ignorance; and the man that has neither pens nor ink nor crayons, when a
record of his thought would have delivered him over to the derision of
posterity. This, however, the reader will say, is to embroider a large
moral upon a trivial occasion. Possibly the moral may be
disproportionately large; and yet, after all, the occasion may not be so
trivial as it seems. One of the many revolutions worked by the railway
system is, to force men into a much ampler publicity; to throw them at a
distance from home amongst strangers; and at their own homes to throw
strangers amongst _them_. Now, exactly in such situations it is, where
all other gauges of appreciation are wanting, that the two great
external indications of a man's rank, viz., the quality of his manners
and the quality of his pronunciation, come into play for assigning his
place and rating amongst strangers. Not merely pride, but a just and
reasonable self-respect, irritates a man's aspiring sensibilities in
such a case: not only he _is_, but always he _ought_ to be, jealous of
suffering in the estimation of strangers by defects which it is in his
own choice to supply, or by mistakes which a little trouble might
correct. And by the way we British act in this spirit, whether we ought
to do or not, it is noticed as a broad characteristic of us Islanders,
viz., both of the English and the Scotch, that we are morbidly alive to
jealousy under such circumstances, and in a degree to which there is
nothing amongst the two leading peoples of the Continent at all
corresponding.[52] A Scotchman or an Englishman of low rank is anxious
on a Sunday to dress in a style which may mislead the casual observer
into the belief that perhaps he is a gentleman: whereas it is notorious
that the Parisian artisan or labourer of the lower class is proud of
connecting himself conspicuously with his own order, and ostentatiously
acknowledging it, by adopting its usual costume. It is his way of
expressing an _esprit de corps_. The same thing is true very extensively
of Germans. And it sounds pretty, and reads into a sentimental
expression of cheerful contentedness, that such customs should prevail
on a great scale. Meantime I am not quite sure that the worthy Parisian
is not an ass, and the amiable German another, for thus meekly resigning
himself to the tyranny of his accidental situation. What they call the
allotment of Providence is, often enough, the allotment of their own
laziness or defective energy. At any rate, I feel much more inclined to
respect the aspiring Englishman or Scotchman that kicks against these
self-imposed restraints; that rebels in heart against whatever there may
be of degradation in his own particular employment; and, therefore,
though submitting to this degradation as the _sine quâ non_ for earning
his daily bread, and submitting also to the external badges and dress of
his trade as frequently a matter of real convenience, yet doggedly
refuses to abet or countersign any such arrangements as tend to lower
him in other men's opinion. And exactly this is what he _would_ be doing
by assuming his professional costume on Sundays; the costume would then
become an exponent of his choice, not of his convenience or his
necessity; and he would thus be proclaiming that he glories in what he
detests. To found a meek and docile nation, the German is the very
architect wanted; but to found a go-ahead nation quite another race is
called for, other blood and other training. And, again, when I hear a
notable housewife exclaiming, 'Many are the poor servant girls that
have been led into temptation and ruin by dressing above their station,'
I feel that she says no more than the truth; and I grieve that it should
be so. Out of tenderness, therefore, and pity towards the poor girls, if
I personally had any power to bias their choice, my influence should be
used in counteraction to their natural propensities. But this has
nothing to do with the philosophic estimate of those propensities.
Perilous they are; but _that_ does not prevent their arising in
fountains that contain elements of possible grandeur, such as would
never be developed by a German Audrey (see 'As You Like It') content to
be treated as a doll by her lover, and viewing it as profane to wear
petticoats less voluminous, or a headdress less frightful than those
inherited from her grandmother.
Excuse this digression, reader. What I wished to explain was that, if a
man in a humble situation seeks to refine his pronunciation of English,
and finds himself in consequence taxed with pride that will not brook
the necessities of his rank, at all events, he is but _integrating_ his
manifestations of pride. Already in his Sunday's costume he has _begun_
this manifestation, and, as I contend, rightfully. If a carpenter or a
stonemason goes abroad on a railway excursion, there is no moral
obligation upon him--great or small--to carry about any memento
whatsoever of his calling. I contend that his right to pass himself off
for a gentleman is co-extensive with his power to do so: the right is
limited by the power, and by that only. The man may say justly: "What I
am seeking is a holiday. This is what I pay for; and I pay for it with
money earned painfully enough. I have a right therefore to expect that
the article shall be genuine and complete. Now, a holiday means freedom
from the pains of labour--not from some of those pains, but from all.
Even from the memory of these pains, if _that_ could be bought, and from
the anticipation of their recurrence. Amongst the pains of labour, a
leading one next after the necessity of unintermitting muscular effort,
is the oppression of people's superciliousness or of their affected
condescension in conversing with one whom they know to be a working
mechanic. From this oppression it is, from this oppression whether open
or poorly disguised, that I seek to be delivered. It taints my pleasure:
it spoils my holiday. And if by being dressed handsomely, by courtesy in
manners, and by accuracy in speaking English, I can succeed in obtaining
this deliverance for myself, I have a right to it." Undoubtedly he has.
His real object is not to disconnect himself from an honest calling, but
from that burthen of contempt or of slight consideration which the world
has affixed to his calling. He takes measures for gratifying his
pride--not with a direct or primary view to that pride, but indirectly
as the only means open to him for evading and defeating the unjust
conventional scorn that would settle upon himself _through_ his trade,
if that should happen to become known or suspected. This is what I
should be glad to assist him in; and amongst other points connected with
his object, towards which my experience might furnish him with some
hints, I shall here offer him the very shortest of lessons for his
guidance in the matter of English pronunciation.
What can be attempted on so wide a field in a paper limited so severely
in dimensions as all papers published by this journal _must_ be limited
in obedience to the transcendent law of variety? To make it possible
that subjects _enough_ should be treated, the Proprietor wisely insists
on a treatment vigorously succinct for each in particular. I myself, it
suddenly strikes me, must have been the chief offender against this
reasonable law: but my offences were committed in pure ignorance and
inattention, faults which henceforth I shall guard against with a
penitential earnestness. Reformation meanwhile must begin, I fear,
simultaneously with this confession of guilt. It would not be possible
(would it?) that, beginning the penitence this month of November, I
should postpone the amendment till the next? No, _that_ would look too
brazen. I must confine myself to the two and a half pages prescribed as
the maximum extent--and of that allowance already perhaps have used up
one half at the least. Shocking! is it not? So much the sterner is the
demand through the remaining ground for exquisite brevity.
Rushing therefore at once _in medias res_, I observe to the reader that,
although it is thoroughly impossible to give him a guide upon so vast a
wilderness as the total area of our English language, for, if I must
teach him how to pronounce, and upon what learned grounds to pronounce,
40,000 words, and if polemically I must teach him how to dispose of
40,000 objections that have been raised (or that _may_ be raised)
against these pronunciations, then I should require at the least 40,000
lives (which is quite out of the question, for a cat has but
nine)--seeing and allowing for all this, I may yet offer him some
guidance as to his guide. One sole rule, if he will attend to it,
governs in a paramount sense the total possibilities and compass of
pronunciation. A very famous line of Horace states it. What line? What
is the supreme law in every language for correct pronunciation no less
than for idiomatic propriety?
'_Usus_, quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi:'
usage, the established practice, subject to which is all law and normal
standard of correct speaking. Now, in what way does such a rule
interfere with the ordinary prejudice on this subject? The popular error
is that, in pronunciation, as in other things, there is an abstract
right and a wrong. The difficulty, it is supposed, lies in ascertaining
this right and wrong. But by collation of arguments, by learned
investigation, and interchange of _pros_ and _cons_, it is fancied that
ultimately the exact truth of each separate case might be extracted.
Now, in that preconception lies the capital blunder incident to the
question. There _is_ no right, there _is_ no wrong, except what the
prevailing usage creates. The usage, the existing custom, _that_ is the
law: and from that law there is no appeal whatever, nor demur that is
sustainable for a moment.
FOOTNOTES:
[52] Amongst the Spaniards there _is_.
_XV. THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES COULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN NO MODERN ERA._
Now, observe what I am going to prove. First A, and as a stepping-stone
to something (B) which is to follow: It is, that the Jewish Scriptures
could not have been composed in any modern æra. I am earnest in drawing
your attention to the particular point which I have before me, because
one of the enormous faults pervading all argumentative books, so that
rarely indeed do you find an exception, is that, in all the dust and
cloud of contest and of objects, the reader never knows what is the
immediate object before the writer and himself, nor if he were told
would he understand in what relation it stood to the main object of
contest--the main question at stake. Recollect, therefore, that what I
want is to show that these elder Jewish Scriptures must have existed in
very ancient days--how ancient? for ancient is an ambiguous word--could
not have been written as a memorial of tradition within a century or two
of our æra. To suppose, even for the sake of answering, the case of a
forgery, is too gross and shocking: though a very common practice
amongst writers miscalled religious, but in fact radically, incurably
unspiritual. This might be shown to be abominable even in an
intellectual sense; because no adequate, no rational purpose could be
answered by such a labour. The sole conceivable case would be, that from
the eldest days the Jews had been governed by all the Mosaic
institutions as we now have them, but that the mere copying, the mere
registration on tablets of parchment, wood, leather, brass, had not
occurred till some more modern period. As to this the answer is at once:
Why should they not have been written down? What answer could be given?
Only this: For the same reason that other nations did not commit to
writing their elder institutions. And why did they not? Was it to save
trouble? So far from that, this one privation imposed infinite trouble
that would have been evaded by written copies. For because they did not
write down, therefore, as the sole mode of providing for accurate
remembrance, they were obliged to compose in a very elaborate metre; in
which the mere _pattern_ as it were of the verse, so intricate and so
closely interlocked, always performed thus two services: first, it
assisted the memory in mastering the tenor; but, secondly, it checked
and counterpleaded to the lapses of memory or to the artifices of fraud.
This explanation is well illustrated in the 'Iliad'--a poem elder by a
century, it is rightly argued, than the 'Odyssey,' ergo the eldest of
Pagan literature. Now, when the 'Iliad' had once come down safe to
Pisistratus 555 years B.C., imagine this great man holding out his hands
over the gulf of time to Homer, 1,000 years before, who is chucking or
shying his poems across the gulf. Once landed in those conservative
hands, never trouble yourself more about the safety of the 'Iliad.'
After that it was as safe as the eyes in any Athenian's head. But before
that time there _was_ a great danger; and this danger was at all
surmounted (scholars differ greatly and have sometimes cudgelled one
another with real unfigurative cudgels as to the degree in which it
_did_ surmount the danger) only by the metre and a regular orchestra in
every great city dedicated to this peculiar service of chanting the
'Iliad'; insomuch that a special costume was assigned to the chanters of
the 'Iliad,' viz., scarlet or crimson, and also another special costume
to the chanters of the 'Odyssey,' viz., violet-coloured. Now, this
division of orchestras had one great evil and one great benefit. The
benefit was, that if locally one orchestra went wrong (as it might do
upon local temptations) yet surely all the orchestras would not go
wrong: ninety-nine out of every hundred would check and expose the
fraudulent hundredth. _There_ was the good. But the evil was concurrent.
For by this dispersion of orchestras, and this multiplication, not only
were the ordinary chances of error according to the doctrine of chances
multiplied a hundred or a thousand fold, but also, which was worse, each
separate orchestra was brought by local position under a separate and
peculiar action of some temptation, some horrible temptation, some bribe
that could not be withstood, for falsifying the copy by compliments to
local families; that is, to such as were or such as were not descendants
from the Paladius of Troy. For that, let me say, was for Greece, nay,
for all the Mediterranean world, what for us of Christian ages have been
the Crusades. It was the pinnacle from which hung as a dependency all
the eldest of families. So that they who were of such families thirsted
after what they held aright to be asserted, viz., a Homeric
commemoration; and they who were not thirsted after what had begun to
seem a feasible ambition to be accomplished. It was feasible: for
various attempts are still on record very much like our interpolations
of Church books as to records of birth or marriage. Athens, for
instance, was discontented with Homer's praise; and the case is
interesting, because, though it argues such an attempt to be very
difficult, since even a great city could not fully succeed, yet, at the
same time, it argues that it was not quite hopeless, or else it would
hardly have been attempted. So that here arises one argument for the
main genuineness of the Homeric text. Yet you will say: Perhaps when
Athens tried the trick it was too late in the day: it was too late after
full daylight to be essaying burglaries. But it would have been easy in
elder days. This is true; but remark the restraint which that very state
of the case supposes. Precisely when this difficulty became great,
became enormous, did the desire chiefly become great, become enormous,
for mastering it. And when the difficulty was light, when the forgery
was most a matter of ease, the ambition was least. For you cannot
suppose that families standing near to the Crusades would have cared
much for the reputation. As an act of piety they would prize it; as an
exponent of antiquity they would not prize it at all. For, in fact, it
would argue no such thing, until many centuries had passed. You see,
however, by this sketch the _pros_ and the _cons_ respecting the
difficulty of transmitting the 'Iliad' free from corruption, if at once
it was resigned to mere oral tradition. The alterations were more and
more tempting; but in that ratio were less and less possible. And then,
secondly, there were the changes from chance or from changing language.
Apply all these considerations to the case of the Hebrew Scriptures, and
their great antiquity is demonstrated.
_XVI. DISPERSION OF THE JEWS, AND JOSEPHUS'S ENMITY TO CHRISTIANITY._
Look into the Acts of the Apostles, you see the wide dispersion of the
Jews which had then been accomplished; a dispersion long antecedent to
that penal dispersion which occurred subsequently to the Christian era.
But search the pages of the wicked Jew, Josephus,[53] who notices
expressly this universal dispersion of the Jews, and gives up and down
his works the means of tracing them through every country in the
southern belt of the Mediterranean, through every country of the
northern belt, through every country of the connecting belt, in Asia
Minor and Syria--through every island of the Mediterranean. Search
Philo-Judæus, the same result is found. But why? Upon what theory? What
great purpose is working, is fermenting underneath? What principle, what
law can be abstracted from this antagonist or centrifugal motion
outwards now violently beating back as with a conflict of tides the
original centripetal motion inwards? Manifestly this: the incubating
process had been completed: the ideas of God as an ideal of Holiness,
the idea of Sin as the antagonist force--had been perfected; they were
now so inextricably worked into the texture of Jewish minds, or the
Jewish minds were now arrived at their _maximum_ of adhesiveness, or at
their _minimum_ of repulsiveness, in manners and social character, that
this stage was perfect; and now came the five hundred years during which
they were to manure all nations with these preparations for
Christianity. Hence it was that the great globe of Hebraism was now
shivered into fragments; projected 'by one sling of that victorious
arm'--which had brought them up from Egypt. Make ready for Christianity!
Lay the structure, in which everywhere Christianity will strike root.
You, that for yourselves even will reject, will persecute Christianity,
become the pioneers, the bridge-layers, the reception-preparers, by
means of those two inconceivable ideas, for natural man--sin and its
antagonist, holiness.
In this way a preparation was made. But if Christianity was to benefit
by it, if Christianity was to move with ease, she must have a language.
Accordingly, from the time of Alexander, the strong he-goat, you see a
tendency--sudden, abrupt, beyond all example, swift, perfect--for
uniting all nations by the bond of a single language. You see kings and
nations taking up their positions as regularly, faithfully, solemnly as
a great fleet on going into action, for supporting this chain of
language.
Yet even that will be insufficient; for fluent motion out of nation into
nation it will be requisite that all nations should be provinces of one
supreme people; so that no hindrances from adverse laws, or from
jealousies of enmity, can possibly impede the fluent passage of the
apostle and the apostle's delegates--inasmuch as the laws are swallowed
up into one single code, and enmity disappears with its consequent
jealousies, where all nationalities are absorbed into unity.
This last change being made, a signal, it may be supposed, was given as
with a trumpet; now then, move forward, Christianity; the ground is
ready, the obstacles are withdrawn. Enter upon the field which is
manured; try the roads which are cleared; use the language which is
prepared; benefit by the laws which protect and favour your motion;
apply the germinating principles which are beginning to swell in this
great vernal season of Christianity. New heavens and new earth are
forming: do you promote it.
Such a _complexus_ of favourable tendencies, such a meeting in one
centre of plans--commencing in far different climates and far different
centres, all coming up at the same æra face to face, and by direct lines
of connection meeting in one centre--the world had never seen before.
FOOTNOTES:
[53] 'The wicked Jew,' Josephus, as once I endeavoured to show, was
perhaps the worst man in all antiquity; it is pleasant to be foremost
upon any path, and Joe might assuredly congratulate himself on
surmounting and cresting all the scoundrels since the flood. What there
might be on the other side the flood, none of us can say. But on _this_
side, amongst the Cis-diluvians, Joe in a contest for the deanery of
that venerable chapter, would assuredly carry off the prize. Wordsworth,
on a question arising as to _who_ might be the worst man in English
history, vehemently contended for the pre-eminent pretensions of Monk.
And when some of us assigned him only the fifth or sixth place, was
disposed to mourn for him as an ill-used man. But no difficulty of this
kind could arise with regard to the place of Josephus among the
ancients, full knowledge and impartial judgment being presupposed. And
his works do follow him; just look at this: From the ridiculous attempt
of some imbecile Christian to interpolate in Josephus's History a
passage favourable to Christ, it is clear that no adequate idea
prevailed of his intense hatred to the new sect of Nazarenes and
Galilæans. In our own days we have a lively illustration of the use
which may be extracted from the Essenes by sceptics, and an indirect
confirmation of my own allegation, against them, in Dr. Strauss (_Leben
Jesu_). The moment that his attention was directed to that fact of the
Essenes being utterly ignored in the New Testament (a fact so easily
explained by _my_ theory, a fact so _utterly_ unaccountable to _his_) he
conceived an affection for them. Had they been mentioned by St. John,
there was an end to the dislike; but Josephus had, even with this modern
sceptical Biblical critic, done his work and done it well.
_XVII. CHRISTIANITY AS THE RESULT OF PRE-ESTABLISHED HARMONY._
If you are one that upon meditative grounds have come sincerely to
perceive the philosophic value of this faith; if you have become
sensible that as yet Christianity is but in its infant stages--after
eighteen centuries is but beginning to unfold its adaptations to the
long series of human situations, slowly unfolding as time and change
move onwards; and that these self-adapting relations of the religion to
human necessities, this conformity to unforeseen developments, argues a
Leibnitzian pre-establishment of this great system as though it had from
the first been a mysterious substratum laid under 'the dark foundations'
of human nature; holding or admitting such views of the progress
awaiting Christianity--you will thank us for what we are going to say.
You may, possibly for yourself, when reviewing the past history of man,
have chanced to perceive the same--we are not jealous of participation
in a field so ample--but even in such a case, if the remark (on which we
are now going to throw a ray of light) should appeal to you in
particular, with less of absolute novelty, not the less you will feel
thankful to be confirmed in your views by independent testimony. We, for
ourselves, offer the remark as new; but, in an age teeming with so much
agility of thought, it is rare that any remark can have absolutely
evaded all partial glimpses or stray notices of others, even when _aliud
agentes_, men stumble upon truths, to which they are not entitled by any
meritorious or direct studies. However, whether absolutely original or
not, the remark is this--Did it ever strike you, reader, as a most
memorable phenomenon about Christianity, as one of those contradictory
functions which, to a thing of human mechanism, is impossible, but which
are found in _vital_ agencies and in all deep-laid systems of
truth--that the same scheme of belief which is the most settling,
freezing, tranquillizing for one purpose, is the most unbinding,
agitating, revolutionary in another? Christianity is that religion which
most of all settles what is perilous in scepticism; and yet, also, it is
that which most of all unsettles whatever may invite man's intellectual
activity. It is the sole religion which can give any deep anchorage for
man's hopes; and yet, also, in mysterious self-antagonism, it is the
sole religion which opens a pathless ocean to man's useful and blameless
speculations. Whilst all false religions neither as a matter of fact
_have_ produced--nor as a matter of possibility _could_ have produced--a
philosophy, it is a most significant distinction of Christianity, and
one upon which volumes might be written, that simply by means of the
great truths which that faith has fixed when brought afterwards into
collision with the innumerable questions which that faith has left
undetermined (as not essential to her own final purposes), Christianity
has bred, and tempted, and stimulated a vast body of philosophy on
neutral ground; ground religious enough to create an interest in the
questions, yet not so religious as to react upon capital truths by any
errors that may be committed in the discussion. For instance, on that
one sea-like question of free agency, besides the _explicit_ philosophy
that Christianity has bred amongst the Schoolmen, and since their time,
what a number of sects, heresies, orthodox churches have _implicitly_
couched and diffused some one view or other of this question amongst
their characteristic differences; and without prejudice to the integrity
of their Christian views or the purity of their Christian morals.
Whilst, on the other hand, the very noblest of false religions (the
noblest as having stolen much from Christianity), viz., Islamism, has
foreclosed all philosophy on this subject by the stupid and killing
doctrine of fatalism. This we give as one instance; but in all the rest
it is the same. You might fancy that from a false religion should arise
a false philosophy--false, but still a philosophy. Is it so? On the
contrary: the result of false religion is no philosophy at all.