that in 1881 the British flag carried 63,000,000 tons, out of 129,000,000 tons of sea-borne merchandise. In fact, the carrying-trade of the world is passing into British hands. Great Britains banking has grown as fast as her shipping. In 1850 she had 260,000,000 of bank capital and deposits, which rose to 840,000,000 in 1882, the average for the latter year being 23 per inhabitant, against 10 in 1850. The British colonies have powerfully helped to enrich the mother country. Their commerce (without counting India), which was 153,000,000 in 1870, at present reaches 270,000,000, and the amount of British capital profitably invested in Aus * Carrying-power allows steamers to count five for one, as it is found they can make three long or eight short passages for one of a sailing- vessel. TIlE INCJ?EASE OF WEALTH. 81 tralia and Canada is known to exceed 400,000,000 sterling. The subjoined table shows the amount of British wealth under the principal items: Millions of Dollars. Dollars per Inhabitant. 1840. 1870. 1882. 1840. 1870. 1882. Land 8,400 9,400 9,400 323 301 263 Cattle, etc 1,900 2,400 2,070 73 77 58 Houses 3,850 8,100 11,400 148 258 320 Railways 165 2,650 3,850 6 85 108 Shipping 115 330 600 4 11 17 Bullion 305 590 715 11 18 20 Merchandise.. 350 1,300 1,750 13 43 49 Furniture 1,950 4,100 5,700 75 133 160 Loans 1,150 3,000 5,300 44 97 149 Sundries: 1,965 2,530 2,815 76 80 79 Total 20,150 34,400 43,600 773 1,103 1,223 France is equally remarkable for the industry of her popula- tion and their extreme thrift. The yearly accumulations aver- aged $8 a head before the Second Empire, $14 during the reign of Napoleon III., and $29 since the disaster of Sedan. The capital wealth of France is much less than that of either Great Britain or the United States, and it would be easy to show that the annual earnings of the people are in like manner less; yet, during the past fourteen years, Frenchmen have saved, per head, more than Englishmen or Americans. This is a phenomenon deserving the study of economists both in Europe and America. Without pretending to explain it, I may call attention to some facts. The ascertained wealth of France is arrived at by com- paring the death-rate with the amount of assets proved in the Legacy Court. If, by any chance, the rich people have died faster than usual, and the poor less rapidly than usual, since 1870, we should be overestimating the national wealth. But there is no ground for such a supposition. If the government valuation of landed property be excessive, it would likewise disturb our calcu- lations. There is, however, little room to suppose that the whole nation would tamely submit to pay duties on an exorbitant val- uation. But while we admit that the official value is correct, we discover an increase of $5,000,000,000 in the value of land since 1852, which accounts for one-fifth of the total accumulations VOL. CXL.NO. 338. 6 82 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. since 1850. This is not an imaginary increase of wealth, for the market value of the land has risen in the interval as follows: Vatue in dollars per acre. 1852. Vineyards 120 to 196 Meadow 180 to 260 Tillage 100 to 180 1881. 180 to 280 240 to 330 140 to 240 Another item of increase is railways, which in 1860 repre- sented a value of $850,000,000, and in 1883 exceeded $2,550 000,~0. This accounts for $80,000,000 a year. Houses form another valuable branch of savings. Paris, for example, has built $530,000,000 worth of new houses since 1860, and the average increase of house-property in France is officially estimated at $160,000,000 per annum. If we compare the wealth of France and that of the United Kingdom in 1882, we find them as follows: Millions of Dollars. France. United Kingdom. Land.........14,930 9,400 Cattle, etc 1,960 2,070 Houses 9,500 11,400 Railways 2,550 3,850 Bullion 1,520 715 Movables 5,600 7,450 Sundries 3,640 8,715 39,700 43,600 Dollars per Inhabitant. France. 393 50 250 66 40 147 96 1,042 United Kingdom. 263 58 320 108 20 209 245 1,223 None of these valuations include mines, because the mineral is of little value until it is placed above ground. It has been estimated that the peat of Irish bogs, at ten cents a ton, would pay off the national debt of Great Britain. The salt contained in the English Channel is of still greater value, but can hardly be counted as an item of national wealth, although England derives some income from this source. When we turn to the United States, we find a country of un- limited resources and great industry, yet the annual accumnla- tion is not much more than in the United Kingdom. In fact, if Ireland were excluded, the savings of the British people would reach 5 per head, precisely the same as in the United States. THE INGREASE OF WEALTH. 83 This is at first disappointing, for we are naturally predisposed to imagine that there is in the United States more affluence, a greater margin over cost of living, than in the crowded island of Great Britain. It is true that from 1850 to 1870 the yearly accumulation averaged $44 a head, notwithstanding the terrible devastation caused by the war. But in future we cannot expect t& see savings exceed $25, for the Americans seem less disposed to accumulate than to enjoy wealth. If we consider the Union under four great divisions, we find the progress of wealth as follows: Millions of Dollars. Dollars per Inhabitant. 1880. 1870. 1880. 1860. 1870. 1880. New England 1,925 4,200 4,935 610 1,202 1,235 Middle States 4,320 12,570 16,420 525 1,290 1,430 South (13) 6,110 3,680 4,415 595 325 290 West (14) 6,975 14,920 21,710 730 1,060 1,140 Total 19,330 35,370 47,480 615 905 940 In 1860 the New England and Middle States had thirty-two per cent. of the capital of the Union, whereas they now have forty-five per cent. In the same interval the West has risen from thirty-six to forty-six per cent. If we examine the accu- mulations of the past thirty years, we find as follows: Millions of Dollars per annum. ytates 1850-60. 1860-70. 1870-80. Thirty years. NewEngland 75 227 74 125 Middle 199 825 385 470 South 341 * 74 57 West 478 795 679 650 The Union 1,093 1,212 1,302 The decade ending with 1880 saw the accumulations of the New England and Middle States decline more than half, while those of the Western States kept almost uniform. In the whole term of thirty years, the Union has averaged a little over $1,300,- 000,000 yearly, of which exactly half corresponds to the Western States. Comparing the annual accumulation with population, we find the average per head as follows: * The Southern States lost $2,430,000,000 in this decade. 84 THE NO.RTH AMEI?ICAN J?EVIEW Dollars yearlyper Inhabitant. States 1850-60. 1860-70. 1870-80. Thirty years. NewEngland 26 68 19 38 Middle 27 92 35 51 South 37 6 5 West 62 66 41 56 The Union 41 46 27 35 Here we see the reverse of what is taking place in England; the wealth of the country, or at least the power of accumulation, is tending westward, to the prairies, whereas in England the agricultural capital and farming interests are every year dimin- ishing. Poetic writers are in the habit of telling us that agri- culture is the basis of all wealth, that the plow is the emblem of prosperity; but these sentiments must be received cautiously. It would seem to be in the interest of every nation, and of man- kind, that the agricultural or pastoral element should not predominate, but rather the commerciaL Merchants are the best statesmen, and mercantile communities the most prosperous and enlightened. In the meantime the accumulation of wealth goes on from day to day. The American adds seven cents daily to the public fortune, which means that the United States are nearly $4,000,000 richer at sunset than they were at sunrise. The accumulations of Europe and the United States make up $11,000,000 daily, and the increase of population, that is, the excess of births over deaths, is 11,000; so that for every new-coiner into the world there is an addition of $1,000, to provide for his necessities. As a natural result of the increase of wealth, the material condition of nations is improving; not only is the average con- sumption of meat, coffee, sugar, etc., rising all over Europe; not only are gas and water supply extended to minor towns and villages; not only do the savings-banks of Europe show a steady increase of deposits amounting to $110,000,000 yearly; but all the appliances of civilization are multiplied; new harbors and lighthouses are constructed for the common benefit of mankind as if nations in becoming richer also became more generous, more mindful of the golden precept, Let no man live for himself. MICHAEL G. MULUALL. THE EVIDENCE OF THE SENSES. Tm~ senses being the only avenues through which we derive our knowledge of the material world, we are prone to place implicit reliance on their indications, to overlook the part that reason and intelligence play in the interpretation that the mind puts upon the phenomena presented. Indeed, our intui- tive interpretations of physical manifestations are generally mistaken for the indications of the senses themselves. Apart from experience, reason, and intelligence, it is very questionable whether the indications of the senses would convey to us any useful and substantial information. The organs of sense were never, in fact, designed by nature as instruments of scientific inquiry; they were never intended to give us direct and accurate information in relation to the physical qualities of matter. These gates of knowledge are always open; but we are not the passive recipients of knowledge. The fable of Proteus is a true picture of the combat between man, eager for knowledge, and the stubborn guardian charged with the preservation of the secrets of destiny. The sea-god changed himself into various shapes before speaking, and yielded only to the hero who, far from being moved by his transformations, bound him with bands of increasing pressure. Such is nature herself; her answers are always true; but, before allowing truth to shine forth,she arrays herself in the garments of error, or hides herself behind the phantoms of illusion, and will only assnme her proper shape under the determined pres- sure of a resolute disciple of science. When a question arises as to any matter of fact or appear- ance, what is more common than the observation, Must I not believe the evidence of my senses ~ And yet, no evidence is more misleading and fallacious, and there are no witnesses that require more careful scrutiny and more strict cross-examination 85

THE EVIDENCE OF THE SENSES. Tm~ senses being the only avenues through which we derive our knowledge of the material world, we are prone to place implicit reliance on their indications, to overlook the part that reason and intelligence play in the interpretation that the mind puts upon the phenomena presented. Indeed, our intui- tive interpretations of physical manifestations are generally mistaken for the indications of the senses themselves. Apart from experience, reason, and intelligence, it is very questionable whether the indications of the senses would convey to us any useful and substantial information. The organs of sense were never, in fact, designed by nature as instruments of scientific inquiry; they were never intended to give us direct and accurate information in relation to the physical qualities of matter. These gates of knowledge are always open; but we are not the passive recipients of knowledge. The fable of Proteus is a true picture of the combat between man, eager for knowledge, and the stubborn guardian charged with the preservation of the secrets of destiny. The sea-god changed himself into various shapes before speaking, and yielded only to the hero who, far from being moved by his transformations, bound him with bands of increasing pressure. Such is nature herself; her answers are always true; but, before allowing truth to shine forth,she arrays herself in the garments of error, or hides herself behind the phantoms of illusion, and will only assnme her proper shape under the determined pres- sure of a resolute disciple of science. When a question arises as to any matter of fact or appear- ance, what is more common than the observation, Must I not believe the evidence of my senses ~ And yet, no evidence is more misleading and fallacious, and there are no witnesses that require more careful scrutiny and more strict cross-examination 85 86 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W. than these very senses. It is true that in some particular ap- plications of them we are compelled to take the testimony, as in our courts of justice, for what it appears to declare. But in any case of doubt, the senses are the most faflible guides that can be selected. Notable illustrations are afforded by the indications of sight, the sense that is supposed to afford us the most precise and accurate knowledge. All are familiar with the phenomena that accompany the rising and setting of the sun and moon. The impression produced is that of an apparently large orb, vastly larger than when it is near the meridian. Yet nothing is more certain than that the real apparent magnitude of the sun and moonwhennearthehorizonisnotonlynotgreater,but~we adhere to the strict limits of truth, is in fact apparently less than when they are higher in the firmament. Let any one adopt any convenient method of measuring the apparent magnitudes of the sun or moon in the horizon and on the meridian, and they will be found to be sensibly the same. This may be accomplished by extending two threads of line silk parallel to each other in a frame; place them in such position, and at such a distance from the eye, that when presented to the sun or moon, in the horizon, they will exactly touch its upper and lower limbs. Let this arrangement be pre- served until the sun or moon has risen to the meridian, and then let it be viewed in the same manner. It will be found that the threads will equally touch its upper and lower limbs, and their interval will still measure its apparent diameter. Astronomical telescopes are provided with a system of parallel wires, by which observations of this kind can be made with the greatest accuracy, and the application of this more refined method of measurement leads to the same conclusion. We can scarely call this an optical deception, for these very experiments prove that the eye is not deceived; the visual angle in both cases being precisely the same, the size of the image on the retina must have been the same. In fact, in the case of the moon, it is obvious that since she is nearly four thousand miles farther from us when she rises or sets than when she passes the meridian, her apparent diameter in the hon- xon, instead of appearing greater, ought to appear about a six- tieth part less than when on the meridian. This conclusion has been verified by refined methods of measurement. THE EVIDENCE OF THE SENSES. 87 Gassendi, a distinguished disciple of Galileo, thought that as the moon is less brilliant in the horizon than in the zenith, the pupil of the eye is opened wider in looking at it in the former station, and that it is for this reason that we see it larger. But for this conclusion to be valid, it would be necessary that variations in the openings of the pupil should produce varia- tions in the dimensions of the image on the retina. This notion is wholly at variance with the principles of optics, which assure us that the size of the image produced in the eye is the same to whatever extent the pupil is dilated or contracted. The error is evidently one of the interpreting mind, and not of the sense of sight. When objects are beyond a certain moderate distance from the eye, the size of the image on the retina has very little to do with our estimate of their apparent or real magnitude, unless we have reason to believe that the objects whose apparent dimensions are compared, are at the same distance from us. A child two feet high, at the distance of one hundred yards, presents the same apparent size to the organ of visionsub- tends the same angleas a man six feet high at the distance of three hundred yards. Yet no one would mistake the one for the other, however different their absolute distances. In all such cases our estimate of size is the result of a complex mental operation, in which allowance is made for the influence of distance. If circnmsLances are such that we can form no just estimate of distance, we are liable to be misled. In the case of terrestrial objects, our estimate of distance and, of course, of size depends in a great measure upon the number of inter- vening objects. The dilated size of the sun or moon when seen in the horizon is an illusion of the judgment, in which we esti- mate the distance of the orb to be much greater, because there are terrestrial objects interposed. Aloft we have no associations to guide us; its isolation in the expanse of the sky leads us rather to undervalue its apparent magnitude. Other considera- tions besides the interposition of objects enter into the complex mental operations on which our judgment of apparent size is founded; but all of them seem to be related to our estimate of distance. For example, a smoky condition of the atmosphere, by rendering the rising moon much less brilliant, enormously en- larges her apparent size; for, in this case, the obscuration of her brightness is associated with greater distance. 88 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Again, the impression we obtain of the convexity or con- cavity of bodies is not the result of direct visual perception. There are optical instruments (pseudoscopes) in which objects that are really convex appear to be concave, and vice versa. Indeed, the art of painting is in great measure based upon the imperfection of the information conveyed through the medium of sight. This is particularly true of landscape painting. The luminous diverging lines occasionally seen in the air toward sunset, in a sky full of partially broken clouds, sometimes termed the sun drawing water, are in reality parallel. They are, in fact, sunbeams through apertures in the clouds, partially intercepted and reflected by the dust and vapors suspended in the atmosphere. Sometimes they may be seen to diverge from a point near the western horizon, and to converge toward an opposite point in the east, in a manner analogous to the meridian lines on a terrestrial globe. This apparent deviation from par- allelism is the result of the laws of perspective. A similar phe- nomenon, arising from the same cause, is sometimes presented by parallel bands of fleecy clouds. In this view of the subject, we certainly cannot be said to see directly the position of a body by a simple effort of sight. By means of the eye we gather a variety of data, which are submitted to a rapid mental analysis. When the body is near, the differential qualities on which our judgment is based are substantial and obvious, so that he who runs may read. As the distance increases, the calculation grows nicer; only a careful scrutinizing eye will notice the delicate touches in outline, pro- portion, or shading, on which the problem liangs. At still greater distances, it is impossible for any eye or any mind to divine the true position and distance. When this limit is reached, our decision is held by so weak a tenure that the slightest adventitious circumstance, such as the intervention of objects or the greater or less brilliance of the bodies, determines our judgment. There is another illusion belonging to sight, examples of which may be found in daily experience, which, nevertheless, I have not seen as minutely analyzed as might be desirable. I refer to the apparent motion of a body at rest, and the converse. In both cases the apparent motion is invariably in the opposite direction to the real motion. In the case of the rotation of the earth upon its axis from west to east, we imagine ourselves to THE EVIDENCE OF THE SENSES. 89 be at rest, while the sun and other heavenly bodies appear to move from east to west. To the passengers on shipboard the shore appears to recede as the ship leaves the land. In like manner, to one riding rapidly along a road, the trees seem to move backward. On the other hand, if we are in a railway car that is in a state of rest, the motion of a train on an adjacent track is transferred, in our conception (in an opposite direction), to the car in which we are seated; and if the passing train is long, the feeling of uncertainty becomes heightened, and sometimes almost painful. Similarly, if, while we are standing upon the edge of a wharf, a large ship gradually approaches us, as soon as she gets sufficiently near, the motion of the ship is apparently transferred to the wharf; and the impression is so powerful, that most uninitiated persons will absolutely stagger. In like manner, when the external covering of an observatory, consist- ing of the cylindrical sides and hemispherical dome, is made to revolve while we are within, the motion is almost invariably transferred to the platform upon which we are standing. The following explanation, which was, I believe, first sug- gested by Professor Joseph Henry, in 1849, will be found to embrace all possible cases: By long experience, extending back to the period of early childhood, and possibly inherited from untold generations of progenitors, the mind has acquired the habit of inferring, without reflection, that when two bodies are relatively in motion, the motion belongs to the smaller, and that the larger is at rest. This inference is probably inseparably associated with the equally early experience, that it is more difficult to set a large body in motion than a small one. It is not necessary to the effect that one of the bodies should really be the larger, but that, at the time, it should occupy a larger portion of the field of view. Moreover, in order to secure the result, it is absolutely necessary that all concomitant circum- stances, unconnected with apparent size, that influence our judgment of the direction of motion of bodies, should be re- moved. Thus, there must be no fixed objects intervening or visible beyond the body observed, as they might enable us to correct the impression. When these conditions are fulfilled, I believe it will be found to be a universal law that apparent size determines to which of the bodies the motion is referred, on the principle that the apparently smaller body seems to move. 90 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. In the apparent diurnal motion of the heavenly bodies from east to west, produced by our actual motion from west to east, the earth seems to us vastly larger than any body exterior to it, and when motion is observed, we insensibly transfer it to the apparently smaller bodies. It is in vain that reason and calcu- lation combine to assure us that the sun is more than a million times the bulk of the earth; he occupies but a comparatively small portion of our field of view, and, in spite of the deductions of reason, he seems to us much smaller than the earth, and we transfer the motion to him. In like manner, in the apparent recession of the shore from an observer on shipboard, the objects on land occupy a much smaller portion of our field of view than the ship on which we are standing; and therefore, in accordance with the principle, our motion is transferred to them. The same is evidently true in relation to the apparent backward motion of the trees in riding along a road. This principle is equally applicable to the opposite class of phenomena. Thus in the case of the train of cars: the train on the contiguous track is so near to us that all external fixed objects are excluded from our view; and as it occupies a larger portion of the field of view than the car in which we are seated, we imagine the latter to be in motion, because it is apparently the smaller body. The illusion is still more perfect in the case of the revolving dome of the observatory, because the moving body occupies the whole space around the observer. The following remarkable phenomenon, in which the motion of the observer is not involved, admits of a similar explanation. When large and detached masses of clouds are rapidly passing between us and the moon, provided there are no intervening objects, it is very difficult to resist the impression that it is the moon that is moving. If the clouds are small, no such illusion is produced. It may be objected that, even in case the clouds are small, yet, as they are apparently larger than the moon, the latter ought to seem to move under all circumstances. The answer is, that when the clouds are small we are able to see the stars in the vicinity of the moon, and the apparent invariability of her distance from them enables us to correct the impression, as in the case of fixed intervening objects. In all the instances heretofore enumerated, it appears that the sense of sight does not give us any positive and direct in- formation 5 the eye only furnishes the data, from which experi THE EVIDENCE OF THE SENSES. 91 ence, reason, and judgment rapidly draw the conclusions that are ordinarily ascribed to visual perceptions. But even in the case of colors, which are probably qualities conveyed to our minds directly through the medium of sight, the character of our perception depends, in many cases, upon the previous con- dition of the organ of vision, as well as many other adventitious circumstances that render the phenomena exceedingly complex and very difficult of interpretation. Thus, if we look steadily, for a considerable time, at a strougly illuminated red object on a black ground, the intensity of the color soon becomes en- feebled; if now the eyes are suddenly directed toward a white surface close beside it, we shall see a green image of the same shape and size as the object. In like manner, if the eye be directed intently upon the disk of the sun at rising or setting, when he is red, on closing the eyelids, a distinctly green image of the solar disk will be perceived. Indeed, when the object looked at is brilliantly illuminated, the accidental colors that manifest themselves on closing the eyes constitute a curious and perplexing succession of complementary color-tints, which will continue to be visible until the retina recovers its state of repose. These subjective sensations of color have been carefully investi- gated by Plateau, who thereby lost his sight in the cause of science. Metaphysicians and physiologists have differed widely in relation to the services that ought to be attributed to the sense of touch. Some have greatly exaggerated them, considering it the sense par excellence. Anaxagoras ascribed the superiority of man over other animals, and his pr& iminence in the universe, to the hand. Aristotle and, after him, Galen, termed the human hand the instrument of instruments. Later, Helvetins revived the idea, that man is the wisest of animals because he possesses hands. The notion has been expanded by Condillac, Buffon, and many modern metaphysicians and physiologists. Buffon, in particular, assigned so much importance to the touch that he ascribed the superiority of the intelligence of one person over another to his having made a more prompt and repeated use of his hands from early infancy. He therefore recommended that infants should be encouraged to use them freely from the moment of birth. Others have considered the hand the source of our mechanical capabilities. The same answer applies to all these views. The hand can only be regarded as an instrument by 92 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. which information of particular kinds is conveyed to the mind, and by which other functions are executed, under the guidance of an intelligent will. The idiot frequently has the sense of touch more delicate than the man of genius, or than the most skillful mechanician; whilst the most ingenious artists have by no means the highest development of the tactile sense. But it has been asserted that the touch is, of all the senses, the least subject to error, and that it is, therefore, the correcting, the regulating, the geometrical sense. In part only is this sub- stantiated by observation and experience. It will be shown in the sequel that some of the errors of this sense are as striking and grievous as those that happen to the other senses. The sensory apparatus constituting touch is far less specialized than the other organs of sense. As far as known, the same tactile nerves are cognizant of several distinct kinds of sen- sation. For example, the organ of touch recognizes pain, temperature, titillation, and, with the help of muscular action and motion, size, shape, roughness, and various physical quail. ties of special materials and objects. On the other hand, the organs of special sensation, such as those of smell, taste, hear. ing, and sight, receive impressions of a particular kind, in consequence of the peculiar character of the nerves with which they are supplied. Some physiologists have imagined that the sense of tem- perature is received through some other channel than the sensory apparatus contained in the integuments; but the most trustworthy experiments afford no adequate ground for the supposition. At present these researches seem to indicate that the several characteristic sensations of touchpain, heat and cold, and titillation all arise from affections of the tactile nerves of common sensibility, which are distributed in different portions of the skin. Hence we may infer that the difference of these sensations is to be ascribed to the peculiarity of the impressions received at the peripheral extremities of the tactile nerves. One of the great purposes of the sense of touch is to enable us to judge of the temperature of bodies and this office it executes alone. It requires no previous exercise; yet how in- accurate, how fallacious, is its appreciation of temperature. This sense is called into action only where there is difference between the temperature of the sensory organ and that of the surrounding medium, or of the substances with which it is THE EVIDENCE OF THE SENSES. 93 specially brought in contact. The intensity of the impression is determined rather by the relative than by the absolute thermal condition of the body that excites it. Thus,if one hand be immersed for a time in hot water, and the other in ice-cold water, and then both be plunged into tepid water, this will seem cool to the former, and warm to the latter. A person coming out of cold air into an atmosphere of moderate tem- perature derives from it a feeling of genial warmth; whilst another coming into the same atmosphere from one much hotter complains of its chilliness. So much are our sensations in this respect dependent on the temperature that has pre- viously existed that the comfortable point will be found to vary at different seasons. During the Arctic voyages made by Parry, Franklin, Ross, Kane, Nares, and others, it was found that a zero temperature seemed quite mild after the thermometer had been twenty or thirty degrees below that point. In like manner, if on a hot summer day we descend into a deep cave, it will feel cold; if we descend into the same cave on a frosty day in winter, it will feel warm; yet a thermometer will prove that it has nearly the same temperature in both seasons. But even when the state of our body is the same, the sense of feeling will be found equally fallacious as regards the tem- perature of bodies. When the temperatures of different sub- stances are compared by the hand, the sensation experienced is not so much influenced by the absolute amount of free heat possessed by each, as by its relative power of abstracting or im- parting heat to the skin. When bodies are colder than the hand, substances that are good conductors are felt to be colder than those which conduct heat badly, although really of the same temperature, because they abstract heat from the sensory surface more rapidly. On the contrary, if the bodies are warmer than the hand, the best conductors will seem to be the hottest, because their heat is most readily imparted. For a like reason, if we plunge into water that is of the same temperature as the surrounding atmosphere (provided it is below the natural temperature of the body), the liquid wi]l seem to be cold. Moreover, the sense of temperature is influenced in a re- markable degree by the extent of surface on which the impres- sion is made. Every one is familiar with the fact that hot water in which a single finger may be held without inconven 94 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. jence, will be felt to be intolerable when the whole hand is im- mersed in it. It has been shown by Professor E. H. Weber that if one vessel of water be heated to ninety-eight degrees (F.), and another to one hundred and four degrees (F.), and the whole hand be immersed in the former, while the finger alone is immersed in the latter, a wrong judgment of their relative temperatures will probably be given. The interpretation that the mind pnts upon the impressions made by external objects upon the tactile organs, is partly the result of intuition and partly of experience. Thus, in eases of amputation, an impression made upon the divided extremities of the nervous trunks is intuitively referred to the parts to which they were originally distributed. In like manner, when our tactile organs are in an nnaccustomed position, we still interpret impressions made upon them as if they were in their ordinary relations to each other. For example, in the experi- ment, mentioned by Aristotle, of rolling a pea between two fingers of one hand, which are crossed instead of being parallel, so that the surfaces usually most distant are brought into proximity with each other, the sensation is that of a separate convex body opposed to each of these surfaces, so that the single body seems to be double. When the eyes are closed, we are completely misled by the fallacious interpretation of the impression produced by the lateral portions of the fingers being brought in opposition, which are naturally in a different situa- tion, and at a distance from each other. There are many similar deceptions. If a book is held between the hands, the palms turned outward, the arms being previously crossed, the edge of the book appears in this case to be bent at an angle. If one hand is passed over its corresponding shoulder, and the other under the arm belonging to it, and a book held between the hands thus placed, the edges of the leaves of the book appear to the one hand to be a continuation of the surface of the back of the book. If the tongue is folded back upon itself, the portion thus placed appears to be a foreign body laid upon the tongue, except that the sensibility of the part thus turned is still percep- tible. If the tongue is turned edgewise, and then placed against the teeth, the teeth appear to be inclined instead of vertical. In a large proportion of other cases, our interpretation of tactile sensationsespecially of all those relating to the con- figuration, density, etc., of external objectsis based upon THE EVIDENCE OF THE SENSES. 95 experience. Those who have watched the eagerness with which the infant examines by touch every attractive object within its reach are at no loss to perceive how the experience thus early interwoven with the mind, in combination with that derived through the visual sense, causes the tactile and visual percep- tions to be so indissolubly associated that each is continually suggesting the other. From observations made upon persons born blind, when the visual power has been first obtained it is certain that the notions of form previously acquired by touch do not aid in the visual discrimination or recognition of objects. For example, if any such person had learned to distinguish a sphere, a cube, and a pyramid by the touch, he would not be able to say which was which by looking at them, until he had learned by experience to associate the two classes of perceptions. In such cases, when the sight is first restored, no ideas are formed of distance, size, or solidity. The blind man of Beth- saida, when his sight was restored, said, I see men as trees walking. The fourteen-year-old lad who was couched by Cheselden, when he first saw, thought all external objects touched his eyes. An amusing ailecdote recorded of him shows the complete want, at least in man, of any natural or intuitive connection between the ideas formed through visual and through tactile sensations. He was well acquainted with a dog and a cat by feeling, but could not recognize their respective charac- ters when he saw them; and one day he took up the cat and felt her attentively, and then setting her down, said, So, puss, I shall know you another time. It is scarcely necessary for me to dwell on the fallacies of hearing, taste, and smell, as no one is disposed to ascribe an undue degree of infallibility to the impressions furnished through these senses. As regards hearing, the inaccuracies of its indications in relation to the distance, direction, and charac- ter of sounds, are proverbial. Indeed, the art of ventriloquism rests upon the uncertainties and inaccuracies of information derived through the organ of hearing. By skillful modifica- tions of the intensity and the qualities of sounds, and by adroitly directing the attention of the hearers to the proper quarters, it is easy for the operator to produce the most com- plete acoustic illusions. Certain external agencies are known to excite impressions through several different sensory channels; the sensation being, 96 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. however, in each case characteristic of the particular nervous apparatus. The ear is unable to distinguish the slightest differ- ence between luminous and dark objects; neither is the eye able to discriminate between acute and grave sounds; nor can the taste appreciate the most strongly odoriferous bodies. Hence, we may infer that no nerve of special sensation can, by any possi- bility, assume the function of another. From a careful consideration of all the facts connected with the exercise of the senses, it must be evident to every reflecting mind that the organs of sense were not designed to supply us with philosophical instruments. The eye, the ear, and the touch, though admirably adapted to serve our purposes, are not sever- ally a microscope or telescope, a sonometer or siren, and a thermometer or pyrometer. It was well observed by Locke that an eye adapted to discover the intimate constitution of the atoms forming the hands of a clock, might be, from the very nature of the mechanism, incapable of informing us of the hour indicated by the same hand. A telescopic eye that would enable us to see the details of structure on the surface of Jupiter or Saturn, would ill requite its owner for that ruder power which guides him through the town he inhabits and enables him to recognize the friends who surround him. We are not the pas- sive recipients of knowledge. There must be an external world of light and of sound, to give impressions to the eye and to the ear; there must also be an active, intelligent mind by which they are molded, combined, and interpreted, so as to constitute substantial knowledge. It is as necessary that thought should be exerted as it is that there should be something upon which it is exerted. Sensation is passive; attention is active. The distinction is manifest by its own nature; and we find evidence of it in the very forms of language. To look is more than to see; to listen or hearken is more than to hear; to feel is more than to touch. JOHN LECONTE.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CCCXXXIX. FEBRUARY, 1885. HOW SHALL THE PRESIDENT RE ELECTED? THE clause of the Constitution of the United States that prescribes the manner in which the President and Vice-Presi- dent shall be elected, was adopted only a short time before the adjournment of the convention. It was a substitute for a pro- vision that had, in principle, already received the approval of the body among its earliest acts, and had been re-affirmed in successive reconsiderations of the subject. Nobody can rise from a perusal of the journal of the convention without being thoroughly convinced that that original provision embodied the deliberate judgment of the majority (we may say, perhaps, of the entire body, since the votes were occasionally unanimous) as to the wisest mode of disposing of this difficult subject. At the opening of the convention, late in May, 1787, a series of resolutions was introduced by Edmund Randolph, of Virginia, which formed the principal text of a long-continued discussion of the provisions that the new Constitution ought to embrace. The first clause of one of these was in the following words: Resolved, That a national executive be instituted, to be chosen by the national ~egis1ature for the term of years. VOL. CXL.NO. 339. 97 7 98 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE iv. Four days later tliis was adopted, the blank having been filled with the word seven. Two months later still, in the first draft of the Constitution reported from committee, this pro- vision re-appeared in the following form: The executive power of the United States shall be vested in a single person He shall be elected by ballot by the legislature. He shall hold his office dnring a term of seven years; but he shall not be elected a second time. Another month elapsed, in the course of which the details of the reported Constitution were critically examined; and on the last day of that month, all matters that had not been finally disposed of, among which was the manner of electing a Presi- dent, were referred to a committee consisting of one member from each State. It was on the recommendation of this com- mittee that the provision on this subject was adopted which was finally incorporated into the Constitution of 1787a provision which, with a slight modification not affecting the mode of election, still stands in the twelfth amendment. And it is the unfortunate change thus made in the text of the Constitution as first drawn up which has entailed upon us the perpetually recurring scenes of angry political controversy and wild public excitement that have marked the close of each presidential term. So grave have become these evils, that peaceful citizens are beginning to tremble at the approach of a presidential election; and men of business hold their breath and curtail their operations, as experienced mariners take in sail in antici- pation of a coming hurricane. No consequence could have been more wholly unlooked for than this, by the authors of the pro- vision that has proved to be so mischievous. On the other hand, the plausibility of the proposition to confide the selection of a chief magistrate to a council composed of the wisest. vir- tuousest, discreetest, best ~ of the nation, seems momentarily to have captivated the imaginations and disturbed the judgments of those sages of the Revolution to such a degree, that they actually believed they should be able by this expedient to lift this purely mundane question to a region far above the influ- ence of vulgar human passion. Singularly enough, too, the contemporary generation of their countrymen seems to have accepted this part of their work at the valuation put upon it by themselves; for, while every other provision of the Constitution HOW SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 99 was the subject of very sharp and even condemnatory criticism in one quarter or another, and the acceptance of the entire instrument, long doubtful, was finally secured only with great difficulty, this seems to have received some moderate commenda- tion from those who noticed it at all. In No. 68 of The Federalist,~~ Mr. Hamilton expresses himself in these words It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided It was equally desirable that the immediate election should be made by men capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements that were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requi- site to so complicated an investigation. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government. This was the theory; the contrast between the anticipation and the experimental result is almost ludicrous. Had there never been any such thug as political parties in the country, the practice might have corresponded more nearly with the expectation. During Washingtons time there were no parties, and at each election in which he was a candidate every Elector gave him his vote. Party nominations were first made in 1800, and the Electors, however well qualified to analyze in candi- dates the qualities adapted to the station, and to act with a judicious combination of all the reasons that were proper to govern their choice, very quietly shut their eyes, declined to take the trouble of analysis, and voted for their party nominees. And so have their successors continued to do in every election since. The members of the Electoral College are thus reduced to the ridiculous attitude of mere automata. Ever since 1800 they have exercised no more important or dignified function than that of mechanically depositing ballots already prepared for them. It is evident, therefore, that an amendment of the Con- stitution is to be desired, if it were only to rid us of this elec- toral rubbish. But the Electoral College, useless as it has become as a piece of our political machinery, is at least harmless; and an amend- ment that should stop with its abolition would do nothing to 100 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. avert those grave evils and even serious dangers which, as experience has proved to us, are of unavoidable recurrence, under our present system, in every closely contested presiden- tial struggle. As examples of these evils may be enumerated the long-continued agitation and excitement of the public mind persisting for months together, embarrassing interruption to the regular operations of business, protracted anxiety on the part of multitudes who have, or imagine that they have, important interests at stake in the contest, attempts to corrupt or intimi- date voters or to exclude them from the polls, the fabrication and circulation of false statements on the eve of election, and frauds upon the ballot-boxes. To these may be added the dis- graceful practice of trading votes, frequent among the low political intriguers of our larger towns transactions known in the slang of their own vulgar circles as deals, in which a manager accepts one of the candidates of the opposing party for the sake of an equivalent in votes for another on his own ticket; and, finally, the degradation of the political press, which lends itself to the lowest abuse of opposing candidates. Still another very grave evil is connected with these contests, to which, as it seems to me, attention has not been sufficiently directed, and that is the obstruction that the question of the presidential succession interposes in the way of Congressional legislation. Owing to this, the second Congress in every presi- dential term is to a great degree paralyzed for usefulness. During the first session of that Congress, every measure of great and general interest is invariably thrust aside, on the ground that a presidential election is impending, and that any action might prejudice the prospects of the party responsible for it. The second session is equally unproductive, for the reason that a presidential election has just taken place, and all such ques- tions must be left to the new administration. Thus, although in the forty-eighth Congress, still in existence, there was a majority in favor of some reform of the oppressive tariff under which the country is suffering, and though the prevalence of this feeling was made manifest in the choice of Speaker, yet the shadow of the approaching presidential contest benumbed the spirit of both parties alike, and deprived them of the courage of their opinions. Even so moderate a measure as that proposed by Mr. Morrison was deemed to involve too serious a hazard, and it failed for lack of support from many who approved it in HOW SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 101 their hearts. We are told that we have nothing better to expect during the present session, because there is not time, in the small lease of life that remains to Congress, to matnre a measure of such importance. Time is not the thing that is wanting, but courage; and it is a very serious fact, which our people would do well to ponder, that, owing to the reflex action of our vicious system of presidential elections, the national legislature, for two years out of every four, is mentally incapaci- tated for the discharge of its proper functions. These are grave evils, but graver still are those angry dis- putes that have arisen, and are liable continually to arise, over the final count, resulting from real or asserted falsification of the Electoral vote, or from conflicting returns and duplicate certificates from the same States. The danger is that the dis- appointed party may appeal to open violence in support of their claims, and plunge the nation into civil war. A catastrophe like that was near befalling us in 1876, from which we were saved mainly by the moderation and patriotism of the Democratic can- didate. With a defeated competitor as passionate and as self- willed as the soldier President of 1828, the result might have been very different. And in the contest that has just ended, there were many who for a time believed we were very near a similar crisis, though with a pretext far less plausible. If the electoral system is to be retained in form as provided in the Constitution, legislation is necessary to secure the final settle- ment of controversies in regard to the result of the election in each State, by judicial proceedings within the States themselves; so that the certificates forwarded to Washington shall be conclu- sive, and nothing shall remain for Congress to do but to sum up the returns and announce the names of the successful candi- dates. Very judicious propositions to this effect have been laid before Congress from time to time, without receiving the atten- tion they deserved; as, for example, the joint resolution offered in the Senate by Mr. Eaton, of Connecticut, in November, 1877, and the House bill of Mr. Hewitt, of New York, introduced in February, 1882. Better than this, however, the Electors might be appointed directly by the State legislatures. New York, Del- aware, South Carolina, and Vermont appointed them in this manner down to 1824; Georgia did the same, except in the single election of 1796, when she resorted to the general ticket; and Connecticut maintained the practice down to 1820. Other States 102 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. employed this alternately with other methods. Massachusetts, for example, employed the district-ticket system in the first three elections, legislative appointment in the fourth, the general ticket in the frfth, the legislative in the sixth, the district system in the seventh, the legislative in the eighth, the district system in the ninth and tenth, and she has employed the general ticket ever since. New Jersey practiced appointment by legislature down to 1816, and South Carolina till 1868, in which two years these States resorted severally to the method of general ticket.* This plan, however, which the fact of so general and so long- continued persistence in it proves to have nothing about it objectionable, and which obviates most of the evils attendant on the mode of election now universally practiced, is nevertheless objectionable equally with that, in the respect that it throws the entire electoral vote of the State in favor of one party, when it may happen that the numerical difference between the two great parties is insignificant, and in case there are minor parties in the field, the prevailing party may be in a minority. This happened in the late election in New York, in which Mr. Cleve- lands plurality was only about one thousand, and he was actually in a minority of more than forty thousand. In 1844, the fate of the entire election was determined by the vote of New York; and the vote of New York was thrown for a candi- date that was in a popular minority in the State of more than ten thousand votes. The contest was between Mr. Polk and Mr. Clay. The issue was annexation of Texas and extension of slavery on the one hand, and antiannexation and freesoil on the other. Mr. Clay was anti-annexation and anti-extension, but he was a citizen of a slave State, and he was not an aboli- tionist. The extreme Free-soilers, therefore, nominated James G. Birney as a third candidate, and the fifteen thousand votes they gave to him, which would otherwise naturally have gone to Mr. Clay, lost New York to the latter by about five thousand votes, and thus gave the election to his competitor. In the last election, had the electoral vote of New York been divided between the parties in the proportion of their voting strength, Mr. Cleveland would have received only seventeen votes, and Mr. Blame would have received seventeen, while Mr. St. John and General Butler would have had one vote each. It is evident * ~ am indebted for these particulars to my young friend, Charles A. ONeill, Esq., of this city, who has made a study of the subject. HOW SHALL TIlE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 103 that the application of this principle in all the States might sometimes have the effect to reverse the decision of the Elec- toral College as given nuder the provisions of the Constitntion; and in fact that it must do so whenever the defeated candidate has heavy popular majorities in the States that support him, while his competitor succeeds in others by light ones. Presidents have come into power with a popular majority against them. This was true in the election of 1844, when Mr. Polks vote was 24,000 below that of the united opposition. It was true in the case of General Taylor in 1848, when Mr. Van Buren, the nominee of the Free-soilers, drew off avery heavy body of partisans, so that the successful candidate was in a popular minority of 151,000. In 1856 Mr. Buchanan was elected, though outnumbered in the popular vote by 377,000. Mr. Lincoln came into the Presidency in 1860 (there being three opposing candi- dates), though failing of an absolute majority by a number nearly as large 354,000. In 1876 the honesty of the popular vote in several of the States was disputed, but the majority against the successful candidate, Mr. Hayes, was apparently not far from 250,000. In the election of Electors by State legislatures, the injustice of throwing the solid vote of the State for one party only might be obviated by applying the principle above applied to the popu- lar vote, and dividing the Electors between the parties in the proportion of their strength in the legislature itself. Or, accord- ing to a plan suggested some years since by the present writer, the lower house of each legislature might resolve itself into committees, equal in number to the number of Congressional districts in the State, each committee composed of all the dele- gates from a particular Congressional district and having power to choose one Elector ; the Senatorial Electors to be elected by the State Senate, or dispensed with altogether. Though this suggestion was not received with favor,the plan it proposes is entirely feasible, and it is obviously more just than that which was long and very generally practiced, of choosing the entire Electoral College of each State by the entire legislature. In proceeding to consider whether it is possible to devise any remedy for the evils that environ this difficult question, it is worth while to look back to the proceedings of the Convention of 1787, and inquire what were the expedients then suggested for securing, peacefully and fairly, the appointment of a chief 104 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. executive. We find that there were eleven, which may be stated as follows, the name of the proposer being annexed in each case, except where the record is silent in regard to it: 1. By the national legislature. Edmund Randolph, of Virginia. 2. By the State executives. Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts. 3. By the Congress constituted as under the articles of Confederation. William Patterson,* of New Jersey. 4. By electors to be chosen by electors to be chosen by the people. Alexander Hamilton, of New York. 5. By electors to be chosen by the people of the States (general ticket). 6. By electors to be chosen by the people in districts. James Wilson, of Pennsylvania. 7. By electors to be appointed by the State legislatures. Oliver Ells- worth, of Connecticut. S. By electors to be taken by lot from the national legislature. James Wilson, of Pennsylvania. 9. By the national legislature, each State having one vote. 10. By the direct vote of the whole people. 11. By electors to be chosen for each State, in such manner as the legis- lature thereof may direct. Committee of August 31, 1787. Adopted. To these may be added the following propositions more re- cently made: 12. Direct election by the people, in districts, without personal electors. Senator 0. P. Morton, of Indiana, in 1873. 13. By the people of the States, in general ticket, the electoral votes to be divided in proportion to the voting strength of parties. Proposed above. 14. By State legislatures, the electoral vote to be divided in proportion to the voting strength of parties in the same. Proposed above. 15. By the lower houses of State legislnturcs in committees composed severally of the delegates from the several Congressional districts. Proposed by this writer in 1877. I am compelled to avow it as my most profound conviction that the only assured security for the future possible to us against the formidable dangers that surround the question, is to be found in a return to the plan of placing the election of the President in the hands of the national legislature, which com- mended itself so strongly to the wisdom of the fathers. The members of Congress possess necessarily all the quali- ties of fitness that are possible to be looked for in any electoral college; although, as the system works at present, it is of no * Mr. Patterson proposed a revision of the articles of Confederation rather than a new constitution. HOW SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 10~ consequence whether Electors are fit or not. Congressmen represent, as the Electors of the present system do not, the peo- ple of limited districts, and therefore, when political opinion in a State is divided, the Congressional delegation of the State i~ divided also, and will not commit the injnstice that is now invariably committed, of throwing the entire vote of the State in favor of one party. But in an election by Congress the quality of fitness in the electors would have a significance that it has not under the present system, for the Members of Con- gress, if not in all cases accomplished statesmen, are neverthe- less much more familiar with affairs of state, and much more competent to act on and decide political questions than the average citizen. It may be said that the caucus would replace the convention ; but the caucus of the dominant party will in such case become itself the electoral body. Congress affords us an Electoral College in which the theory of the fathers of the Constitution is a reality. Moreover, since it would be im- possible, by any process, to bring together an equal number of men more capable of representing the party interests or the party intelligence, it is certain that we cannot expect from any other electoral body, however constituted, a more judicious or satisfactory appointment of a President. In the cases in which, under the Constitution, an election by the Electoral College fails, examples of which we have had in 1800 and 1824, the choice of President already devolves upon one of the houses of Congress. Had every election from 1788 downward been decided by Congress, especially with the exclu- sion of the provision that requires the vote to be taken by States, in general the same parties that were actually successful would have prevailed. Whenever a case like that of 1800 or that of 1824 occurs, it happens, under the Constitution as it stands, that the election is made by an outgoing Congress. This, in some points of view, is advantageous, and in others the reverse. It is advantageous in that it finds members free from liability to be influenced by considerations as to their own r& lection, a new Congress having been already chosen, and a new term being about to begin. It is an advantage also, that, having been elected more than a year before, they have not been chosen merely ad hoc, but their selection has been determined by general considerations of public policy; so that, while they would continue generally to represent the bias of political 106 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. opinion among their constituents, they would be untrammeled by any special instructions or pledges. It is a disadvantage, however, that, in case of the occurrence of such a remarkable and sudden change of public opinion as we have occasionally seen, the new Congress might not be politically in harmony with the old, nor, by consequence, with the executive elected by it. Should the Constitution be so amended as to throw the presidential election into the hands of Congress, it would, there- fore, be well to adjust the limitations of the terms of service so that the election may be made by an incoming Coligress, and be in fact its ftrst duty after its own organization. The President would thus be secure of a sympathetic legislature, and we should be spared the conflicts that we have seen so often between codrdinate departments of our Federal government. Curiously enough, these conflicts have been more persistent and more bitter between Congress and the Presidents that have received the office through the vice-presidency than with those that have been directly chosen. The pitiable histories of the administra- tions of John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, and more strikingly still of Andrew Johnson, illustrate this remark, a remark which, but for the prudence and good sense that have distinguished the official life and conduct of our present excellent chief magistrate, might seem to indicate a law. It is greatly to be hoped that, under an improved system of election, whatever it may be, there will be no more successions to the presidency by inheritance. In such cases, at least, let Congress fill the vacancy. Though the President may die, Congress is a body that never dies, and may make a new election without delay. Should even such a calamity befall as the death of the President during the recess, Congress might be called together by telegraph, and re-assemble within a week. A Vice-President would be no longer necessary. The President pro tern. of the Senate might also be President pro tern. of the United States for the few days of unavoidable interregnum. The contemporary republic of France has afforded us a felic- itous illustration of the working of this principle. Three succes- sive Presidents have been elected by the French Chambers without excitement or danger to the peace, and with the result of maintaining an executive in harmony with the legislative body. The parliamentary and ministerial government of Great Britain furnishes another example, which, in so far as the principle in- volved is concerned, is equally in point. The Commons do not HOlY SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 107 make the ministry, it is true, but they unmake it; and all the power of the Queeu is not smfficient to make a new one unaccept- able to them. And there is not a government in the world in which the transfer of power from one party to another is accom- plished more peacefully or more safisfactorily to the people that live under it than that of the British Empire. These reasons are conclusive with me; yet I am aware that the plan I propose is not likely to find general acceptance. The plan that will probably prove to be most popular, and, if we have any change at all, is most likely to be preferred, is that of elec- tion by the people directly. There is something about this plan well calculated to catch the popular fancy, and it will probably be claimed that it is more in harmony with the democratic prin- ciple than any other. Senator Morton, in his speech on the sub- ject in the Senate in 1873, advocated this view with great eloquence, and in a manner well adapted to win the approval of the multitude, yet hardly likely to convince thinking men. The Senators principal argument is this: that, in the choice of a chief magistrate, every citizen has a right to give his vote for the man of his choice; whereas, under our present system, he is compelled to vote for the choice of somebody else, or lose his vote altogether. We may admit this without being able to perceive the hardship. If the man whom an individual voter prefers is not also the preference of several millions of his countrymen be- sides, his vote is of no avail, and he might as well not cast it. In other words, votes are not worth the paper they are printed on, without organization and united action among the voters. If, by an amendment of the Constitution, the election should be made direct, party conventions will continue to name candidates precisely as they do now, and individuals will continue to cast their votes as completely under dictation as they do at present, unless, out of mere caprice, they choose to throw them away. Senator Mortons argument, therefore, is the flimsiest sort of fallacy. But Senator Morton argued further that the electoral system operates unjustly to the whole people, in the respect that under it a candidate may fail of election, although having a majority of the popular vote in his favor. This indeed is true, and it has actually happened. But, on the other hand, a popular majority may often be due to a sectional majority, and even to a majority of a comparatively small section, overpowering adverse, though inferior, majorities in the much larger portion of the Union. 108 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. To illustrate: in the late election, the single State of Texas gave for the Democratic candidate a plurality of about 135,000 votes over his principal competitor. New York gave a plurality in the same direction of only about 1000. The case is con- ceivable in which thirty-seven States should give pluralities of 1000 each to a candidate of one and the same party, while Texas should again give 135,000 for the other. In a direct election, Texas, in such a case, would give the nation a chief magistrate by a popular majority of nearly 100,000. It will easily be seen that the plan of electing Presidents by direct popular vote would soon extinguish the last vestiges of State independence; and though to many this result might not be unacceptable, it ought to be regarded with apprehension by the party that, for nearly a century, in its profession of faith, has given to the resolutions of 1798 and 1799 a place a little above the scriptures of the Old and New Testament. But the conclusive objection to the plan of direct election is the fact that it leaves all those grave evils that have hitherto attended our quadrennial presidential contests wholly unreme- died, if it is not in fact calculated to aggravate them. The disturbance of the public quiet, the conflicts at the polls, the practices of intimidation or corruption of voters, the bargain- ings, or deals between local political managers, the degrada- tion of the press and consequent demoralization of public sentiment, the obstruction to legislation, and all the other evils that attend our elections now would continue unchecked. Only one conceivable advantage can attend the change, but it is one of some importance. A great State, with a majority of, let us say, 100, would no longer be able to overwhelm half a dozen smaller ones with a joint majority of more than 100,000. F. A. P. BARNARD. IN the convention that framed the Constitution of the United States nearlya century ago, there was a wide difference of opinion as to the manner of choosing the national Executive. Proposi- tions were made that the election should be by the two houses of Congress; by Electors chosen by the people in separate dis- tricts throughout the States; by the executives of the States; by the legislatures of the States; by Electors appointed by

108 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. To illustrate: in the late election, the single State of Texas gave for the Democratic candidate a plurality of about 135,000 votes over his principal competitor. New York gave a plurality in the same direction of only about 1000. The case is con- ceivable in which thirty-seven States should give pluralities of 1000 each to a candidate of one and the same party, while Texas should again give 135,000 for the other. In a direct election, Texas, in such a case, would give the nation a chief magistrate by a popular majority of nearly 100,000. It will easily be seen that the plan of electing Presidents by direct popular vote would soon extinguish the last vestiges of State independence; and though to many this result might not be unacceptable, it ought to be regarded with apprehension by the party that, for nearly a century, in its profession of faith, has given to the resolutions of 1798 and 1799 a place a little above the scriptures of the Old and New Testament. But the conclusive objection to the plan of direct election is the fact that it leaves all those grave evils that have hitherto attended our quadrennial presidential contests wholly unreme- died, if it is not in fact calculated to aggravate them. The disturbance of the public quiet, the conflicts at the polls, the practices of intimidation or corruption of voters, the bargain- ings, or deals between local political managers, the degrada- tion of the press and consequent demoralization of public sentiment, the obstruction to legislation, and all the other evils that attend our elections now would continue unchecked. Only one conceivable advantage can attend the change, but it is one of some importance. A great State, with a majority of, let us say, 100, would no longer be able to overwhelm half a dozen smaller ones with a joint majority of more than 100,000. F. A. P. BARNARD. IN the convention that framed the Constitution of the United States nearlya century ago, there was a wide difference of opinion as to the manner of choosing the national Executive. Proposi- tions were made that the election should be by the two houses of Congress; by Electors chosen by the people in separate dis- tricts throughout the States; by the executives of the States; by the legislatures of the States; by Electors appointed by HOW SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 109 the legislatures of the States; by Electors appointed as the legislatures may direct; by Electors chosen by lot from the Senators and Representatives in Congress; by the Governors of the States, with the advice of their councils; and by direct vote of the people in each State. All of these plans had their supporters, and several of them were adopted only to be reconsidered and defeated. That for election by the two houses of Congress was three times carried, once unanimously, and as often recalled and set aside. Finally, the mode of choice by Electors appointed in such manner as the legisla- ture of each State may direct, the number of Electors to corre- spond with the representation of the State in Congress, prevailed. The main question was, whether the power should be with the people, or a remove from them. The opposition to the popular mode was strenuous aud overwhelming, only one State, Penn- sylvania, voting for it. Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, claimed that the people would never be sufficiently informed of the characters of men to vote intelligently for the candidates that might be presented. Charles Piuckney, of South Carolina, was afraid the people would be incited by designing and active dema- gogues. George Mason, of Virginia, declared that it would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper person for President to the people as to refer a trial of colors to a blind man. The extent of the country alone, he contended, would render it impos- sible for the people to have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective merits of candidates. Elbridge Gerry, of Massachu- setts, said a popular election was radically vicious, as the igno- rance of the people would put it in the power of some one set of men, dispersed throughout the Union and acting in concert, to deceive them and delude them into the election of an improper person. A cabal would certainly, in every instance, dictate the President, if the election was to be referred to the people. And so on to the end of kindred opposition from other members. The theory of the Electoral College, so called, as established, was, therefore: first, that the people could not be trusted to choose the Chief Executive; and secondly, that the Electoral College interposed between them and the election was to exercise independence, with superior knowledge and wisdom, in making the selection. At ftrst the Electors were appointed by the State legislatures, and acted upon their own judgment. They were unanimous in electing and reelecting George Washington 110 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W~ President, while at the same time voting for no less than fifteen different persons for Vice-President. The provision then was that each Elector should vote for two persons; that the one receiving the greatest nnmber of votes, if a majority of the whole nnmber of Electors, should be President; and that, after the choice of President, the one having the greatest nnmber of votes of the Electors, even thongh not a majority of the whole, shonld be Vice-President. At the third election, in 1796, the Electoral College was divided between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson for the frrst office. The result was a vote of seventy- one for Adams and sixty-eight for Jefferson, and they thns became respectively President and Vice-President. At the next election, in 1800, the ftrst organized movement to forestall the action of the Electoral College was made. A cancns of the friends of Mr. Jefferson in Congress pnt him in nomination for President, and when the Electoral College balloted the votes were fonnd to be a tie between him and Aaron Bnrr, each having 73. The Honse of Representatives, after a warm and pro- tracted struggle, elected Mr. Jefferson President, and Mr. Burr Vice-President. It was this electoral tie that induced the adop- tion of the amendment, still in force, that requires the Electors to ballot separately for President and Vice-President. After 1800, nominations were made by Congressional and legislative cancnses, which grew in strength nntil their controlling power was recognized and they were crowned King ~ Another crisis came in 1824, when Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams were opponents. Neither had a majority of the electoral votes, as some were given to William H. Crawford and Henry Clay, while John C. Calhoun, having the reqnisite majority, was elected Vice-President. The House made Mr. Adams President. This ended the reign of King Caucus. The popular sentiment dic- tated the choice of Andrew Jackson over John Quincy Adams for President in 1828, by an electoral vote of 178 to 83; and the self- assertion of the people had been such that the Legislatures grad- ually relinquished the power of appointment of the Electors. In 1824, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina, and Vermont were the only exceptions, and in 1828 South Caro- lina stood alone, as it continued to stand down to the reconstruc- tion of its State government after the close of the rebellion. In 1830 the first political national convention of delegates represent- lug the people was held; and the holding of national nominating HOW SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED ~ 111 conventions by the different political parties began in 18312, and has since continued, being now the ftrmly established usage. The people not only appoint the Electors directly by their votes, but they perform the very office which, in distrust of their intelligence and judgment, the Electoral College was created to fill, that of selecting the national executive. Beginning at the primary meeting and passing along through the intermediary conven- tions until the national party council is reached, they direct every movement made in the naming of candidates from among whom the President and Vice-President are chosen. The Electors vote as the expressed will of the people directs, and, under the un- written law that has supplanted the letter of the Constitution as that instrument was drawn, are without volition. Such is the practice. The ground upon which the Electoral system was based hav- ing long since crumbled away, the system itself should now follow. The conditions that existed in 1787 and caused the Constitutional Convention to reason and make provision as it did, have changed. The number of States has been trebled, the area of the country has been increased tenfold, and the population has been multiplied by fifteen. Yet, by the applica- tion of steam upon land and water, by the use of the electric telegraph, and by the revolutions of the power printing-press, all then unknown and undreamt of, distance of travel has been reduced, space in communication has been annihilated, and spread of intelligence has become universal; so that the minds of the sixty millions of population can be almost instan- taneously informed and brought to consider any given proposi- tion now, while a like result, with the four millions of popu- lation then, would have taken months, if, indeed, possible to be reached at all. The trouble to-day is not with the people, but with the Electoral College. Instead of the candidates for President and Vice-President not being known to the people, it is the Electoral College that is an enigma to them. It would be impossible to present any candidate without having a full history of his life and character spread by the public press before every citizen in every corner of the land within twenty- four hours after his nomination. It would be equally impos- sible, in the State of New York for illustration, to nominate candidates for Electors who would be known to all the citizens called upon to vote for them. Many people never have an 112 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. understanding of the working of the Electoral College, and every four years, as the Presidential election comes round, the public journals are called upon to instruct the risen as well as the rising generation in its mysteries. Some, even among the statesmen of the land, forget their knowledge of it, and confound others by their misunderstanding of its operations. The Electoral College is not only without utility or value, to the end for which it was created, but it is a dangerous piece of machinery. How much it needs watching in some if not in all of its thirty-eight different parts, the election of eight years ago attests. And now, according to public report, the representa- tives of the party that won the election of November last have taken the precaution to cause duplicate copies of the Electoral certificates for Cleveland and Hendricks to be sent to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, outside the law, as a check on possible irregnlarities. It is a sufficient reason for doing away with the Electoral College that it is utterly useless. Its only legitimate f auction is to do over again what the people themselves do in appointing it. But the power it possesses and wields in the exercise of that function is open and liable to perversion, and therefore it is a standing menace to the integrity of Presidential elections. True, up to the present time it has not, through error or bribery, reversed the will of the people. The pitcher is never broken until the last time it goes to the well. Is it wise to maintain an intermediary that is superfluous at best, until it does some serious damage to call for its de- struction? Even as the agency it is, it has obvious imperfec- tions. No positive qualifications are required for an Elector, who may be a citizen or an alien, a man or a woman, an Indian or a Chinaman. There is a prohibition that no Senator or Rep- resentative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector, and that is all. And the Elector is not only permitted but directed to vote by ballot. This is an anti-democratic provision, which may cause a blunder, and conld be easily used to cover a crime. An agent of the people should never be permitted to act secretly in trans- acting their business, except in cases where the public safety may require. Especially shonld he never be allowed to cast a ballot in secret for them. What the people can do for them- selves in making and administering their government they shonld not employ an agent to do; much less employ an agent 110W SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 113 to do over again what they have already done, as in the ease of the Electoral College. In dispensing with Presidential Electors, no disturbing change need be made. Preserving the autonomy of the States and their proportions of power as measured by representation in Congress, the people of each State would vote for President and Vice-President upon a ballot, precisely as they now vote for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, and with the same freedom of choice for each separately, which is denied them under the Electoral College system. The candidate receiving the highest number of votes for either office, would have certified for him the proportion belonging to the State as, thirty-six for New York. The end of election by direct vote of the people is plainly seen and easily understood. The means to it can be readily devised. A uniform day of election, as at present, but different from that upon which State and local officers are chosen; im- mediate count of the votes after the close of the polls; prompt subsequent canvass by boards of final jurisdiction in all the States alike, and simultaneously; transmission of the returns by State certificate, and determination and proclamation of the result by duly established authority, whether it be Congress or some other tribunal, at Washington ; these are points of detail that can be provided for without difficulty. If to the direct vote of the people should be added provision for a term of six years, with ineligibility of the incumbent for rei~3lection, the improvement of the article of the Constitution relating to the election of the executive would be as complete as it is possible to make it. WILLIAM PURCELL. THERE can be no more fitting time to discuss the infirmities, or weigh the value of existing methods for the election of a chief magistrate than that which follows the subsidence of the excitement of the recent presidential election. It has been the fashion of late to criticise and condemn the Electoral College. The cure has always been an attempt at substitution. It is said of it that: It has departed in practice from the theory of its creation; it is a cumbersome and useless piece of machinery; it had its origin in a distrust of popular government, and stands vOL. CXL.NO. 339. 8

110W SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 113 to do over again what they have already done, as in the ease of the Electoral College. In dispensing with Presidential Electors, no disturbing change need be made. Preserving the autonomy of the States and their proportions of power as measured by representation in Congress, the people of each State would vote for President and Vice-President upon a ballot, precisely as they now vote for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, and with the same freedom of choice for each separately, which is denied them under the Electoral College system. The candidate receiving the highest number of votes for either office, would have certified for him the proportion belonging to the State as, thirty-six for New York. The end of election by direct vote of the people is plainly seen and easily understood. The means to it can be readily devised. A uniform day of election, as at present, but different from that upon which State and local officers are chosen; im- mediate count of the votes after the close of the polls; prompt subsequent canvass by boards of final jurisdiction in all the States alike, and simultaneously; transmission of the returns by State certificate, and determination and proclamation of the result by duly established authority, whether it be Congress or some other tribunal, at Washington ; these are points of detail that can be provided for without difficulty. If to the direct vote of the people should be added provision for a term of six years, with ineligibility of the incumbent for rei~3lection, the improvement of the article of the Constitution relating to the election of the executive would be as complete as it is possible to make it. WILLIAM PURCELL. THERE can be no more fitting time to discuss the infirmities, or weigh the value of existing methods for the election of a chief magistrate than that which follows the subsidence of the excitement of the recent presidential election. It has been the fashion of late to criticise and condemn the Electoral College. The cure has always been an attempt at substitution. It is said of it that: It has departed in practice from the theory of its creation; it is a cumbersome and useless piece of machinery; it had its origin in a distrust of popular government, and stands vOL. CXL.NO. 339. 8 114 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W~ between the people and a free choice of their ruler; and it is full of danger. These criticisms are not altogether groundless; but their weight, as against the system, may well be questioned, and the system itself, as against any substitute yet proposed, may well challenge discussion. It is true that the original idea of the Electoral College was a free choice of the President by Electors chosen, not on previous committals, but exercising after their appointment a deliberate unbiased judgment in casting a ballot for that man of all others in the republic most commending himself to such judgment of the Electors. The fathers expected that the result of the free deliberation of the College, or rather the resultant of the delib- erations of the separate Colleges in the several States, would most surely bring into this high position the noblest and best equipped citizen. The practice, however, has come to be, that the Electors are now appointed because of their known preference for some particular individual for the office of President, whose character and fitness are discussed before the public months in advance, not to couvince the man who is to be Elector, but to persuade the voter to cast his ballot for one already pledged. This change seems at first thought to be very much for the worse, degrading the College from a high and ideal function to a mere registering machine. But something may be said on the other side. Whatever may have been the dream of the fathers, political parties in this country were inevitable, and were sure to divide on the principles and policies of admin- istration. This division was certain to manifest itself ftrst and strongest in the choice of a chief magistrate. It is better in every way that the merits of this division should be debated before the people themselves in advance, rather than be pressed home upon the Elector between his election and his ballot for President. If he were at liberty to be swayed after his election, debates fierce and wild would attack him, and corruption and bribery would compass him about and beset his footsteps till his ballot had been cast. From all this he is protected by the unwritten law that determines his ballot before he is chosen. It is difficult to feel much force in the charge that the Electoral College is a cumbersome and useless piece of machinery. If the system were abolished,it would abolish only the meeting of the Electors, now fixed by law on the first Monday of the December after their election. The canvass of the vote in the HOW SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 115 different States would still remain, attended with increased difficulty. The method of verification, its transmission to some official in Washington, the opening and counting the votes, and official declaration of the resnit by some one and in some presence, would be as necessary as ever. To the reflecting citizen there is no part of the machinery of our government whose workings are more simple and impressive than this meet- ing of the Electors. They are few, selected for their weight of character; they assemble simultaneously at the capitols of their respective States to record with deliberation and dignity, and fittiug formality, the verdict rendered a month before amid con- flicts and political )assions that sometimes rock the republic. The contrast, in the presidential election through which the country has just passed, between the trouble and excitement that agitated the public mind during the first week in November, when the Electors were chosen, and that calm acquiescence out of which has sprung increased confidence in the future, pervad- ing all parties a month later, when the Electors assembled to execute the mandate of the people, is a health-giving influence worth much more than it can ever cost. This did not all come of a foregone conclusion. Under all that the certainty to come had worked on human passions and expectations, when the hour of its coming approached, there was a revived faith in our institutions. The mists had passed away, and the structure appeared to all eyes stronger and grander than ever. Men did not go about talking in this strain, but earnest patriots of all parties felt it and were made better citizens by it. The Electoral College had its origin, not in a distrust of popular government, as is sometimes charged, but in the dis- tinction between a republic of States and a pure democracy; and any substitute for it not based on this distinction, is out of harmony with the other parts of this remarkable whole, and must fail, or compel a change in them also. It was modeled, though imperfectly, after the legislative power, which consists of the House, representing the people, and the Senate, representing the States. It is true that in the joint action of the Senatorial and other Electors in one body much of the power of the State is merged; yet upon the failure of all the colleges to elect by an absolute majority, the States alone make the choice. A vote by the people directly for President, which keeps up the distinction now existing in the College, based on a republic 116 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. of States, would save nothing but the ceremony now performed on the first Wednesday of December following. This is so tri- fling a gain at most that it is hardly worthy of grave discussion. On the other hand, a vote directly for President, upon a plan which treats the people as one whole, and determines the result by a majority of the entire aggregate of votes in the nation, would neutralize the vote of the smaller States, like Delaware, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, by equalizing it with that, it may be, of a single county out of fifty in New York or Illinois, and thus extinguish the equality of the States altogether. This, while more democratic, would be a stride toward central- ization at war with the whole theory of the government. It does not admit of discussion. The gravest of all charges against the system is, that the execution of its provisions is full of danger. Recent experience and a marvelous deliverance from disaster are too fresh in our memory to need comment. In the recent election, also, a little cloud no larger than a mans hand, and only for a little while above the horizon, filled the land with alarm lest perils once escaped as by a miracle, were coming upon ns again. But this danger does not attach itself to the Electoral method more than to any other under our complicated frame-work of national and State governments. The danger lies in the difficulty in verifying the several steps of the process. These steps are indispensable, whatever the method of pro- cedure. It grows out of the fact that the election of a Presi- dent is in part the work of the State government, and in part that of the nation, each independent of the other in what it does. The State alone appoints the Electors in any manner its legislature may determine, and they meet where the State de- termines. When they have cast and certified their ballots, State authority over them ceases, and the national begins. What they have done is transmitted under seal to the seat of government of the United States, and delivered to the President of the Senate, who, on a given day, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, opens all the certifi- cates. Who shall determine what persons have been appointed Electors in any State? And who shall pass upon their action after they are appointed? It is very clear that if the State alone has authority to appoint the Electors, the State must de- termine whom it has appointed. And if what they have done is 110 IV SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 117 to be delivered under seal to the President of the Senate, and is to be by him opened in the presence of the two houses, and the votes then counted, it is equally clear that from the time the certificate leaves the hands of the Electors in the State to the final declaration of the result, the whole proceeding is national, and controlled by United States officials. But this does not by any means answer all the questions to which the~e meager and uncertain provisions of the Constitution have given rise. If the President of the Senate is to open all certificates, is he to de- termine what are certificates? to decide between genuine and false ones? If not the President of the Senate, who is to dis- charge this important duty? Is it the Senate and the House in whose presence they are to be opened? And if they are to do it, are they to do it as a Senate and a I-louse, by separate and concurrent action, or as one body? Again, if the House is to proceed ~~immediately,~~ as the Constitution provides, to elect a President when it appears that no choice has been made by an actual majority of the Electors, must not the House, ex necessi- tate rei, then and there itself count the votes to determine its own constitutional duty? The Constitution nowhere answers these questions, and there is no tribunal authorized to answer them. The States have no tribunal in which a contested election of Electors can be decided. And the United States Constitution has created none to ad- judicate those in which the methods of ascertaining and declar- ing the result are involved. Congress cannot create such a court for the State, nor require it to be done by the State Judiciary, nor even extricate its own government from the doubts these questions raise. These questions are not sugges- tions of remote possibilities about which the present need not give itself much concern. On the contrary, they but formulate the inquiry that filed the public mind with intense alarm during the uncertainty that hung about the election of 1876, and has created great uneasiness at both elections since. The Electoral Commission was a patriotic device, concurred in at the time by both political parties, to avoid questions that neither could answer. If doubts of a like character shall ever again make the result uncertain, their solution cannot be looked for through any such method, and these questions unanswered may yet wreck the government. The peril that underlies them has been likened by an eminent statesman, now dead, to a tor 118 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. pedo planted in the straits, with which the ship of state may at some time come into fatal collision. It is the height of folly to shut our eyes to this danger. And it is useless to seek in argnment a satisfactory answer to these questions. The public mind will always divide upon them. The only safe solu- tion of the problem is their removal by a Constitutional amend- ment that shall make plain and simple every step in the process, both State and national, and shall also require or create a tribunal in each State competent to settle finally any possible controversy over the appointment of Electors or their action till the record of what they do reaches some national official. And it should create a like national tribunal to settle every question that can thereafter arise. The provision that requires an election by an actual majority rather than a plurality in the Electoral College, necessitated the designation of some other body to elect in case of failure on that account. The Constitution clothes the House of Represen- tatives, voting by States, with that function. The two occasions in which that power has been exercised have demonstrated the danger with which it is fraught. Happily, its recurrence is not likely to be frequent, else it is a serious question whether the government could long survive the strain thus brought upon it. Doubtless, a President elected by an absolute majority of the College would enter upon his office with greater moral force behind him than one elected by a plurality only, but the latter will stand stronger and breathe a much purer atmosphere all his official days, than lie would if he reached the same position through the devious ways and mephitic breath of a Congres- sional election. It were much better, therefore, that the amend- ment embrace, also, a provision substituting a plurality for a majority, and leaving the provision in relation to the House of Representatives applicable only to the remote possibility of a tie in the Electoral College. These amendments accomplished, safety will be secured as far as that can be done by Constitutional safeguards. Whether with these changes the Electoral system should also give place to some new method of more direct elec- tion by the people, is of little moment if only this weak point in our system be sufficiently strengthened. Let us not be lulled into further indifference by a too great reliance upon that wisdom and patriotism which has once carried the republic safely through this peril. H. L. DAWES. HOW SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 119 B~ no difficulty developed in the attempt to organize the Federal Government were the authors of the Constitution more perplexed than by the problem how to choose the President and Vice-President of the United States. Various schemes were propounded for the purpose, only to be successively entertained and rejected. For example: election by the people, election by the national legislature, election by the State legislatures, appointment by the State executives. Eventually, on the eve of the adjournment of the convention, the committee of detail reported a plan for the creation of an intermediate college of Electors, by whom the chief executive officers of the nation should be chosen; and the device was incorporated in the fundamental law of the Union as formulated in Article II. of the original Constitution. In the experiment, however, the method of election here prescribed speedily miscarried, and the twelfth amendment was adopted, to avert another snch occur- rence as convulsed the country in 1800, when Jefferson and Burr had an equal number of votes for President, and the House of Representatives finally chose Jefferson on the thirty-sixth ballot. That the existing contrivance is vicious in principle and mis- chievous in operation, and that the choice of President and Vice- President by the immediate will of the nation, voting as a political unit, is the truer and the safer expedient, are the theses that I purpose briefly to maintain. In a scientific view, any mechanism, material or moral, is decisively condemned by the fact that it misses the end of its creation; and that the present plan of electing the President and Vice-President fails to fulfill an essential function of its institu- tion everybody sees and nobody denies. One, and a principal function, that the College of Electors was designed to perform, was to preclnde the people from any direct agency in the election, for the avowed reason that the people are incapable of exercising so delicate and difficult a power as the choice of the chief magistrates of the nation, and becanse such an office could be better discharged by a select body of commensurate virtue and intelligence. It would be as natural, said George Mason, to refer the choice of a proper character to the people, as it would be to refer a trial of colors to a blind man.~~ And, in No. 67 of The Federalist, Hamilton indulged the pleasing anticipation that the process of election affords a moral cer- tainty that the office of President will never fall to the lot of

HOW SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 119 B~ no difficulty developed in the attempt to organize the Federal Government were the authors of the Constitution more perplexed than by the problem how to choose the President and Vice-President of the United States. Various schemes were propounded for the purpose, only to be successively entertained and rejected. For example: election by the people, election by the national legislature, election by the State legislatures, appointment by the State executives. Eventually, on the eve of the adjournment of the convention, the committee of detail reported a plan for the creation of an intermediate college of Electors, by whom the chief executive officers of the nation should be chosen; and the device was incorporated in the fundamental law of the Union as formulated in Article II. of the original Constitution. In the experiment, however, the method of election here prescribed speedily miscarried, and the twelfth amendment was adopted, to avert another snch occur- rence as convulsed the country in 1800, when Jefferson and Burr had an equal number of votes for President, and the House of Representatives finally chose Jefferson on the thirty-sixth ballot. That the existing contrivance is vicious in principle and mis- chievous in operation, and that the choice of President and Vice- President by the immediate will of the nation, voting as a political unit, is the truer and the safer expedient, are the theses that I purpose briefly to maintain. In a scientific view, any mechanism, material or moral, is decisively condemned by the fact that it misses the end of its creation; and that the present plan of electing the President and Vice-President fails to fulfill an essential function of its institu- tion everybody sees and nobody denies. One, and a principal function, that the College of Electors was designed to perform, was to preclnde the people from any direct agency in the election, for the avowed reason that the people are incapable of exercising so delicate and difficult a power as the choice of the chief magistrates of the nation, and becanse such an office could be better discharged by a select body of commensurate virtue and intelligence. It would be as natural, said George Mason, to refer the choice of a proper character to the people, as it would be to refer a trial of colors to a blind man.~~ And, in No. 67 of The Federalist, Hamilton indulged the pleasing anticipation that the process of election affords a moral cer- tainty that the office of President will never fall to the lot of 120 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications; and asseverated that it will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station fi]led by characters pre~3minent for ability and virtue. He asserted, furthermore, that of all parts of the Constitution, the scheme of choosing the President and Vice- President was precisely that which most commanded applause. It may not abate anything from our admiration of the sagacity of the statesmen who figured in the convention, but it is an indisputable fact that the expedient upon which they so plumed themselves proved, upon trial, a miserable miscarriage. The virtue and intelligence of the Electoral College have no opera- tion in the choice of President; his election is effected by the undisputed, though not unqualified, volition of the people. The constant probability that the station would be filed by the most eminent personages is resolved into the fact that it is attainable only by colorless character and inoffensive medioc- rity. Because, then, the existing contrivance for the election of President fails, and fails utterly in one essential particular, to compass the end of its institution, and operates instead to pro- duce the very result it was projected to prevent, it should be discarded as a solecism and an excrescence in our political system. They present no valid argument for its continued existence who urge that, at the most, it is merely a useless and harmless expedient, and that it no way interrupts the operations of the mechanism with which it is incorporated. Even were it an utter abortion, without function or effect, still the simple fact that it is nugatory, that it is a sham, that it accomplishes the very result it pretends to avert, mars the perfection of the system of which it is a part, and discredits the Constitution in the popular regard. But the present plan of electing the Presi- dent is not wholly abortive; it accomplishes one of its appointed purposes, and, in fulfilling this specific function, it is productive of positive evil. The constitution of the Electoral College is committed to the State legislatures, with a single important limitation of their power, which is, that the number of Electors shall be equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.~~ Representation in Con- gress being proportioned to population, a number of Electors equal to the number of Representatives would afford a just HOW SHALL THE PBESIDENT BE ELECTED? 121 measure of the relative influence of the States in the choice of President; but this natural and equitable ratio is neutralized by the allotment to each State of two Electo~s who stand for noth- ing but the sterile abstraction of State sovereignty. Avowedly this provision was designed to destroy the legitimate and just ratio between political power and the number of voters, was intended to arm the smaller States with an influence in the elec- tion of President disproportionate to their relative population; and such is its effect. In the recent election, the States of New England cast thirty-eight votes, while but thirty-six were given by New York; and yet the population of those States is one- third less than the population of New York. Furthermore, it has happened repeatedly, that a President has been chosen against the vote of the popular majority; another result of this arbitrary addition to the electoral weight of the States, codper- ating with the principle of the system presently discussed. That this provision is, in theory, repugnant to the genius of popular government, is self-evident. The rule of the majority is the fundamental principle of popular government, because it is the only principle that recognizes the equality of men; a postulate upon which all popular government proceeds. And this principle is vindicated by philosophical speculation. Rutherforth says: It is plainly most consistent with reason, that the sentiments of the majority should prevail and conclude the whole; because it is not so likely that a greater number of men should be mistaken when they concur in their judgment as that a smaller number should be mistaken. And this is like- wise most consistent with equity; because, in general, the greater number have proportionately greater interest that the purposes of society should succeed well, and have more at stake if those purposes should miscarry or be disappointed. Institutes of Natural Law, II., 1, Sec. 1. However this may be, certainly the theory of American gov- ernment reposes upon the principle of the rule of the majority; and in so far as the provision under review challenges and crosses this principle, it is repugnant to the genius of popular govern- ment. The important control in the Federal administration that is imparted by the provision to the smaller States, is evident upon a view of the powers of the executive its qualified veto upon legislation, its prerogative of appointment to office, and its treaty-making power. The effect of the arrangement in giving to the smaller States a factitious weight in the election of Presi- dent, will doubtless commend it to the judgment of the sticklers 122 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. for State sovereignty; but independently of this provision for an equal Senatorial representation in the Electoral College, the smaller States are already armed with an adequate power of self-protection and a disproportionate influence upon the opera- tions of government. By their equality of representation in the Senate, of which they cannot be deprived but by their own con- sent, they have an equal weight in legislation with the larger States, to the full effect of which consideration it is requisite to remember that the Senate may exert an absolute negative upon legislation. Then, too, by virtue of this equal Senatorial repre- sentation, the smaller States participate equally with the largest in all the executive and judicial powers of the Senate, in the appointments to o~ce,in concluding treaties, and in the deter- mination of impeachments. In respect of all these important matters, Nevada stands on a level with the imperial common- wealth of New York. It is, then, a frivolous apprehension to object that the interests of the smaller States would be endan- gered by depriving them of their artificial and unequal weight in the election of President. Another principle of the electoral system, which, in co~pera- tion with the arbitrary allowance of two votes to each State, without reference to population, has been indicated as contribut- ing to the defeat of the popular will in the election of President, is this: in the election the States vote as political units, so that the minority vote in each State is annihilated, and is ineffectual to influence the general result. Thus it might happen that the Southern States, voting with New England and Indiana for the same candidate, and giving him a bare plurality of the popular suffrage, would elect him, against the competition of another candidate supported by all the other States with an overwhelming majority of the popular vote; and so the President of the United States would represent a comparatively small minority of the whole people. But this result would not occur if the event depended upon the vote of the entire nation ; for then the minority vote of each State would weigh in the balance of the total suffrage. The pres- ent mode of electing a President involves the method of voting by composite units, a principle of which the tendency is to defeat the operation of the numerical principle. The device was not original with the authors of the Constitution, but had been successfully employed in the Comitia Tributa, and 110W SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 123 under the Constitution of Servius, to neutralize the vote of the mass of Roman citizens, and to insure the ascendency of favored classes. It had been found efficient, too, in the councils of Con- stance and Basle, to defeat a decision by the numerical majority. The same principle was incorporated in the Confederation of 1781, and legitimately enough, because the Confederated States were in no sense a nation, but a league of sovereign common- wealths, and it was logical that in the general council the vote of each State should operate with the weight of an independent unit. But now we are a nation, and the voice of the entire nation should be audible and potent in the election of the execu- tive chief of the nation. In each State the Electors may be chosen in any way the State legislature may be pleased to prescribe. Wherefore, whatever interest or oligarchy might chance for the time to be prevalent in the legislature of a State, would have the power, as it certainly would have the will, to make such provision for the choice of Presidential Electors as would promote any occasional interest of class or object of party, however incompatible with the general welfare of the nation. The history of New York furnishes an instance of the possible subserviency of State legislatures to party intrigue in the choice of electors, in the attempt, made on the suggestion of Hamilton, to alter abruptly the mode of their appointment to serve the interests of a de- feated faction an attempt that, but for the incorruptible integrity of John Jay, would have been successful. A plan of choosing the chief magistrate of the republic, which depends upon the State legislatures to determine the constituency by whom ultimately he shall be elected, which may be worked in subserviency to partial and transient interests, to the national detriment, and which leaves with the legislatures of the States power even to deprive a State of any participation in the elec- tion of President, such a scheme, independently of its experi- enced effects, cannot survive the a priori logic of a sound political philosophy. If, then, the existing method be indefensible in theory and pernicious in practice, it should be replaced by a plan, if such can be devised, more in harmony with the genius of our insti- tutions, and more conducive to the public welfare. And it results from the principles on which this criticism proceeds, that the true and the expedient mode of choosing the chief 124 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. magistrate of the nation is by the popular vote of the nation. As an officer of a distinct and independent government, his appointment should not be contingent npon the will or action of the States. As a representative of the might and majesty of the American people, he should be the immediate elect of the American people. Exposed, as the executive mnst be, to en- croachment ou its prerogatives by legislative usurpation, he should be sustained by whatever moral power may be imparted by the declared confidence and support of the people. As the representative chief of the nation in its unity, he should embody the national will in its unity. Since the rule of the majority is an equivalent term for popular government, and since, in the American system of political philosophy, the voice of the majority is the voice of all, his election should be suspended on the event of the majority vote, unaffected by any arrangement inconsistent with the effectual expression of that majority. And so thought the sages of the Convention; the present con- trivance for the choice of President being the desperate makeshift of discordant inter~ts and counsels; while Morris, Madison, Wilson, Dickinson, and Carroll favored the election of President by the people. ROGER A. PRYOR. A SUGGESTION is making itself felt in the public mind as to the propriety of repealing the Electoral system. The Constitu- tion of the United States has been in existence nearly one hun- dred years, and within that period almost every feature of it has felt the friction of actual experience, sufficient to test its strength and its fitness. The Electoral system of choosing a chief magistrate has been subjected to this test more frequently perhaps than any other feature of the Constitution about which any question has been made. Twenty-two Presidents have been chosen under it, several of them twice. Although it was conceived and inaugurated so long ago, in the golden age of American patriotism and simplicity, when there were but thir- teen States in the Union, possessed of only 820,000 square miles of territory, and occupied by not more than 3,000,000 people, it has been operative through our amazing increase in wealth, our vast growth in population, our mighty enlargement of ter

124 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. magistrate of the nation is by the popular vote of the nation. As an officer of a distinct and independent government, his appointment should not be contingent npon the will or action of the States. As a representative of the might and majesty of the American people, he should be the immediate elect of the American people. Exposed, as the executive mnst be, to en- croachment ou its prerogatives by legislative usurpation, he should be sustained by whatever moral power may be imparted by the declared confidence and support of the people. As the representative chief of the nation in its unity, he should embody the national will in its unity. Since the rule of the majority is an equivalent term for popular government, and since, in the American system of political philosophy, the voice of the majority is the voice of all, his election should be suspended on the event of the majority vote, unaffected by any arrangement inconsistent with the effectual expression of that majority. And so thought the sages of the Convention; the present con- trivance for the choice of President being the desperate makeshift of discordant inter~ts and counsels; while Morris, Madison, Wilson, Dickinson, and Carroll favored the election of President by the people. ROGER A. PRYOR. A SUGGESTION is making itself felt in the public mind as to the propriety of repealing the Electoral system. The Constitu- tion of the United States has been in existence nearly one hun- dred years, and within that period almost every feature of it has felt the friction of actual experience, sufficient to test its strength and its fitness. The Electoral system of choosing a chief magistrate has been subjected to this test more frequently perhaps than any other feature of the Constitution about which any question has been made. Twenty-two Presidents have been chosen under it, several of them twice. Although it was conceived and inaugurated so long ago, in the golden age of American patriotism and simplicity, when there were but thir- teen States in the Union, possessed of only 820,000 square miles of territory, and occupied by not more than 3,000,000 people, it has been operative through our amazing increase in wealth, our vast growth in population, our mighty enlargement of ter HO TV SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 125 ritory, and all the revolutions of our society. So it may be said that it has been thoroughly tested by all phases of our polities. Yet in no ease has it been seriously impeached, in no instance has it ever been accused as the cause of any of our troubles or dangers. The charge that it is a useless and unnecessary piece of political machinery, at first blush appears to be true. It would, indeed, seem to be a superfluous thing to vote for a man in order to have him in turn vote for the President of your choice, when you could seemingly as well vote for him directly yourself. But our ancestors were not guilty of this folly. The Electoral College is not now, by any means, the thing that they designed it to be. The original purpose was to make it an inde- pendent body, with absolute power to select a President and Vice-President of their own choice, by their own wisdom, with- out reference to the wishes of parties or any one else. The debates in convention and cotemporary criticism, as well as the first few years of the government~s existence, show this. The anxiety of the Constitution-makers seems to have been so to provide for these elections as to avoid the tumultuous passions of the mob on the one hand, and, on the other, the corrupting influences to which, it was supposed, a smaller body would be subjected. The chief propositions as to the manner of electing the President were, first, by the people directly, then by the House of Representatives, then by the whole legislative body, and lastly, by Electors chosen by the States for that pur- pose. Many and serious objections were made to all these methods; but finally, after much hesitation and many changes of opinion, the present plan was adopted. Many precautions were taken to make their choice free and unbiased. The Electors were to be chosen by the States in such manner as each State should direct; they were forbidden to have any official connection whatever with the United States; they were to be chosen for the sole and special purpose of electing a President and Vice-President, and they were themselves to expire officially the moment that duty was performed. They were to assemble, for that purpose, in the capitols of their respective States, on the same day, and cast their votes imme- diately, without consultation, or the opportunity therefor, with the Electors of any other State. In this view, it cannot be truthfully said that our fathers provided a useless or absurd 126 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. institution. They gave us, on the contrary, a very wise and well-guarded airangement for the selection of chief magistrate. The departure came in a manner entirely unlooked for by them. It is a striking commentary upon their undoubted wisdom, that they should have failed altogether to foresee the most palpable and inevitable of all the results of their contrivance, the one that now furnishes the pretext for its repeal, and that was the almost immediate drifting away from their original purpose of selecting independent, highly empowered Electors, and the modern conversion of them into mere registers of the popular will. So far as I can perceive from the debates, they made no prediction whatever of the rapid growth and power of parties in our politics, and of the force of that fierce democracy which was to burst through all forms and restraints in the assertion of its will. Now, though every line and word of the Constitution in regard to this matter stands just as the fathers left it, the candi- dates for Electors in all the States have the names of the pro- posed President and Vice-President for whom they are to vote inscribed above their own on the popular ballots; and they would no more think of voting for any other candidates than they would think of committing suicide. It is this reduction of the Electoral College to the condition of being the mere mouth-piece of the majority that makes the system appear useless. But is it worth while to abolish it for no other and better reason? Is not this call for a change simply the utterance of the practical and direct spirit of the times? Should we yield to that spirit, without some cause over and above the mere business instinct? Are all forms hurtful and useless? Is it not possible that a day may come, and come soon, when the safety of the republic may require the assertion of the original, independent powers of the Electoral College? And should that day never come, is that other day likely to arrive when the Electoral College, as at preseiit used, can possibly do us any harm? In my opinion, the forms instituted by the framers of the Constitution are something more than mere forms. They are important aids in the organization and continuity of the functions of government. Like the many ceremonials and indirections of the common law, which were all founded on good and sufficient reasons, those of the Constitu- tion were based on some supposed necessity of free government. Generally, all checks upon hasty, or corrupt, or in anywise im HOW SHALL THE PRESIDENT BE ELECTED? 127 proper legislation or political action, are of essential service to good government. They are eminently conservative; with ns they are adjuncts to stability, if not stability itself. I believe it highly probable that our future may produce occasion for the interposition of the independent powers of dispassionate Electors to prevent anarchy or despotism. From the closing of a fierce presidential contest, to the time of the meeting of the chosen Electors, there always comes a great calm, a blessed cooling- time. At such a moment reason and patriotism would have opportunity to rally and do their saving work, should the re- public be in danger. Here, in many cases easily supposed, these temporary repositories of popular power might save our country from disruption, and bloodshed, and anarchy. The Electoral College is an anchor that may yet hold the ship when all other cables have parted. That possibility surely makes it worth the space it occupies on the deck. So long as it is used as it has been for the past sixty years, as the mere instrument for an- nouncing the will of the majority, it cannot possibly be deemed any restriction upon popular suffrage, or have the slightest effect in preventing the full force of a single ballot. For if it should be abolished, as proposed, the effect and weight of each individual vote would neither be increased nor diminished. There is no proposition, that I remember, to change the influence of the States by consolidating the total votes of the Union, abolishing all State lines, and ma king an election depend upon a majority of this aggregated vote. Such a proposition would be abso- lutely inadmissible, and I presume is not seriously entertained by the most extreme consolidationist. We should be very careful how we change any of these origi- nal provisions, even those that appear to be mere forms. The ceremonials intended either to secure or celebrate the liberties, valor, or wisdom of a people, are the last things they will sur- render. The consuls, the great chief magistrates of Rome, represented the majesty of the people of the republic established by the elder Brutus, after the expulsion of the kings. They continued to be regularly elected and inaugurated long after their functions had been usurped by the emperors, and the office was but a shadow. But the tradition of ancient dignity, says Gibbon, was long revered by the Romans and barbarians, and at the end of a thousand years two consuls were created by the sovereigns of Rome and Constantinople, for the 128 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. sole purpose of giviug a date to the year and a festival to the people. So conservative at heart are the masses. The Electoral College was given us by the wisest and purest statesmen connected with our countrys history; to them, more than to all others, we have been taught to attribute the chief glory and excellence of our institutions; and, unless it can be shown that it is hurtful to the peoples liberties, it ought to be many a year before it is abolished to appease a senseless clamor. The real and ever-present danger to our countrys peace lies in the methods of ascertainiug and pronouncing what Electors are actually chosen by the people, and not in the Electors them- selves. This,it is needless to say, is the business of the States, to the honesty and accuracy of which they should look all the more vigilantly because, though their Electors are in the strictest sense State officers, yet they, more than all others, nearly con- cern the whole people of the Union. Z. B. VANCE. HOLMESS LIFE OF EMERSON. A LIFE of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes is an event in the literary world too remarkable to be passed over by the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW without immediate notice. The biographer unites in himself all the accomplishments that fit him for the work of love which he has undertaken. He was the neighbor and the frequent companion of Emerson, having with him a friendship without reserve. Holmes himself is one of the remarkable men of his generation, and, high as his place is in our literature, he holds a still higher one in personal worth and efficiency in active life. The public willingly accords to him any praise which it perceives that he deserves, though it does not at once hold in its view all his merits. Holmes, in the first place, is a man of science; then, he is great in his pro. fession, in which he has gained distinction as a professor in the university and as an author; and again, he is one of our most popular poets, discoursing in his verse on everything, from that which can raise the beginning of a gentle smile through all the gradations of the cheerful to the inimitable expression of the most complete mirth, and yet knowing how to take up the sternest lesson of morality, and make the castaway shell on the sea-shore teach the individual and the nation to press forward in the career of improvement, or forfcit the purpose and beauty of life. Nor must it be left out of view that Holmes, under the guidance of his father, whose name is held in high respect by all the students of his countrys history, was not only well grounded in the annals of America, but, aided by heredity through a splendid line, was thoroughly well trained in the very best lessons of Connecticut orthodoxy. Besides this, he has after a fashion of his own reproduced the system of pleasing instruction by dialogue. But in each of these he appeals in some degree to a special public, and no one of these separate VOL. CXL.NO. 339. 129 9 7-

HOLMESS LIFE OF EMERSON. A LIFE of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes is an event in the literary world too remarkable to be passed over by the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW without immediate notice. The biographer unites in himself all the accomplishments that fit him for the work of love which he has undertaken. He was the neighbor and the frequent companion of Emerson, having with him a friendship without reserve. Holmes himself is one of the remarkable men of his generation, and, high as his place is in our literature, he holds a still higher one in personal worth and efficiency in active life. The public willingly accords to him any praise which it perceives that he deserves, though it does not at once hold in its view all his merits. Holmes, in the first place, is a man of science; then, he is great in his pro. fession, in which he has gained distinction as a professor in the university and as an author; and again, he is one of our most popular poets, discoursing in his verse on everything, from that which can raise the beginning of a gentle smile through all the gradations of the cheerful to the inimitable expression of the most complete mirth, and yet knowing how to take up the sternest lesson of morality, and make the castaway shell on the sea-shore teach the individual and the nation to press forward in the career of improvement, or forfcit the purpose and beauty of life. Nor must it be left out of view that Holmes, under the guidance of his father, whose name is held in high respect by all the students of his countrys history, was not only well grounded in the annals of America, but, aided by heredity through a splendid line, was thoroughly well trained in the very best lessons of Connecticut orthodoxy. Besides this, he has after a fashion of his own reproduced the system of pleasing instruction by dialogue. But in each of these he appeals in some degree to a special public, and no one of these separate VOL. CXL.NO. 339. 129 9 7- 130 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. parts of tlie public knows him entirely. He is li]~e a man who has three or four estates of land lying out of sight of each other, and none but his friends take cognizance of the vastness of his possessions. Or his merits are as stars in different constella- tions, which no telescope can bring into one field of vision. Every one of thcse acquisitionshis science, his public spirit, his poetry, and the rest goes with him to his work on the life, writings, character, and influence of Emerson. And here comes again into view a quality of Holmes,instead of seizing the brilliant opportunity for the display of himself, he brings all his powers to be used exclusively for the task he has in hand, and steadily directs the attention of his reader, not to him- self, but to the man of whom he is writing. And more than this; he has not allowed his mind to be biased by his affection and personal esteem; he writes, disguising nothing, palliating nothing, concealing nothing; but in the expres- sion of his judgment he is always gentle, urbane, and ten- der-hearted, giving praise where it is due, but making no overstatement. It may be a surprise to those who do not know him, to find him so perfect in his metaphysics; but he follows Emerson through all his trains of thought, and states them concisely and clearly, with such completeness and exactness that he could not have done better if he had passed all his life in the chair of a professor of philosophy. Our illustrious biographer, who knows very well that by the right of descent the genius of a Brahmin whom Alexander the Great, after he had passed the Himalayas, might have conversed with, may re-appear in the brain of a pupil in a New England town school, begins by giving us a long array of ancestors among whom one must search for those through whom Emer- son was born to be what he became. Among them he rightly distinguishes Emersons grandfather, who more than a hundred years ago was the minister of Concord. When Emerson, more than forty years ago, accompanied me on a visit to the town school.master of the olden time, who was still alive, in excellent health, of vigorous mind, and with a ready recollection of the deeds he had witnessed in his early days, we enconraged him to tell his story of what happened in Concord on the 19th of April, 1775, but took care not to ask him a question or in any way to interrupt or disturb him in his narrative. The messengers that went in advance of the British to sound HOLMESS LIFE OF EMERSON. 131 the alarm throngh all the villages on their way, reached Con- cord some honrs before the enemy. The bell of the town meeting-house was at once set a-ringing, and the school-master, as he told of the instant gathering of the minute-men, related that onr Emersons grandfather, the minister of the town, came at the alarm from his house to join the men of his congregation, bringing with him his gun and ammunition. At the words an- nouncing that he came armed, the bluest of blue eyes in my companion shone with a mild radiance of surprise and delight and pride, for he had not before heard this special circnmstance that the minister came bearing arms. The Emerson of that day further bequeathed to his descendant a deep insight into the meaning of facts, for in April, 1775, he entered in his almanac, which was his diary: This month is remarkable for the great- est events of the present age. Emerson came into the world with an enduring constitution, so that he lived to be within one year of fourscore. He had excellent organs of digestion, and in mature life could eat pie like a school-boy; he slept well at night, and during sleep kept a window open, even in midwinter; but he complains more than twice of his want of power of voice and a commanding pres- ence~~ so that the reader of his life is led to indulge in a sur- mise what he would have become if he had had a commanding presence~~ like Webster; or if to the question, Whose voice is music now 0V he could have claimed a right to place himself by the side of Heury Clay. Whenever he exercised his mind on public affairs, he did so with judgment and courage. Emerson went through school and our Cambridge College without exciting remark; for his livelihood after leaving college he taught a school in Boston, en livening the toil by writing exquisite poems; thought a moment of becoming a lawyer, for which profession he was wholly unfit; studied divinity; visited the South; and at twenty-five was settled in Boston as colleague of Heury Ware, who in life and thought was one of the purest men that ever lived, and totally free from extrava- gance or waywardness. Emerson was soon most happily mar- ried, and life seemed to open upon him in the full promise of occupation, peace, and happiness. But ere long his days were overclouded; he Lost the wife of his youth; and, while he had not the least inclination to skepticism, the uncontrollable range of his mind soon brought him at variance with the sober- 132 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEIY minded men of the society to which he had become the minister. He disliked the form in which the communion was administered in the Congregational churches of New England, and he grieved at the distinction that was made between members of the church and other members of the congregation. The people of his society thought otherwise, and this was his answer: It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all. I have no hostility to this institntion; I am only stating my want of sympathy with it. Neither should I ever have obtruded this opinion npon other people, had I not been called by my office to administer it. That is the end of my oppo- sition, that I am not interested in it. I am content that it stand to the end of the world, if it please men and please Heaven, and I shall rejoice in all the good it prodnces. (Emersons works, xi., p. 28.) And so he parted with his congregation, and was left without wife, or child, or fixed occupation. Hardly was Emerson liberated from service, when he visited Sicily, Italy, France, and England, and saw Coleridge, Words- worth, Landor, and De Quincey. The biographer of Car. lyle gives us an account of the light and joy that Emerson brought to the recluse and his wife in their remote solitude in Scotland. They were blessed days for Carlyle, for, through Emerson, Carlyle, before he had obtained distinction in England, established a reputation in America which re-acted on England; and Emerson, by his zeal and his labor and his influence, secured him for a time in America the copyright which our country still fails to concede to the foreigner. Nothing better could be asked for than the characterization and contrast of the two by Holmes. (Pp. 82, 83.) The young American philosopher preached in Great Britain, charming by the consummate beauty of his language and the dignity and simplicity of his manner. He made no war on any form of Christianity; he could go into a rhapsody on the sublime thought and poetic beauty of the book of Psalms, and praised the Te Deum of the established church as the grand hymn which had come down through the ages, voicing the praises of generation after generation. Returning home, he soon became a resident of Concord, of which he that will know the loveliness must read the delightful description by Holmes. (P. 70.) He liked and extolled in Christianity the institution of preaching; and now, bound in the spirit to continue the prac HOLMESS LIFE OF EMERSON. 133 tice of addressing his fellow-men, he sought his audience through the lecture-room or the press. The character of his mind, as he found himself in solitude in his native town, was to see the whole universe in its unity, all as one effluence of the same great and infinite and universal spirit. The feeling that truth and beauty and virtue are one, and that nature is the symbol that typifies it to the soul, is the in spiring sentiment. (Pp. 74, 75.) So he selected Michael Angelo for the first subject of an illustrative discourse, because to him the sublime workman had no country of his own, and was a friend to every one of the human race who acknowledges the beauty that beams in universal nature and seeks to approach its source in perfect goodness. Emerson, in the choice of the next hero over whom he was to shed the luster of his praise, was equally guided by his own nature. In spite of all his gracefulness and reserve and love of the unbroken tranquillity of serene thought, he was by the right of heredity a belligerent for the cause of freedom, of which John Milton, among all the great English poets, was the fore- most champion. From the inmost core of his character Milton was the herald of rightful liberty and its ever-ready warrior where it fell into danger. He wrote in sublime and impassioned prose for liberty of mind, of man, and of the state. He has furnished to the English-speaking world the best epic, the best ode, the best elegies, in the mood of joyousness and in the mood of meditation; sonnets full of high thought, expressed in the strongest and noblest words, and the most delightful mask for representation in the social circle. In advanced life, when all his hopes for the political reform of England had been wrecked, he writes the best tragedy that has ever been written in modern times according to the rules of the Greek drama, and in it paints in perfection the comeliness and the reviving power of men who, armed with celestial vigor and plain, heroic magni- tude of mind, make a glorious revolution in behalf of the liberty of mankind; and then, mindful of the sorrows that had fallen on himself and his associates, is driven for consolation to remember that Patience is more oft the exercise Of saints, the trial of their fortitude. (Samson Agonistes, lines 12681291.) Such a hero had a right to find a resting-place on Emersons breast; and this is what he writes of him: It is the preroga 134 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W~ tive of this great man to stand at this hour foremost of all men in the power to inspire. Virtue goes out of him into others. Better than any other he has discharged the office of every great man, namely, to raise the idea of man in the minds of his contemporaries and of posterity, exhibiting such a composition of grace, of strength, and of virtue as poet had not described nor hero lived. No philosopher in England, France, or 0-er- many communicates the same vibration of hope, of self-rever- ence, of piety, of delight in beauty, which the name of Milton awakes. (Pp. 75, 76.) The year 1835 was an auspicious one for Emerson; he formed a second happy marriage. In due time a family sprung up about him, giving him companionship more than care. In the same year the people of Concord called on him to pronounce a discourse on the history of his native town for the period of two hundred years, and he who in his philosophy treats facts as the glorified representations of the infinite, and can not always draw with sharpness the outline of his thought, went to work with zeal and unwearied research to write the history of a New England village. His toil had its reward; he produced a discourse marked by accuracy in detail, the justest judgment, and a style of perfect simplicity and clearness; while his philosophy, coming without observation, underlies every line. Had it fallen to his lot to become a historian, he would have had no superior in fair-mindedness, persistent study, vividness of narrative, and the most sacred fidelity to truth. Again, in the next year, at the celebration of the 19th of April, he wrote verses that will remain in memory as long as the deeds that drew them forth. In the following years Emerson found pleasure in meeting the young men of the country at the period of their education in the universities, and from time to time delivered addresses that were greatly admired when they were pronounced, and are preserved in his works. In an oration delivered before the members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society of our Cambridge, on the day after commencement in 1837, he spoke to a crowded audience in this wise: The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption of the soul. Thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep; but in actual life the marriage is not cele- brated. There are patient naturalists, but they freeze their subject under the wintry light of the understanding. Is not prayer also a study of truth HOLMESS LIFE OF EMERSON. 135 a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily without learning something. The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. When the fact is seen under the light of an idea, the gaudy fable fades and shrivels. We behold the real higher law. To the wise, therefore, a fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables. These wonders are brought to our own door. You also are a man. Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world a heaven. Know, then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenom- enon perfect. All that Adam had, all that Ca~sar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house heaven and earth; Ca3sar called his house Rome; you perhaps call yours a cobblers trade, a hundred acres of ploughed land, or a scholars garret. Yet, line for line, and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. (Emersons works, i., 77, 78, 79.) In midsummer of the following year he uttered more start- ling words. The mind of the country was very widely agitated by the endeavor to prepare the way for the universal acceptance of the multitudinous and ever-increasing revelations of science, by eliminating from the public mind the host of traditional errors that clung to it like barnacles to good ships that return from a long cruise. Invited by the Senior Class in Divinity College to deliver an address before them on a Sun- day evening in July, 1838, he spoke of the defects of historical Christianity, while at the same time he accepted the prin- ciples of Christianity as absolute truth truth from the begin- ning, and truth that was sure to remain forever. His biographer, with a thorough knowledge of the nature of the questions that were brought into issue, has analyzed the address and stated its meaning with accuracy and precision. When Emerson was met by manifold objections, both to the form of statement that he had chosen for utterance and its inappropriateness to the place in which it had been delivered, to the question why he and his ideas were there, he could only answer for himself and his ideas in the language of his own Rhodora: I never thought to ask, I never knew; But, in my simple ignorance, suppose, The self-same power that brought you there brought me. And when he found some of those whom he greatly esteemed, as well as those to whom he was indifferent, were bent on 136 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W~ making him out to be a heretic, he refused to offer to make good his thesis against all comers, saying: I delight in tell- ing what I think, I shall go on just as before, seeing whatever I can, and telling what I see; and he persistently adhered to the rule which he had established as the rule of his life: Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive, unharmed. (Emersons works, ix., 217.) Bitter controversy could not be avoided. Emerson in the earliest part of his life had declared of Christianity that Miracles are not its evidence to us, but the doctrines them- selves, yet he took very little part in the strife which broke out and which ended for him in a signal triumph. One of the very ablest writers in New England, the head of a school in theology, himself in private life one of the most estimable of men, sounded a loud clarion and took the field. He was perhaps the unfittest man to take up arms against Emerson, for he admitted none of the special tenets of orthodoxy, not even the theory of the will as defined by Jonathan Edwards with the clearness of light, and now accepted by Huxley with all or most of his brothers in science, as well as by Calvinists of the new school and the old, and he had taken care through the press to let it be known by all his circle that he had reasons for not believing in the Trinity. He planted himself on the assertion that, Miracles recorded in the New Testament are the only proof of the divine origin of Christianity. (Frothinghams Life of George Ripley, p. 100.) In the good old times of orthodoxy, more than a hundred years ago, the church-member was not asked for a belief in Christianity from its historical evidence, but whether he had an inward experience of its truth. The opinions of the deists of the eighteenth century found no home in New England. Edwards used to say that the more the truth of Christianity was discussed purely on historical grounds, the greater was the spread of infidelity; and to show the folly of resting the truth of religion on narratives of the performance of miracles, he puts forward this supposition: A Christian missionary goes out to India to convert its heathen, and when he is asked for his proof of the truth of his religion, answers that its founder per- formed miracles. Miracles! the East Indian would instantly HOLMESS LIFE OF EMERSON. 137 answer; my religion had for its proof a hnndred miracles to yonr one. Ripley had an easy task of it to refnte the argnment of his opponent; and the strife awakened Theodore Parker to go abroad like a raging ilerenles armed with a clnb. Ripley more qnietly persisted in making the American mind familiar with that of the philosophers in the conntries of Leibnitz and of Bossnet, and superintended the pnblication of translations by himself and his friends of works of Consin and Jonifroy, Benja- min Constant, and others. The series was well received in Boston and throngh the conntry. It natnrally tonched a chord in Paris. Consin was moved to write over to a friend then re- siding in Boston, for a copy of the works of Jonathan Edwards. Opinion began to rise, and after many years ripened in Paris, that nnder the anspices of Emerson there had been a revival of philosophy in and aronnd Boston. It reached the Institnte of France. A vacancy occurring in the Academy, of which the admirable Mignet was the perpetual secretary, its members looked the world throngh for the proper person to fill it, and on acconnt of this infinence of Emerson on thonght and of the cx- qnisite beanty of his style and the simplicity and integrity with which he had treated philosophical snbjects, he ont of all candi- dates in the world was selected as the fittest to receive the appointment to the vacant arm-chair. In 1847 Emerson published his first and best volnmes of poems. Is he to be considered one of the greatest poets? Will he be cherished by the people? Will his fame and his song be transmitted to the latest generations? The bard, he himself says, Must smite the chords rudely and hard, As with hammer or with mace; That they may render back Artful thunder. Leaving rule and pale forethought, He shall not his brain encumber With the coil of rhythm and number. (Emersons works, ix., 106, 107.) No one, therefore, can be surprised if Emerson is sometimes unmelodious. He makes it the primal duty of the orator, and it is equally so of the poet, to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak. (Pp. 285, 138 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. 286.) The verses of Emerson are sometimes difficult to be under- stood. He finds the subjects of poetry only in nature, whereas the highest poetry leads us into the secret of the passions, relations, and actions of living men and women. Homer treats of men and women, of love aud war, of heroes and demigods, and of the gods themselves, is always melodious, and is always clear even to a child. And yet Emerson, though so different from Homer, was a poet; that which he has done best, and which will live longest, is in verse. Emerson,~~ so writes Holmes, is always seeing the univer- sal in the particular; is a citizen of the universe; deals with symbols too vast, sometimes too vague; sees the hidden spirit- ual meaning of things as Cayley and Sylvester see the meaning of their mysterious formuhe; finds in every phenomenon of nature a hieroglyphic. Others measure and describe the monu- ments; he reads the sacred inscriptions. How alive he makes Monadnoc! Without the help of tools or workmen, Emerson makes ~ haughty ~ stand before us an impersona- tion of kingly humanity, and talk with us as a god from Olympus might have talked. This is the fascination of his poetry; the sense of the infinite fills it with its majestic pres- ence; he has also a keen delight in the every-day aspects of nature. If Emerson is a careless versifier and rhymer, still in his verse there is something which belongs, indissolubly, sacredly, to his thought. All his earlier verse has a certain freshness which belongs to the first outburst of song in a poetic nature. If in the flights of his imagination he is like the strong-winged bird of passage, in his exquisite choice of de- scriptive epithets his subtle selective instinct penetrates the vocabulary for the one word he wants. (Pp. 321, 322, 323.) Thus far our biographer. If we turn to special poems, we ~nd The Problem a bit of autobiography. In whatever year it may have been written down, it expresses the thought of Emerson when in his earliest manhood he was still teaching a school in Boston. The ancients have a story of a demigod who as he entered the world was stopped at a cross-road by two personages who, in rivalry with each other, sought to direct him in the choice that he was to make between the two roads for his journey through life. The one offered him the goblet filled to the brim with pleasure; the other, the stern virtues of self- sacrifice for the welfare of his fellow-men. In like manner HOLMESS LIFE OF EMERSON. 139 Emerson brings back the moment when on his entrance to life two inward voices plead with him. To hear and decide between them, he places himself seemingly before a prelate, one of the most liberal that ever lived Jeremy Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines. He must choose whether he will be a seer or a priest; whether he will aspire to the Divinity by intuition, or through the portals of an established church; and Emerson, having in his mind the beautiful, no less than the good and the true, recounts the struggle and his choice in living words that came directly from the soul. Among the fragments of the p6etry written by philosophers of antiquity, whether Greek or Roman, nothing of the kind has come down to us that is so good. Emerson, without entering upon deep scientific researches, gladly received the new teachings of our century.* Tyndall, the man of science, cites from Emerson four lines that excel in beauty of statement and in their truth: Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake. In like manner our all-observant biographer does not fail to point out how Emerson, many years before the publications of Darwin on the descent of man, wrote: The youth reads omens where he goes, And speaks all languages the rose. The wood-fly mocks with tiny noise The far halloo of human voice. The perfumed berry on the spray Smacks of faint memories far away. A subtle chain of countless rings The next unto the farthest brings, And, striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form. These lines find their place in the midst of the most glowing description of the changes wronght in nature when the marble sleep of winter is broken and the happy spring brings all her dowry. They keep their place in the new London edition of Tyndalls Lectures on Light, p. 54. 140 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Emersons works.* They are left out from their place in the American edition of Emersons works (ix., 145), perhaps because some of them have been prefixed to one of his prose essays; but that is no reason for excluding them from their original place, unless Emerson of himself, in the full strength of his mind, gave other directions. On all occasions the mind of Emerson turned to that which was general, to that which concerned the whole. When return- ing from an excursion into the forest he first learned that telegraph wires had been successfully anchored under the ocean, the new-found path for thought, he declares, Shall lift mans public action to a height Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses, When linked hemispheres attest his deed. (Emersons works, ix., 167.) And it may be that by the closer connection of nations slavery will be abolished, rulers compelled to avoid making themselves the enemies of the human race, and respect for the rights of the half-civilized and the uncivilized find better anchoring-ground in the hearts of mankind. The criticisms of our wise biographer on Emerson are throughout candid and instructive. As last words of criticism we cite: We may not be able to assign the reason of the fas- cination which the poet we have been considering exercises over us; but this we can say, that he lives in the highest atmosphere of thought; that he is always in the presence of the infinite, and ennobles the accidents of human existence so that they partake of the absolute and eternal while he is looking at them; that he unites a royal dignity of manner with the simplicity of primitive nature; that his words and phrases arrange themselves, as if by an elective affinity of their own, with a curiosa felicitas which cap- tivates and enthralls the reader who comes fully under its influence; and that through all he sings as in all he says for us we recognize the same serene, high, pure intelligence and moral nature. (Pp. 341, 342.) It is a matter of interest to know the political opinions of Emerson; and here are those which he held in the years just preceding the year 1840: Of the two great parties which, at * Macmillans edition of Emersons poems, vol. iii. of his works, and pp. 195, 196. HOLMESS LIFE OF EMERSON. 141 this hour, almost share the nation between them, I should say that one has the best cause, and the other contains the best men. The philosopher, the poet, or the religious man will, of course, wish to cast his vote with the Democrat, for free trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the access of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth and power. But he can rarely accept the persons whom the so-called popular party propose to him as representatives of these liberties. On the other side, the Conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It indicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant. From neither party, when in power, has the world any benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the resources of the nation. (P. 187.) When, in the struggle between slavery and free labor, Sena- tor Sumner was struck down by violence, and strong and com- bined efforts were made to force slavery upon Kansas against the will of its people, Emerson threw aside all the reserve of private life to rouse the people to observation and resolute action. One party set up for its candidate for the presidency a man who had not sufficient force of character to have formed an effective government; and the other, a man who could not be depended upon to resist promptly the movements toward dis- union. Emerson, as clearly as any one, perhaps more clearly than any one at the time, saw the enormous dangers that were gathering over the Constitution. At a meeting held in Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, on the 10th of September, 1856, he spoke in this wise: The hour is coming when the strongest will not be strong enough. A harder task will the new revolution of the nineteenth century be than was the revolution of the eighteenth century. I think the American Revolution bought its glory cheap. If the problem was new, it was simple. If there were few people, they were united, and the enemy three thousand miles off. But now, vast property, gigantic interests, family connections, webs of party, cover the land with a network that immensely multiplies the dangers of war. Fellow-citizens, in these times full of the fate of the republic, I think the towns should hold town meetings, and resolve themselves into com 142 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. mittees of safety, go into permanent sessions, adjourning from week to week, from month to month. I wish we could send the sergeant-at-arms to stop every American who is about to leave the country. Send home every one who is abroad, lest they should find no country to return to. Come home and stay at home, while there is a country to save. (Emersons works, xi., 248.) It would certainly be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find any speech, made in the same year, that is marked with so much courage and foresight as this of Emerson. More than five years later, when an officer of the army attempted to open the eyes of the government to the all but infinite difficulties that lay in its path and the vastness of the preparations that were needful for success, he was held to be wild and extravagant in his demands. Even after the inauguration of Lincoln, several months passed away before his Secretary of State or he himself saw the future so clearly as Emerson had foreshadowed it in 1856. He lived to see an end of slavery throughout our land; and in a great old age fell finally asleep, with his wife and with children for his survivors, and with the love and veneration of all who had known him. When he was established in a home of his own, it became the home of his mother; and the regard he showed her was marked by a singular mixture of veneration and affection, as if he had always in mind the very tender memory of their sorrows in the time when she alone bore all the burden of her orphan children. How he could love a brother is recorded for us in the poem in which he bewails a brothers death; how intense was his tenderness as a father, by the words in which he poured forth his sorrows at the death of one of his sons. He never failed a friend; he never forgot his duty to any human being. He held that men were made to do good to one another; it was no burden to him to receive good offices; and he was never weary of ministering to the wants of others, often with a too lavish generosity. In public affairs his nearest object of affection was that of his town, and he knew how, when he pleased, to guide its councils at its meetings. His next love was his State; next came the Union; and next the federation of the many nations of the human race. In his principles he did not change throughout his life, and there never was a moment in which he was not true to them. He knew how to obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.~~ His HOLMESS LIFE OF EMERSON. 143 own peace he secured by a tranquillity of mind which never could be disturbed except by wounds that reached his affections. He was an optimist, always full of hope, finding skyborn music in everything, and a power in nature to lift better up to best. He lived always in the enjoyment of universal esteem. While still in the vigor of manhood he had obtained celebrity through- out the nations that lead the culture of the world. Germany was familiar with him through his own works and the able and earnest and most friendly interpretations of them by Herman Grimm. In England his prose and his verse gained alike an ever- increasing audience, and were read and admired in every class of society. The Institute of France showed him honors such as the Academy in elder days had tendered to Benjamin Franklin. At death no one was left alive who was hostile to his good fame or unwilling to extol his virtues. To complete the measure of his happiness, Oliver Wendell Holmes, a favorite with the culti- vated English-speaking peoples of two hemispheres, has risen up to be his biographer, and finds that he had no office but to relate how perfect Ralph Waldo Emerson was in sincerity, in the love of justice, and in devotedness to truth, to the beautiful, and to the good. GEORGE BANCROFT. NEW DEPARTURES IN EDUCATION. IF quantity and mechanism are the standards of merit in education, our country excels all others. The American child uses three or four times as many pages of text-books in a year as the European child. In the average excellence of our school- buildings; in the remarkable order and discipline of our school- rooms; in the consummate perfection of our marking systems, by which not only the lesson-getting but often the conduct of the largest classes is graded on a scale so fine and long that no two pupils are alike; in the size of our educational meetings and number of papers read; in the number of our educational jour- nals, now over sixty; in the number of educational publishing houses and the bulk of their productions; in these respects Columbia beats all creation. At this moment, said the super- intendent of schools in a certain large city, taking out his watch, so many thousand children here are reciting their grammar lesson, and in so many minutes they will all turn to arithmetic. A Sunday-school authority lately declared that as the sun moved across our land, one day in every seven, about seven million children and adults, with little distinction of age or method, would be on Abrahams sacrifice. Growth in bigness of these many sorts, with statistical illustrations, is the theme of many school reports, addresses, etc., and horizontal expansion has its inspirations. Although, compared with other lands, we almost never have the best in education, we rarely have the worst. But the very vastness, uniformity, and average mechanical excellence of our school system as a whole, admirable as it is in itself, and indispensable as it is for all higher developments, make it less plastic than it should be to the rapidly deepening apprehensions of the very complex conditions of setting children to learn what humanity has toiled to discover and striven to do and be in the world. Our printed courses of study, often so detailed and 144

NEW DEPARTURES IN EDUCATION. IF quantity and mechanism are the standards of merit in education, our country excels all others. The American child uses three or four times as many pages of text-books in a year as the European child. In the average excellence of our school- buildings; in the remarkable order and discipline of our school- rooms; in the consummate perfection of our marking systems, by which not only the lesson-getting but often the conduct of the largest classes is graded on a scale so fine and long that no two pupils are alike; in the size of our educational meetings and number of papers read; in the number of our educational jour- nals, now over sixty; in the number of educational publishing houses and the bulk of their productions; in these respects Columbia beats all creation. At this moment, said the super- intendent of schools in a certain large city, taking out his watch, so many thousand children here are reciting their grammar lesson, and in so many minutes they will all turn to arithmetic. A Sunday-school authority lately declared that as the sun moved across our land, one day in every seven, about seven million children and adults, with little distinction of age or method, would be on Abrahams sacrifice. Growth in bigness of these many sorts, with statistical illustrations, is the theme of many school reports, addresses, etc., and horizontal expansion has its inspirations. Although, compared with other lands, we almost never have the best in education, we rarely have the worst. But the very vastness, uniformity, and average mechanical excellence of our school system as a whole, admirable as it is in itself, and indispensable as it is for all higher developments, make it less plastic than it should be to the rapidly deepening apprehensions of the very complex conditions of setting children to learn what humanity has toiled to discover and striven to do and be in the world. Our printed courses of study, often so detailed and 144 NEW DEPARTURES IN EDUCATION. 145 exiguous as to destroy all the teachers freedom and initiative, and our examination papers and exhibitions, which too often more than make up for lack of thoroughness by the number of studies begun, show off the children so well that we forget that many of our schools are, as has been said, working out here the problem that China has solved so well, viz., how to instruct and not develop. Worst of all is the attempt of the so-called philosophy of this mechanism to meet the rising demand that the school shall do something for morals, by so distinguishing between the functions of church, state, family, and school, that only the above-named methods seem proper for the latter; when the fact is, the only thing that can ever undermine our school system in popular support is a suspicion that it does not mor- alize as well as mentalize children. This antiquated philosophy of education has no open questions, except into which pigeon-hole, in a predetermined system, new facts and ideas shall go; and it quite forgets that rudiments of the studies are not first prin- ciples (at least save in exact sciences, and rarely there), and that the logical order in which subjects are best apprehended by the adult or scientific mind is very different from, and often in- consistent with, the arts of adaptation. This is what we now mean by the old in education. It has done great things for us in the past, and is an indispensable basis for future progress. Its danger is complacency and routine; and when we reflect on the sad fatality by which everything in education always tends to gravitate toward the worst, without great and unremitting effort and enthusiasm, a worst that involves national decay and even calamity, it may be well to ask ourselves whether such a system is not, on the whole, better adapted to educate henchmen of political and other bosses, civil and religious, than freemen, and to enfeeble moral and muscular fiber, and breed actual dis- trust for books and mental culture by cram. The new education, on the other hand (if we may venture to indicate roughly the ever-shifting line between the old and the new in this field), holds that there is one thing in nature, and one alone, fit to inspire all true men and women with more awe and reverence than Kants starry heavens, and that is the soul and the body of the healthy young child. Heredity has freighted it with all the accumulated results of parental well and ill doing, and filled it with reverberations from a past more vast than science can explore; and on its right development von. cxL.No. 339. 10 146 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. depends tlie entire future of civilization two or three decades hence. Simple as childhood seems, there is nothing harder to know; and responsive as it is to every influence about it, noth- ing is harder to guide. To develop childhood to virtue, power, and due freedom is the supreme end of education, to which everything else should be subordinated as means. Just as to command inanimate nature we must constantly study, love, obey her, so to control child nature we must first, and perhaps still more piously, study, love, obey it. The best of us teachers have far more to learn from children than we can ever hope to teach them; and what we succeed in teaching, at least beyond the merest rudiments, will always be proportionate to the knowl- edge we have the wit to get from and about them. Every important advance or reform in the history of educa- tion has been in large measure due to new insights into the nature of childhood, dispelling the mazes of error that are spun with such strange persistence and abundance through the minds of adults about it. There is a partition that insensibly rises between the adult and the child, as between the educated and the uneducated mind, which must be laboriously broken down. Pestalozzi dressed, washed, combed, aired, and slept in the midst of his pauper school-children, shared all their joys and sorrows, and effected his reforms because he had at last come to live in their world, and learned and told something new of childhood. Locke, Froebel, Herbart, Hamilton, Bell, Lancaster, Stowe, Wil- derspen, Necker, and most of the teachers whose work and words it is worth our while to ponder in the history of education, studied children, often in a systematic way, as a naturalist studies the instincts of insects and animals; and their exhor- tation is to follow, observe, adapt to the nature of childhood. Knowledge of the subject to be taught, though so commonly defective, is only the beginning of the teachers wisdom, especi- ally in all primary and intermediate education. He must look solely at the pupil, and sacrifice, if need be, any method or logical order to the law of exigency, which requires instruction to be given whenever, wherever, and however interest is hottest and curiosity most alert. Premature, belated, ill-adapted infor- mation, given without determining just how much knowledge can be presupposed as the point of departure, this is the cram that makes bad, collapsible mental tissue, because not thoroughly digested and assimilated, and originates that worst product NEW DEPARTURES IN EDUCATION. 147 of artificial methods, a dislike of study and knowledge. All possible, or at least all common errors liable to arise in childish minds at each point of each study, or the great source of ignor- ance as it may be called, should be carefully studied. To secure some practical knowledge of this kind of juvenile psychology, which should determine the matter as well as the method of teaching, is the object of the graduate courses in pedagogy, or of the almost gratuitous year of probationary apprenticeship now required in several European countries before even the best scholars are allowed to teach. It also explains the partial truth of the monitorial system, that those could teach a subject best who had just learned it, and who also knew the style and language of the learners. The new education of to-day looks at quality rather than quantity, and has chiefly in view two things: first, methods that are natural, and secondly, educational valuesthe highest of all kinds of value in the world. When we speak of truth for its own sake, apart from all utilities, we mean its purely educa- tional value. In this sense it is well said that all sciences, religions, states, etc., exist and are good only because and in so far as they develop man. It is plain that the wisest of the founders of our political institutions realized far more than most of us do, that in a country so free and so new, and without author- ity, precedent, or tradition, only intelligence could control the conditions of human development. Narrow as their views of education were, they felt that in a peculiar sense it must be no less fundamental in a republic like ours than in Platos, where all problems were ultimately educational ones. The chief specialty of our country must be education, if she is to main- tain her place among the powers of the civilized world. Here the wisdom of true statesmanship must culminate. The law- givers that will rule our land in the next century should and must study well the problems of education. Scientifically, too, the next problem is, undoubtedly, man and his faculties, first to know and then to control the conditions of his development a most important aspect of the whole problem. The question how high a development man can reach, the fundamental ques- tion of civilizations, is likely, or at least ought, to be solved more consciously, and with more design and intelligence here than elsewhere; and hence, too, the great and peculiar significance of our very few educational institutions of highest rank. 148 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. One of the most hopeful things in education is the dawn of better and more objective ways of studying the mind and its growth. The old-fashioned philosophies on which so many pres- ent methods of teaching are based, which are still well intrenched in most of our normal schools, seem imposing with their vast generalization, bnt are too introspective for youth, are formal, and where most absolnte, least harmonious among themselves. They have done great good, and it is not needful here to point out their grave defects. But better and more modern methods of research into the phenomena and laws of the soul, more consonant with the demands of modern and especially Ameri- can life and thought, as specialized and c& iperative as science, slowly doing over again the work of the great thinkers of the past century, and without losing their positive result, removing their limitations, enriching and applying their insights these are now slowly but surely working out a true natural history of mans nascent faculties. Here is the heart of the pedagogy of to-day and of to-morrow, where the science and philosophy of education join friendly hands with the practical teacher, and here he who would speak with authority and be heard in the new departure already ripening, must study with patience and love the psychology of the growing, playing, learning child and youth. Thus alone we can, in the langnage of Socrates in the Laches, make the education of the children our own education. As thus the questions that were once thought settled by the old philosophy slowly open, it becomes every day plainer that he will do most for the education of the future who can make original contribution to the anthropology of childhood; for, im- posing as any school system may be, it is good and will endure only as it represents and fits the nature and needs of children. Even in discussing such questions as the form, slant, and height of seat in school,the lighting, heating, ventilation, and size of rooms, the duration and frequency of recess, the number of stud- ies, the length of lessons, the best part of the day for study, the best form and size of type and script, the best position in writ- ing, the best size of classes, etc., points that are now much in debate, it is to the physical nature of childhood that we must ever turn for a solution, to which he alone makes real contribn- tion who brings new facts about juvenile physiology and hygiene. It is most readily granted that the tact, skill, and insight of those few who are born lovers and leaders of children and youth, like NEW DEPARTURES IN EDUCATION. 149 Socrates, may be always trusted to make these observations by rapid intuition and adapt their workto juvenile nature by instinct. This is true genius, and always does its work better than any rules or methods that art can prescribe; but, though found in nearly all ranks and places, it is too rare, too suspected, and too often intimidated to be relied upon to keep our vast system e~i rapport with the real needs of children. Froebel recommended that when a child was born, each parent should open a life-book, in which should be recorded the stages of its physical and mental growth, good and bad influences and qualities, all striking in- cidents, experiences, and peculiarities, and the parents own en- deavors, motives, fears, hopes, and plans in rearing the child; and that this book should be kept without the childs knowledge, to be given to him at maturity as a guide to aid his choice of pro- fession or calling, physical regimen, etc. The study of child life has already produced a series of valuable pamphlets, mostly by foreign scientific men, containing records of their observations on their own infants, in a few cases carried on into the second decade of life. The same individual and objective method is already in use in the study of idiots, the blind, the deaf, criminals, and the insane, where detailed monographs devoted to a single individual or family are of much value. Applied to animals, it has in the past ten years taught us more of the habits and in- stincts of beavers, spiders, bees, ants, birds, etc., than all that was known of them before. Most of the writings of Francis Galton and Candolle are in this line, and those interested in anthro- pology find before them a field as wide as it is new. As, after all, comparatively little of what is now being done has found its way into print, it may be of interest to say that already, in this country, many teachers are carefully exploring, by many ingenious ways, with due precautions against both harm to the child and error in the results, the minds of individual children of all ages, one after another; carefully noting all important points in the environnient, with a view to get at last, when hun- dreds of records are carefully compared, a better and more objective picture of the inward growth of our faculties, service- able alike for science and for the practical work of teaching. One observer makes a specialty of the plays and games of children, favorite toys, play-house architecture, play-ground rounds, the romances spun about dolls, pets, charms, flower oracles, jargons, etc., or gathers all the literature of the subject; 150 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. assuming that, in a way, the amount of play-instinct measures the capacity for culture,, and with, perhaps, the ulterior ques- tion in view, how tliis instinct can be made more educative. Another questions teachers, and yet another circulates questions for older pupils to answer in writing; and thus much useless but always some valuable matter is collected. Several parents preserve with care, and unknown to the child, every attempt at graphic representations, with pencil or pen, made by their chil- dren before positive instruction begins, dated and kept in order in a portfolio or scrap-book. Others make careful studies of child vocabularies and in the schools of one of our largest cities, the teachers are obliged to keep a record of all the errors in English, including spelling and pronunciation and syntax. Others observe and record everything illustrating the childish sense of justice, or truth and honesty, or friendship and affec- tion, or even cases of conscience, etc. Teeth, eyes, hearing, physical measurements of several sorts, including weight, height, girths, strength, school athletics, school and college journalism, all these rubrics and more are exciting specialized attention. Many parents keep more general records of the ways and words of their children, with no method or order, but sure to be of value to this new line of interest. Some work of this sort should be required of every normal-school pupil, and when its methods are fully organized it will do much toward making education more of a science, or rather, which is far better, a profession. By such methods as this, greatly elaborated and perfected by the study of modern psychology, the history of education, and anthropology, we shall know better than now the lines of strongest interest and curiosity in children during each of the main periods of immaturity, and in what order, directions, and rapidity their capacities unfold and may be safely set to work, and how much. Without more knowledge of this kind, the vast power that our school-machinery gives over the development of the child is dangerous. It is acquisition along the lines of least resistance thus ascertained that makes education truly lib- eral, whether elementary or advanced. It is this that makes our colleges so much more effective under the elective system, which makes its way wherever the increased expenditure for instructors can be met. To some taste of such truly liberal education every child has a right, and without it, however NEW DEPARTU1i~ES IN EDUCATION. 151 schooled, he knows nothing of the exquisite joy of rapid mental growth. By it the evils of forcing and overwork will become less grave. In this way only is it safe to keep on widening the sphere of culture, utilizing the instincts of play, industry, imita- tion, fancy, and emulation, and turning everything to educa- tional account. We question whether a modern Socrates would try to repress rather than to utilize and direct the Greek-letter fraternities, athletics, journalism, etc., that are sometimes appa- rently regarded as the noxious bilge-water of American colleges. For the average collegian, such non-examinable elements do probably more for life than what is derived from the curriculum. Parents regard these things too lightly, and the easy-going, non- paternal system of college government either carefully ignores it, often to the grave moral and mental harm of students, or if it interferes, does it with so little knowledge of human nature at this most peculiar stage, that the whole institution is unsettled. As the unforced opinions of young men are said to be the best materials for prophecy, so it is the voluntary interests that de- termine all academic ideals. On these interests and spontanei- ties of youth, all our educational establishments float as on a sea. If they fail, any one of them, these are stranded, and our wisdom is to study well in order well to navigate these still mysterious and propulsive tides. A good method of recommending knowl- edge to the young, and thus of teaching, is one of the most effective bulwarks against a slow relapse to barbarism, because by it knowledge and all its benign influences slowly filter more effectively down from the higher to the lower intelligences. But all methods, curricula, and programs perish with their repre- sentatives, if persisted in from habit or convenience, after the all-controlling needs of childhood have found a better way. Hence, the danger for institutions and men of being left be- hind, which was never greater in this country than to-day, where progress in these directions is so rapid. There is now a demand for teachers of education, that is not likely to grow less, in a number of our best colleges, the presi- dents of which have taken up the lantern of Diogenes in earnest, and, it is to be hoped, not in vain. The work of public-school superintendence has lately become more professional in many parts of the country, and is also increasingly lucrative. Great educational progress is sure to be made in the near future in most of the Western States, where the interest is now far deeper 152 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. and more intense than ever; while the South is about to open to new departures to which hitherto she has been a comparative stranger. Within the domains of psychology, sociology, anthro- pology, history, medical and sanitary science, and jurisprudence, and even religion, various aspects of education and even of child-study are now recognized special departments. In view of these facts and many more, the writer is of the opinion that there is now no line of intellectual work to which a young bac- calaureate can devote himself with greater certainty that indus- try and ability will find their reward in usefulness, reputation, and position than to the professional study of the theory and history and institutions of education. G. STANLEY HALL. THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS PUNISIIMI~NT. THE chief objections to the doctrine of endless punishment are not Biblical but speculative. The great majority of students and exegetes find the tenet in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Davidson, the most learned of English rationalistic critics, explic- itly acknowledges that if a specific sense be attached to words, never-ending misery is enunciated in the Bible. On the pre- sumption that one doctrine is taught, it is the eternity of hell torments. Bad exegesis may attempt to banish it from the New Testament Scriptures, but it is still there, and expositors who wish to get rid of it, as Canon Farrar does, injure the cause they have in view by misrepresentation. It must be allowed that the New Testament record not only makes Christ assert everlasting punishment, but Paul and John. But the question should be looked at from a larger platform than single texts in the light of Gods attributes, and the nature of the soul. The destination of man, and the Creators infinite goodness, conflicting as they do with everlasting punishment, remove it from the sphere of ra- tional belief. If provision be not made in revelation for a change of moral character after death, it is made in reason. Philosophical considerations must not be set aside even by scripture. (Last Things, pp. 133, 136, 151.) So long, then, as the controversy is carried on by an appeal to the Bible, the defender of endless retribution has comparatively an easy task. But when the appeal is made to human feeling and sentiment, or to ratiocination, the demonstration requires more effort. And yet the doctrine is not only Biblical but rational. It is defensible on the basis of sound ethics and pure reason. Nothing is reqnisite for its maintenance but the admission of three cardinal truths of theism, najnely, that there is a just God; that man has free will; and that sin is voluntary action. If 153

THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS PUNISIIMI~NT. THE chief objections to the doctrine of endless punishment are not Biblical but speculative. The great majority of students and exegetes find the tenet in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Davidson, the most learned of English rationalistic critics, explic- itly acknowledges that if a specific sense be attached to words, never-ending misery is enunciated in the Bible. On the pre- sumption that one doctrine is taught, it is the eternity of hell torments. Bad exegesis may attempt to banish it from the New Testament Scriptures, but it is still there, and expositors who wish to get rid of it, as Canon Farrar does, injure the cause they have in view by misrepresentation. It must be allowed that the New Testament record not only makes Christ assert everlasting punishment, but Paul and John. But the question should be looked at from a larger platform than single texts in the light of Gods attributes, and the nature of the soul. The destination of man, and the Creators infinite goodness, conflicting as they do with everlasting punishment, remove it from the sphere of ra- tional belief. If provision be not made in revelation for a change of moral character after death, it is made in reason. Philosophical considerations must not be set aside even by scripture. (Last Things, pp. 133, 136, 151.) So long, then, as the controversy is carried on by an appeal to the Bible, the defender of endless retribution has comparatively an easy task. But when the appeal is made to human feeling and sentiment, or to ratiocination, the demonstration requires more effort. And yet the doctrine is not only Biblical but rational. It is defensible on the basis of sound ethics and pure reason. Nothing is reqnisite for its maintenance but the admission of three cardinal truths of theism, najnely, that there is a just God; that man has free will; and that sin is voluntary action. If 153 154 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW these are denied, there can be no defense of endless punishment or of any other doctrine, except atheism and its corollaries. The Bible and all the creeds of Christendom affirm mans free agency in sinning against God. The transgression which is to receive the endless punishment is voluntary. Sin, whether it be inward inclination or outward act, is unforced human agency. This is the uniform premise of Christian theologians of all schools. Endless punishment supposes the liberty of the human wiJi, and is impossible without it. Could a man prove that he is necessitated in his murderous hate and his murderous act, he would prove, in this very proof, that he ought not to be punished for it, either in time or eternity. Could Satan really convince himself that his moral character is not his own work, but that of God, or of nature, his remorse would cease, and his punishment would end. Self-determination runs parallel with hell. Guilt, then, is what is punished, and not misfortune. Free and not forced agency is what feels the stroke of justice. What, now, is this stroke? What do law and justice do when they pun- ish? Everything depends upon the right answer to this ques- tion. The fallacies and errors of Universalism find their nest and hiding-place at this point. The true definition of punish- ment detects and excludes them. Punishment is neither chastisement nor calamity. Men suf- fer calamity, says Christ, not because they or their parents have sinned, but that the works of God should be made manifest in them. John ix. 3. Chastisement is inflicted in order to develop a good but imperfect character already formed. The Lord loveth whom he chasteneth, and what son is he whom the earthiy father chasteneth not? Hebrews xii. 6, 7. Punish- ment, on the other hand, is retribution, and is not intended to do the work of either calamity or chastisement, but a work of its own. And this work is to vindicate law, to satisfy justice. Punishment, therefore, is wholly retrospective in its primary aim. It looks back at what has been done in the past. Its first and great object is requital. A man is hung for murder, prin- cipally and before all other reasons because he has voluntarily transgressed the law forbidding murder. He is not hung from a prospective aim, such as his own moral improvement, or for the purpose of deterring others from committing murder. The remark of the English judge to the horse-thief, in the days when such theft was capitally punished, You are not hung be- THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 155 cause you have stolen a horse, but that horses may not be stolen, has never been regarded as eminently judicial. It is true that personal improvement may be one consequence of the infliction of penalty. But the consequence must not be con- founded with the purpose. Cam hoc non ergo propter hoe. The criminal may come to see and confess that his crime deserves its punishment, and in genuine unselfish penitence may take sides with the law, approve its retribution, and go into the presence of the Final Judge, relying upon that great atonement which satis- fies eternal justice for sin; but even this, the greatest personal benefit of all, is not what is aimed at in mans punishment of the crime of murder. For should there be no such personal benefit as this attending the infliction of the human penalty, the one suffi- cient reason for inflicting it still holds good, namely, the fact that the law has been violated, and demands the death of the offender for this reason simply and only. The notion of ill- desert and punishableness, says Kant (Praktische Verunuft, 151. Ed. Rosenkranz), is necessarily implied in the idea of voluntary transgression; and the idea of punishment excludes that of happiness in all its forms. For though he who inflicts punishment may, it is true, also have a benevolent purpose to produce by the punishment some good effect upon the criminal, yet the punishment must be justified, first of all, as pure and sim- ple requital and retribution: that is, as a kind of suffering that is demanded by the law without any reference to its prospective beneficial consequences; so that even if no moral improvement and no personal advantage should subsequently accrue to the criminal, he must acknowledge that justice has been done to him, and his experience is exactly conformed to his conduct. In every instance of punishment, properly so called, justice is the very first thing, and constitutes the essence of it. A benevolent purpose and a happy effect, it is true, may be conjoined with punishment~ but the criminal cannot claim this as his due, and he has no right to reckon upon it. All that he deserves is pun- ishment, and this is all that he can expect from the law which he has transgressed. These are the words of as penetrating and ethical a thinker as ever lived. Neither is it true, that the first and principal aim of punish. ment is the protection of society and the public good. This, like the personal benefit in the preceding case, is only secondary and incidental. The public good is not a sufficient reason for 156 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE TV. putting a man to death; but the satisfaction of law is. This view of penalty is most disastrous in its influence, as well as false in its ethics. For if the good of the public is the true rea- son and object of punishment, the amount of it may be fixed by the end in view. The criminal may be made to suffer more than his crime deserves, if the public welfare, in suppressing this par- ticular kind of crime, requires it. His personal desert and responsibility not being the one sufficient reason for his suffer- ing, he may be made to suffer as much as the public safety requires. It was this theory of penalty that led to the multipli- cation of capital offenses. The prevention of forgery, it was once claimed in England, required that the forger should forfeit his life, and upon the principle that punishment is for the pub- lic protection, and not for strict and exact justice, an offense against human property was expiated by hnman life. Contrary to the Noachic statute, which punishes only murder with death~ this statute weighed out mans life-blood against pounds, shil- lings, and pence. On this theory, the number of capital offenses became very numerous and the criminal code very bloody. So that, in the long run, nothing is kinder than exact justice. It prevents extremes in either direction either that of indulgence or that of cruelty. This theory breaks down, from whatever point it be looked at. Suppose that there were but one person in the universe. If he should transgress the law of God, then, upon the principle of ex- pediency as the ground of penalty, this solitary subject of moral government could not be punished that is, visited with a suffering that is purely retributive, and not exemplary or corrective. His act has not injured the public, for there is no public. There is no need of his suffering as an example to deter others, for there are no others. But upon the principle of justice, in distinction from expediency, this solitary subject of moral government could be punished. The vicious ethics of this theory of penalty expresses itself in the demoralizing maxim, It is better that ten guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should suffer. But this is no more true than the converse, It is better that ten inno- cent men should suffer than that one guilty man should escape. It is a choice of equal evil and equal injustice. In either case alike, justice is trampled down. In the first supposed case, there are eleven instances of injustice and wrong; and in the last sup- THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 157 posed case, there are likewise eleven instances of injustice and wrong. Unpunished guilt is precisely the same species of evil with pnnished innocence. To say, therefore, that it is better that ten guilty persons should escape than that one innocent man should suffer, is to say that it is better that there should be ten wrongs than one wrong against justice. The theory that punishment is retributive honors human nat- nrc, but the theory that it is merely expedient and useful degrades it. If justice be the true ground of penalty, man is treated as a person; but if the public good is the ground, he is treated as a chat- tel or a thing. When suffering is judicially inflicted because of the intrinsic gravity and real demerit of crime, ~ free will and re- sponsibility are recognized and put in the foreground; and these are his highest and distinguishing attributes. The sufficient reason for his suffering is found wholly within his own person, in the exercise of self-determination. He is not seized by the mag- istrate and made to suffer for a reason extraneous to his own agency, and for the sake of something lying wholly outside of himself namely, the safety and happiness of others but because of his own act. He is not handled like a brute or an in- animate thing that may be put to good use; but he is recognized as a free and voluntary person, who is punished not because pun- ishment is expedient and useful, but because it is just and right; not because the public safety requires it, but because he owes it. The dignity of the man himself, founded in his lofty but hazard- ous endowment of free will, is acknowledged. Supposing it, now, to be conceded, that future punishment is retributive in its essential nature, it follows that it must be end- less from the nature of the case. For, s~ering must continue as long as the reason for it continues. In this respect, it is like law, which lasts as long as its reason lasts: rcttione cessante, cessat ipsa lex. Suffering that is educational and corrective may come to an end, because moral infirmity, and not guilt, is the rea- son for its infliction; and moral infirmity 7may cease to exist. But suffering that is penal can never come to an end, because guilt is the reason for its infliction, and guilt once incurred never ceases to be. The lapse of time does not convert guilt into inno- cence, as it converts moral infirmity into moral strength; and there- fore no time can ever arrive when the guilt of the criminal will cease to deserve and demand its retribution. The reason for retri- bution to-day is a reason forever. Hence, when God disciplines 158 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. and educates his children, he causes only a temporary suffering. In this case, He will not keep his anger forever. Ps. ciii. 9. But when, as the Supreme Judge, he punishes rebellious and guilty subjects of his government, he causes an endless suffering. In this case, their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. Mark ix. 48. The real question therefore, is, whether God ever punishes. That he chastises, is not disputed. But does he ever inflict a suffering that is not intended to reform the transgressor, and does not reform him, but is intended simply and only to vindi- cate law, and satisfy justice, by requiting him for his transgres- sion? Revelation teaches that he does. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Rom. xii. 19. Retribution is here asserted to be a function of the Supreme Being, and his alone The creature has no right to punish, except as he is authorized by the Infinite Ruler. The powers that be are ordained of God. The ruler is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Roni. xiii. 1, 4. The power which civil government has to punish crimethe private person having no such poweris only a delegated right from the Source of retribution. Natural religion, as well as revealed, teaches that God inflicts upon the voluntary transgressor of law a suffer- ing that is purely vindicative of law. The pagan sages enunci- ate the doctrine, and it is mortised into the moral constitution of man, as is proved by his universal fear of retribution. The ob- jection, that a suffering not intended to reform but to satisfy jus- tice is cruel and unworthy of God, is refuted by the question of St. Paul: Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? God for- bid: for how then shall God judge the world? Rom. iii. 5, 6. It is impossible either to found or administer a government, in heaven or upon earth, unless the power to punish crime is conceded. The endlessness of future punishment, then, is implied in the endlessness of guilt and condemnation. When a crime is con- demned,it is absurd to ask, How long is it condemned? The verdict Guilty for ten days was Hibernian. Damnation means absolute and everlasting damnation. All suffering in the next life, therefore, of which the sufficient and justifying reason is guilt, must continue as long as the reason continues; and the reason is everlasting. If it be righteous to-day, in Gods retrib- utive justice, to smite the transgressor because he violated the THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 159 law yesterday, it is righteous to do the same thing to-morrow, and the next day, and so on ad infinitwrn; because the state of the ease ad infinitmm remains unaltered. The guilt incurred yes- terday is a standing and endless fact. What, therefore, guilt legitimates this instant, it legitimates every instant, and forever. It may be objected that, though the guilt and damnation of a crime be endless, it does not follow that the suffering inflicted on account of it must be endless also, even though it be retribu- tive and not reformatory in its intent. A human judge pro- nounces a theft to be endlessly a theft, and a thief to be endlessly a thief, but he does not sentence the thief to an endless suffering, though he sentences him to a penal suffering. But this objection overlooks the fact that human punishment is only approximate and imperfect, not absolute and perfect like the Divine. It is not adjusted exactly and precisely to the whole guilt of the offense, but is more or less modified, first, by not considering its relation to Gods honor and majesty; secondly, by human ignorance of the inward motives; and, thirdly, by social expe- diency. Earthly courts and judges look at the transgression of law with reference only to mans temporal relations, not his eternal. They punish an offense as a crime against the State, not as a sin against God. Neither do they look into the human heart, and estimate crime in its absolute and in- trinsic nature, as does the Searcher of Hearts and the Om- niscient Judge. A human tribunal punishes mayhem, we wili say, with six months imprisonment, because it does not take into consideration either the malicious and wicked anger that prompted the maiming, or the dishonor done to the Supreme Being by the transgression of his commandment. But Christ, in the final assize, punishes this offense endlessly, because his All-seeing view includes the sum-total of guilt in the case; namely, the inward wrath, the outward act, and the relation of both to the infinite perfection and adorable majesty of God. The human tribunal does not punish the inward anger at all; the Divine tribunal punishes it with hell fire: For whosoever shall say to his brother, Thou fool, is in danger of hell fire. Matt. v. 22. The human tribunal punishes seduction with a pecuniary fine, because it does not take cognizance of the selfish and heartless lust that prompted it, or of the affront offered to that Immaculate Holiness which from Sinai proclaimed, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But the Divine tribunal punishes 160 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. seduction with an infinite suffering, because of its more compre- hensive and truthful view of the whole transaction. Again, human punishment, unlike the Divine, is variable and inexact, because it is to a considerable extent reformatory and protective. Human government is not intended to do the work of the Supreme Ruler. The sentence of an earthly judge is not a substitute for that of the last day. Consequently, human punishment need not be marked, even if this were possible, with all that absoluteness and exactness of justice which characterizes the Divine. Justice in the human sphere may be relaxed by expediency. The retributive element must, indeed, enter into human punishment; for no man may be punished by a human tribunal unless he deserves punishment unless he is a criminal. But retribution is not the sole element when man punishes. Man, while not overlooking the guilt in the case, has some refer- ence to the reformation of the offender, and still more to the protection of society. Civil expediency and social utility modify exact and strict retribution. For the sake of reforming the criminal, the judge sometimes inflicts a penalty that is less than the real guilt of the offense. For the sake of protecting society, the court sometimes sentences the criminal to a suffering greater than his crime deserves. Human tribunals, also, vary the punish- ment for the same offense- sometimes punishing forgery capi- tally, and sometimes not; sometimes sentencing those guilty of the same kind of theft to one year~ s imprisonment, and some- times to two. But the Divine tribunal, in the last great day, is invariably and exactly just, because it is neither reformatory nor protective. Hell is not a penitentiary. It is righteous retribution, pure and simple, unmodified by considerations either of utility to the criminal, or of safety to the universe. Christ, in the day of final account, will not punish wicked men and devils (for the two receive the same sentence, and go to the same place, Matt. xxv. 41), either for the sake of reforming them, or of protecting the righteous from the wicked. His punishment at that time will be nothing but retribution. The Redeemer of men is also the Eternal Judge; the Lamb of God is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah; and his righteous word to wicked and hardened Satan, to wicked and hardened Judas, to wicked and hardened Pope Alexander VI., will be: Vengeance is mine; I will repay. Depart from me, ye cursed, that work iniquity. Rom. xii. 19; THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 161 Matt. xxv. 41; vii. 23. The wicked will reap according as they have sown. The sultering will be unerringly adjusted to the intrinsic guilt: no greater and no less than the sin deserves. That servant which knew his lords will [clearly], and did not according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not [clearly], and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. As many as have sinned with- out [written] law, shall also perish without [written] law; and as many as have sinned under [written] law, shall be judged by the [written] law. Luke xii. 47, 48; Rom. ii. 12. It is because the human court, by reason of its ignorance both of the human heart and the true nature of sin against a spiritual law and a holy God, cannot do the perfect work of the Divine tribunal, that human laws and penalties are only provis- ional, and not final. Earthly magistrates are permitted to modify and relax penalty, and pass a sentence which, though adapted to mans earthly circnmstanees, is not absolute and perfect, and is finally to be revised and made right by the omniscient accuracy of God. The human penalty that approaches nearest to the Divine is capital punishment. There is more of the purely retributive element in this than in any other. The reformatory element is wanting. And this punishment has a kind of endless- ness. Death is a finality. It forever separates the murderer from earthly society, even as future punishment separates for- ever from the society of God and heaven. The argument thus far goes to prove that retribution in dis- tinction from correction, or punishment in distinction from chastisement, is endless from the nature of the case. We pass, now, to prove that it is also rational and right. 1. Endless punishment is rational, in the first place, because it is supported by the human conscience. The sinners own con- science will bear ~ and approve of the condemning sentence, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. Pom. ii. 16. Dives, in the parable, when reminded of the justice of his suffering, is silent. Accordingly, all the evangelical creeds say with the Westminster (Larger Catechism, 89) that the wicked, upon clear evidence and full conviction of their own consciences, shall have the just sentence of condemnation pronounced against them. If in the great day there are any innocent men who have no accusing con- sciences, they will escape hell. We may accommodate St. Pauls VOL. CXL.NO. 339. 11 162 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. words, Rom. xiii. 3, 4, and say: The final judgment is not a terror to good works but to evil. Wilt thou, then, not be afraid of the final judgment ~ Keep the law of God perfectly, without a single slip or failure, inwardly or outwardly, and thou shalt have praise of the same. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid. But a sentence that is justified by the highest and best part of the human constitution must be founded in reason, justice, and truth. It is absurd to object to a judicial decision that is confirmed by the ~ own immediate consciousness of its righteousness. And, as matter of fact, the opponent of end- less retribution does not draw his arguments from the impartial conscience, but from the bias of self-love and desire for happi- ness. His objections are not ethical but sentimental. They are not seen in the dry light of pure truth and reason, but through the colored medium of self-md lgenee and love of ease and sin. Again: a guilty conscience expects endless punishment. There is in it what the Scripture denominates the fearful looking-for of judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour tlie ~ of God. Hebrew x. 27. This is the awful apprehension of an evil that is to last forever; otherwise, it would not be so fearful. The knowledge that future suf- fering will one day cease would immediately relieve the awful apprehension of the sinner. A guilty conscience is in its very nature hopeless. Impenitent men, in their remorse, sorrow as those who have no hope. 1 Thess. iv. 13; having no hope, and without God in the world. Eph. ii. 12. The hope of the wicked shall be as the giving up of the ghost. Job xi. 20. The hypocrites hope shall perish. Job viii. 13. Consequently, the great and distinguishing element in hell-torment is despair, a feeling that is simply impossible in any man or fallen angel who knows that he is finally to be happy forever. Despair results from the endlessness of retribution. No endlessness, no despair. Natural religion, as well as revealed, teaches the de- spair of some men in the future life. Plato (Gorgias 525), Pindar (Olympia II.), Plutarch (De sera vindicta), describe the punishment of the incorrigibly wicked as eternal and hopeless. In Seriptnre, there is no such thing as eternal hope. Hope is a characteristic of earth and time only. Here in this life, all men may hope for forgiveness. Turn, ye prisoners of hope. Zech. ix. 2. Now is the accepted time; now is the day of sal. THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS P UNISII1IIENT. 163 vation. 2 Cor. vi. 2. But in the next world there is no hope of any kind, because there is either fruition or despair. The Christians hope is converted into its realization: For what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for it? Rom. viii. 24. And the impenitent sinners hope of heaven is converted into despair. Canon Farrars phrase eternal hope ~ is derived from Pando- ra s box, not from the Bible. Dantes legend over the portal of hell is the truth: All hope abandon, ye who enter here. That conscience supports endless retribution, is also evinced by the universality and steadiness of the dread of it. Mankind believe in hell, as they believe in the Divine Existence, by reason of their moral sense. Notwithstanding all the attack made upon the tenet in every generation, by a fraction of every generation, men do not get rid of their fear of future punishment. Skeptics themselves are sometimes distressed by it. But a permanent and general fear among mankind cannot be produced by a mere chimera, or a pure figment of the imagination. Men have no fear of Rhadamanthus, nor can they be made to fear him, because they know that there is no such being. An idol is nothing in the world. 1 Cor. viii. 4. But men have the fearful looking-for of judgment from the lips of God, ever and always. If the Biblical hell were as much a nonentity as the heathen Atlantis, no one would waste his time in endeavoring to prove its non-ex- istence. What man woul seriously construct an argument to demonstrate that there is no such being as Jupiter Ammon, or such an animal as the centaur? The very denial of endless retribution evinces by its spasmodic eagerness and effort to disprove the tenet, the firmness with which it is intrenched in mans moral constitution. If there really were no hell, absolute indifference toward the notion would long since have l3een the mood of all mankind, and no arguments, either for or against it, would be constructed. And finally, the demand, even here upon earth, for the pun- ishment of the intensely a d incorrigibly wicked proves that retribution is grounded in the human conscience. When abom- inable and satanic sin is temporarily triumphant, as it sometimes has been in the history of the world, men cry out to God for his vengeance to come down. ~ If there were no God, we should be compelled to invent one ~ now a familiar sentiment. If there were no hell, we should be compelled to invent one,~~ is equally true. When examples of great depravity occur, man cries: 164 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. How long, 0 Lord, how long? The non-infliction of retri- bution upon hardened villainy and successful cruelty causes anguish in the moral sense. For the expression of it, read the imprecatory psalms and Miltons sonnet on the Massacre in Piedmont. 2. In the second place, endless punishment is rational, because of the endlessness of sin. If the preceding view of the relation of penalty to guilt be correct, endless punishment is just, without bringing the sin of the future world into the account. Man incurs everlastin~ punishment for the things done in his body.~~ 2 Cor. v. 10. Christ sentences men to perdition, not for what they are going to do in eternity, but for what they have already done in time. It is not necessary that a man should commit all kinds of sin, or that he shoul sill a very long time, in order to be a sinner. Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is ~uilty of all. James ii. 10. One sin makes guilt, and guilt makes hell. But while this is so, it is a fact to be observed, that sin is actually being added to sin, in the future life, and the amount of guilt is accumulating. The lost spirit is treasuring up wrath. IRom. ii. 5. Hence, there are degrees in the intensity of endless suffering. The difference in the grade arises from the greater resoluteness of the wicked self-determination, and the greater degree of light that was enjoyed upon earth. He who sins against the moral law as it is drawn out in the Sermon on the Mount sins more determinedly and desperately than the pagan who sins against the light of nature. There are probably no men in paganism who sin so willfully and devilishly as some men in Christendom. Profanity, or the blaspheming of God, is a Christian and not a Heathen cha acteristic. There are degrees in future suffering, because it is infinite in duration only. In intensity, it is finite. Consequelltly, the lost do not all suffer precisely alike, though all suffer the same length of time. A thing may be infinite in one respect and finite in others. A line may be infinite in length, and not in breadth and depth. A surface may be infinite in length and breadth, and not in depth. And two persons may suffer infinitely in the sense of endlessly, and yet one experience more pain than the other. The endlessness of sin results, first, from the nature and energy of sinful self-determination. Sin is the creatures act solely. God does not work in the human will when it wills THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 165 antagonistically to him. Consequently, self-determination to evil is an extremely vehement activity of the will. There is no will so willful as a wicked will. Sin is stubborn and obstinate in its nature, because it is enmity and rebellion. Hence, wicked will intensifies itself perpetually. Pride, left to itself, increases and never diminishes. Enmity and hatred become more and more satanic. ~ says South, is the only perpetual motion which has yet been found out, and needs nothing but a beginning to keep it incessantly going on. Upon this important point, Aristotle, in the seventh book of his Ethics, reasons with great truth and impressiveness. He distinguishes between & ~oX~a%~ and & v.pc~rL; between strong will to wickedness and weak self- indulgence. The former is viciousness from deliberation and preference, and implies an intense determination to evil in the man. He goes wrong, not so much from the pull of appetite and passion, as purposely, knowingly, and energetically. He has great strength of will, and he puts it all forth in resolute wicked- ness. The latter quality is more the absence than the presence of will; it is the weakness and irresolution of a man who has no powerful self-determination of any kind. The condition of the former of these two men, Aristotle regarded as worse than that of the latter. He considered it to be desperate and hopeless. The evil is incurable. Repentance and reformation are impossible to this man; for the wickedness in this instance is not mere appetite; it is a principle; it is cold-blooded and total depravity. Another reason for the endlessness of sin is the bondage of the sinful will. In the very act of transgressing the law of God, there is a reflex action of the human will upon itself, whereby it becomes unable to perfectly keep that law. Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. A man is not forced to kill himself, but if he does, he cannot bring himself to life again. And a man is not forced to sin, but if he does, he cannot of himself get back where he was before sinning. He cannot get back to innocency, nor can he get back to holiness of heart. The effect of vicious habit in diminishing a mans ability to resist temptation is pro. verbial. An old and hardened debauchee, like Tiberius or Louis XV., just going into the presence of Infinite Purity, has not so much power of active resistance against the sin that has now ruined him as the youth has who is just beginning to run that awful career. The truth and fact is, that sin, in and by its own nature and operation, tends to destroy all virtuous force, all holy 166 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. energy, in any moral being. The excess of will to sin is the same thing as defect of will to holiness. The hnman will cannot be forced and ruined from without. But if we watch the influence of the will upon itself; the influence of its own wrong decisions, and its own yielding to temptations; we shall find that the voluntary faculty may be ruined from withinmay surrender itself with such an absorbing vehemence and totality to appetite, passion, and selfishness, that it becomes unable to reverse itself and over- come its own inclination and self-determination. And yet, from beginning to end, there is no compulsion in this process. The transgressor follows himself alone. He has his own way, and does as he likes. Neither God, nor the world, nor Satan forces him either to be, or to 10, evil. Sin is the most spontaneous of self-motion. But self-motion has consequences as much as any other motion. And moral bondage is one of them. Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin, says Christ. John viii. 34. The culmination of this bondage is seen in the next life. The sinful propensity, being allowed to develop unresisted and unchecked, slowly but surely eats out all virtuous force as rust eats out a steel sr~ring, until in the awful end the will becomes all habit, all lust, and all sin. Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. James i. 15. In the final stage of this process, which commonly is not re0 ched until death, when the spirit re- tirns unto God who gave it, the guilty free agent reaches that dreadful condition where resistance to evil ceases altogether, and surrender to evil becomes demoniacal. The cravings and hank- erings of long-indulged and unresisted sin become organic, and drag the man; and he goeth after them as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks till a dart strike through his liver. Prov. vii. 22, 23. For though the will to resist sin may die out of a man, the conscience to condemn it never can. This remains eternally. And when the process is complete; when the responsible creature in the abuse of free agency has perfected his moral ruin; when his will to good is all gone; there remain these two in his immortal spirit sin and conscience, brimstone and fire. Rev. xxi. 8. Still another reason for the endlessness of sin is the fact that rebellious enmity toward law and its Source is not diminished, but increased, by the righteous punishment experienced by the impenitent transgressor. Penal suffering is beneficial only when it is humbly accepted, is acknowledged to be deserved, and is THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 167 penitently submitted to; when the transgressor says: Father, I have sinned, and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants. Luke xv. 18, 19; when, with the penitent thief, he says: We are in this condemnation justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds. Luke xxiii. 41. But when in this life retribution is denied and jeered at; and when in the next life it is complained of and resisted, and the arm of hate and defiance is raised against the tribunal, penalty hardens and exasperates. This is impenitence. Such is the temper of Satan; and such is the temper of all who finally become his associates. This explains why there is no repent- ance in hell, and no meek submission to the Supreme Judge. This is the reason why Dives, the impenitent sensualist, is informed that there is no possible passage from Hades to Para- dise, by reason of the great gulf fixed between the two; and this is the reason why he asks that Lazarus may be sent to warn his five brethren, lest they also come into this place of torment, where the request for a drop of water ~ a mitiga- tion of punishment is solemnly refused by the Eternal Arbi- ter. A state of existence in which there is not the slightest relaxing of penal suffering is no state of probation. 3. In the third place, endless punishment is rational, because sin is an infinite evil; infinite not because committed by an infi- nite being, but against one. We reason invariably upon this prin- ciple. To torture a dumb beast is a crime; to torture a man is a greater crime. The person who transbresses is the same in each instance; but the different worth and dignity of the objects upon whom his action terminates makes the difference in the gravity of the two offenses. Davids adultery was a finite evil in refer- ence to Uriah, but an infinite evil in reference to God. Against thee only have I sinned, was the feeling of the sinner in this case. Had the patriarch Joseph yielded, he would have sinned agaiiist Pharaoh. But the greatness of the sin as related to the fellow- creature is lost in its enormity as related to the Creator, and his only question is: How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God ~ Gen. xxxix. 9. The incarnation and vicarious satisfaction for sin by one of the persons of the Godhead demonstrates the infinity of the evil. It is incredible that the Eternal Trinity should have submitted to such a stupendous self-sacrifice, to remove a merely finite and tem- poral evil. The doctrine of Christs vicarious atonement, logically, 168 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIETf. stands or falls with that of endless punishment. Historically, it lias stood or fallen with it. The incarnation of Almighty God, in order to make the remission of sin possible, is one of the strongest arguments for the eternity and infinity of penal suffering. The objection that an offense committed in a finite time cannot be an infinite evil, and deserve an infinite suffering, implies that crime must be measured by the time that was consumed in its perpetration. But even in human punishment, no reference is had to the length of time occupied in the commission of the offense. Murder is committed in an instant, and theft sometimes requires hours. But the former is the greater crime, and receives the greater punishment. 4. That endless punishment is reasonable is proved by the preference of the wicked themselves. The unsubmissive, re- bellious, defiant, and impenitent spirit prefers hell to heaven. Milton correctly represents Satan as saying: All good to me becomes bane, and in heaven much worse would be my state; and, also, as declaring that it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. This agrees with the Scripture representation, that Judas went to his own place. Acts i. 25. The lost spirits are not forced into a sphere that is unsuited to them. There is no other abode in the universe which they would prefer to that to which they are assigned, because the only other abode is heaven. The meekness, lowliness, sweet submis- sion to God, and love of him, that characterize heaven, are more hateful to Lucifer and his angels than even the sufferings of hell. The wicked would be no happier in heaven than in hell. The burden and anguish of a guilty conscience, says South, is so in- supportable that some have done violence to their own lives, and so fled to hell as a sanctuary, and chose damnation as a re- lease. This is illustrated by facts in human life. The thoroughly vicious and ungodly man prefers the license and freedom to sin which he finds in the haunts of vice to the restraints and purity of Christian society. There is hunger, disease, and wretchedness in one circle; and there is plenty, health, and happiness in the other. But he prefers the former. He would rather be in the gambling-house and brothel than in the Christian home. The finally lost are not to be conceived of as having faint desires and aspirations for a holy and heavenly state, and as feebly but really inclined to sorrow for their sin, but are kept in hell con- trary to their yearning and petition. They are sometimes so de THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 169 scribed by the opponent of the doctrine, or at least so thought of. There is not a single throb of godly sorrow or a single pulsation of holy desire in the lost spirit. The temper toward God in the lost is angry and defiant. They hate both me and my Father, says the Son of God, without a cause. John xv. 24, 25. Satan and his followers love darkness rather than light, hell rather than heaven, because their deeds are evil. John iii. 19. Sin ultimately assumes a fiendish form and degree. It is pure wickedness ~ -ithout regret or sorrow, and with a delight in evil for evils sake. There are some men who reach this state of de- pravity even before they die. They are seen in the callous and cruel voluptuaries portrayed by Tacitus, and the heaven-defying atheists described by St. Simon. They are also depicted in Shakespeares Jago. The reader knows that lago is past saving, and deserves everlasting damnation. Impulsively, he cries out with Lodovico: Where is that viper ~ bring the villain forth. And then Othellos calmerbut deeper feeling becomes his own: I look down towards his feet but thats a fable: If that thou best a devil, I cannot kill thee. The punishment is remitted to the retribution of God. 5. That endless punishment is rational, is proved by the history of morals. In the history of human civilization and morality, it is found that that age which is most reckless of law, and most vicious in practice, is the age that has the loosest con- ception of penalty, and is the most inimical to the doctrine of endless retribution. A virtuous and religious generation adopts sound ethics, and reverently believes that the Judge of all the earth will do right, Gen. xviii. 25; that God will not call evil good, and good evil, nor put darkness for light and light for darkness, Isa. v. 20; and that it is a deadly error to assert with the sated and worn-out sensualist: All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous and the wicked. EccI. ix. 2. The French people, at the close of the last century, were a very demoralized and vicious generation, and there was a very general disbelief and denial of the doctrines of the Divine exist- ence, the immortality of the soul, the freedom of the will, and future retribution. And upon a smaller scale, the same fact is continually repeating itself. Any little circle of business men who are known to deny future rewards and punishments are shunned by those who desire safe investments. The recent un 170 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. common energy of opposition to endless punishment, which started about ten years ago in this country, synchronized with great defalcations and breaches of trust, uncommon corruption in mercantile and political life, and great distrust between man and man. Luxury deadens the moral sense, and luxurious popula- tions are not apt to have the fear of God before their eyes. Hence luxurious ages are immoral. One remark remains to be made respecting the extent and scope of hell. It is only a spot in the universe of God. Com- pared with heaven, hell is narrow and limited. The kingdom of Satan is insignificant in contrast with the kingdom of Christ. In the immense range of Gods dominion, good is the rule, and evil is the exception. Sin is a speck upon the infinite azure of eternity; a spot on the sun. Hell is only a corner of the uni- verse. The Gothic etymon denotes a covered-up hole. In Script- ure, hell is a pit, a lake; not an ocean. It is bottomless, but not boundless. The Gnostic and Dualistic theories, which make God and Satan or the Demiurge nearly equal in power and dominion, find no support in Revelation. The Bible teaches that there will always be some sin and some death in the uni- verse. Some angels and men will forever be the enemies of God. But their number, compared with that of unfallen angels and redeemed men, is small. They are not described in the glowing language and metaphors by which the immensity of the holy and blessed is delineated. The chariots of God are twenty thousand, and thousands of angels. Ps. lxviii. 17. The Lord came from Sinai, and shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of his saints. Dent. xxxii. 2. The Lord hath pre- pared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom ruleth over all. Ps. ciii. 21. Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. Matt. vi. 13. The Lord Christ must reign till he hath put all enemies under his ~ 1 Cor. xv. 25. St. John heard a voice from heaven as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder. Rev. xiv. 1. The New Jerusalem lieth four square, the length is as large as the breadth; the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day; the kings of the earth do bring their honor into it. Rev. xxi. 16, 24, 25. The number of the lost spirits is never thus emphasized and enlarged upon. The brief, stern statement is, that the fearful and unbelieving shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. Rev. xxi. 8. No metaphors and amplifications are added to make THE CERTAINTY OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 171 the impression of an immense multitude which no man can number. We have thus briefly presented the rational defense of the most severe and unwelcome of all the tenets of the Christian re- ligion. It must have a foothold in the hnman reason, or it could not have maintained itself against all the recoil and oppo- sition which it elicits from the human heart. Fonnded in ethics, in law, and in judicial reason, as well as unquestionably taught by the Author of Christianity, it is no wonder that the doctrine of eternal retribntion, in spite of selfish prejudices and appeals to human sentiment, has always been a belief of Christendom. Front theology and philosophy it has passed into hnman litera- ture, and is wrought into its finest structures. It makes the sol- emn substance of the Iliad and the Greek Drama. It pours a som- ber light into the brightness and grace of the LEneid. It is the theme of the Inferno, and is presupposed by both of the other parts of the Divine Comedy. The epic of Milton derives from it its awful grandeur. And the greatest of the Shakespearean tragedies sound and stir the depths of the human soul by their delineation of guilt intrinsic and eternal. In this discussion, we have purposely brought into view only the righteousness of Almighty God, as related to the voluntary and responsible action of man. We have set holy justice and dis- obedient free-will face to face, and drawn the conclusions. This is all that the defender of the doctrine of retribution is strictly concerned with. If he can demonstrate that the principles of eternal rectitude are not in the least degree infringed upon, but are fully maintained, when sin is endlessly punished, he has done all that his problem requires. Whatever is just is beyond all rational attack. But with the Christian Gospel in his hands, the defender of the Divine justice finds it difficult to be entirely reticent and say not a word concerning the Divine mercy. Over against Gods infinite antagonism and righteous severity toward moral evil there stands Gods infinite pity and desire to forgive. This is realized, not by the high-handed and unprincipled method of pardoning without legal satisfaction of any kind, but by the strange and stupendous method of putting the Eternal Judge in the place of the human criminal; of substituting Gods satisfac- tion for that due from man. In this vicarious atonement for sin, the Triune God relinquishes no claims of law, and waives no 172 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W rights of justice. The sinners Divine Substitute, in his hour of voluntary agony and death, drinks the cup of punitive and inex- orable justice to the dregs. Any man who, in penitent faith, avails himself of this vicarious method of setting himself right with the Eternal Nemesis, will find that it succeeds; but he who rejects it must through endless cycles grapple with the dread problem of human guilt in his own person, and alone. WJLLJ~ G. T. SHEDD. THEORIES REGARDING THE SUNS CORONA. PROBABLY most of our readers know that during a total solar eclipse, when the moon for a few moments interposes her- self and replaces the dazzling disk of the snn by an inky blot upon the heavens, then, snrronnding it appears the corona, the loveliest and most impressive of all celestial objects; a won- derfnl glory of silvery light and streaming radiance, revealed to onr admiration for an instant, and then immediately withdrawn; accessible to observation and stndy only for a few minutes in a century. It is no mere structureless luminosity of fog or haze, but is built np of various elements. There are in it brilliant hair-like filaments closely and curiously intertwined; long, bright radiating streamers like comets tails, and forms like the petals of some luminons flower; all floating in a filmy nebu- losity, which here and there is scored by straight, dark rifts cutting clear down throngh everything to the very edge of the moon, like shadows cast by a gas-light in a dusty air, or like the dark rays one often sees in a summer afternoon reaching outward from the snn before a shower. For the most part, the coronal forms are rather indefinite and nncertainly ontlined, confnsed in dazzling brightness at the base, and fading out insensibly, at a distance that depends much on the clearness of the air and the keenness of the observers eye. At least, this is true of most of the longer streamers, for often there is a rather surprising degree of sharpness in some of the lower outlines, so that the corona is sometimes described as nearly sqnare, or a five or six rayed star, or like a head with parted hair, according to occasionnever twice alike exactly. It is obvious that if the corona is really at the sun, it must be of enormous dimensions, extending many hundreds of thousands of miles, and even miliions, from the central globe; an object of cosmical importance, to be ranked with nebuhe and 173

THEORIES REGARDING THE SUNS CORONA. PROBABLY most of our readers know that during a total solar eclipse, when the moon for a few moments interposes her- self and replaces the dazzling disk of the snn by an inky blot upon the heavens, then, snrronnding it appears the corona, the loveliest and most impressive of all celestial objects; a won- derfnl glory of silvery light and streaming radiance, revealed to onr admiration for an instant, and then immediately withdrawn; accessible to observation and stndy only for a few minutes in a century. It is no mere structureless luminosity of fog or haze, but is built np of various elements. There are in it brilliant hair-like filaments closely and curiously intertwined; long, bright radiating streamers like comets tails, and forms like the petals of some luminons flower; all floating in a filmy nebu- losity, which here and there is scored by straight, dark rifts cutting clear down throngh everything to the very edge of the moon, like shadows cast by a gas-light in a dusty air, or like the dark rays one often sees in a summer afternoon reaching outward from the snn before a shower. For the most part, the coronal forms are rather indefinite and nncertainly ontlined, confnsed in dazzling brightness at the base, and fading out insensibly, at a distance that depends much on the clearness of the air and the keenness of the observers eye. At least, this is true of most of the longer streamers, for often there is a rather surprising degree of sharpness in some of the lower outlines, so that the corona is sometimes described as nearly sqnare, or a five or six rayed star, or like a head with parted hair, according to occasionnever twice alike exactly. It is obvious that if the corona is really at the sun, it must be of enormous dimensions, extending many hundreds of thousands of miles, and even miliions, from the central globe; an object of cosmical importance, to be ranked with nebuhe and 173 174 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. comets. If, on tlie other hand, it can be shown to be due to the lunar atmosphere, and still more if it should turn out to belong to the earths atmosphere, or, in other words, to be a pnrely optical phenomenon, then, however beautiful and impressive it may be, it drops to a lower rank, and takes its place with rain- bows and halos, and sunset glows. At the outset, the writer may as well affirm his complete conviction that the corona is mainly solar, to be thought of and respected as such, but that purely atmospheric and optical effects contribute more or less to the phenomenon as we see it. At the same time, there are high authorities in solar physics who would dissent from the mainly solar,~~ and would ascribe a much greater relative importance to the atmospherie and optical elements. No one at present seems to credit the moon with much influ- ence in the matter, except as a mere screen or shadow-casting body; there is no lunar atmosphere of such extent and character as to account for the corona. At least, this is the almost univer- sal belief of astronomers; and yet it is perhaps not quite im- possible that there may really be some exceedingly rare gaseous envelope around our satellite, not dense enough to be perceived at any other time, though still sufficient to become visible under the circumstances of an eclipse. But even if this should turn out to be the case, it may be considered certain that the lunar element of the corona is relatively unimportant. The explanation that immediately suggests itself to one looking at the matter superficially is undoubtedly that which would refer the corona to the action of the earths atmosphere. We are so used to seeing illumination around the edge of any object that has a brilliant light behind it, that it is most natural to think of the corona as caused in the same way. Whenever a beam of sunlight is transmitted through air, a portion of the light is diffused into the surrounding space, so that to an eye situated a little one side the air in the path of the beam is intensely luminous. There are curious ques- tions whether this diffusion is due to the air itself, or to minute particles of foreign matter in the air, since the clearer the air the less the illumination; but the diffusion always takes place to a greater or less extent. But when we come to consider the circumstances of an eclipse, it is at once evident that the corona cannot be accounted for in this manner. At the middle of a total eclipse the observer is in the center of a THEORIES REGARDING THE SUNS CORONA. 175 great shadow, from fifty to one hnndred and fifty miles in diam- eter, so that the air in the region of the sky near the snn is as mnch in the dark as he is himself; the snn does not shine npon it at all, and it cannot therefore by any possibility send him any snnlight. Bnt if there is any real solar or lunar corona, then of conrse the action of the earths atmosphere would diffuse the light of this corona just as it would tine sunlight; and so, though it cannot cause the phenomenon, the air mnst modify it, rendering the glory more extensive, softening its sharper ont- lines, and enveloping them in a luminous haze. And since the air between the eye of the observer and the dark disk of the moon is exposed to the coronal light, this atmospheric illnmina- tion must extend inward from the edges of the lunar disk, as well as ontward. It does so, making the moon to stand ont like a globe, instead of looking like a fiat disk; and this illumination of the moons disk is a fair measnre of the atmospheric element in the corona, which is thns shown to be comparatively trifling, thongh real. In some way the objections t~ the atmospheric origin of the corona escaped the notice of even eminent astronomers for a while, and the theory was warmly supported nntil, and even after, spectroscopic observations settled the matter in 1869 and 1870 by showing that the coronal light is not simple reflected sunlight. if it were, its spectrum would contain all the pecu- liar dark markings (t e Frannhofer lines) that characterize sunlight; while, i. fact, the only conspicuons featnre of the spectrnm is a brilliant green line, dne to some nukuown gas. Bright lines due to hydrogen are also present, and there are besides certain other bright lines in the violet and ultra-violet portions of the spectrum, which, though they affect the eye only feebly or not at all, are yet more efficient upon the photographic plate than even the green line. A few of the dark Fraunhofer lines have also been seen occasionally npon a faint backgronn d, show- ing that although reflected or diffused sunlight is not the mail constituent of the coronal luminosity, it is still present to some extent. it is to be noticed, moreover, that the bright streamers and other similar markings of the corona seem to give princi- pally a smooth, continuons, nulined spectrum, as if they con- sisted of incandescent particles, solid or liquid, while the bright green line and the hydro en lines seem to be due rather to the nebnlous light that bathes and permeates the whole. This green 176 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. line, by the way, is often referred to as the corona-line, and sometimes as 1474, because upon Kirchhoff~s map of the solar spectrum, which was in ordinary use in 1869, it occnrs at that number on the scale that is printed alongside the spectrum as a means of reference. The presence of these bright lines in the spectrum of the coronal light demonstrates two things: that the corona is not luminous by the mere reflection and dispersion of ordinary sun- light by mist, or cloud, or anything of that nature; and further, that the light does come, in considerable measure, at least, from luminous gases at the sun. (We assume that every reader knows that bright-line spectra come only from glowing gas.) This demonstration that the corona is really of solar origin, and not a phenomenon of the lunar or terrestrial atmosphere, is borne out and confirmed by photographic evidence. In 1871 three fine series of photographs of the corona were obtained by observers many hundred miles apart. One station was at Bekul, on the western coast of India, another in northern Ceylon, and still a third on the island of Java. It took the moons shadow nearly half an hour to traverse the line, and of course the atmospheric circumstances were more or less different at each station. But all the photographs agree with curious precision in all the main features, and even in most of the finer details of the corona. In fact, there are no evident discrepancies whatever, such as must have occurred if there was anything local in the appearance. Since 1870 other similar series of eclipse photographs have been obtained (notably in 1878), and they all tell the same story of the solar nature of the corona. The hypothesis that seems to meet most of the conditions thus far indicated, and until very recently has commanded the almost unanimous assent of astronomers (and probably does so still), is substantially as follows: It is supposed that the sun is surrounded by an envelope of mingled gases, in which hydrogen and the unknown substance to which the green line is due are specially predominant. In many respects this gaseous envelope is analogous to the atmosphere of the earth,and so it is often spoken of as a solar atmosphere, but always with the implied reservation that the extreme differ- ence between the solar and terrestrial conditions must necessarily impair the analogy in numerons and important particulars. In this coronal atmosphere, as Jaussen has called it, there are THEORIES REGARDING THE SUNS CORONA. 177 filaments and streamers and other forms that are probably not gaseous, but composed of mist and dust; some of them may be of meteoric origin, and some composed of matter ejected from the sun, while others perhaps are due to the condensation of vapors in the coronal atmosphere, as clouds are formed in the air. As to the straight, dark rifts, they are more difficult to explain than anything else, but perhaps may be compared to the dark channel in the center of a ~ tail behind the nucleus. The relation of the streamers and filaments to the poles of the sun suggests the operation of forces analogous to those that produce the aurora borealis in our own upper air. At one time, indeed, when the bright line of the corona spectrum was first discovered, the line was supposed to be identical with one of the lines in the spectrum of the aurora; and an attempt (for which the writer was largely responsible) was made to identify the two phenom- ena, both in respect to the materials concerned and the nature of the forces that produce the characteristic forms. But it did not require any long period of observation to show that the imagined identity of spectra was a mistake; the gaseous elements of the aurora and of the corona are certainly not the same; and while no evidence has been brought to show that magnetic forces on the sun may not be influential in forming and arrang- ing the coronal streamers, just as the earths magnetism un- questionably does give shape and arrangement to our auroral beams, yet it must be admitted that no progress has been made in establishing the analogy. If this theory that the corona is really a solar envelope is true, then evidently it is an affair of stupendous dimensions. The average width of the luminous ring is at least 15 on all ordinary occasions, and this implies an average elevation of more than 400,000 miles above the solar photosphere. But many of the streamers extend four or five times as far; and during the eclipse of 1878 some of them were traced, in the clear air of Colorado, to a distance of fully 6~ or moe than 9,000,000 miles. If the sun is always really surrounded by such a magnificent nebula, may we not hope to reach the vision of it at some other time than during the few brief moments of eclipse, and in some way to map out its outlines and watch its changes from day to day ~ The spectroscopic method, which succeeds with the brilliant, cloud-like flames of hydrogen that lie on and close above the solar surface, breaks down with the VOL. CxL.No. 339. 12 178 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. corona. The spectroscope does indeed, any day, without much trouble, show the bright 1474 line at the edge of the solar disk; but only at the edge, never at any height. Though we can study at our leisure, and with delightful satisfaction, the forms and behavior of the hydrogen prominences, not a glimpse can be obtained of the more delicate, but not less beautiful, texture that lies at the base of the corona, nor of the grander features of the fainter outlying nebulosity. But it will be remembered that spectroscopic observations at the time of an eclipse have shown that the coronal halo is rich in rays that belong to the ultra-violet. This fact suggested to Dr. Huggins the idea that it might be possible to render visible by photography the coronal forms that do not reach the eye. By the use of a reflecting telescope, with arrangements and appliances that we cannot here describe, he has attained what looks like a success, although it is not so evident and decided as to warrant very positive assertion. Screening off the image of the sun itself from the photographic plate, and taking all possible precautions to prevent the irregular reflection and scattering of light, he obtains, around the circle where the suns image would be if not screened off, a ghostly phantasm of faint outlines that certainly most closely resemble and simulate what is conspicuous at an eclipse. The shadings are so faint and so indefinite that one naturally fears the effect of his imagination in their interpretation; but nearly all who have seen them agree as to their reality and nature. The plates, moreover, seem to prove that some of the coronal features are quite persistent, lasting for months, and coming round regularly into the same aspect at each solar rotation. The past year has been so unfavorable for this sort of work, on account of the strange haze that has filled the air, that little, if any, new advance has been made in the investigation. An observer, with suitable apparatus, was sent to the Riffelberg, in Switzerland, last summer, in hopes that the mountain air would prove more transparent and less reflecting than that of the lower regions, thus giving a darker background for the shadowy forms. But, as has been intimated, the newest plates, so far as yet heard from, excel those made by Dr. iluggins two years ago only very slightly, if at all. It is still quite possible to accept them as actual,though feeble, portraits of a real solar nebula, or to reject them as showing to an unprejudiced eye nothing more THEORIES REGARDING THE SUNS CORONA. 179 than such slight inequalities of light and shade as always ap- pear upon a photographic plate when subjected to a prolonged and forced development. Until something more conclusive is obtained, it is likely that opinions will continue to differ in regard to them. But there are serious difficulties in the way of accepting the idea of a solar atmosphere and a solar nebula as the true ex- planation of the corona, and there are phenomena that seem to point in a different direction. The principal objection to the nebula-theory of the corona, if we may call it so, lies in the undeniable difficulty of supposing so deep an atmosphere to surround the sun, consistently with the known intensity of solar gravity, and the ascertained fact that in several cases comets have rushed through the coronal regions with a velocity of from one hundred to three hundred miles a second, and yet have experienced no sensible retardation of their motion; their orbits have shown no change. Granting that the solar atmosphere is governed by the same laws as the terrestrial, it is easy to show that if at the elevation of one hundred thousand miles its density were one-millionth that of the air at the earths surface, then at the suns surface it must be many miliion times denser than lead. The objection, however, is less formidable than at first it looks; because, to begin with, it is not certain, or even likely, that at solar tem- peratures the same laws of gaseous compression hold as at ter- restrial temperature; and besides, the phenomena of comets tails render it almost indisputable that the sun somehow exerts upon certain forms of matter a powerful repulsive force, which opposes and may neutralize or even overpower gravitation. We have therefore no right to assume that the downward increase of density in the solar atmosphere follows any such rule as holds good upon the earth. And as regards the resistance to comets motions, it is a gratuitous assumption that the density of the coronal atmosphere is anything like one-millionth that of the air at the earths surface. The phenomena of Crookess tubes show that a gas of this low density, even in quantities of only a few cubic inches, can produce light of extreme intensity. It is obvious, therefore, that all the luminous phenomena of the corona, considering the enormous depth of every line of sight drawn through it, could be accounted for by an atmosphere of a density millions of times below that in any vacuum tube ever 180 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. constructed. One molecule to each cubic inch would prob-. ably answer every purpose, so far as the optical phenomena are concerned, while according to the estimates of Professor Johnston Stoney, with which other physicists are in sub- stantial agreement, the number of molecules in each cubic inch of atmospheric air at the sea-level is about twenty thousand millions of millions of millions (20,000,OO0000,O00000,000000). It may be added, that whatever may be the theoretical difficulties in the way of supposing the solar atmosphere to extend to an elevation of one hundred thousand miles, yet the phenomena of solar prominences, and the forms and motions of ~he hydrogen at their summits, show the actual presence of a surrounding medium (invisible in the spectroscope, of course) comparable in density with the visible hydrogen itself. Other objections, and somewhat serious ones, are drawn from the peculiar polariza- tion of the light in different parts of the corona, which is thought by many to be inconsistent with the nebula-theory. Still another objection, the last we shall mention, lies in the fact that the appearance of the corona is that of something flat. It is very difficult to imagine any arrangement of streamers upon a globe which would look like what we actually see, and the dark straight rifts are especially awkward to explain. These difficulties, and a few others, which we have not space to discuss here, have led Professor Hastings of New Haven to propose a new theory of the corona, which reduces it to a mere diffraction phenomenon, an optical effect produced by the pass- age of light from the edges of the solar disk near to the edge of the moon. It is not reflection nor refraction; it implies no action of the terrestrial or lunar atmosphere; but it belongs to the same class of optical effects as the so-called Grimaldi fringes at the edge of a shadow, the colors of a soap-bubble, and the iridescence of mother-of-pearl, all of which are due to what is known as the interference of light, i. e., to the coinbina- tion of overlying and opposing waves under certain peculiar con- ditions. The idea that the corona might be due to diffraction is not new, but previous mathematical investigations of the matter had shown that, assuming the usual equations of light, the ex- planation breaks down; no considerable quantity of light could be bent into the moons shadow. By assuming, however, what is very probably true (for reasons that we cannot here discuss), that at different moments the phases of the light-waves change,. THEORIES REGARDING THE SUNS CORONA. 181 in such a way that they no longer form a continuous periodic series, Professor Hastings makes the equations present a different aspect, and it appears quite probable that considerable luminous disturbance might be propagated inside the moons sliadow, so as to give to an observer the impression of a bright fringe around the moon. Any irregularities in the edge of the moon, or in the brightness of different parts of the edge of the sun, would then give rise to straight radial streaks, bright or dark as the case might be, though they could hardly account for the curved forms that are still more common. If this theory is true, the corona ought to be much wider on the side where the edge of the sun is least deeply covered. Professor Hastings proposed this as a crucial test of his theory, and during the eclipse of May, 1883, in the South Pacific, he verified his idea by observations with an ingenious apparatus devised and constructed by him- self expressly for the purpose. When the eclipse first became total, the 1474 line was visible on the eastern side of the sun (just covered) to a distance of 10 or 12, while on the western edge the extent was barely 3 or 4. Just before the close of totality, the conditions were reversed. The only different ex- planation for this change yet proposed attributes it simply to diffusion of light by our air. The lower part of the corona is so much brighter than the upper, that it scatters light much more widely. Professor Hastings gives strong, if not absolutely con- clusive, reasons for rejecting this explanation; and if we renounce it, it will be difficult to avoid admitting the substantial correctness of his theory. One who wishes to understand his ideas fully will find it best to consult the original report, which is just published in the second volume of the Transactions of the National Academy of Sciences. To the writer it does not seem that the new theory excludes the old. It may be true that diffraction diverts light coming from points very near the limb of the sun out of its straight course, and causes it to enter the lunar shadow; but this does not negative the idea of a solar atmosphere of considerable extent. The objections urged against the existence of such a nebulous solar envelope, though certainly involving serious difficulties and demanding consideration, do not appear conclusive. Of course, if the corona photogruphs of Dr. Huggins are accepted, and if they should hereafter be confirmed by new ones of greater clearness that would close the discussion. 182 THE NORTH AMERICAN RE VIE W The December number of The Observatory, which has come to hand since the above was put in type, contains an important letter from Mr. C. Ray Woods, the observer who was sent to the Riffelberg last summer by the Royal Society. His earlier results, as already mentioned, were not much in advance of those previously obtained in England; but later, after a little experience, he seems to have overcome all the most serious difficulties, to have gained the full advantage of his superior atmospheric conditions, and so to have reached unqualified success. We have not space to quote his detailed account of apparatus and methods, and his explanation of the photographic and other principles involved, but only to give his conclusions. He says: As would be expected, the results are better than had been obtained in England, in spite of the red haze which has always been present round the sun, and which visitors to Switzerland have commented on in several of the scientific journals recently. Results on the same day are almost, if not quite, alike, both with the disk and without. The corona varies more or less from day to day. The clearer the day, the better the results. The series extends over a period of two months, one months results being free from effects that require elimination. C. A. YOUNG. SHALL CLERGYMEN BE POLITICIANS ~ THE clergyman in politics is by no means a novel or modern figure. He has always been familiar in Rome; and in France, Germany, England, every country that has had a state church, he has often played a prominent part. But in our own country, where the church and the state are constitutionally separated, his position is necessarily somewhat different. His appearance is doubly significant. He represents theories and tendencies that, although familiar to us in history, are as yet foreign to us in experience. He has a prophetic importance. And there- fore it may not be improper to endeavor to set forth briefly, in an abstract and impersonal way, some of the principles and truths that apply to him in this present age, and under this non- sectarian government. In the first place, all clergymen are men, except those few that are women, and they are hardly numerous enough to count. As men, they have the same duties, rights, and privileges as all other citizens. These may be briefly enumerated, with regard to political questions, under three heads. First, they have the right of free thought and free speech, sacred, inalienable, ines- timable; second, they have the duties of obedience to law, loyalty to government, and the exercise of their active powers for the highest welfare of their country; third, they have the privilege (which is also a duty) of voting on all questions of public interest, in accordance with the dictates of their reason and conscience, with none to molest or make them afraid. Of these rights and obligations no professional restrictions can rob them; and the church that attempts to obstruct or hinder its ministers in their exercise has no farther claim upon the protection of a republican government. In the second place, all clergymen are bound by the respon- sibilities of their office, and by the definite instructions of the 183

SHALL CLERGYMEN BE POLITICIANS ~ THE clergyman in politics is by no means a novel or modern figure. He has always been familiar in Rome; and in France, Germany, England, every country that has had a state church, he has often played a prominent part. But in our own country, where the church and the state are constitutionally separated, his position is necessarily somewhat different. His appearance is doubly significant. He represents theories and tendencies that, although familiar to us in history, are as yet foreign to us in experience. He has a prophetic importance. And there- fore it may not be improper to endeavor to set forth briefly, in an abstract and impersonal way, some of the principles and truths that apply to him in this present age, and under this non- sectarian government. In the first place, all clergymen are men, except those few that are women, and they are hardly numerous enough to count. As men, they have the same duties, rights, and privileges as all other citizens. These may be briefly enumerated, with regard to political questions, under three heads. First, they have the right of free thought and free speech, sacred, inalienable, ines- timable; second, they have the duties of obedience to law, loyalty to government, and the exercise of their active powers for the highest welfare of their country; third, they have the privilege (which is also a duty) of voting on all questions of public interest, in accordance with the dictates of their reason and conscience, with none to molest or make them afraid. Of these rights and obligations no professional restrictions can rob them; and the church that attempts to obstruct or hinder its ministers in their exercise has no farther claim upon the protection of a republican government. In the second place, all clergymen are bound by the respon- sibilities of their office, and by the definite instructions of the 183 184 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Bible, publicly to support and exalt the powers that be, in the exercise of lawful authority. They must preach the Christian duties of obedience, order, and loyalty. They must pray with their congregations for the chief magistrate and all others that bear the staff of rule. They must endeavor to enforce, with the holy sanctions of religion, the precepts of that inspired law of life which commands men in the same sentence to fear God and honor the king. These are clear and positive principles. They can hardly be denied by any one who takes a candid view of the obligations of citizenship and has an intelligent faith in the doctrines of holy Scripture. If they were honestly followed and applied, they would make all the clergy faithful, earnest, and eminently useful citizens. I think they are sufficient, and at the same time I think they are exhaustive. They cover and sum up, within their sphere, the whole duty of the clergyman. Beyond this he has no busi- ness, no calling, no place. As a man, he may do what he pleases, within the limits of the law. But as a clergyman, an office- bearer and representative of a church, claiming, or at least exer- cising, an influence by virtue of his sacred profession, carrying with him the more or less venerable titles of Reverend and Doctor of Divinity, as a member of a class that derives whatever power and authority it may have from its separation from the world and its peculiar connection with religion, he ought not to enter publicly and officially into party politics; he ought not to mingle in the active strife and petty conflict of an ordinary political campaign; he ought not to weaken the force of his loyalty to the general Government by violent advocacy of a par- ticular party; he ought not to misuse the official authority that has been given to him by the church for a higher purpose, in attempting to control the decision of purely economic and personal questions upon which the church, as the Kingdom of Christ, has, and can have, no opinion. Remembering, then, that we do not now speak of the private action of individuals, nor of the conduct of those men (often of the largest talents and widest usefulness) that are virtually separated from the distinctive office of a clergyman (which is the oversight and instruction of the church), we may sum up what remains to be said under three points. The clergyman in politics is superfluous. He has no special fitness or training for this sphere of activity. In fact, we may SHALL CLERGYMEN BE POLITICIANS? 185 question whether he is not actually unfitted for it. And cer- tainly his frequent and absurd mistakes, when he attempts it, have often given occasion to the pious to mourn, to the ungodly to scoff, and to the politicians to swear. Why should the clergy- man attempt to tell you how to vote? He is not a master of political economy. He has no angelic intuition in regard to questions of fact. The only ground on which he can assume a peculiar right to instruct or control any one in these matters is the theory that a spiritual father must also be a temporal direc- tor; and this is a theory against which, I think, the majority of the American people have an unconquerable prejudice. The clergyman in politics is disloyaL The government under which he lives affords a generous an~ impartial protection to all forms of religious faith and worship; it does not dis- criminate between them. The official or judge who should be influenced in his decisions by denominational considerations, sav- ing all his favor for the Protestants as against the Roman Catho- lics, or perverting justice to serve the Baptists rather than the Methodists, would be worthy of universal execration, and prob- ably he would receive it. As men, of course, the officers of gov- ernment may belong to any religious body they may prefer; but as officers they are bound to be impartial. The same prin- ciples apply to clergymen as officers of the church. Reciproc- ity is essential in toleration. A non-sectarian state implies a non-partisan church. If you destroy one you destroy the other. If you bind any particular church to the support of any political party, rather than to the larger loyalty that knows no parties, the result is inevitable, though it may be slow. You are binding that party to the support of that particular church ; you are undermining the foundations of civil and religious liberty; you are unconsciously preparing the way for the worst kind of union between church and state, a union in which the word church~~ shall be synonymous with a sect, and the word state synony- mous with a section. If such a result should ever come to pass, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibiity,it is morally certain that the favored church in a democracy will be that which can cast the largest vote. None of the younger denominations can possibly compete with it in a race of this kind. It would be a bitter but not an unjust humiliation, if the members of those distinctively Protestant communions which have always professed to cherish the principles of religious lib 186 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. erty, equality, and toleration, grasping in an evil hour the sword of political interference, should in the end perish by that same sword. Let the clergyman that flings himself and his church into a strife manifestly partisan and secular, reflect whether he is not thereby weakening and impairing that sacred alle- giance which he owes first of all to the country at large, and to the Government in its highest conception, not as an instru- ment of sectional triumph, but as an embodiment of that supreme power and authority which God has delegated to human rulers. The clergyman in politics is injurious. When he lowers the pulpit to the level of the stump, when he turns the worship of God into what is virtually a political caucus, when he attempts to lead the church as a religious organization into the train of any candidate for office, he is doing a great and irreparable harm to the cause of religion. I endeavor to write guardedly ;~ I would not accuse any man of consciously doing these thiugs~ But it cannot be denied that there are tendencies in this direc- tion; and in time these tendencies, if not checked, will result in a more or less complete demoralization of the clergy and secu- larization of the church. That will be a fatal day. We shall then see ministers of the gospel indulging in the vituperation that a recent writer in this REVIEW has so sharply denounced as the most shameful feature of our modern politics. Party discipline will teach them to condone immoralities on their own side, and to repeat slanders against the other side. A lack of worldly experience, combined with a professional habit of rhetorical statement, will produce an odium politicum, compared with which the traditions of the extinct odium tlzeologicum will seem like the stories of a Golden Age. We shall see the stewards of the bread of life waiting for the crumbs that fall from Ca~sars table, and hear the notes of the gospel trumpet blending with the blare of political brass bands. We shall have churches constructed on party lines, where none shall enter unless they vote the right ticket, where the acts of the candidates will be expounded more frequently than the Acts of the Apostles, where the great revivals will occur in every fourth year, and the most urgent question will always be (with an eye to the main chance), What shall the harvest be? May that evil day be far distant! May an enlightened Christian sentiment, and that sense of reverence for the church. SHALL CLERGYMEN BE POLITICIANS? 187 in the purity of her ideal life which still exists, not only among the clergy, but also (and perhaps even more generally) among the wise and thoughtful laity, protest against these tendencies, and call a halt upon every man who would take even a single step in this direction. The kingdom of Christ must not be brought down to the level of the kingdoms of this world. Its mighty influence must not be imperiled for the attainment of secular ends. Its purity must not be sullied, its divine inde- pendence must not be sacrificed, by political alliances. Within its walls there must be neither Republican nor Democrat, Bar- barian nor Scythian, bond nor free, but all must be one in Christ Jesus. And all its energies must be devoted to the great work of redeeming and purifying human lives. I believe that the interests or religion are supreme above all other interests. I care more for the honor and power of the holy church of Christ than for any other cause on earth. And I had rather see all political parties buried together in a common grave than suffer one blot to fall upon the purity of the church, or see her sway over the hearts of men impaired or weakened by a single degree. May my right hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth when I am drawn by allurements from without, or driven by dictation from within, to swerve by a hairs-breadth from the preaching of religion, or to range the royal, blood-stained banner of Christ among the flags and ensigns of a political procession. HENRY J. V~ DYKE, JR. TIrEIu~ are two orders of Christian ministers the hierarch- ical and the fraternal. The fraternal minister has influence simply by what he is in original endowment and by education. Like men in all other professions, his influence is the legitimate influence of his personal character and his professional skill. All this the hierarchical clergy have; but over and above all natural talent, they receive, by virtue of ordination, an authority directly from God, to announce truth, and to convey through ordinances certain invaluable graces and spiritual gifts that come to men only through such channels. Such divine special endo~wments lift them above their fellow-men. They constitute

SHALL CLERGYMEN BE POLITICIANS? 187 in the purity of her ideal life which still exists, not only among the clergy, but also (and perhaps even more generally) among the wise and thoughtful laity, protest against these tendencies, and call a halt upon every man who would take even a single step in this direction. The kingdom of Christ must not be brought down to the level of the kingdoms of this world. Its mighty influence must not be imperiled for the attainment of secular ends. Its purity must not be sullied, its divine inde- pendence must not be sacrificed, by political alliances. Within its walls there must be neither Republican nor Democrat, Bar- barian nor Scythian, bond nor free, but all must be one in Christ Jesus. And all its energies must be devoted to the great work of redeeming and purifying human lives. I believe that the interests or religion are supreme above all other interests. I care more for the honor and power of the holy church of Christ than for any other cause on earth. And I had rather see all political parties buried together in a common grave than suffer one blot to fall upon the purity of the church, or see her sway over the hearts of men impaired or weakened by a single degree. May my right hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth when I am drawn by allurements from without, or driven by dictation from within, to swerve by a hairs-breadth from the preaching of religion, or to range the royal, blood-stained banner of Christ among the flags and ensigns of a political procession. HENRY J. V~ DYKE, JR. TIrEIu~ are two orders of Christian ministers the hierarch- ical and the fraternal. The fraternal minister has influence simply by what he is in original endowment and by education. Like men in all other professions, his influence is the legitimate influence of his personal character and his professional skill. All this the hierarchical clergy have; but over and above all natural talent, they receive, by virtue of ordination, an authority directly from God, to announce truth, and to convey through ordinances certain invaluable graces and spiritual gifts that come to men only through such channels. Such divine special endo~wments lift them above their fellow-men. They constitute 188 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. a spiritual nobility. In all matters of religion they are to men as the voice of God. Now, though it is quite possible to imagine that in common affairs, not within the sphere of revealed religion, they may have a place as citizens, and may take part and lot in the ordi- nary duties and privileges of citizens in a free country, yet it is difficult to prevent the imagination of men from conceiving that a priest is still a priest while acting as a citizen, and that he is unfair, in that he brings the authority of the religions sphere to bear upon politics and civil administration. And this im- pression is intensified from the fact that the church and the state in other lands have been, and still are, united. It has been a prudent practice in America that priests should not carry their priestly influence into politics. This has been the prevailing practice among Catholic priests and among Episcopal clergymen. Setting all these aside, and not entering into the question whether in our day and under onr institutions the priest may not profitably strip himself of his priestly character, and like the unconsecrated citizen take a full share of political action, we wish to point out how utterly without any professional excuse are all Protestant clergymen who renounce the sacra- mental theory, and who regard themselves in no sense as a class set apart from common men, other than is the lawyer, the physician, the artist, the engineer, or the mechanic. In theory, Protestant clergymen are moral teachers, whose influence depends upon their original endowment, their educa- tion, their moral influence, and their wisdom. They are simply men among men. They are above men by no ordination. They receive no prerogatives of God. Their whole force lies in the wisdom and goodness of their lives. It was Paul and Barnabas that cried out at Lystra, We also are men, of like passions with you. It was Paul that declared of his moral power, We have this treasure in earthen vessels. While the clergyman is a con- soler, a counselor, a nurse to the young, a guide to morality, he is, before all things, and professionally, a teacher, a moral teacher; and it is in this view that his rights and duties must be discussed. There are several things that must be taken for granted in discussing the right and duty of the American clergyman to take part in politics. It is to be assumed that he has common sense; that each man is at liberty to determine the best method SHALL CLERGYMEN BE POLITICIANS? 189 of employing his influence, whether by private conversation, or by preaching from the pulpit, or by his pen, or by public speech from the platform. It is taken for granted that a clergyman knows enough to discriminate between the aims of political action and the mere instruments by which those aims are sought to be accomplished, and that he has the ordinary prudence that guides men in selection of time and place and other circum- stance. With these preliminaries I would argue: First. That all procedure which puts clergymen into a class and pretends to elevate them above their fellow-men, and by reason of their holy function frees them from contact with the ordinary duties of humanity, is most pernicious, both in its philosophy and its morality, and nowhere so emphatically as in America and under our Government. No man is to be known before the law, in our land, as a member of any class, and though in fact there are exceptions, they are wrong, and should be abrogated. The clergyman, in the eye of the law, is simply a citizen, as is the physician, the lawyer, the teacher, the engineer. Public convenience may demand that doctors and teachers should not be subject to military service; but it is not for any reason in them, but because their functions involve the safety of large portions of the community. The law wisely regards simple citi- zenship, and not the occupation of the citizen. Of all ungracious pleas for exemption, that is the most pernicious that pleads the sanctity of the clerical office, as if there was a holiness in it that relieved the clergyman from the common duties of citizenship. Second. With all the more force will these views apply to the clergyman in a land where the body of citizens have laid upon them the solemn responsibility of determining the laws, of securing their execution, of electing the magistrates and execu- tive officers, and of forming the whole policy of the state. No man has a right to be an exempt. No man has a right to put contempt upon the political duties of the citizen, least of all the clergyman! Certainly there are many disagreeable things demanded of a patriotic citizen. He must act upon an equality with his fellow-men, however plain or even low or vulgar they may be. Before the ballot-box, as before the altar, all men are equal the drunkard and the temperate, the judge and the vagrant, the coarse and the refined, the educated and the ignorant. To separate ones self from ones fellows may be allow- able in many social relations, in the sanctuary of home, and in 190 THE NORTEI AMERICAN REVIEW. groups gathered by elective affinity. But all the more impor- tant is it that all thos3 duties which bring men together in com- mon duty, cojumon citizenship, and common humanity, should be vigorously maintained. If by reason of superior endowments, advantages of wealth, attractions of refined leisure, or relish of literary or philosophical pursuits, men grow unwilling to mingle with their fellow-men or to take up political tasks and burdens, refusing to perform amply and continuously their political duties, they do in fact remit to the less fit, and to the positively unfit, the whole care of the state, its politics, magistracy, and morality. This is distributive treason. When this long pro- cession of selfish men the rich man, in his self-indulgence; the artist, in his daintiness; the scholar, in his literature; the fashionable and the indolent, in their glittering selfishness are seen moving away from politics, it will only need a robed and recreant clergyman at their head to form a band of infamy, trampling under foot the very life of their country! Third. Because he is by profession a moral teacher, the clergyman should be an example to his flock, of conscientious, patient duty performed, and from him they should receive both incitement and instruction. The man that preaches only an abstract gospel is but a pulpit cypher. It is the gospel applied that clergymen should preach. Christian ethics is the very soil out of which all graces of spirituality grow. Modern notions of the dignity of the pulpit have well-nigh disrobed the pulpit of its legitimate power. The man in the pulpit shonld be a man from among men, in full sympathy with his fellow-men, not ignorant of their trials and stumbling difficul- ties, and able to fortify men against the temptations peculiar to every walk of life. His parishioners are not in half so much danger of falling into false theology as into false weights and measures, into selfishness, animosities, revenges, and all forms of unjust conduct. There would have been fewer Christian men in the penitentiary to-day if the pulpit had succeeded in establishing in mens minds a clearer idea of what is safe and lawful in business. Less dogma, more morality! The world to come must be reached by a wise walking in the world that now is. In like manner a minister should instruct his people in political duty and in their political dangers. Two elements are needed to exalt politics from the low level at which it now exists: the influence of woman, and of a faithful pulpit. Such themes as these, at suitable times, should be discussed as belong- SHALL CLERGYMEN BE POLITICIANS? 191 ing to Christian ethics: 1. The meaning of citizenship, its responsibilities and duties. 2. The sin of bribery. What is bribery? and what are the kinds and shades of it? 3. The vote, its meaning and value. The purchase of votes, the throw- ing away of votes. 4. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego types of Christian men walking in the fierce fires of a political can- vass. 5. Injustice and slander in politics, and all forms of revenge. 6. The distinctions between principles and policies in the state. 7. The sin of withdrawing from all participation in politics. 8. Clergymen are the guides of their people in the ethics of daily affairs. 9. Race question the duty of superiors to inferiors. 10. The hindrance or the destruction of the weak by the strong is of the very essence of a malignant infidelity, a crucifying of the very heart of Jesus. If it be said that clergymen are ordinarily unfitted to discuss such themes, then, in our age and in our country, they are unfit to preach the gospel. Fourth. It would be well for ministers of religion if they studied the life of Christ more and theology less. Jesus was no dainty teacher in professional robes. Born to poverty and labor, he never forsook his mates. He lived among them; he ate and drank with them; he preached to them of their special sins and special duties; he refused the dignity of rabbiship, and to the end was a man among men. He rebuked rulers; he exposed hypocrites and pretenders in high places; he meddled with the temple, the altar, the officers thereof; and in Galilee and in Judea, alike among peasants, fishermen, and scholars, he laid down the great ethical laws on which should be built a sound practical morality. Little like him will be his professed preachers that talk long and loud of philosophy and theology, but whisper softly in muffled pulpits of the duties of morality of every-day life, and think themselves holy in proportion as they neglect Christs example of life and teaching. If ever there was a stern and practical moralist, it was John the Baptist. Christs criticism of him is significant. What went ye out to see? a reed shaken in the wind, a pulpit marvel, a tremulous, an incessant quivering novelty? A man clothed in soft raiment? a robed, cushioned, fashion-loving priest, teaching the respecta- bilities of fashionable society? No, a prophet, a stern teacher of rigorous morality in all its phases and applications. Yea, more than a prophet, a man that loved righteousness and hated all shams and elegant dishonesties. 192 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Fifth. The example of American clergymen in the Colonial days, through the Revolution, and afterward, until the mephitic gas of slavery had well-nigh suffocated the pulpit, is instructive. Ministers in New England were the counselors of the magistrates. They were expected to teach their people what were their political duties, as before them, in England, the Puritan clergy had aided in establishing civil liberty upon religious foundations. To-day the pulpit is regaining its old American tone. In single instances it may work harm; but no harm of injudicious men can be half so harmful as a pulpit without a message to common people about their daily duties; their common temptations, and above all, without a word of instruction to men as citizens ful- filling their sublime duties to the laws, to the magistracy, and to the policy of this great nation. It is objected, that a practical union of church and state is likely to result from meddling ministers. No more than from meddling lawyers, meddling doctors, meddling school-masters. On the other hand, the very way to induce the evils feared is by erecting into a privileged class men who assume to be too holy to meddle with affairs that belong to common citizens. It may be said, that the minister has an unfair advantage; that his audience cannot reply; that he can exert a partisan influence which will offend, divide, and break up a church. All this is quite true; but it could ouly happen to one without skill, prudence, or tact. It is an argument against the misperformance of duty, and not against the imperative duty. If a clergyman waits till sides are taken, till mens passions are aroused,and then assails or defends, he will show an utter want of common sense. He must instruct his people in the duty of citizens, as part of his yearly task; he must educate them to a conscience in all political action; he must exalt the duties of patriotism; must make distinction between good men and bad, long before hot and turbulent times arise. As a general thing, instruction from the pulpit upon political duty should not be given on the eve of an election. When the lines are drawn, and the air is lurid and torrid, the pulpit should be silent, and the clergyman should exert his influence through some other channel. In tran- quil times, between great political campaigns, if ministers would give to their people such discussions as abound i