FOOTNOTE:

[1] "Rational animal" is thus the predicate of the statement

constituting the definition. Sometimes the word "definition" is used

to signify merely the predicate.

DEFOE, DANIEL (c. 1659-1731), English author, was born in the parish of

St Giles, Cripplegate, London, in the latter part of 1659 or early in

1660, of a nonconformist family. His grandfather, Daniel Foe, lived at

Etton, Northamptonshire, apparently in comfortable circumstances, for he

is said to have kept a pack of hounds. As to the variation of name,

Defoe or Foe, its owner signed either indifferently till late in life,

and where his initials occur they are sometimes D. F. and sometimes D.

D. F. Three autograph letters of his are extant, all addressed in 1705

to the same person, and signed respectively D. Foe, de Foe and Daniel

Defoe. His father, James Foe, was a butcher and a citizen of London.

Daniel was well educated at a famous dissenting academy, Mr Charles

Morton's of Stoke Newington, where many of the best-known nonconformists

of the time were his schoolfellows. With few exceptions all the known

events of Defoe's life are connected with authorship. In the older

catalogues of his works two pamphlets, _Speculum Crapegownorum_, a

satire on the clergy, and _A Treatise against the Turks_, are attributed

to him before the accession of James II., but there seems to be no

publication of his which is certainly genuine before _The Character of

Dr Annesley_ (1697). He had, however, before this, taken up arms in

Monmouth's expedition, and is supposed to have owed his lucky escape

from the clutches of the king's troops and the law, to his being a

Londoner, and therefore a stranger in the west country. On the 26th of

January 1688 he was admitted a liveryman of the city of London, having

claimed his freedom by birth. Before his western escapade he had taken

up the business of hosiery factor. At the entry of William and Mary into

London he is said to have served as a volunteer trooper "gallantly

mounted and richly accoutred." In these days he lived at Tooting, and

was instrumental in forming a dissenting congregation there. His

business operations at this period appear to have been extensive and

various. He seems to have been a sort of commission merchant, especially

in Spanish and Portuguese goods, and at some time to have visited Spain

on business. In 1692 he failed for L17,000. His misfortunes made him

write both feelingly and forcibly on the bankruptcy laws; and although

his creditors accepted a composition, he afterwards honourably paid them

in full, a fact attested by independent and not very friendly witnesses.

Subsequently, he undertook first the secretaryship and then the

management and chief ownership of some tile-works at Tilbury, but here

also he was unfortunate, and his imprisonment in 1703 brought the works

to a standstill, and he lost L3000. From this time forward we hear of no

settled business in which he engaged.

The course of Defoe's life was determined about the middle of the reign

of William III. by his introduction to that monarch and other

influential persons. He frequently boasts of his personal intimacy with

the "glorious and immortal" king, and in 1695 he was appointed

accountant to the commissioners of the glass duty, an office which he

held for four years. During this time he produced his _Essay on

Projects_ (1698), containing suggestions on banks, road-management,

friendly and insurance societies of various kinds, idiot asylums,

bankruptcy, academies, military colleges, high schools for women, &c. It

displays Defoe's lively and lucid style in full vigour, and abounds with

ingenious thoughts and apt illustrations, though it illustrates also the

unsystematic character of his mind. In the same year Defoe wrote the

first of a long series of pamphlets on the then burning question of

occasional conformity. In this, for the first time, he showed the

unlucky independence which, in so many other instances, united all

parties against him. While he pointed out to the dissenters the

scandalous inconsistency of their playing fast and loose with sacred

things, yet he denounced the impropriety of requiring tests at all. In

support of the government he published, in 1698, _An Argument for a

Standing Army_, followed in 1700 by a defence of William's war policy

called _The Two Great Questions considered_, and a set of pamphlets on

the Partition Treaty. Thus in political matters he had the same fate as

in ecclesiastical; for the Whigs were no more prepared than the Tories

to support William through thick and thin. He also dealt with the

questions of stock-jobbing and of electioneering corruption. But his

most remarkable publication at this time was _The True-Born Englishman_

(1701), a satire in rough but extremely vigorous verse on the national

objection to William as a foreigner, and on the claim of purity of blood

for a nation which Defoe chooses to represent as crossed and dashed with

all the strains and races in Europe. He also took a prominent part in

the proceedings which followed the Kentish petition, and was the author,

some say the presenter, of the _Legion Memorial_, which asserted in the

strongest terms the supremacy of the electors over the elected, and of

which even an irate House of Commons did not dare to take much notice.

The theory of the indefeasible supremacy of the freeholders of England,

whose delegates merely, according to this theory, the Commons were, was

one of Defoe's favourite political tenets, and he returned to it in a

powerfully written tract entitled _The Original Power of the Collective

Body of the People of England examined and asserted_ (1701).

At the same time he was occupied in a controversy on the conformity

question with John How (or Howe) on the practice of "occasional

conformity." Defoe maintained that the dissenters who attended the

services of the English Church on particular occasions to qualify

themselves for office were guilty of inconsistency. At the same time he

did not argue for the complete abolition of the tests, but desired that

they should be so framed as to make it possible for most Protestants

conscientiously to subscribe to them. Here again his moderation pleased

neither party.

The death of William was a great misfortune to Defoe, and he soon felt

the power of his adversaries. After publishing _The Mock Mourners_,

intended to satirize and rebuke the outbreak of Jacobite joy at the

king's death, he turned his attention once more to ecclesiastical

subjects, and, in an evil hour for himself, wrote the anonymous

_Shortest Way with the Dissenters_ (1702), a statement in the most

forcible terms of the extreme "high-flying" position, which some high

churchmen were unwary enough to endorse, without any suspicion of the

writer's ironical intention. The author was soon discovered; and, as he

absconded, an advertisement was issued offering a reward for his

apprehension, and giving the only personal description we possess of

him, as "a middle-sized spare man about forty years old, of a brown

complexion and dark brown-coloured hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose,

a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth." In this

conjuncture Defoe had really no friends, for the dissenters were as much

alarmed at his book as the high-flyers were irritated. He surrendered,

and his defence appears to have been injudiciously conducted; at any

rate he was fined 200 marks, and condemned to be pilloried three times,

to be imprisoned indefinitely, and to find sureties for his good

behaviour during seven years. It was in reference to this incident that

Pope, whose Catholic rearing made him detest the abettor of the

Revolution and the champion of William of Orange, wrote in the

_Dunciad_--

"Earless on high stands unabash'd Defoe"

--though he knew that the sentence to the pillory had long ceased to

entail the loss of ears. Defoe's exposure in the pillory (July 29, 30,

31) was, however, rather a triumph than a punishment, for the populace

took his side; and his _Hymn to the Pillory_, which he soon after

published, is one of the best of his poetical works. Unluckily for him

his condemnation had the indirect effect of destroying his business at

Tilbury.

He remained in prison until August 1704, and then owed his release to

the intercession of Robert Harley, who represented his case to the

queen, and obtained for him not only liberty but pecuniary relief and

employment, which, of one kind or another, lasted until the termination

of Anne's reign. Defoe was uniformly grateful to the minister, and his

language respecting him is in curious variance with that generally used.

There is no doubt that Harley, who understood the influence wielded by

Defoe, made some conditions. Defoe says he received no pension, but his

subsequent fidelity was at all events indirectly rewarded; moreover,

Harley's moderation in a time of the extremest party-insanity was no

little recommendation to Defoe. During his imprisonment he was by no

means idle. A spurious edition of his works having been issued, he

himself produced a collection of twenty-two treatises, to which some

time afterwards he added a second group of eighteen more. He also wrote

in prison many short pamphlets, chiefly controversial, published a

curious work on the famous storm of the 26th of November 1703, and

started in February 1704 perhaps the most remarkable of all his

projects, _The Review_. This was a paper which was issued during the

greater part of its life three times a week. It was entirely written by

Defoe, and extends to eight complete volumes and some few score numbers

of a second issue. He did not confine himself to news, but wrote

something very like finished essays on questions of policy, trade and

domestic concerns; he also introduced a "Scandal Club," in which minor

questions of manners and morals were treated in a way which undoubtedly

suggested the _Tatlers_ and _Spectators_ which followed. Only one

complete copy of the work is known to exist, and that is in the British

Museum. It is probable that if bulk, rapidity of production, variety of

matter, originality of design, and excellence of style be taken

together, hardly any author can show a work of equal magnitude. After

his release Defoe went to Bury St Edmunds, though he did not interrupt

either his _Review_ or his occasional pamphlets. One of these, _Giving

Alms no Charity, and Employing the Poor a Grievance to the Nation_

(1704), is extraordinarily far-sighted. It denounces both indiscriminate

alms-giving and the national work-shops proposed by Sir Humphrey

Mackworth.

In 1705 appeared _The Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions

from the World in the Moon_, a political satire which is supposed to

have given some hints for Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_; and at the end

of the year Defoe performed a secret mission, the first of several of

the kind, for Harley. In 1706 appeared the _True Relation of the

Apparition of one Mrs Veal_, long supposed to have been written for a

bookseller to help off an unsaleable translation of Drelincourt, _On

Death_, but considerable doubt has been cast upon this by William Lee.

Defoe's next work was _Jure divino_, a long poetical argument in (bad)

verse; and soon afterwards (1706) he began to be much employed in

promoting the union with Scotland. Not only did he write pamphlets as

usual on the project, and vigorously recommend it in _The Review_, but

in October 1706 he was sent on a political mission to Scotland by Sidney

Godolphin, to whom Harley had recommended him. He resided in Edinburgh

for nearly sixteen months, and his services to the government were

repaid by a regular salary. He seems to have devoted himself to

commercial and literary as well as to political matters, and prepared at

this time his elaborate _History of the Union_, which appeared in 1709.

In this year Henry Sacheverell delivered his famous sermons, and Defoe

wrote several tracts about them and attacked the preacher in his

_Review_.

In 1710 Harley returned to power, and Defoe was placed in a somewhat

awkward position. To Harley himself he was bound by gratitude and by a

substantial agreement in principle, but with the rest of the Tory

ministry he had no sympathy. He seems, in fact, to have agreed with the

foreign policy of the Tories and with the home policy of the Whigs, and

naturally incurred the reproach of time-serving and the hearty abuse of

both parties. At the end of 1710 he again visited Scotland. In the

negotiations concerning the Peace of Utrecht, Defoe strongly supported

the ministerial side, to the intense wrath of the Whigs, displayed in an

attempted prosecution against some pamphlets of his on the all-important

question of the succession. Again the influence of Harley saved him. He

continued, however, to take the side of the dissenters in the questions

affecting religious liberty, which played such a prominent part towards

the close of Anne's reign. He naturally shared Harley's downfall; and,

though the loss of his salary might seem a poor reward for his constant

support of the Hanoverian claim, it was little more than his ambiguous,

not to say trimming, position must have led him to expect.

Defoe declared that Lord Annesley was preparing the army in Ireland to

join a Jacobite rebellion, and was indicted for libel; and prior to his

trial (1715) he published an apologia entitled _An Appeal to Honour and

Justice_, in which he defended his political conduct. Having been

convicted of the libel he was liberated later in the year under

circumstances that only became clear in 1864, when six letters were

discovered in the Record Office from Defoe to a Government official,

Charles Delafaye, which, according to William Lee, established the fact

that in 1718 at least Defoe was doing not only political work, but that

it was of a somewhat equivocal kind--that he was, in fact, sub-editing

the Jacobite _Mist's Journal_, under a secret agreement with the

government that he should tone down the sentiments and omit

objectionable items. He had, in fact, been released on condition of

becoming a government agent. He seems to have performed the same not

very honourable office in the case of two other journals--_Dormer's

Letter_ and the _Mercurius Politicus_; and to have written in these and

other papers until nearly the end of his life. Before these letters were

discovered it was supposed that Defoe's political work had ended in

1715.

Up to that time Defoe had written nothing but occasional literature,

and, except the _History of the Union_ and _Jure Divino_, nothing of any

great length. In 1715 appeared the first volume of _The Family

Instructor_, which was very popular during the 18th century. The first

volume of his most famous work, the immortal story--partly adventure,

partly moralizing--of _The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of

Robinson Crusoe_, was published on the 25th of April 1719. It ran

through four editions in as many months, and then in August appeared the

second volume. Twelve months afterwards the sequel _Serious

Reflections_, now hardly ever reprinted, appeared. Its connexion with

the two former parts is little more than nominal, Crusoe being simply

made the mouth-piece of Defoe's sentiments on various points of morals

and religion. Meanwhile the first two parts were reprinted as a

_feuilleton_ in _Heathcote's Intelligencer_, perhaps the earliest

instance of the appearance of such a work in such a form. The story was

founded on Dempier's _Voyage round the World_ (1697), and still more on

Alexander Selkirk's adventures, as communicated by Selkirk himself at a

meeting with Defoe at the house of Mrs Damaris Daniel at Bristol.

Selkirk afterwards told Mrs Daniel that he had handed over his papers to

Defoe. _Robinson Crusoe_ was immediately popular, and a wild story was

set afloat of its having been written by Lord Oxford in the Tower. A

curious idea, at one time revived by Henry Kingsley, is that the

adventures of Robinson are allegorical and relate to Defoe's own life.

This idea was certainly entertained to some extent at the time, and

derives some colour of justification from words of Defoe's, but there

seems to be no serious foundation for it. _Robinson Crusoe_ (especially

the story part, with the philosophical and religious moralizings largely

cut out) is one of the world's classics in fiction. Crusoe's shipwreck

and adventures, his finding the footprint in the sand, his man

"Friday,"--the whole atmosphere of romance which surrounds the position

of the civilized man fending for himself on a desert island--these have

made Defoe's great work an imperishable part of English literature.

Contemporaneously appeared _The Dumb Philosopher_, or _Dickory Cronke_,

who gains the power of speech at the end of his life and uses it to

predict the course of European affairs.

In 1720 came _The Life and Adventures of Mr Duncan Campbell_. This was

not entirely a work of imagination, its hero, the fortune-teller, being

a real person. There are amusing passages in the story, but it is too

desultory to rank with Defoe's best. In the same year appeared two

wholly or partially fictitious histories, each of which might have made

a reputation for any man. The first was the _Memoirs of a Cavalier_,

which Lord Chatham believed to be true history, and which William Lee

considers the embodiment at least of authentic private memoirs. The

Cavalier was declared at the time to be Andrew Newport, made Lord

Newport in 1642. His elder brother was born in 1620 and the Cavalier

gives 1608 as the date of his birth, so that the facts do not fit the

dates. It is probable that Defoe, with his extensive acquaintance with

English history, and his astonishing power of working up details, was

fully equal to the task of inventing it. As a model of historical work

of a certain kind it is hardly surpassable, and many separate

passages--accounts of battles and skirmishes--have never been equalled

except by Carlyle. _Captain Singleton_, the last work of the year, has

been unjustly depreciated by most of the commentators. The record of the

journey across Africa, with its surprising anticipations of subsequent

discoveries, yields in interest to no work of the kind known to us; and

the semi-piratical Quaker who accompanies Singleton in his buccaneering

expeditions is a most life-like character. There is also a Quaker who

plays a very creditable part in _Roxana_ (1724), and Defoe seems to have

been well affected to the Friends. In estimating this wonderful

productiveness on the part of a man sixty years old, it should be

remembered that it was a habit of Defoe's to keep his work in manuscript

sometimes for long periods.

In 1721 nothing of importance was produced, but in the next twelvemonth

three capital works appeared. These were _The Fortunes and Misfortunes

of Moll Flanders_, _The Journal of the Plague Year_, and _The History of

Colonel Jack_. _Moll Flanders_ and _The Fortunate Mistress_ (Roxana),

which followed in 1724, have subjects of a rather more than questionable

character, but both display the remarkable art with which Defoe handles

such subjects. It is not true, as is sometimes said, that the difference

between the two is that between gross and polished vice. The real

difference is much more one of morals than of manners. Moll is by no

means of the lowest class. Notwithstanding the greater degradation into

which she falls, and her originally dependent position, she has been

well educated, and has consorted with persons of gentle birth. She

displays throughout much greater real refinement of feeling than the

more high-flying Roxana, and is at any rate flesh and blood, if the

flesh be somewhat frail and the blood somewhat hot. Neither of the

heroines has any but the rudiments of a moral sense; but Roxana, both in

her original transgression and in her subsequent conduct, is actuated

merely by avarice and selfishness--vices which are peculiarly offensive

in connexion with her other failing, and which make her thoroughly

repulsive. The art of both stories is great, and that of the episode of

the daughter Susannah in _Roxana_ is consummate; but the transitions of

the later plot are less natural than those in _Moll Flanders_. It is

only fair to notice that while the latter, according to Defoe's more

usual practice, is allowed to repent and end happily, Roxana is brought

to complete misery; Defoe's morality, therefore, required more

repulsiveness in one case than in the other.

In the _Journal of the Plague Year_, more usually called, from the title

of the second edition, _A History of the Plague_, the accuracy and

apparent veracity of the details is so great that many persons have

taken it for an authentic record, while others have contended for the

existence of such a record as its basis. But here too the genius of Mrs

Veal's creator must, in the absence of all evidence to the contrary, be

allowed sufficient for the task. _The History of Colonel Jack_ is an

unequal book. There is hardly in _Robinson Crusoe_ a scene equal, and

there is consequently not in English literature a scene superior, to

that where the youthful pickpocket first exercises his trade, and then

for a time loses his ill-gotten gains. But a great part of the book,

especially the latter portion, is dull; and in fact it may be generally

remarked of Defoe that the conclusions of his tales are not equal to the

beginning, perhaps from the restless indefatigability with which he

undertook one work almost before finishing another.

To this period belong his stories of famous criminals, of Jack Sheppard

(1724), of Jonathan Wild (1725), of the Highland Rogue i.e. Rob Roy

(1723). The pamphlet on the first of these Defoe maintained to be a

transcript of a paper which he persuaded Sheppard to give to a friend at

his execution.

In 1724 appeared also the first volume of _A Tour through the whole

Island of Great Britain_, which was completed in the two following

years. Much of the information in this was derived from personal

experience, for Defoe claims to have made many more tours and visits

about England than those of which we have record; but the major part

must necessarily have been dexterous compilation. In 1725 appeared _A

New Voyage round the World_, apparently entirely due to the author's own

fertile imagination and extensive reading. It is full of his peculiar

verisimilitude and has all the interest of Anson's or Dampier's voyages,

with a charm of style superior even to that of the latter.

In 1726 Defoe published a curious and amusing little pamphlet entitled

_Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business, or Private Abuses Public

Grievances, exemplified in the Pride, Insolence, and Exorbitant Wages of

our Women-Servants, Footmen, &c._ This subject was a favourite one with

him, and in the pamphlet he showed the immaturity of his political views

by advocating legislative interference in these matters. Towards the end

of this same year _The Complete English Tradesman_, which may be

supposed to sum up the experience of his business life, appeared, and

its second volume followed two years afterwards. This book has been

variously judged. It is generally and traditionally praised, but those

who have read it will be more disposed to agree with Charles Lamb, who

considers it "of a vile and debasing tendency," and thinks it "almost

impossible to suppose the author in earnest." The intolerable meanness

advocated for the sake of the paltriest gains, the entire ignoring of

any pursuit in life except money-getting, and the representation of the

whole duty of man as consisting first in the attainment of a competent

fortune, and next, when that fortune has been attained, in spending not

more than half of it, are certainly repulsive enough. But there are no

reasons for thinking the performance ironical or insincere, and it

cannot be doubted that Defoe would have been honestly unable even to

understand Lamb's indignation. To 1726 also belongs _The Political

History of the Devil_. This is a curious book, partly explanatory of

Defoe's ideas on morality, and partly belonging to a series of

demonological works which he wrote, and of which the chief others are _A

System of Magic_ (1726), and _An Essay on the History of Apparitions_

(1728), issued the year before under another title. In all these works

his treatment is on the whole rational and sensible; but in _The History

of the Devil_ he is somewhat hampered by an insufficiently worked-out

theory as to the nature and personal existence of his hero, and the

manner in which he handles the subject is an odd and not altogether

satisfactory mixture of irony and earnestness. _A Plan of English

Commerce_, containing very enlightened views on export trade, appeared

in 1728.

During the years from 1715 to 1728 Defoe had issued pamphlets and minor

works too numerous to mention. The only one of them perhaps which

requires notice is _Religious Courtship_ (1722), a curious series of

dialogues displaying Defoe's unaffected religiosity, and at the same

time the rather meddling intrusiveness with which he applied his

religious notions. This was more flagrantly illustrated in one of his

latest works, _The Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage

Bed_ (1727), which was originally issued with a much more offensive

name, and has been called "an excellent book with an improper title."

The _Memoirs of Captain Carleton_ (1728) were long attributed to Defoe,

but the internal evidence is strongly against his authorship. They have

been also attributed to Swift, with greater probability as far as style

is concerned. _The Life of Mother Ross_, reprinted in Bohn's edition,

has no claim whatever to be considered Defoe's.

There is little to be said of Defoe's private life during this period.

He must in some way or other have obtained a considerable income. In

1724 he had built himself a large house at Stoke Newington, which had

stables and grounds of considerable size. From the negotiations for the

marriage of his daughter Sophia it appears that he had landed property

in more than one place, and he had obtained on lease in 1722 a

considerable estate from the corporation of Colchester, which was

settled on his unmarried daughter at his death. Other property was

similarly allotted to his widow and remaining children, though some

difficulty seems to have arisen from the misconduct of his son, to whom,

for some purpose, the property was assigned during his father's

lifetime, and who refused to pay what was due. There is a good deal of

mystery about the end of Defoe's life; it used to be said that he died

insolvent, and that he had been in jail shortly before his death. As a

matter of fact, after great suffering from gout and stone, he died in

Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields, on Monday the 26th of April 1731, and was

buried in Bunhill Fields. He left no will, all his property having been

previously assigned, and letters of administration were taken out by a

creditor. How his affairs fell into this condition, why he did not die

in his own house, and why in the previous summer he had been in hiding,

as we know he was from a letter still extant, are points not clearly

explained. He was, however, attacked by Mist, whom he wounded, in prison

in 1724. It is most likely that Mist had found out that Defoe was a

government agent and quite probable that he communicated his knowledge

to other editors, for Defoe's journalistic employment almost ceased

about this time, and he began to write anonymously, or as "Andrew

Moreton." It is possible that he had to go into hiding to avoid the

danger of being accused as a real Jacobite, when those with whom he had

contracted to assume the character were dead and could no longer justify

his attitude.

Defoe married, on New Year's Day, 1684, Mary Tuffley, who survived until

December 1732. They had seven children. His second son, Bernard or

Benjamin Norton, has, like his father, a scandalous niche in the

_Dunciad_. In April 1877 public attention was called to the distress of

three maiden ladies, directly descended from Defoe, and bearing his

name; and a crown pension of L75 a year was bestowed on each of them.

His youngest daughter, Sophia, who married Henry Baker, left a

considerable correspondence, now in the hands of her descendants. There

are several portraits of Defoe, the principal one being engraved by

Vandergucht.

In his lifetime, Defoe, as not belonging to either of the great parties

at a time of the bitterest party strife, was subjected to obloquy on

both sides. The great Whig writers leave him unnoticed. Swift and Gay

speak slightingly of him,--the former, it is true, at a time when he was

only known as a party pamphleteer. Pope, with less excuse, put him in

the _Dunciad_ towards the end of his life, but he confessed to Spence in

private that Defoe had written many things and none bad. At a later

period he was unjustly described as "a scurrilous party writer," which

he certainly was not; but, on the other hand, Johnson spoke of his

writing "so variously and so well," and put _Robinson Crusoe_ among the

only three books that readers wish longer. From Sir Walter Scott

downwards the tendency to judge literary work on its own merits to a

great extent restored Defoe to his proper place, or, to speak more

correctly, set him there for the first time. Lord Macaulay's description

of _Roxana_, _Moll Flanders_ and _Colonel Jack_ as "utterly nauseous and

wretched" must be set aside as a freak of criticism.

Scott justly observed that Defoe's style "is the last which should be

attempted by a writer of inferior genius; for though it be possible to

disguise mediocrity by fine writing, it appears in all its naked inanity

when it assumes the garb of simplicity." The methods by which Defoe

attains his result are not difficult to disengage. They are the

presentment of all his ideas and scenes in the plainest and most direct

language, the frequent employment of colloquial forms of speech, the

constant insertion of little material details and illustrations, often

of a more or less digressive form, and, in his historico-fictitious

works, as well as in his novels, the most rigid attention to vivacity

and consistency of character. Plot he disregards, and he is fond of

throwing his dialogues into regular dramatic form, with by-play

prescribed and stage directions interspersed. A particular trick of his

is also to divide his arguments after the manner of the preachers of his

day into heads and subheads, with actual numerical signs affixed to

them. These mannerisms undoubtedly help and emphasize the extraordinary

faithfulness to nature of his fictions, but it would be a great mistake

to suppose that they fully explain their charm. Defoe possessed genius,

and his secret is at the last as impalpable as the secret of genius

always is.

The character of Defoe, both mental and moral, is very clearly indicated

in his works. He, the satirist of the true-born Englishman, was himself

a model, with some notable variations and improvements, of the

Englishman of his period. He saw a great many things, and what he did

see he saw clearly. But there were also a great many things which he did

not see, and there was often no logical connexion whatever between his

vision and his blindness. The most curious example of this

inconsistency, or rather of this indifference to general principle,

occurs in his _Essay on Projects_. He there speaks very briefly and

slightingly of life insurance, probably because it was then regarded as

impious by religionists of his complexion. But on either side of this

refusal are to be found elaborate projects of friendly societies and

widows' funds, which practically cover, in a clumsy and roundabout

manner, the whole ground of life insurance. In morals it is evident that

he was, according to his lights, a strictly honest and honourable man.

But sentiment of any "high-flying" description--to use the cant word of

his time--was quite incomprehensible to him, or rather never presented

itself as a thing to be comprehended. He tells us with honest and simple

pride that when his patron Harley fell out, and Godolphin came in, he

for three years held no communication with the former, and seems quite

incapable of comprehending the delicacy which would have obliged him to

follow Harley's fallen fortunes. His very anomalous position in regard

to Mist is also indicative of a rather blunt moral perception. One of

the most affecting things in his novels is the heroic constancy and

fidelity of the maid Amy to her exemplary mistress Roxana. But Amy,

scarcely by her own fault, is drawn into certain breaches of definite

moral laws which Defoe did understand, and she is therefore condemned,

with hardly a word of pity, to a miserable end. Nothing heroic or

romantic was within Defoe's view; he could not understand passionate

love, ideal loyalty, aesthetic admiration or anything of the kind; and

it is probable that many of the little sordid touches which delight us

by their apparent satire were, as designed, not satire at all, but

merely a faithful representation of the feelings and ideas of the

classes of which he himself was a unit.

His political and economical pamphlets are almost unmatched as clear

presentations of the views of their writer. For driving the nail home no

one but Swift excels him, and Swift perhaps only in _The Drapier's

Letters_. There is often a great deal to be said against the view

presented in those pamphlets, but Defoe sees nothing of it. He was

perfectly fair but perfectly one-sided, being generally happily ignorant

of everything which told against his own view.

The same characteristics are curiously illustrated in his moral works.

The morality of these is almost amusing in its downright positive

character. With all the Puritan eagerness to push a clear,

uncompromising, Scripture-based distinction of right and wrong into the

affairs of every-day life, he has a thoroughly English horror of

casuistry, and his clumsy canons consequently make wild work with the

infinite intricacies of human nature. He is, in fact, an instance of the

tendency, which has so often been remarked by other nations in the

English, to drag in moral distinctions at every turn, and to confound

everything which is novel to the experience, unpleasant to the taste,

and incomprehensible to the understanding, under the general epithets of

wrong, wicked and shocking. His works of this class therefore are now

the least valuable, though not the least curious, of his books.

The earliest regular life and estimate of Defoe is that of Dr Towers

in the _Biographia Britannica_. George Chalmers's _Life_, however

(1786), added very considerable information. In 1830 Walter Wilson

wrote the standard _Life_ (3 vols.); it is coloured by political

prejudice, but is a model of painstaking care, and by its abundant

citations from works both of Defoe and of others, which are

practically inaccessible to the general reader, is invaluable. In 1859

appeared a life of Defoe by William Chadwick, an extraordinary

rhapsody in a style which is half Cobbett and half Carlyle, but

amusing, and by no means devoid of acuteness. In 1864 the discovery of

the six letters stirred up William Lee to a new investigation, and the

results of this were published (London, 1869) in three large volumes.

The first of these (well illustrated) contains a new life and

particulars of the author's discoveries. The second and third contain

fugitive writings assigned by Lee to Defoe for the first time. For

most of these, however, we have no authority but Lee's own impressions

of style, &c.; and consequently, though the best qualified judges will

in most cases agree that Defoe may very likely have written them, it

cannot positively be stated that he did. There is also a _Life_ by

Thomas Wright (1894). The _Earlier Life and Chief Earlier Works_ of

Defoe (1890) was included by Henry Morley in the "Carisbrooke

Library." Charles Lamb's criticisms were made in three short pieces,

two of which were written for Wilson's book, and the third for _The

Reflector_. The volume on _Defoe_ (1879) in the "English Men of

Letters" series is by W. Minto.

There is considerable uncertainty about many of Defoe's writings; and

even if all contested works be excluded, the number is still enormous.

Besides the list in Bohn's _Lowndes_, which is somewhat of an _omnium

gatherum_, three lists drawn with more or less care were compiled in

the 19th century. Wilson's contains 210 distinct works, three or four

only of which are marked as doubtful; Hazlitt's enumerates 183

"genuine" and 52 "attributed" pieces, with notes on most of them;

Lee's extends to 254, of which 64 claim to be new additions. The

reprint (3 vols.) edited for the "Pulteney Library" by Hazlitt in

1840-1843 contains a good and full life mainly derived from Wilson,

the whole of the novels (including the _Serious Reflections_ now

hardly ever published with _Robinson Crusoe_), _Jure Divino_, _The Use

and Abuse of Marriage_, and many of the more important tracts and

smaller works. There is also an edition, often called Scott's, but

really edited by Sir G. C. Lewis, in twenty volumes (London,

1840-1841). This contains the _Complete Tradesman_, _Religious

Courtship_, _The Consolidator_ and other works not comprised in

Hazlitt's. Scott had previously in 1809 edited for Ballantyne some of

the novels, in twelve volumes. Bohn's "British Classics" includes the

novels (except the third part of _Robinson Crusoe_), _The History of

the Devil_, _The Storm_, and a few political pamphlets, also the

undoubtedly spurious _Mother Ross_. In 1870 Nimmo of Edinburgh

published in one volume an admirable selection from Defoe. It contains

Chalmers's _Life_, annotated and completed from Wilson and Lee,

_Robinson Crusoe_, pts. i. and ii., _Colonel Jack_, _The Cavalier_,

_Duncan Campbell_, _The Plague_, _Everybody's Business_, _Mrs Veal_,

_The Shortest Way with Dissenters_, _Giving Alms no Charity_, _The

True-Born Englishman_, _Hymn to the Pillory_, and very copious

extracts from _The Complete English Tradesman_. An edition of Defoe's

_Romances and Narratives_ in sixteen volumes by G. A. Aitken came out

in 1895.

If we turn to separate works, the bibliography of Defoe is practically

confined (except as far as original editions are concerned) to

_Robinson Crusoe_. _Mrs Veal_ has been to some extent popularized by

the work which it helped to sell; _Religious Courtship_ and _The

Family Instructor_ had a vogue among the middle class until well into

the 19th century, and _The History of the Union_ was republished in

1786. But the reprints and editions of _Crusoe_ have been innumerable;

it has been often translated; and the eulogy pronounced on it by

Rousseau gave it special currency in France, where imitations (or

rather adaptations) have also been common.

In addition to the principal authorities already mentioned see John

Forster, _Historical and Biographical Essays_ (1858); G. Saintsbury,

"Introduction" to Defoe's _Minor Novels_; and valuable notes by G. A.

Aitken in _The Contemporary Review_ (February 1890), and _The

Athenaeum_ (April 30, 1889; August 31, 1890). A facsimile reprint

(1883) of _Robinson Crusoe_ has an introduction by Mr Austin Dobson.

Dr Karl T. Bulbring edited two unpublished works of Defoe, _The

Compleat English Gentleman_ (London, 1890) and _Of Royall Educacion_

(London, 1905), from British Museum Add. MS. 32,555. Further light was

thrown on Defoe's work as a political agent by the discovery (1906) of

an unpublished paper of his in the British Museum by G. F. Warner.

This was printed in the _English Historical Review_, and afterwards

separately.

DEGAS, HILAIRE GERMAIN EDGARD (1834- ), French painter, was born in

Paris on the 19th of July 1834. Entering in 1855 the Ecole des Beaux

Arts, he early developed independence of artistic outlook, studying

under Lamothe. He first exhibited in the Salon of 1865, contributing a

"War in the middle ages," a work executed in pastel. To this medium he

was ever faithful, using it for some of his best work. In 1866 his

"Steeplechase" revealed him as a painter of the racecourse and of all

the most modern aspects of life and of Parisian society, treated in an

extremely original manner. He subsequently exhibited in 1867 "Family

Portraits," and in 1868 a portrait of a dancer in the "Ballet of _La

Source_." In 1869 and 1870 he restricted himself to portraits; but

thenceforward he abandoned the Salons and attached himself to the

Impressionists. With Manet and Monet he took the lead of the new school

at its first exhibition in 1874, and repeatedly contributed to these

exhibitions (in 1876, 1878, 1879 and 1880). In 1868 he had shown his

first study of a dancer, and in numerous pastels he proclaimed himself

the painter of the ballet, representing its figurantes in every attitude

with more constant aim at truth than grace. Several of his works may be

seen at the Luxembourg Gallery, to which they were bequeathed, among a

collection of impressionist pictures, by M. Caillebotte. In 1880 Degas

showed his powers of observation in a set of "Portraits of Criminals,"

and he attempted modelling in a "Dancer," in wax. He afterwards returned

to his studies of the sporting world, exhibiting in December 1884 at the

Petit Gallery two views of "Races" which had a great success, proving

the increasing vogue of the artist among collectors. He is ranked with

Manet as the leader of the "impressionist school." At the eighth

Impressionist Exhibition, in 1886, Degas continued his realistic studies

of modern life, showing drawings of the nude, of workwomen, and of

jockeys. Besides his pastels and his paintings of genre and

portraits--among these, several likenesses of Manet--Degas also handled

his favourite subjects in etching and in aquatint; and executed several

lithographs of "Singers at Cafes-concert," of "Ballet-girls," and indeed

of every possible subject of night-life and incidents behind the scenes.

His work is to be seen not only at the Luxembourg but in many of the

great private collections in Paris, in England and America. In the

Centenary Exhibition of 1900 he exhibited "The Interior of a

Cotton-Broker's Office at New Orleans" (belonging to the Museum at Pau)

and "The Rehearsal."

See also G. Moore, "Degas, the Painter of Modern Life," _Magazine of

Art_ (1890); J. K. Huysmans, _Certains_ (Paris, 1889); G. Geffroy, _La

Vie Artistique_ (3^e Serie, Paris, 1894).

DE GEER, LOUIS GERHARD, BARON (1818-1896), Swedish statesman and writer,

was born on the 18th of July 1818 at Finspang castle. He adopted the

legal profession, and in 1855 became president of the Gota Hofret, or

lord justice of one of the Swedish supreme courts. From the 7th of April

1858 to the 3rd of June 1870 he was minister of justice. As a member of

the Upper House he took part in all the Swedish _Riksdags_ from 1851

onwards, though he seldom spoke. From 1867 to 1878 he was the member for

Stockholm in the first chamber, and introduced and passed many useful

reformatory statutes; but his greatest achievement, as a statesman, was

the reform of the Swedish representative system, whereby he substituted

a bi-cameral elective parliament, on modern lines, for the existing

cumbersome representation by estates, a survival from the later middle

ages. This great measure was accepted by the Riksdag in December 1865,

and received the royal sanction on the 22nd of June 1866. For some time

after this De Geer was the most popular man in Sweden. He retired from

the ministry in 1870, but took office again, as minister of justice, in

1875. In 1876 he became minister of state, which position he retained

till April 1880, when the failure of his repeated efforts to settle the

armaments' question again induced him to resign. From 1881 to 1888 he

was chancellor of the universities of Upsala and Lund. Besides several

novels and aesthetic essays, De Geer has written a few political memoirs

of supreme merit both as to style and matter, the most notable of which

are: _Minnesteckning ofver A. J. v. Hopken_ (Stockholm, 1881);

_Minnesteckning ofver Hans Jarta_ (Stockholm, 1874); _Minnesteckning

ofver B. B. von Platen_ (Stockholm, 1886); and his own _Minnen_

(Stockholm, 1892), an autobiography, invaluable as a historical

document, in which the political experience and the matured judgments of

a lifetime are recorded with singular clearness, sobriety and charm.

See _Sveriges historia_ (Stockholm, 1881, &c.), vi,; Carl Gustaf

Malmstrom, _Historiska Studier_ (Stockholm, 1897). (R. N. B.)

DEGGENDORF, or DECKENDORF, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria,

25 m. N.W. of Passau, on the left bank of the Danube, which is there

crossed by two iron bridges. Pop. (1905) 7154. It is situated at the

lower end of the beautiful valley of the Perlbach, and in itself it is a

well-built and attractive town. It possesses an old town hall dating

from 1566, a hospital, a lunatic asylum, an orphanage, and a large

parish church rebuilt in 1756; but the chief interest centres in the

church of the Holy Sepulchre, built in 1337, which attracts thousands of

pilgrims to its _Porta Caeli_ or _Gnadenpforte_ (Gate of Mercy) opened

annually on Michaelmas eve and closed again on the 4th of October. In

1837, on the celebration of the 500th anniversary of this solemnity, the

number of pilgrims was reckoned at nearly 100,000. Such importance as

the town possesses is now rather commercial than religious,--it being a

depot for the timber trade of the Bavarian forest, a station for the

Danube steamboat company, and the seat of several mills, breweries,

potteries and other industrial establishments. On the bank of the Danube

outside the town are the remains of the castle of Findelstein; and on

the Geiersberg (1243 ft.), in the immediate vicinity, stands another old

pilgrimage church. About 6 m. to the north is the village of Metten,

with a Benedictine monastery founded by Charlemagne in 801, restored as

an abbey in 1840 by Louis I. of Bavaria, and well known as an

educational institution. The first mention of Deggendorf occurs in 868,

and it appears as a town in 1212. Henry (d. 1290) of the Landshut branch

of the ruling family of Bavaria made it the seat of a custom-house; and

in 1331 it became the residence of Henry III. of Natternberg (d. 1333),

so called from a castle in the neighbourhood. In 1337 a wholesale

massacre of the Jews, who were accused of having thrown the sacred host

of the church of the Holy Sepulchre into a well, took place in the town;

and it is probably from about this date that the pilgrimage above

mentioned came into vogue. The town was captured by the Swedish forces

in 1633, and in the war of the Austrian Succession it was more than once

laid in ashes.

See Gruber and Muller, _Der bayerische Wald_ (Regensburg, 1851);

Mittermuller, _Die heil. Hostien und die Juden in Deggendorf_

(Landshut, 1866); and _Das Kloster Metten_ (Straubing, 1857).

DE HAAS, MAURITZ FREDERICK HENDRICK (1832-1895), American marine

painter, was born on the 12th of December 1832 in Rotterdam, Holland. He

studied art in the Rotterdam Academy and at The Hague, under Bosboom and

Louis Meyer, and in 1851-1852 in London, following the English

water-colourists of the day. In 1857 he received an artist's commission

in the Dutch navy, but in 1859, under the patronage of August Belmont,

who had recently been minister of the United States at The Hague, he

resigned and removed to New York city. He became an associate of the

National Academy in 1863 and an academician in 1867, and exhibited

annually in the academy, and in 1866 he was one of the founders of the

American Society of Painters in Water Colors. He died on the 23rd of

November 1895. His "Farragut Passing the Forts at the Battle of New

Orleans" and "The Rapids above Niagara," which were exhibited at the

Paris Exposition of 1878, were his best known but not his most typical

works, for his favourite subjects were storm and wreck, wind and heavy

surf, and less often moonlight on the coasts of Holland, of Jersey, of

New England, and of Long Island, and on the English Channel.

His brother, WILLIAM FREDERICK DE HAAS (1830-1880), who emigrated to New

York in 1854, was also a marine painter.

DEHRA, a town of British India, headquarters of the Dehra Dun district

in the United Provinces. Pop. (1901) 28,095. It lies at an elevation of

2300 ft. Here the Hardwar-Dehra railway terminates. Dehra is the

headquarters of the Trigonometrical Survey and of the Forest Department,

besides being a cantonment for a Gurkha force. The Forest School, which

trains subordinate forest officials for all parts of India, is a fine

building. Attached to it is an institution for the scientific study of

sylvi-culture and the exploitation and administration of forests. The

town of Dehra grew up round the temple built in 1699 by the heretical

Sikh Guru, Ram Rai, the founder of the Udasi sect of Ascetics. This

temple is a remarkable building in Mahommedan style. The central block,

in imitation of the emperor Jahangir's tomb, contains the bed on which

the Guru, after dying at will and coming back to life several times,

ultimately died outright; it is an object of great veneration. At the

corners of the central block are smaller monuments commemorating the

Guru's wives.

DEHRA DUN, a district of British India, in the Meerut division of the

United Provinces. Its area is 1209 sq. m. The district is bounded on the

N. by the native state of Tehri or Garhwal, on the E. by British

Garhwal, on the S. by the Siwalik hills, which separate it from

Saharanpur district, and on the W. by the hill states of Sirmur, Jubbal

and Taroch. The valley (the Dun) has an area of about 673 sq. m., and

forms a parallelogram 45 m. from N.W. to S.E. and 15 m. broad. It is

well wooded, undulating and intersected by streams. On the N.E. the

horizon is bounded by the Mussoorie or lower range of the Himalayas, and

on the S. by the Siwalik hills. The Himalayas in the north of the

district attain a height between 7000 and 8000 ft., one peak reaching an

elevation of 8565 ft.; the highest point of the Siwalik range is 3041

ft. above sea-level. The principal passes through the Siwalik hills are

the Timli pass, leading to the military station of Chakrata, and the

Mohand pass leading to the sanatoriums of Mussoorie and Landaur. The

Ganges bounds the Dehra valley on the E.; the Jumna bounds it on the W.

From a point about midway between the two rivers, and near the town of

Dehra, runs a ridge which forms the watershed of the valley. To the west

of this ridge the water collects to form the Asan, a tributary of the

Jumna; whilst to the east the Suswa receives the drainage and flows into

the Ganges. To the east the valley is characterized by swamps and

forests, but to the west the natural depressions freely carry off the

surface drainage. Along the central ridge, the water-level lies at a

great depth from the surface (228 ft.), but it rises gradually as the

country declines towards the great rivers. In 1901 the population was

178,195, showing an increase of 6% in the decade. A railway to Dehra

from Hardwar, on the Oudh and Rohilkhand line (32 m.), was completed in

1900. The district is served by the Dun canals. Tea gardens cover a

considerable area, and the valley contains a colony of European tea

planters.

_History._--Dehra Dun only emerges from the mists of legend into

authentic history in the 17th century A.D., when it formed part of the

Garhwal kingdom. Towards the end of the century the heretical Sikh Guru,

Ram Rai, expelled from the Punjab, sought refuge in the Dun and gathered

round him a crowd of devotees. Fateh Sah, raja of Garhwal, endowed the

temple which he built, round which grew up the town of Gurudwara or

Dehra (q.v.). In the 18th century the fertility of the valley attracted

the attention of Najib-ud-daula, governor of Saharanpur, who invaded it

with an army of Rohillas in 1757 and annexed it to his dominion. His

rule, which lasted till 1770, brought great prosperity to the Dun; but

on his death it became a prey to the surrounding tribes, its desolation

being completed after its conquest by the Gurkhas in 1803. In 1814 it

was taken possession of by the British, and in the following year was

annexed to Saharanpur. Under British administration the Dun rapidly

recovered its prosperity.

DEIOCES ([Greek: Deiokes]), according to Herodotus (i. 96 ff.) the first

king of the Medes. He narrates that, when the Medes had rebelled against

the Assyrians and gained their independence about 710 B.C., according to

his chronology (cf. Diodor. ii. 32), they lived in villages without any

political organization, and therefore the whole country was in a state

of anarchy. Then Deioces, son of Phraortes, an illustrious man of

upright character, was chosen judge in his village, and the justness of

his decisions induced the inhabitants of the other villages to throng to

him. At last the Medes resolved to make an end of the intolerable state

of their country by erecting a kingdom, and chose Deioces king. He now

caused them to build a great capital, Ecbatana, with a royal palace, and

introduced the ceremonial of oriental courts; he surrounded himself

with a guard and no longer showed himself to the people, but gave his

judgments in writing and controlled the people by officials and spies.

He united all the Median tribes, and ruled fifty-three years (c. 699-647

B.C.), though perhaps, as G. Rawlinson supposed, the fifty-three years

of his reign are exchanged by mistake with the twenty-two years of his

son Phraortes, under whom the Median conquests began.

The narration of Herodotus is only a popular tradition which derives the

origin of kingship from its judicial functions, considered as its

principal and most beneficent aspect. We know from the Assyrian

inscriptions that just at the time which Herodotus assigns to Deioces

the Medes were divided into numerous small principalities and subjected

to the great Assyrian conquerors. Among these petty chieftains, Sargon

in 715 mentions Dayukku, "lieutenant of Man" (he probably was,

therefore, a vassal of the neighbouring king of Man in the mountains of

south-eastern Armenia), who joined the Urartians and other enemies of

Assyria, but was by Sargon transported to Hamath in Syria "with his

clan." His district is called "bit-Dayaukki," "house of Deioces," also

in 713, when Sargon invaded these regions again. So it seems that the

dynasty, which more than half a century later succeeded in throwing off

the Assyrian yoke and founded the Median empire, was derived from this

Dayukku, and that his name was thus introduced into the Median

traditions, which contrary to history considered him as founder of the

kingdom. (Ed. M.)

DEIOTARUS, a tetrarch of Galatia (Gallo-Graecia) in Asia Minor, and a

faithful ally of the Romans. He is first heard of at the beginning of

the third Mithradatic war, when he drove out the troops of Mithradates

under Eumachus from Phrygia. His most influential friend was Pompey,

who, when settling the affairs of Asia (63 or 62 B.C.), rewarded him

with the title of king and an increase of territory (Lesser Armenia). On

the outbreak of the civil war, Deiotarus naturally sided with his old

patron Pompey, and after the battle of Pharsalus escaped with him to

Asia. In the meantime Pharnaces, the son of Mithradates, had seized

Lesser Armenia, and defeated Deiotarus near Nicopolis. Fortunately for

Deiotarus, Caesar at that time (47) arrived in Asia from Egypt, and was

met by the tetrarch in the dress of a suppliant. Caesar pardoned him for

having sided with Pompey, ordered him to resume his royal attire, and

hastened against Pharnaces, whom he defeated at Zela. In consequence of

the complaints of certain Galatian princes, Deiotarus was deprived of

part of his dominions, but allowed to retain the title of king. On the

death of Mithradates of Pergamum, tetrarch of the Trocmi, Deiotarus was

a candidate for the vacancy. Other tetrarchs also pressed their claims;

and, further, Deiotarus was accused by his grandson Castor of having

attempted to assassinate Caesar when the latter was his guest in

Galatia. Cicero, who entertained a high opinion of Deiotarus, whose

acquaintance he had made when governor of Cilicia, undertook his

defence, the case being heard in Caesar's own house at Rome. The matter

was allowed to drop for a time, and the assassination of Caesar

prevented any final decision being pronounced. In his speech Cicero

briefly dismisses the charge of assassination, the main question being

the distribution of the provinces, which was the real cause of the

quarrels between Deiotarus and his relatives. After Caesar's death, Mark

Antony, for a large monetary consideration, publicly announced that, in

accordance with instructions left by Caesar, Deiotarus was to resume

possession of all the territory of which he had been deprived. When

civil war again broke out, Deiotarus was persuaded to support Brutus and

Cassius, but after the battle of Philippi went over to the triumvirs. He

remained in possession of his kingdom till his death at a very advanced

age.

See Cicero, _Philippica_, ii. 37; _Ad fam._ viii. 10, ix. 12, xv. 1,

2, 4; _Ad Att._ xiv. 1; _De divin._ i. 15, ii. 36, 37; _De harusp.

resp._ 13, and above all _Pro rege Deiotaro_; Appian, _Bell. Mithrid._

75, 114; _Bellum Alexandrinum_, 34-41, 65-77; Dio Cassius xli. 63,

xlii. 45, xlvii. 24, 48, xlviii. 33.

DEIR, or DEIR EZ-ZOR, a town of Asiatic Turkey, on the right bank of the

Euphrates, 27(1/2) m. above its junction with the Khabor, lat. 35 deg.

20' N., long. 40 deg. 12' E. Pop. 8000 and upward, about one-tenth

Christians; except in the official classes, there are no Turks. It is

the capital and the only considerable town of the Zor sanjak, formed in

1857, which includes Ras el-'Ain on the north and Palmyra on the south,

with a total area of 32,820 sq. m., chiefly desert, and an estimated

population of 100,000, mostly Arab nomads. Deir itself is a thrifty and

rising town, having considerable traffic; it is singularly European in

appearance, with macadamized streets and a public garden. The name Deir

means monastery, but there is no other trace or tradition of the

occupation of the site before the 14th century, and until it became the

capital of the sanjak it was an insignificant village. It is an

important centre for the control of the Bedouin Arabs, and has a

garrison of about 1000 troops, including a special corps of mule-riders.

It is also a road centre, the roads from the Mediterranean to Bagdad by

way of Aleppo and Damascus respectively meeting here. A road also leads

northward, by Sinjar, to Mosul, crossing the river on a stone bridge,

built in 1897, the only permanent bridge over the Euphrates south of

Asia Minor. (J. P. Pe.)

DEIRA, the southern of the two English kingdoms afterwards united as

Northumbria. According to Simeon of Durham it extended from the Humber

to the Tyne, but the land was waste north of the Tees. York was the

capital of its kings. The date of its first settlement is quite unknown,

but the first king of whom we have any record is Ella or Aelle, the

father of Edwin, who is said to have been reigning about 585. After his

death Deira was subject to Aethelfrith, king of Northumbria, until the

accession of Edwin, in 616 or 617, who ruled both kingdoms (see Edwin)

till 633. Osric the nephew of Edwin ruled Deira (633-634), but his son

Oswine was put to death by Oswio in 651. For a few years subsequently

Deira was governed by Aethelwald son of Oswald.

See Bede, _Historia ecclesiastica_, ii. 14, iii. 1, 6, 14 (ed. C.

Plummer, Oxford, 1896); Nennius, _Historia Brittonum_, S 64 (ed. Th.

Mommsen, Berlin, 1898); Simeon of Durham, _Opera_, i. 339 (ed. T.

Arnold, London, 1882-1885). (F. G. M. B.)

DEISM (Lat. _deus_, god), strictly the belief in one supreme God. It is

however the received name for a current of rationalistic theological

thought which, though not confined to one country, or to any

well-defined period, was most conspicuous in England in the last years

of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century. The deists,

differing widely in important matters of belief, were yet agreed in

seeking above all to establish the certainty and sufficiency of natural

religion in opposition to the positive religions, and in tacitly or

expressly denying the unique significance of the supernatural revelation

in the Old and New Testaments. They either ignored the Scriptures,

endeavoured to prove them in the main by a helpful republication of the

_Evangelium aeternum_, or directly impugned their divine character,

their infallibility, and the validity of their evidences as a complete

manifestation of the will of God. The term "deism" not only is used to

signify the main body of the deists' teaching, or the tendency they

represent, but has come into use as a technical term for one specific

metaphysical doctrine as to the relation of God to the universe, assumed

to have been characteristic of the deists, and to have distinguished

them from atheists, pantheists and theists,--the belief, namely, that

the first cause of the universe is a personal God, who is, however, not

only distinct from the world but apart from it and its concerns.

The words "deism" and "deist" appear first about the middle of the 16th

century in France (cf. Bayle's _Dictionnaire, s.v._ "Viret," note D),

though the deistic standpoint had already been foreshadowed to some

extent by Averroists, by Italian authors like Boccaccio and Petrarch, in

More's _Utopia_ (1515), and by French writers like Montaigne, Charron

and Bodin. The first specific attack on deism in English was Bishop

Stillingfleet's _Letter to a Deist_ (1677). By the majority of those

historically known as the English deists, from Blount onwards, the name

was owned and honoured. They were also occasionally called

"rationalists." "Free-thinker" (in Germany, _Freidenker_) was generally

taken to be synonymous with "deist," though obviously capable of a

wider signification, and as coincident with _esprit fort_ and with

_libertin_ in the original and theological sense of the word.[1]

"Naturalists" was a name frequently used of such as recognized no god

but nature, of so-called Spinozists, atheists; but both in England and

Germany, in the 18th century, this word was more commonly and aptly in

use for those who founded their religion on the _lumen naturae_ alone.

It was evidently in common use in the latter half of the 16th century as

it is used by De Mornay in _De la verite de la religion chretienne_

(1581) and by Montaigne. The same men were not seldom assaulted under

the name of "theists"; the later distinction between "theist" and

"deist," which stamped the latter word as excluding the belief in

providence or in the immanence of God, was apparently formulated in the

end of the 18th century by those rationalists who were aggrieved at

being identified with the naturalists. (See also THEISM.)

The chief names amongst the deists are those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury

(1583-1648), Charles Blount (1654-1693), Matthew Tindal (1657-1733),

William Wollaston (1659-1724), Thomas Woolston (1669-1733), Junius Janus

(commonly known as John) Toland (1670-1722), the 3rd earl of Shaftesbury

(1671-1713), Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Anthony Collins

(1676-1729), Thomas Morgan (?-1743), and Thomas Chubb (1679-1747).[2]

Peter Annet (1693-1769), and Henry Dodwell (the younger; d. 1784), who

made his contribution to the controversy in 1742, are of less

importance. Of the eleven first named, ten appear to have been born

within twenty-five years of one another; and it is noteworthy that by

far the greater part of the literary activity of the deists, as well as

of their voluminous opponents, falls within the same half century.

The impulses that promoted a vein of thought cognate to deism were

active both before and after the time of its greatest notoriety. But

there are many reasons to show why, in the 17th century, men should have

set themselves with a new zeal, in politics, law and theology, to follow

the light of nature alone, and to cast aside the fetters of tradition

and prescriptive right, of positive codes, and scholastic systems, and

why in England especially there should, amongst numerous free-thinkers,

have been not a few free writers. The significance of the Copernican

system, as the total overthrow of the traditional conception of the

universe, dawned on all educated men. In physics, Descartes had prepared

the way for the final triumph of the mechanical explanation of the world

in Newton's system. In England the new philosophy had broken with

time-honoured beliefs more completely than it had done even in France;

Hobbes was more startling than Bacon. Locke's philosophy, as well as his

theology, served as a school for the deists. Men had become weary of

Protestant scholasticism; religious wars had made peaceful thinkers seek

to take the edge off dogmatical rancour; and the multiplicity of

religious sects, coupled with the complete failure of various attempts

at any substantial reconciliation, provoked distrust of the common basis

on which all were founded. There was a school of distinctively

latitudinarian thought in the Church of England; others not unnaturally

thought it better to extend the realm of the _adiaphora_ beyond the

sphere of Protestant ritual or the details of systematic divinity.

Arminianism had revived the rational side of theological method.

Semi-Arians and Unitarians, though sufficiently distinguished from the

free-thinkers by reverence for the letter of Scripture, might be held to

encourage departure from the ancient landmarks. The scholarly labours of

P. D. Huet, R. Simon, L. E. Dupin, and Jean Le Clerc (Clericus), of the

orientalists John Lightfoot, John Spencer and Humphrey Prideaux, of John

Mill, the collator of New Testament readings, and John Fell, furnished

new materials for controversy; and the scope of Spinoza's _Tractatus

theologico-politicus_ had naturally been much more fully apprehended

than ever his _Ethica_ could be. The success of the English revolution

permitted men to turn from the active side of political and theological

controversy to speculation and theory; and curiosity was more powerful

than faith. Much new ferment was working. The toleration and the free

press of England gave it scope. Deism was one of the results, and is an

important link in the chain of thought from the Reformation to our own

day.

Long before England was ripe to welcome deistic thought Lord Herbert of

Cherbury earned the name "Father of Deism" by laying down the main line

of that religious philosophy which in various forms continued ever after

to be the backbone of deistic systems. He based his theology on a

comprehensive, if insufficient, survey of the nature, foundation, limits

and tests of human knowledge. And amongst the divinely implanted,

original, indefeasible _notitiae communes_ of the human mind, he found

as foremost his five articles:--that there is one supreme God, that he

is to be worshipped, that worship consists chiefly of virtue and piety,

that we must repent of our sins and cease from them, and that there are

rewards and punishments here and hereafter. Thus Herbert sought to do

for the religion of nature what his friend Grotius was doing for natural

law,--making a new application of the standard of Vincent of Lerins,

_Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_. It is important to notice

that Herbert, as English ambassador at Paris, united in himself the

currents of French and English thought, and also that his De Veritate,

published in Latin and translated into French, did not appear in an

English version.

Herbert had hardly attempted a systematic criticism of the Christian

revelation either as a whole or in its details. Blount, a man of a very

different spirit, did both, and in so doing may be regarded as having

inaugurated the second main line of deistic procedure, that of

historico-critical examination of the Old and New Testaments. Blount

adopted and expanded Hobbes's arguments against the Mosaic authorship of

the Pentateuch; and, mainly in the words of Burnet's _Archeologiae

philosophicae_, he asserts the total inconsistency of the Mosaic

Hexaemeron with the Copernican theory of the heavens, dwelling with

emphasis on the impossibility of admitting the view developed in

Genesis, that the earth is the most important part of the universe. He

assumes that the narrative was meant _ethically_, not _physically_, in

order to eliminate false and polytheistic notions; and he draws

attention to that double narrative in Genesis which was elsewhere to be

so fruitfully handled. The examination of the miracles of Apollonius of

Tyana, professedly founded on papers of Lord Herbert's, is meant to

suggest similar considerations with regard to the miracles of Christ.

Naturalistic explanations of some of these are proposed, and a mythical

theory is distinctly foreshadowed when Blount dwells on the inevitable

tendency of men, especially long after the event, to discover miracles

attendant on the birth and death of their heroes. Blount assaults the

doctrine of a mediator as irreligious. He dwells much more pronouncedly

than Herbert on the view, afterwards regarded as a special

characteristic of all deists, that much or most error in religion has

been invented or knowingly maintained by sagacious men for the easier

maintenance of good government, or in the interests of themselves and

their class. And when he heaps suspicion, not on Christian dogmas, but

on beliefs of which the resemblance to Christian tenets is sufficiently

patent, the real aim is so transparent that his method seems to partake

rather of the nature of literary eccentricity than of polemical

artifice; yet by this disingenuous indirectness he gave his argument

that savour of duplicity which ever after clung to the popular

conception of deism.

Shaftesbury, dealing with matters for the most part different from those

usually handled by the deists, stands almost wholly out of their ranks.

But he showed how loosely he held the views he did not go out of his way

to attack, and made it plain how little weight the letter of Scripture

had for himself; and, writing with much greater power than any of the

deists, he was held to have done more than any one of them to forward

the cause for which they wrought. Founding ethics on the native and

cultivable capacity in men to appreciate worth in men and actions, and,

like the ancient Greek thinkers whom he followed, associating the

apprehension of morality with the apprehension of beauty, he makes

morality wholly independent of scriptural enactment, and still more, of

theological forecasting of future bliss or agony. He yet insisted on

religion as the crown of virtue; and, arguing that religion is

inseparable from a high and holy enthusiasm for the divine plan of the

universe, he sought the root of religion in feeling, not in accurate

beliefs or meritorious good works. He set little store on the theology

of those who in a system of dry and barren notions "pay handsome

compliments to the Deity," "remove providence," "explode devotion," and

leave but "little of zeal, affection, or warmth in what they call

rational religion." In the protest against the scheme of "judging truth

by counting noses," Shaftesbury recognized the danger of the standard

which seemed to satisfy many deists; and in almost every respect he has

more in common with those who afterwards, in Germany, annihilated the

pretensions of complacent rationalism than with the rationalists

themselves.

Toland, writing at first professedly without hostility to any of the

received elements of the Christian faith, insisted that Christianity was

not mysterious, and that the value of religion could not lie in any

unintelligible or self-contradictory elements; though we cannot know the

real essence of God or of any of his creatures, yet our beliefs about

God must be thoroughly consistent with reason. Afterwards, Toland

discussed, with considerable real learning and much show of candour, the

comparative evidence for the canonical and apocryphal Scriptures, and

demanded a careful and complete historical examination of the grounds on

which our acceptance of the New Testament canon rests. He contributed

little to the solution of the problem, but forced the investigation of

the canon alike on theologians and the reading public. Again, he

sketched a view of early church history, further worked out by Johann

Salomo Semler (1725-1791), and surprisingly like that which was later

elaborated by the Tubingen school. He tried to show, both from Scripture

and extra-canonical literature, that the primitive church, so far from

being an incorporate body of believers with the same creed and customs,

really consisted of two schools, each possessing its "own gospel"--a

school of Ebionites or Judaizing Christians, and the more liberal school

of Paul. These parties, consciously but amicably differing in their

whole relation to the Jewish law and the outside world, were

subsequently forced into a non-natural uniformity. The cogency of

Toland's arguments was weakened by his manifest love of paradox.

Wollaston upheld the "intellectual" theory of morality, and all his

reasoning is independent of any authority or evidence derived from

revelation. His system was simplicity itself, all sin being reduced to

the one form of lying. He favoured the idea of a future life as being

necessary to set right the mistakes and inequalities of the present.

Collins, who had created much excitement by his _Discourse of

Free-thinking_, insisting on the value and necessity of unprejudiced

inquiry, published at a later stage of the deistic controversy the

famous argument on the evidences of Christianity. Christianity is

founded on Judaism; its main prop is the argument from the fulfilment of

prophecy. Yet no interpretation or rearrangement of the text of Old

Testament prophecies will secure a fair and non-allegorical

correspondence between these and their alleged fulfilment in the New

Testament. The inference is not expressly drawn, though it becomes

perfectly clear from his refutation of William Whiston's curious counter

theory that there were in the original Hebrew scriptures prophecies

which were literally fulfilled in the New Testament, but had been

expunged at an early date by Jewish scribes. Collins indicates the

possible extent to which the Jews may have been indebted to Chaldeans

and Egyptians for their theological views, especially as great part of

the Old Testament would appear to have been remodelled by Ezra; and,

after dwelling on the points in which the prophecies attributed to

Daniel differ from all other Old Testament predictions, he states the

greater number of the arguments still used to show that the book of

Daniel deals with events past and contemporaneous, and is from the pen

of a writer of the Maccabean period, a view now generally accepted.

Collins resembles Blount in "attacking specific Christian positions

rather than seeking for a foundation on which to build the edifice of

Natural Religion." Amongst those who replied to him were Richard

Bentley, Edward Chandler, bishop of Lichfield, and Thomas Sherlock,

afterwards bishop of London, who also attacked Woolston. They refuted

him easily on many specific points, but carefully abstained from

discussing the real question at issue, namely the propriety of free

inquiry.

Woolston, at first to all appearance working earnestly in behalf of an

allegorical but believing interpretation of the New Testament miracles,

ended by assaulting, with a yet unknown violence of speech, the

absurdity of accepting them as actual historical events, and did his

best to overthrow the credibility of Christ's principal miracles. The

bitterness of his outspoken invective against the clergy, against all

priestcraft and priesthood, was a new feature in deistic literature, and

injured the author more than it furthered his cause.

Tindal's aim seems to have been a sober statement of the whole case in

favour of natural religion, with copious but moderately worded criticism

of such beliefs and usages in the Christian and other religions as he

conceived to be either non-religious or directly immoral and

unwholesome. The work in which he endeavoured to prove that true

Christianity is as old as the creation, and is really but the

republication of the gospel of nature, soon gained the name of the

"Deist's Bible." It was against Tindal that the most important of the

orthodox replies were directed, e.g. John Conybeare's _Defence of

Revealed Religion_, William Law's _Case of Reason_ and, to a large

extent, Butler's _Analogy_.

Morgan criticized with great freedom the moral character of the persons

and events of Old Testament history, developing the theory of conscious

"accommodation" on the part of the leaders of the Jewish church. This

accommodation of truth, by altering the form and substance of it to meet

the views and secure the favour of ignorant and bigoted contemporaries,

Morgan attributes also to the apostles and to Jesus. He likewise expands

at great length a theory of the origin of the Catholic Church much like

that sketched by Toland, but assumes that Paul and his party, latterly

at least, were distinctly hostile to the Judaical party of their

fellow-believers in Jesus as the Messias, while the college of the

original twelve apostles and their adherents viewed Paul and his

followers with suspicion and disfavour. Persecution from without Morgan

regards as the influence which mainly forced the antagonistic parties

into the oneness of the catholic and orthodox church. Morgan "seems to

have discerned the dawning of a truer and better method" than the

others. "He saw dimly that things require to be accounted for as well as

affirmed or denied," and he was "one of the pioneers of modern

historical science as applied to biblical criticism."

Annet made it his special work to invalidate belief in the resurrection

of Christ, and to discredit the work of Paul.

Chubb, the least learnedly educated of the deists, did more than any of

them, save Herbert, to round his system into a logical whole. From the

New Testament he sought to show that the teaching of Christ

substantially coincides with natural religion as he understood it. But

his main contention is that Christianity is not a doctrine but a life,

not the reception of a system of truths or facts, but a pious effort to

live in accordance with God's will here, in the hope of joining him

hereafter. Chubb dwells with special emphasis on the fact that Christ

preached the gospel to the poor, and argues, as Tindal had done, that

the gospel must therefore be accessible to all men without any need for

learned study of evidences for miracles, and intelligible to the meanest

capacity. He sought to show that even in the New Testament there are

essential contradictions, and instances the unconditional forgiveness

preached by Christ in the gospels as compared with Paul's doctrine of

forgiveness by the mediation of Christ. Externally Chubb is interesting

as representing the deism of the people contrasted with that of Tindal

the theologian.

Dodwell's ingenious thesis, that Christianity is not founded on

argument, was certainly not meant as an aid to faith; and, though its

starting-point is different from all other deistical works, it may

safely be reckoned amongst their number.

Though himself contemporary with the earlier deists, Bolingbroke's

principal works were posthumously published after interest in the

controversy had declined. His whole strain, in sharp contrast to that of

most of his predecessors, is cynical and satirical, and suggests that

most of the matters discussed were of small personal concern to himself.

He gives fullest scope to the ungenerous view that a vast proportion of

professedly revealed truth was ingeniously palmed off by the more

cunning on the more ignorant for the convenience of keeping the latter

under. But he writes with keenness and wit, and knows well how to use

the materials already often taken advantage of by earlier deists.

Before passing on to a summary of the deistic position, it is necessary

to say something of the views of Conyers Middleton (q.v.), who, though

he never actually severed himself from orthodoxy, yet advanced theories

closely analogous to those of the deists. His most important theological

work was that devoted to an exposure of patristic miracles. His attack

was based largely on arguments which could be turned with equal force

against the miracles of the New Testament, and he even went further than

previous rationalists in impugning the credibility of statements as to

alleged miracles emanating from martyrs and the fathers of the early

church. That Middleton was prepared to carry this type of argument into

the apostolic period is shown by certain posthumous essays

(_Miscellaneous Works_; ii. pp. 255 ff.), in which he charges the New

Testament writers with inconsistency and the apostles with suppressing

their cherished beliefs on occasions of difficulty.

In the substance of what they received as natural religion, the deists

were for the most part agreed; Herbert's articles continued to contain

the fundamentals of their theology. Religion, though not identified with

morality, had its most important outcome in a faithful following of the

eternal laws of morality, regarded as the will of God. With the virtuous

life was further to be conjoined a humble disposition to adore the

Creator, avoiding all factitious forms of worship as worse than useless.

The small value they attributed to all outward and special forms of

service, and the want of any sympathetic craving for the communion of

saints, saved the deists from attempting to found a free-thinking

church. They seem generally to have inclined to a quietistic

accommodation to established forms of faith, till better times came.

They steadfastly sought to eliminate the miraculous from theological

belief, and to expel from the system of religious truth all debatable,

difficult or mysterious articles. They aimed at a rational and

intelligible faith, professedly in order to make religion, in all its

width and depth, the heritage of every man. They regarded with as much

suspicion the notion of a "peculiar people" of God, as of a unique

revelation, and insisted on the possibility of salvation for the

heathen. They rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, and protested

against mediatorship, atonement and the imputed righteousness of Christ,

always laying more stress on the teaching of Christ than on the teaching

of the church about him; but they repeatedly laid claim to the name of

Christians or of Christian deists. Against superstition, fanaticism and

priestcraft they protested unceasingly. They all recognized the soul of

man--not regarded as intellectual alone--as the ultimate court of

appeal. But they varied much in their attitude towards the Bible. Some

were content to argue their own ideas into Scripture, and those they

disliked out of it; to one or two it seemed a satisfaction to discover

difficulties in Scripture, to point to historical inaccuracies and moral

defects. Probably Chubb's position on this head is most fairly

characteristic of deism. He holds that the narrative, especially of the

New Testament, is in the main accurate, but, as written after the events

narrated, has left room for misunderstandings and mistakes. The apostles

were good men, to whom, after Christ, we are most indebted; but they

were fairly entitled to their own private opinions, and naturally

introduced these into their writings. The epistles, according to Chubb,

contain errors of fact, false interpretations of the Old Testament, and

sometimes disfigurement of religious truth.

The general tendency of the deistical writings is sufficiently

self-consistent to justify a common name. But deism is not a compact

system nor is it the outcome of any one line of philosophical thought.

Of matters generally regarded as pertaining to natural religion, that on

which they were least agreed was the certainty, philosophical

demonstrability and moral significance of the immortality of the soul,

so that the deists have sometimes been grouped into "mortal" and

"immortal" deists. For some the belief in future rewards and punishments

was an essential of religion; some seem to have questioned the doctrine

as a whole; and, while others made it a basis of morality, Shaftesbury

protested against the ordinary theological form of the belief as

immoral. No two thinkers could well be more opposed than Shaftesbury and

Hobbes; yet sometimes ideas from both were combined by the same writer.

Collins was a pronounced necessitarian; Morgan regarded the denial of

free will as tantamount to atheism. And nothing can be more misleading

than to assume that the belief in a Creator, existent wholly apart from

the work of his hands, was characteristic of the deists as a body. In

none of them is any theory on the subject specially prominent, except

that in their denial of miracles, of supernatural revelation, and a

special redemptive interposition of God in history, they seem to have

thought of providence much as the mass of their opponents did. Herbert

starts his chief theological work with the design of vindicating God's

providence. Shaftesbury vigorously protests against the notion of a

wholly transcendent God. Morgan more than once expresses a theory that

would now be pronounced one of immanence. Toland, the inventor of the

name of pantheism, was notoriously, for a great part of his life, in

some sort a pantheist. And while as thinkers they diverged in their

opinions, so too they differed radically in character, in reverence for

their subject and in religious earnestness and moral worth.

The deists were not powerful writers; none of them was distinguished by

wide and accurate scholarship; hardly any was either a deep or

comprehensive thinker. But though they generally had the best

scholarship of England against them, they were bold, acute,

well-informed men; they appreciated more fully than their contemporaries

not a few truths now all but universally accepted; and they seemed

therefore entitled to leave their mark on subsequent theological

thought. Yet while the seed they sowed was taking deep root in France

and in Germany, the English deists, the most notable men of their time,

were soon forgotten, or at least ceased to be a prominent factor in the

intellectual life of the century. The controversies they had provoked

collapsed, and deism became a by-word even amongst those who were in no

degree anxious to appear as champions of orthodoxy.

The fault was not wholly in the subjectivism of the movement. But the

subjectivism that founded its theology on the "common sense" of the

individual was accompanied by a fatal pseudo-universalism which, cutting

away all that was peculiar, individual and most intense in all

religions, left in any one of them but a lifeless form. A theology

consisting of a few vague generalities was sufficient to sustain the

piety of the best of the deists; but it had not the concreteness or

intensity necessary to take a firm hold on those whom it emancipated

from the old beliefs. The negative side of deism came to the front, and,

communicated with fatal facility, seems ultimately to have constituted

the deism that was commonly professed at the clubs of the wits and the

tea-tables of polite society. But the intenser religious life before

which deism fell was also a revolt against the abstract and

argumentative orthodoxy of the time.

That the deists appreciated fully the scope of difficulties in Christian

theology and the sacred books is not their most noteworthy feature; but

that they made a stand, sometimes cautiously, often with outspoken

fearlessness, against the presupposition that the Bible is the religion

of Protestants. They themselves gave way to another presupposition

equally fatal to true historical research, though in great measure

common to them and their opponents. It was assumed by deists in

debating against the orthodox, that the flood of error in the hostile

camp was due to the benevolent cunning or deliberate self-seeking of

unscrupulous men, supported by the ignorant with the obstinacy of

prejudice.

Yet deism deserves to be remembered as a strenuous protest against

bibliolatry in every degree and against all traditionalism in theology.

It sought to look not a few facts full in the face, from a new point of

view and with a thoroughly modern though unhistorical spirit. It was not

a religious movement; and though, as a defiance of the accepted

theology, its character was mainly theological, the deistical crusade

belongs, not to the history of the church, or of dogma, but to the

history of general culture. It was an attitude of mind, not a body of

doctrine; its nearest parallel is probably to be found in the eclectic

strivings of the Renaissance philosophy and the modernizing tendencies

of cisalpine humanism. The controversy was assumed to be against

prejudice, ignorance, obscurantism; what monks were to Erasmus the

clergy as such were to Woolston. Yet English deism was in many ways

characteristically English. The deists were, as usually happens with the

leaders of English thought, no class of professional men, but

represented every rank in the community. They made their appeal in the

mother tongue to all men who could read and think, and sought to reduce

the controversy to its most direct practical issue. And, with but one or

two exceptions, they avoided wildness in their language as much as in

the general scheme of theology they proposed. If at times they had

recourse to ambiguity of speech and veiled polemic, this might be partly

excused when we remember the hanging of Thomas Aikenhead in 1697 for

ridiculing the Bible, and Woolston's imprisonment in 1729.

French deism, the direct progeny of the English movement, was equally

short-lived. Voltaire during his three years' residence in England

(1726-1729) absorbed an enthusiasm for freedom of thought, and provided

himself with the arguments necessary to support the deism which he had

learned in his youth; he was to the end a deist of the school of

Bolingbroke. Rousseau, though not an active assailant of Christianity,

could have claimed kindred with the nobler deists. Diderot was for a

time heartily in sympathy with deistic thought; and the _Encyclopedie_

was in its earlier portion an organ of deism. Even in the Roman Catholic

Church a large number of the leading divines were frankly deistic, nor

were they for that reason regarded as irreligious. But as Locke's

philosophy became in France sensationalism, and as Locke's pregnant

question, reiterated by Collins, how we know that the divine power might

not confer thought on matter, led the way to dogmatic materialism, so

deism soon gave way to forms of thought more directly and completely

subversive of the traditional theology. None the less it is

unquestionable that in the period preceding the Revolution the bulk of

French thinkers were ultimately deists in various degrees, and that

deism was a most potent factor not only in speculative but also in

social and political development. Many of the leaders of the

revolutionary movement were deists, though it is quite false to say that

the extreme methods of the movement were the result of widespread

rationalism.

In Germany there was a native free-thinking theology nearly contemporary

with that of England, whence it was greatly developed and supplemented.

Among the earliest names are those of Georg Schade (1712-1795), J. B.

Basedow (1723-1790), the educationist, Johann August Eberhard (q.v.);

and K. F. Bahrdt, who regarded Christ as merely a noble teacher like

Moses, Confucius and Luther. The compact rational philosophy of Wolff

nourished a theological rationalism which in H. S. Reimarus was wholly

undistinguishable from dogmatic deism, and was undoubtedly to a great

extent adopted by Lessing; while, in the case of the historico-critical

school to which J. S. Sender belonged, the distinction is not always

easily drawn--although these rationalists professedly recognized in

Scripture a real divine revelation, mingled with local and temporary

elements. It deserves to be noted here that the former, the theology of

the _Aufklarung_, was, like that of the deists, destined to a

short-lived notoriety; whereas the solid, accurate and scholarly

researches of the rationalist critics of Germany, undertaken with no

merely polemical spirit, not only form an epoch in the history of

theology, but have taken a permanent place in the body of theological

science. Ere _rationalismus vulgaris_ fell before the combined assault

of Schleiermacher's subjective theology and the deeper historical

insight of the Hegelians, it had found a refuge successively in the

Kantian postulates of the practical reason, and in the vague but earnest

faith-philosophy of Jacobi.

Outside France, Germany and England, there were no great schools of

thought distinctively deistic, though in most countries there is to be

found a rationalistic anti-clerical movement which partakes of the

character of deism. It seems probable, for example, that in Portugal the

marquis de Pombal was in reality a deist, and both in Italy and in Spain

there were signs of the same rationalistic revolt. More certain, and

also more striking, is the fact that the leading statesmen in the

American War of Independence were emphatically deists; Benjamin Franklin

(who attributes his position to the study of Shaftesbury and Collins),

Thomas Paine, Washington and Jefferson, although they all had the

greatest admiration for the New Testament story, denied that it was

based on any supernatural revelation. For various reasons the movement

in America did not appear on the surface to any great extent, and after

the comparative failure of Elihu Palmer's _Principles of Nature_ it

expressed itself chiefly in the spread of Unitarianism.

In England, though the deists were forgotten, their spirit was not

wholly dead. For men like Hume and Gibbon the standpoint of deism was

long left behind; yet Gibbon's famous two chapters might well have been

written by a deist. Even now many undoubtedly cling to a theology nearly

allied to deism. Rejecting miracles and denying the infallibility of

Scripture, protesting against Calvinistic views of sovereign grace and

having no interest in evangelical Arminianism, the faith of such

inquirers seems fairly to coincide with that of the deists. Even some

cultured theologians, the historical representatives of

latitudinarianism, seem to accept the great body of what was contended

for by the deists. Moreover, the influence of the deistic writers had an

incalculable influence in the gradual progress towards tolerance, and in

the spread of a broader attitude towards intellectual problems, and this

too, though, as we have seen, the original deists devoted themselves

mainly to a crusade against the doctrine of revelation.

The original deists displayed a singular incapacity to understand the

true conditions of history; yet amongst them there were some who pointed

the way to the truer, more generous interpretation of the past. When

Shaftesbury wrote that "religion is still a discipline, and progress of

the soul towards perfection," he gave birth to the same thought that was

afterwards hailed in Lessing's _Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes_ as

the dawn of a fuller and a purer light on the history of religion and on

the development of the spiritual life of mankind.

AUTHORITIES.--See John Leland, _A View of the Principal Deistical

Writers_ (2 vols., 1754-1756; ed. 1837); G. V. Lechler, _Geschichte

des englischen Deismus_ (2 vols., 1841); L. Noack, _Die Freidenker in

der Religion_ (Bern, 1853-1855); John Hunt, _Religious Thought in

England_ (3 vols., 1870-1872); Leslie Stephen, _History of English

Thought in the 18th Century_ (2 vols., 1876); A. S. Farrar, _A

Critical History of Free Thought_ (1862, Bampton Lectures); J. H.

Overton and F. Relton, _The English Church from the Accession of

George I. to the end of the 18th Century_ (1906; especially chap. iv.,

"The Answer to Deism"); A. W. Benn, _History of English Rationalism in

the 19th Century_ (1906); i. 111 ff.; J. M. Robertson, _Short History

of Free Thought_ (1906); G. Ch. B. Punjer, _Geschichte der

christlichen Religionsphilosophie seit der Reformation_ (Brunswick,

1880); M. W. Wiseman, _Dynamics of Religion_ (London, 1897), pt. ii.;

article "Deismus" in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopadie_ (vol. iv.,

1898).