a Benedictine Nunnery, and Bishop Alcock, of Ely, its founder, when
he did away with the discredited sisterhood, adapted their ruined
buildings instead of destroying them. The college was erected to the
honour of the Blessed Virgin, St. John, and St. Radegund, but Alcock
added the new title which it still bears. The names of Prioresses
are preserved from Letitia, _circa_ 1213, to Joan Fulbourne, 1493.
Though we do not know precisely when the nuns began, there is an
unusual amount of records left concerning them which tend to show that
they were distinguished in family rather than learning, and given to
hospitality as well as good works. They owed their butcher £21 at a
time when a sheep cost a shilling. Let us hope that the good man's
daughters learnt something as boarders in the St. Radegund Guest
House. What can be gathered concerning early days is told pleasantly.
It may seem odd that a nunnery should exist in Cambridge, quite near
the site of the famous Sturbridge Fair; but the ladies started before
the colleges began, and they were some way off the nucleus of academic
buildings. The excellent sketches are a great addition to the book.
The beautiful piscina figured on page 286 has long been familiar to
lovers of Cambridge architecture, but new discoveries have been made
since Le Keux published his _Memorials_ in 1845. Jesus has been lucky
in its antiquaries and historians, also in escaping the full fervour
of that debased Gothic which flourished in the nineteenth century.
The discovery of the Chapter Arches by the Rev. Osmond Fisher in 1893
is quite a romance. He was able to supplement many years earlier the
indolence of a Master and save the Tower from falling.
The notes, other than architectural, chronicle the varying fortunes
of the foundation, with details of the plague, plays in English and
Latin, militant and destructive commissioners, and worthies like Tobias
Rustat, Yeoman of the Robes to Charles II. Cranmer's is the first name
in the college lists, and it has always been distinguished in theology,
though for most people its main modern reputation is for athletics.
This side of the college is, however, not touched by the authors, who
deal with reverend signiors and men famous in literature.
The college can boast of Sterne, whose grandfather was one of its
masters; but nothing is known of his academic behaviour. This is just
as well, since his associate Hall-Stevenson can hardly have been a
model young man. Coleridge, the only poet, we think, who ever won an
academic prize for a Greek Ode, was decidedly eccentric, and had a
reputation for saying good things, as we learn from the lively pages of
Gunning. He was treated with great leniency by the dons of Jesus, and
left through his own perversity. His poetry at this time is negligible,
and his lines "to a young Jackass on Jesus Piece," whom he wished to
take with him,
in the Dell
Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell,
reveal the coming exponent of Pantisocracy. We do not think that his
rowdiness at the trial of Frend in the Senate House is to his credit,
in spite of his explanations.
The work of both writer and artist shows a genuine enthusiasm for the
college and its memories. Both illustrations and print gain by the
ample page; but a book weighing well over two-and-a-half pounds will
hardly do as a "handbook."
COMRADES IN CAPTIVITY. By F. W. HARVEY. Sidgwick & Jackson. 10_s._
6_d._ net.
Mr. Harvey's book strikes one immediately as amazingly truthful. He not
only gives one facts about his prison life in Germany, he avoids giving
too many facts. Deliberately he refuses to be preoccupied with the mere
horrors, or the beastliness of some of his captors, or the nervous
strain on the prisoners. And this surely is artistically right, if one
is to get a picture of what prison life meant to the average normal
prisoner. The men who wished to retain sanity had to keep out of their
minds, so far as they could, the things which Mr. Harvey leaves out of
his book. They endeavoured by work, by lectures, by concerts, by games,
by theatrical performances to recall continuously to themselves that
normal life still prescribed in spite of their untoward fate. And nobly
most of them succeeded. Perhaps some of their efforts were a little
uncalled-for. For instance, Mr. Harvey tells us that on their first
arrival at Guterslob new prisoners were treated quite formally by their
fellow-countrymen:
New arrivals were not ignored by the British. There was a system
whereby they even fed (German food being totally inadequate) until
their own parcels began to arrive. Clothes, too, were served out to
those who seemed in need. And there were invitations to tea with
senior officers and officials. Such preliminaries accomplished,
however, one was dropped like a hot coal--for a time, that is, until
one had proved oneself.
And he also states that when at Crefeld all prisoners other than
British were turned out. "We thought it damnable." The truth is our
Allies had been, far more than we realised, an interest and diversion
in captivity. Certainly it must have seemed odd to be made welcome
by Russians and French rather than by one's fellow-countrymen, and
we think it is due not, as Mr. Harvey, "to the national tradition,"
but to the public school and university tradition of the new boy
and the freshman. Mr. Harvey enlivens his book with specimen
lectures--including an excellent one of his own on Shaw--poems and
anecdotes; and there are amusingly rough sketches by Mr. C. G. B.
Bernard.
WILLIAM SMITH, POTTER AND FARMER, 1790-1858. By GEORGE BOURNE. Chatto.
1920. 6_s._ net.
Mr. Bourne has written a beautiful and sensitive little book about his
grandfather, and his own memories of his grandfather's village. It has
in it that deep and still appreciation of English country and of the
ways of English peasants, which is so common to all who know and love
them, and so very rarely expressed. It has the quality of Jefferies
at his best, and of Mr. Hudson too. The scenes which he evokes--the
broad green spaces, the silence, the interminable round of tasks, the
handling of the earth and its store--will never come again in the
places of which he tells us. Farnborough, Frimley, Camberley, Yateley
are suburbs of London, over-run by the spawn of Aldershot and the
railway. Nowadays one must go further afield to realise the presence of
Saint Use; and a term seems to be set even there. It is not that, in
the Roman poet's phrase, _Nos patriæ fines et dulcia linquimus arva_:
rather that those fair fields are flying further from us--as well they
may, seeing what we make of them. Such a book as Mr. Bourne's will be
treasured hereafter for the sake of the quiet beauty and homely virtues
which it records, but very much also for the tenderness and fidelity
with which it does its work.
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
COAL MINING AND THE COAL MINER. By H. F. BULMAN, M.I.Min.E., Assoc. M.
Inst. C.E., F.G.S. Methuen. 15_s._
NATIONALISATION OF THE MINES. By FRANK HODGES, Secretary of the Miners'
Federation of Great Britain. With Foreword by the Right Hon. J. R.
CLYNES, M.P. Leonard Parsons. 4_s._ 6_d._
Mr. Bulman is a mining engineer who has been a colliery manager and
a director of colliery companies, and he has a wide knowledge of the
subject. He has much of interest and value to say about the getting
of coal, the technical processes and the machinery, the work of the
miners and their dangers. But he does not confine himself to these
matters; he deals with many of the controversial questions that
are exercising the public mind at the moment. His book was written
unfortunately--or fortunately--before the Coal Commission, as he
puts it, "commenced its novel proceedings," and his allusions to the
evidence it took and the reports it issued are confined to a note or
two here and there. There is no doubt, however, which side he is on.
Though sympathetic enough to the miners, he has plenty of hard words
to say of their Trade Unions. He deplores the prevalence of ca'canny,
of absenteeism, of the aggressive spirit shown towards the employers.
Over Government interference he waxes very bitter; many of the rules
and regulations imposed on the management for the safety of the miners
rouse his ire, whilst the Minimum Wage Act he regards as utterly
mischievous, since it "encourages the indolence which is so prominent
a characteristic of human nature." The longest chapter in the book
discusses in considerable detail--and with many attractive plans and
pictures--the housing of the miners. Mr. Bulman thinks that it is very
unfair to throw the blame for bad housing conditions on the colliery
owners, who, he says, have done more than most employers to provide
houses for those they employ. But many, we think, who have read the
evidence given to the Royal Commission, whatever may be their views on
the proper method of running the coal industry, will find themselves at
issue with Mr. Bulman on that point.
Mr. Hodges makes a direct and ably-reasoned appeal for the
nationalisation of the mines. He is, we think, at rather needless pains
to disclaim "politics" in his book. His main emphasis is certainly
on the economic aspect of the problem; but he cannot avoid being
"political" in the largest sense. He exposes, with a good deal more
stress than Mr. Bulman, the wasteful methods of coal production by the
3300 British collieries operated by 1452 companies, and subject to the
"dead-hand" of 4000 royalty owners, as well as its wasteful methods
of consumption at the collieries and further afield. He discusses the
decrease of output, the main reason for which he will by no means admit
to be the naughtiness of the miners. And he directs the notice of
the unhappy general public to the fact that we are faced at the same
time with a decline in production and a large increase in profits.
What, then, does Mr. Hodges want? He sees "no other remedy except that
of National ownership of the entire industry, with joint control by
the full personnel of the industry and representatives of the whole
community." The miners, he avers, are as much opposed to bureaucracy
as the most extreme of "anti-nationalisers." Both the Sankey scheme
and the original scheme of the miners ("The Nationalisation of Mines
and Minerals Bill," which is printed as an Appendix to the book) guard
against this. The State is to own the industry, but the machinery
of Pit and District Committees and a National Mining Council would
mean management by those engaged in the industry, together with
representatives of the consumers. This last part is important, for
the Syndicalist idea of the "Mines for the Miners" is, in Mr. Hodges'
view, antisocial and "repugnant to our communal instincts." Nor will
he allow that there is any substance in the fear that the initiative
secured by private ownership will be lost. If this initiative really
exists to-day, it will be increased a hundredfold, he argues, when
scope is given to the brain-workers who are responsible for the running
of the industry. Altogether the book is one which is worthy of the most
careful study by nationalisers and anti-nationalisers alike.
SOCIAL THEORY. By G. D. H. COLE. Methuen. 5_s._
It is a commonplace of our sceptical and disillusioned age that all our
cherished institutions are in the melting-pot. The old economic order
is tottering; the finger of scorn is pointed at the hollowed principle
of Parliamentary Government. Eager reformers preach Democracy and yet
more Democracy. But the discontented citizen finds himself getting
ever a larger portion of the shadow of Democracy and ever less of the
substance. To him in his perplexity comes Mr. Cole, offering a new
social theory, to explain the causes of the evil and its true remedy.
What is wrong, he asserts, is the false doctrine that endows the State
with sovereign attributes and makes it supreme in every sphere. His
treatment of Leviathan is drastic. He is not merely for curbing it,
nor, on the other hand, for its complete destruction. What he wants is
to deflate the monster, so to speak, and reduce it to the status of a
decent domestic animal with a carefully limited sphere of usefulness.
The democratic society which Mr. Cole foresees will be a co-ordinated
system of functional associations, guilds of producers, co-operative
societies of consumers, and many others. The State will no longer be
sovereign, it will merely be one of those associations, confined to
its own specific functions. For each function in society there must
be found an association and method of representation, and for each
association and body of representatives a function. "Representative
democracy," as we see it to-day in a "single omnicompetent Parliament,"
is a mockery; for "no man can represent another man, and no man's will
can be treated as a substitute for, or representative of, the wills of
others." This does not mean that Mr. Cole denies the validity of all
representative government, only that he wants it put in a truer form.
And that form is functional representation. The elected representatives
of the future, of whom clearly there will be many--and "Why not?" says
Mr. Cole--are not to be mere delegates, but each will have a more
limited rôle, subject to more constant and closer criticism and advice
from their constituents and, in the last resort, to "recall" by them.
It is in this functional organisation that Mr. Cole centres his hopes
of social and economic peace and progress, of political justice, of
liberty and happiness for the individual. It is a theory that is open
to criticism at several points, and no final judgment of it can, of
course, be passed on the basis of this book. But Mr. Cole at least
argues his case very clearly and trenchantly, and he has made a notable
contribution to political science.
THEOLOGY
FIRST CHRISTIAN IDEAS. By E. C. SELWYN. Murray, 9_s._ net.
The late Dr. Murray was of that type of scholar which England
produces to perfection, and of whom Dr. Abbott is our most notable
and distinguished example. An untiring patience, a close attention to
detail, a rather over-dogmatic manner, and at times a simple felicity
are the chief marks of the school. In this posthumous volume Dr. Selwyn
continues his argument, advocated in previous books, that the writers
of the New Testament were familiar with the Septuagint rather than the
Hebrew, and that a great deal of the New Testament is _Midrash_--that
is, hortatory comment--on Old Testament stories. That he proves this
thesis it would be too much to affirm; but he certainly strengthens
his case by the careful handling he gives here to selected passages,
especially the narratives of the Infancy and the Temptation. At
times one meets sentences in which one recognises the old headmaster
rather than the student. For instance, "The origin of the term Mass
is Mazzoth, the cakes of unleavened bread, and no other etymology is
worth a moment's consideration"; but generally Dr. Selwyn's points are
made carefully, modestly, and carry conviction. This is especially true
of a really startling piece of exegetical translation in Chapter III.
The upholders of the Helvidian view that the brethren of Jesus were
the children of Mary are fond of quoting the phrase of St. Luke, "She
brought forth her first-born son." Dr. Selwyn, with a simplicity that
seems unaware of its force, removes this argument in the following
passage:
Here we may notice two points which show his [Luke's] close
observance of Scripture. The first is one that opens a just complaint
against R.V., which renders "She brought forth her first-born son"
(τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῆς τὸν Πρωτότοκον {ton huion autês ton Prôtotokon}).
Luke is not speaking of uterine children of Mary, but he is declaring
a solemn title, on which St. Paul had already dwelt. The title is
based upon Ps. 89--"I will make him my First-born, higher than the
sons of the earth." Which renders the Greek best, the R.V. or "She
brought forth her son, the First-born"? There can be no question.
It is unfortunate that Dr. Selwyn wrote an extremely unattractive
style, and is singularly unmethodical in the arrangement of his
material. We have little doubt that this and his other books will be
pillaged by popular preachers and theologians who have none of his
scholarship. After all, such a fact is not an unworthy conclusion to
the life of a great schoolmaster, who belongs to a profession which is
fated to give ideas to those who will but rarely admit or even remember
their source.
PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN CREEDS. By EDWARD CARPENTER. Allen & Unwin. 10_s._
6_d._ net.
No one would deny the correspondence between much of the theology
and ceremonial of the Christian religion and previous creeds. What
significance is to be attached to that correspondence will depend on
the bias of the student. The Christian historian will see in the facts
of anthropology evidence that Christianity is a natural as well as a
revealed religion, and that its claims are greatly strengthened just
because of pagan premonitions. The sceptic may be inclined to dismiss
all Christian refinement of older myths as so much rubbish, of which
the world must be rid before it can live coldly in the bleak light of a
scientific materialism. Anyhow, there seems little advantage in anyone
writing elaborately on the subject who is not a scholar. Mr. Carpenter
is amiable, occasionally interesting, more often merely garrulous, but
he seems to have no claims to scholarship, nor, what is ever fatal, to
be able to estimate the value of previous scholars' works. One instance
will suffice. He names the few eccentrics, Drews, Robertson, Bossi,
Jensen, who deny the historicity of Jesus Christ; calls it a "large
and learned body of opinion," and adds that "a still larger (but less
learned) body fights desperately for the actual historicity of Jesus."
The statement is really absurd. Not to mention orthodox scholars,
Harnack alone could swallow his "learned body" without feeling
discomfort.
His own method shows too great an eagerness to produce parallels at
all costs. He notes that many gods, Dionysus, Mithra, Osiris were born
in caves; Jesus Christ was born in a stable. But why call a stable an
underground chamber? The facts are twisted to suit his theory; indeed,
the whole book reminds one of those strained allegorical treatises
which were common in the Middle Ages. The principal flaw in his book,
as in all similar essays, is that he never approaches the records of
the different religions, to which he is comparing Christianity, with a
hundredth part of the severity he applies to Christian documents. He
does not even discuss the age of manuscripts, a question of the first
importance in the problem of religious origins. How many religions
can show pre-Christian manuscript authority for the traits which, in
the absence of that evidence, we may have believed were borrowed from
Christianity itself?
ANTHROPOLOGY
MAN--PAST AND PRESENT. By A. H. KEANE. Revised and largely rewritten by
A. HINGSTON QUIGGIN and A. C. HADDON. Cambridge University Press. 36_s._
What are the chief natural divisions of mankind, and how did they come
to be formed? Such is the specific problem of ethnology, and it is one
on which the whole body of the anthropological sciences may be said
to converge. In a sense physical anthropology--that is to say, the
study of the bodily characters of man--has the most direct bearing
on the subject. The members of the human family are distinguished by
marked differences of physique, which are clearly to a large extent
the product of heredity. On the other hand, adaptation to environment
must tend to confine each variety to the most suitable area; so that
geography, in the specialised form known as anthropo-geography, will be
required to help the argument out. Moreover, the history of culture, as
variously comprising ideas, institutions, arts, and languages, provides
important evidence of those movements and clashings of peoples whereby
our ever-shifting balance has been maintained between the forces making
severally for a differentiation and for a fusion of types. Nor is
it enough for the ethnologist to keep his eye fixed on the existing
distribution of these types over the wide surface of the globe. His
outlook as it turns towards the past must embrace a tract of time even
more formidably wide, inasmuch as we can never hope to explore it as
thoroughly. Altogether, the speculative problem is as baffling as it
is alluring. On the practical side, too, there is the question to be
faced how far civilisation can afford to experiment in the direction of
race-amalgamation--whether, in short, physical diversity is or is not
compatible with moral unity within the kingdom of man.
Dr. A. H. Keane, for some time Professor of Hindustani at University
College, London, was born in 1833 and died in 1912. He was the only
Englishman in post-Darwinian times to attempt a grand synthesis of
the facts relating to the origin and interrelation of the main human
groups. In _Ethnology_ (1896) and _Man--Past and Present_ (1899) he put
forward what is in effect the same theory--one to which he adhered for
the rest of his days, as may be gathered from his article on Ethnology
in Hastings' _Dictionary of Religion and Ethics_, published in the year
of his death. This theory amounted to a vindication on evolutionary
grounds of Linnæus' genealogical tree of the human family, with its
four branches, the Æthiopian, Mongolian, American, and Caucasian. Keane
postulated that these primary groups were independently derived from a
common primeval ancestry, first the negro family branching off, then
somewhat later the Caucasian and Mongolo-American splitting out of the
main stem. Thereupon he brought geography into play, supposing each
type to develop in an isolated "cradle-land" where its fundamental
characters became fixed, so that no subsequent intermingling could
wholly obliterate them. Nor is it for him simply a question of physical
differentiation. There are mental and moral peculiarities likewise
that go with the race, and these are reflected in markedly divergent
outgrowths of culture. On the strength of these assumptions it was
possible to construct a highly systematic account of mankind in the
mass. For the big differences were taken as established at the outset
once for all; whereas the myriad smaller differences that actually
distinguish the peoples of the earth were regarded as mere aberrations
from these primary norms.
Twenty-one years, however, of further discovery do not confirm this
bold explanation of the genesis of human diversity, but even militate
against it in a negative way, in so far as some of Keane's most trusted
proofs are shown to be invalid. The great antiquity, for instance, of
certain fossil men found in America turns out to be by no means so
certain as he was ready to believe, and the claim of the New World
to rank as an area of primary characterisation is correspondingly
weakened. Again, a great deal more is now known about the racial types
of Pleistocene Europe, and their multiplicity is hard to reconcile with
the view that in early times a given geographical province would foster
a single well-marked variety. Thus, so far as regards the prehistoric
evidence, the bottom is pretty well knocked out of the theory; and
thereupon the genetic significance of the attempted classification of
types disappears, unless a new theory of origin can be substituted.