ROME.
A vision rises upon us from the land of shadows. We see a wide plain,
miles and miles in extent, rolling in soft billows of green, and girded
on all sides by blue mountains, whose silver crests gleaming in the
setting sunlight tell that the winter yet lingers on their tops, though
spring has decked all the plain. So silent, so lonely, so fair is this
waving expanse with its guardian mountains, it might be some wild
solitude, an American prairie or Asiatic steppe, but that in the midst
thereof, on some billows of rolling land, we discern a city, sombre,
quaint, and old,--a city of dreams and mysteries,--a city of the living
and the dead. And this is Rome,--weird, wonderful, ancient, mighty
Rome,--mighty once by physical force and grandeur, mightier now in
physical decadence and weakness by the spell of a potent moral
enchantment.
As the sun is moving westward, the whole air around becomes flooded with
a luminousness which seems to transfuse itself with pervading presence
through every part of the city, and make all its ruinous and mossy age
bright and living. The air shivers with the silver vibrations of
hundreds of bells, and the evening glory goes up and down, soft-footed
and angelic, transfiguring all things. The broken columns of the Forum
seem to swim in golden mist, and luminous floods fill the Coliseum as it
stands with its thousand arches looking out into the city like so many
sightless eye-holes in the skull of the past. The tender light pours up
streets dank and ill-paved,--into noisome and cavernous dens called
houses, where the peasantry of to-day vegetate in contented
subservience. It illuminates many a dingy court-yard, where the moss is
green on the walls, and gurgling fountains fall into quaint old
sculptured basins. It lights up the gorgeous palaces of Rome's modern
princes, built with stones wrenched from ancient ruins. It streams
through a wilderness of churches, each with its tolling prayer-bell, and
steals through painted windows into the dazzling confusion of pictured
and gilded glories that glitter and gleam from roof and wall within. And
it goes, too, across the Tiber, up the filthy and noisome Ghetto, where,
hemmed in by ghostly superstition, the sons of Israel are growing up
without vital day, like wan white plants in cellars; and the black
mournful obelisks of the cypresses in the villas around, it touches with
a solemn glory. The castle of St. Angelo looks like a great translucent,
luminous orb, and the statues of saints and apostles on the top of St.
John Lateran glow as if made of living fire, and seem to stretch out
glorified hands of welcome to the pilgrims that are approaching the Holy
City across the soft, palpitating sea of green that lies stretched like
a misty veil around it.
Then, as now, Rome was an enchantress of mighty and wonderful power,
with her damp, and mud, and mould, her ill-fed, ill-housed populace, her
ruins of old glory rising dim and ghostly amid her palaces of to-day.
With all her awful secrets of rapine, cruelty, ambition,
injustice,--with her foul orgies of unnatural crime,--with the very
corruption of the old buried Roman Empire steaming up as from a
charnel-house, and permeating all modern life with its effluvium of
deadly uncleanness,--still Rome had that strange, bewildering charm of
melancholy grandeur and glory which made all hearts cleave to her, and
eyes and feet turn longingly towards her from the ends of the earth.
Great souls and pious yearned for her as for a mother, and could not be
quieted till they had kissed the dust of her streets. There they fondly
thought was rest to be found,--that rest which through all weary life
ever recedes like the mirage of the desert; there sins were to be
shriven which no common priest might forgive, and heavy burdens unbound
from the conscience by an infallible wisdom; there was to be revealed to
the praying soul the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen. Even the mighty spirit of Luther yearned for the breast
of this great unknown mother, and came humbly thither to seek the repose
which he found afterwards in Jesus.
At this golden twilight-hour along the Appian Way come the pilgrims of
our story with prayers and tears of thankfulness. Agnes looks forward
and sees the saintly forms on St. John Lateran standing in a cloud of
golden light and stretching out protecting hands to bless her.
"See, see, grandmother!" she exclaimed,--"yonder is our Father's house,
and all the saints beckon us home! Glory be to God who hath brought us
hither!"
Within the church the evening-service is going on, and the soft glory
streaming in reveals that dizzying confusion of riches and brightness
with which the sensuous and color-loving Italian delights to encircle
the shrine of the Heavenly Majesty. Pictured angels in cloudy wreaths
smile down from the gold-fretted roofs and over the round, graceful
arches; and the floor seems like a translucent sea of precious marbles
and gems fused into solid brightness, and reflecting in long gleams and
streaks dim intimations of the sculptured and gilded glories above.
Altar and shrine are now veiled in that rich violet hue which the Church
has chosen for its mourning color; and violet vestments, taking the
place of the gorgeous robes of the ecclesiastics, tell the approach of
that holy week of sadness when all Christendom falls in penitence at the
feet of that Almighty Love once sorrowful and slain for her.
The long-drawn aisles are now full to overflowing with that weird
chanting which one hears nowhere but in Rome at this solemn season.
Those voices, neither of men nor women, have a wild, morbid energy which
seems to search every fibre of the nervous system, and, instead of
soothing or calming, to awaken strange yearning agonies of pain, ghostly
unquiet longings, and endless feverish, unrestful cravings. The sounds
now swell and flood the church as with a rushing torrent of wailing and
clamorous supplication,--now recede and moan themselves away to silence
in far-distant aisles, like the last faint sigh of discouragement and
despair. Anon they burst out from the roof, they drop from arches and
pictures, they rise like steam from the glassy pavement, and, meeting,
mingle in wavering clamors of lamentation and shrieks of anguish. One
might fancy lost souls from out the infinite and dreary abysses of utter
separation from God might thus wearily and aimlessly moan and wail,
breaking into agonized tumults of desire, and trembling back into
exhaustions of despair. Such music brings only throbbings and yearnings,
but no peace; and yonder, on the glassy floor, at the foot of a
crucifix, a poor mortal lies sobbing and quivering under its pitiless
power, as if it had wrenched every tenderest nerve of memory, and torn
open every half-healed wound of the soul.
When the chanting ceases, he rises slow and tottering, and we see in the
wan face turning towards the dim light the well-remembered features of
Father Francesco. Driven to despair by the wild, ungovernable force of
his unfortunate love, weary of striving, overborne with a hopeless and
continually accumulating load of guilt, he had come to Rome to lay down
at the feet of heavenly wisdom the burden which he can no longer bear
alone; and rising now, he totters to a confessional where sits a holy
cardinal to whom has been deputed the office to hear and judge those
sins which no subordinate power in the Church is competent to absolve.
Father Francesco kneels down with a despairing, confiding movement, such
as one makes, when, after a long struggle of anguish, one has found a
refuge; and the churchman within inclining his ear to the grating, the
confession begins.
Could we only be clairvoyant, it would be worth our while to note the
difference between the two faces, separated only by the thin grating of
the confessional, but belonging to souls whom an abyss wide as eternity
must forever divide from any common ground of understanding.
On the one side, with ear close to the grate, is a round, smoothly
developed Italian head, with that rather tumid outline of features which
one often sees in a Roman in middle life, when easy living and habits of
sensual indulgence begin to reveal their signs in the countenance, and
to broaden and confuse the clear-cut, statuesque lines of early youth.
Evidently, that is the head of an easy-going, pleasure-loving man, who
has waxed warm with good living, and performs the duties of his office
with an unctuous grace as something becoming and decorous to be gone
through with. Evidently, he is puzzled and half-contemptuous at the
revelations which come through the grating in hoarse whispers from those
thin, trembling lips. That other man, who speaks with the sweat of
anguish beaded on his brow, with a mortal pallor on his thin, worn
cheeks, is putting questions to the celestial guide within which seem to
that guide the ravings of a crazed lunatic; and yet there is a deadly,
despairing earnestness in the appeal that makes an indistinct knocking
at the door of his heart, for the man is born of woman, and can feel
that somehow or other these are the words of a mighty agony.
He addresses him some words of commonplace ghostly comfort, and gives a
plenary absolution. The Capuchin monk rises up and stands meekly wiping
the sweat from his brow, the churchman leaves his box, and they meet
face to face, when each starts, seeing in the other the apparition of a
once well-known countenance.
"What! Lorenzo Sforza!" said the churchman. "Who would have thought it?
Don't you remember me?"
"Not Lorenzo Sforza," said the other, a hectic brilliancy flushing his
pale cheek; "that name is buried in the tomb of his fathers; he you
speak to knows it no more. The unworthy Brother Francesco, deserving
nothing of God or man, is before you."
"Oh, come, come!" said the other, grasping his hand in spite of his
resistance; "that is all proper enough in its place; but between
friends, you know, what's the use? It's lucky we have you here now; we
want one of your family to send on a mission to Florence, and talk a
little reason into the citizens and the Signoria. Come right away with
me to the Pope."
"Brother, in God's name let me go! I have no mission to the great of
this world; and I cannot remember or be called by the name of other
days, or salute kinsman or acquaintance after the flesh, without a
breach of vows."
"Poh, poh! you are nervous, dyspeptic; you don't understand things.
Don't you see you are where vows can be bound and loosed? Come along,
and let us wake you out of this nightmare. Such a pother about a pretty
peasant-girl! One of your rank and taste, too! I warrant me the little
sinner practised on you at the confessional. I know their ways, the
whole of them; but you mourn over it in a way that is perfectly
incomprehensible. If you had tripped a little,--paid a compliment, or
taken a liberty or two,--it would have been only natural; but this
desperation, when you have resisted like Saint Anthony himself, shows
your nerves are out of order and you need change."
"For God's sake, brother, tempt me not!" said Father Francesco,
wrenching himself away, with such a haggard and insane vehemence as
quite to discompose the churchman; and drawing his cowl over his face,
he glided swiftly down a side-aisle and out the door.
The churchman was too easy-going to risk the fatigue of a scuffle with a
man whom he considered as a monomaniac; but he stepped smoothly and
stealthily after him and watched him go out.
"Look you," he said to a servant in violet livery who was waiting by the
door, "follow yonder Capuchin and bring me word where he abides.--He may
be cracked," he said to himself; "but, after all, one of his blood may
be worth mending, and do us good service either in Florence or Milan. We
must have him transferred to some convent here, where we can lay hands
on him readily, if we want him."
Meanwhile Father Francesco wends his way through many a dark and dingy
street to an ancient Capuchin convent, where he finds brotherly
admission. Weary and despairing is he beyond all earthly despair, for
the very altar of his God seems to have failed him. He asked for bread,
and has got a stone,--he asked a fish, and has got a scorpion. Again and
again the worldly, almost scoffing, tone of the superior to whom he has
been confessing sounds like the hiss of a serpent in his ear.
But he is sent for in haste to visit the bedside of the Prior, who has
long been sick and failing, and who gladly embraces this opportunity to
make his last confession to a man of such reputed sanctity in his order
as Father Francesco. For the acute Father Johannes, casting about for
various means to empty the Superior's chair at Sorrento, for his own
benefit, and despairing of any occasion of slanderous accusation, had
taken the other tack of writing to Rome extravagant laudations of such
feats of penance and saintship in his Superior as in the view of all the
brothers required that such a light should no more be hidden in an
obscure province, but be set on a Roman candlestick, where it might give
light to the faithful in all parts of the world. Thus two currents of
worldly intrigue were uniting to push an unworldly man to a higher
dignity than he either sought or desired.
When a man has a sensitive or sore spot in his heart, from the pain of
which he would gladly flee to the ends of the earth, it is marvellous
what coincidences of events will be found to press upon it wherever he
may go. Singularly enough, one of the first items in the confession of
the Capuchin Superior related to Agnes, and his story was in substance
as follows. In his youth he had been induced by the persuasions of the
young son of a great and powerful family to unite him in the holy
sacrament of marriage with a _protégée_ of his mother's; but the
marriage being detected, it was disavowed by the young nobleman, and the
girl and her mother chased out ignominiously, so that she died in great
misery. For his complicity in this sin the conscience of the monk had
often troubled him, and he had kept track of the child she left,
thinking perhaps some day to make reparation by declaring the true
marriage of her mother, which now he certified upon the holy cross, and
charged Father Francesco to make known to one of that kin whom he named.
He further informed him, that this family, having fallen under the
displeasure of the Pope and his son, Cæsar Borgia, had been banished
from the city, and their property confiscated, so that there was none of
them to be found thereabouts except an aged widowed sister, who, having
married into a family in favor with the Pope, was allowed to retain her
possessions, and now resided in a villa near Rome, where she lived
retired, devoting her whole life to works of piety. The old man
therefore conjured Father Francesco to lose no time in making this
religious lady understand the existence of so near a kinswoman, and take
her under her protection.--Thus strangely did Father Francesco find
himself again obliged to take up that enchanted thread which had led him
into labyrinths so fatal to his peace.
* * * * *
METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.
V.
It is in the search after the true boundaries and characteristics of
orders that we may expect the greatest advance by the naturalists of the
present day; and yet there is now much discrepancy among them, some
mistaking orders for classes, others raising families to the dignity of
orders. This want of agreement in their results is not strange, however;
for the recognition of orders is indeed exceedingly difficult. If they
are, as I have defined them, groups in Nature founded upon a greater or
less complication of structure, they must of course form a regular
gradation within the limits of their class, since comparative perfection
implies comparative rank, and a correct estimate of these degrees of
complication requires an intimate and extensive knowledge of structure
throughout the class. There would seem to be an arbitrary element
here,--that of our individual appreciation of structural character. If
one man holds a certain kind of structural characters superior to
another, he will establish the rank of the order upon that feature,
while some other naturalist, appreciating a different point of the
structure more highly, will make that the test character of the group.
Let us see whether we can eliminate this arbitrary element in our
estimate of these groups, and find any mode of determining orders that
shall be unquestionable, and give us results as positive as a chemical
analysis according to quantitative elements. I believe that there are
such absolute tests of structural relations. It is my conviction, that
orders, like all the other groups of the Animal Kingdom, have a positive
existence in Nature with definite limits, that no arbitrary element
should enter into any part of our classifications, and that we have
already the key by which to solve this question about orders.
To illustrate this statement, I must return to the class of Insects. We
have seen that they are divided into three orders: the long cylindrical
Centipedes, with the body divided throughout in uniform rings, like the
Worms; the Spiders, with the body divided into two regions; and the
Winged Insects, with head, chest, and hind body distinct from each
other, forming three separate regions. In the first group, the
Centipedes, the nervous system is scattered through the whole body, as
in the Worms; in the Spiders it is concentrated in two nervous
swellings, as in the Crustacea, the front one being the largest; and in
the Insects there are three nervous centres, the largest in the head, a
smaller one in the chest, and the smallest in the hind body. Now
according to this greater or less individualization of parts, with the
corresponding localization of the nervous centres, naturalists have
established the relative rank of these three groups, placing Centipedes
lowest, Spiders next, and Winged Insects highest. But naturalists may,
and indeed they actually do, differ as to this estimation of the
anatomical structure. Have we, then, any means of testing its truth to
Nature? Let us look at the development of these animals, taking the
highest order as an illustration, that we may have the whole succession
of changes. All know the story of the Butterfly with its three lives, as
Caterpillar, Chrysalis, and Winged Insect. I speak of its three lives,
but we must not forget that they make after all but one life, and that
the Caterpillar is as truly the same being with the future Butterfly as
the child is the same being with the future man. The old significance of
the word _metamorphosis_--the fabled transformation of one
individual into another, in which so much of the imagination and
poetical culture of the ancients found expression--still clings to us;
and where the different phases of the same life assume such different
external forms, we are apt to overlook the fact that it is one single
continuous life. To a naturalist, metamorphosis is simply growth; and in
that sense the different stages of development in animals that undergo
their successive changes within the egg are as much metamorphoses as the
successive phases of life in those animals that complete their
development after they are hatched.
But to return to our Butterfly. In its most imperfect, earliest
condition, it is Worm-like, the body consisting of thirteen uniform
rings; but when it has completed this stage of its existence, it passes
into the Chrysalis state, during which the body has two regions, the
front rings being soldered together to form the head and chest, while
the hind joints remain distinct; and it is only when it bursts from its
Chrysalis envelope, as a complete Winged Insect, that it has three
distinct regions of the body. Do not the different periods of growth in
this highest order explain the relation of all the orders to each other?
The earliest condition of an animal cannot be its highest condition,--it
does not pass from a more perfect to a less perfect state of existence.
The history of its growth is, on the contrary, the history of its
progress in development; and therefore, when we find that the first
stage of growth in the Winged Insect transiently represents a structural
character that is permanent in the lowest order of its class, that its
second stage of growth transiently represents a structural character
that is permanent in the second order of its class, and that only in the
last stage of its existence does the Winged Insect attain its complete
and perfect condition, we may fairly infer that this division of the
class of Insects into a gradation of orders placing Centipedes lowest,
Spiders next, and Winged Insects highest, is true to Nature.
This is not the only instance in which the embryological evidence
confirms perfectly the anatomical evidence on which orders have been
distinguished, and I believe that Embryology will give us the true
standard by which to test the accuracy of our ordinal groups. In the
class of Crustacea, for instance, the Crabs have been placed above the
Lobsters by some naturalists, in consequence of certain anatomical
features; but there may easily be a difference of individual opinion as
to the relative value of these features. When we find, however, that the
Crab, while undergoing its changes in the egg, passes through a stage in
which it resembles the Lobster much more than it does its own adult
condition, we cannot doubt that its earlier state is its lower one, and
that the organization of the Lobster is not as high in the class of
Crustacea as that of the Crab. While using illustrations of this kind,
however, I must guard against misinterpretation. These embryological
changes are never the passing of one kind of animal into another kind of
animal: the Crab is none the less a Crab during that period of its
development in which it resembles a Lobster; it simply passes, in the
natural course of its growth, through a phase of existence which is
permanent in the Lobster, but transient in the Crab. Such facts should
stimulate all our young students to embryological investigation as a
most important branch of study in the present state of our science.
But while there is this structural gradation among orders, establishing
a relative rank between them, are classes and branches also linked
together as a connected chain? That such a chain exists throughout the
Animal Kingdom has long been a favorite idea, not only among
naturalists, but also in the popular mind. Lamarck was one of the
greatest teachers of this doctrine. He held not only that branches and
classes were connected in a direct gradation, but that within each class
there was a regular series of orders, families, genera, and species,
forming a continuous chain from the lowest animals to the highest, and
that the whole had been a gradual development of higher out of lower
forms. I have already alluded to his division of the Animal Kingdom into
the Apathetic, Sensitive, and Intelligent animals. The Apathetic were
those devoid of all sensitiveness except when aroused by the influence
of some external agent. Under this head he placed five classes,
including the Infusoria, Polyps, Star-Fishes, Sea-Urchins, Tunicata, and
Worms,--thus bringing together indiscriminately Radiates, Mollusks, and
Articulates. Under the head of Sensitive he had also a heterogeneous
assemblage, including Winged Insects, Spiders, Crustacea, Annelids, and
Barnacles, all of which are Articulates, and with these he placed in two
classes the Mollusks, Conchifera, Gasteropoda, and Cephalopoda. Under
the head of Intelligent he brought together a natural division, for he
here united all the Vertebrates. He succeeded in this way in making out
a series which seemed plausible enough, but when we examine it, we find
at once that it is perfectly arbitrary; for he has brought together
animals built on entirely different structural plans, when he could find
characters among them that seemed to justify his favorite idea of a
gradation of qualities. Blainville attempted to establish the same idea
in another way. He founded his series on gradations of form, placing
together, in one division, all animals that he considered vague and
indefinite in form, and in another all those that he considered
symmetrical. Under a third head he brought together the Radiates; but
his symmetrical division united Articulates, Mollusks, and Vertebrates
in the most indiscriminate manner. He sustained his theory by assuming
intermediate groups,--as, for instance, the Barnacles between the
Mollusks and Articulates, whereas they are as truly Articulates as
Insects or Crabs. Thus, by misplacing certain animals, he arrived at a
series which, like that of Lamarck, made a strong impression on the
scientific world, till a more careful investigation of facts exposed its
fallacy.
Oken, the great German naturalist, also attempted to establish a
connected chain throughout the Animal Kingdom, but on an entirely
different principle; and I cannot allude to this most original
investigator, so condemned by some, so praised by others, so powerful in
his influence on science in Germany, without attempting to give some
analysis of his peculiar philosophy. For twenty years his classification
was accepted by his countrymen without question; and though I believe it
to be wrong, yet, by the ingenuity with which he maintained it, he has
shed a flood of light upon science, and has stimulated other naturalists
to most important and interesting investigations. This famous
classification was founded upon the idea that the system of man, the
most perfect created being, is the measure for the whole Animal Kingdom,
and that in analyzing his organization we have the clue to all organized
beings. The structure of man includes two systems of organs: those which
maintain the body in its integrity, and which he shares in some sort
with the lower animals,--the organs of digestion, circulation,
respiration, and reproduction; and that higher system of organs, the
brain, spinal marrow, and nerves, with the organs of sense, on which all
the manifestations of the intelligent faculties depend, and by which his
relations to the external world are established and controlled: the
whole being surrounded by flesh, muscles, and skin. On account of this
fleshy envelope of the hard parts in all the higher animals, Oken
divided the Animal Kingdom into two groups, the Vertebrates and
Invertebrates, or, as he called them, the "_Eingeweide und Fleisch
Thiere_"--which we may translate as the _Intestinal Animals_, or
those that represent the intestinal systems of organs, and the _Flesh
Animals_, or those that combine all the systems of organs under one
envelope of flesh. Let us examine a little more closely this singular
theory, by which each branch of the Invertebrates becomes, as it were,
the exponent of a special system of organs, while the Vertebrates, with
man at their head, include all these systems.
According to Oken, the Radiates, the lowest type of the Animal Kingdom,
embody digestion. They all represent a stomach, whether it is the simple
sac of the Polyps, or the cavity of the Acalephs, with its radiating
tubes traversing the gelatinous mass of the body, or the cavity and
tubes of the Echinoderms, inclosed within walls of their own.
The Mollusks represent circulation; and his division of this type into
classes, according to what he considers the higher or lower organization
of the heart, agrees with the ordinary division into Acephala,
Gasteropoda, and Cephalopoda.
The Articulates are the respiratory animals in this classification: they
represent respiration. The Worms, breathing, as he asserts, through the
whole surface of the skin, without special breathing organs, are the
lowest; the Crustacea, with gills, or aquatic breathing organs, come
next; and he places the Insects highest, with their branching tracheæ,
admitting air to all parts of the body. The Vertebrates, or Flesh
Animals, with their four classes, represent the Bones, the Muscles, the
Nerves, and the Organs of Sense.
This theory, according to which there are as many great divisions as
there are structural systems or combinations of systems in the Animal
Kingdom, seemed natural and significant, and there was something
attractive in the idea that man represents, as it were, the synthetic
combination of all these different systems. Oken also, in his exposition
of his mode of classification, showed an insight into the structure and
relations of animals that commended it to the interest of all students
of Nature, and entitles him to their everlasting gratitude.
Nevertheless, his theory fails, when it is compared with facts. For
instance, there are many Worms that have no respiration through the
skin, while his appreciation of the whole class is founded on that
feature; and in his type representing circulation, the Mollusks, there
are those that have no heart at all. It would carry me too far into
scientific details, were I to explain all the points at which this
celebrated classification fails. Suffice it to say that there is no
better proof of the discrepancy between the system and the facts than
the constant changes in the different editions of Oken's own works and
in the publications of his followers founded upon his views, showing
that they were themselves conscious of the shifting and unstable
character of their scientific ground.
VI.
What, then, is the relation of these larger groups to each other, if
they do not stand in a connected series from the lowest to the highest?
How far are each of the branches and each of the classes superior or
inferior one to another? All agree, that, while Vertebrates stand at the
head of the Animal Kingdom, Radiates are lowest. There can be no doubt
upon this point; for, while the Vertebrate plan, founded upon a double
symmetry, includes the highest possibilities of animal organization,
there is a certain monotony of structure in the Radiate plan, in which
the body is divided into a number of identical parts, bearing definite
relations to a central vertical axis. But while all admit that
Vertebrates are highest and Radiates lowest, how do the Articulates and
Mollusks stand to these and to each other? To me it seems, that, while
both are decidedly superior to the Radiates and inferior to the
Vertebrates, we cannot predicate absolute superiority or inferiority of
organization of either of these groups as compared with each other; they
stand on one structural level, though with different tendencies,--the
body in Mollusks having always a soft, massive, concentrated character,
with great power of contraction and dilatation, while the body in
Articulates has nothing of this compactness and concentration, but on
the contrary is usually marked by a conspicuous external display of
limbs and other appendages, and by a remarkable elongation of the
body,--that feature characterized by Baer when he called them the
Longitudinal type. There is in the Articulates an extraordinary tendency
toward outward expression, singularly in contrast to the soft,
contractile bodies of the Mollusks. We need only remember the numerous
Insects with small bodies and enormously long wings, or the Spiders with
little bodies and long legs, or the number and length of the claws in
the Lobsters and Crabs, as illustrations of this statement for the
Articulates, while the soft compact body of the Oyster or of the Snail
is equally characteristic of the Mollusks; and though it may seem that
this assertion cannot apply to the highest class of Mollusks, the
Cephalopoda, including the Cuttle-Fishes with their long arms or
feelers, yet even these conspicuous appendages have considerable power
of contraction and dilatation, and in the Nautili may even be drawn
completely within the shell. If this view be correct, these two types
occupy an intermediate position between the highest and the lowest
divisions of the Animal Kingdom, but are on equal ground when compared
with each other.
But is there a transition from Radiates to Mollusks, or from Articulates
to Vertebrates, or from any one of these divisions into any other? Let
us first consider the classes as they stand within their divisions. We
have seen that there are three classes of Radiates,--Polyps, Acalephs,
and Echinoderms; three classes of Mollusks,--Acephala, Gasteropoda, and
Cephalopoda; three classes of Articulates,--Worms, Crustacea, and
Insects; and, according to the usually accepted classification, four
classes of Vertebrates,--Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammalia. If there
is indeed a transition between all these classes, it must become clear
to us, when we have accurately interpreted their relative standing.
Taking first the lowest branch, how do the classes stand within the
limits of the type of Radiates? I think I have said enough of these
different classes to show that Polyps as a whole are inferior to
Acalephs as a whole, and that Acalephs as a whole are inferior to
Echinoderms as a whole. But if they are linked together as a connected
series, then the lowest Acaleph should stand next in structure above the
highest Polyp, and the lowest Echinoderm next above the highest Acaleph.
So far from this being the case, there are, on the contrary, many
Acalephs which, in their specialization, are unquestionably lower in the
scale of life than some Polyps, while there are some Echinoderms lower
in the same sense than many Acalephs. This remark applies equally to the
classes within the other types; they stand, as an average, relatively to
each other, lower and higher, but considered in their diversified
specification, there are some members of the higher classes that are
inferior in organization to some members of the lower classes. The same
is true of the great divisions as compared with each other. Instead of
the highest Radiates being always lower in organization than the lowest
Mollusks, there are many Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins higher in
organization than some Mollusks; and so when we pass from this branch to
the Articulates, if we assume for the moment, as some naturalists
believe, that the Mollusks are the inferior type, the Cuttle-Fishes are
certainly very superior animals to most of the Worms; and passing from
Articulates to Vertebrates, not only are there Insects of a more complex
organization than the lowest Fishes, but we bring together two kinds of
animals so remote from each other in structure that the wildest
imagination can scarcely fancy a transition between them. A comparison
may make my meaning clearer as to the relative standing of these groups.
The Epic Poem is a higher order of composition than the Song,--yet we
may have an Epic Poem which, from its inferior mode of execution, stands
lower than a Song that is perfect of its kind. So the plan of certain
branches is more comprehensive and includes higher possibilities than
that of others, while at the same time there may be species in which the
higher plan is executed in so simple a manner that it places their
organization below some more highly developed being built on a lower
plan. It is a poor comparison, because everything that God has made is
perfect of its kind and in its place, though relatively lower or higher;
yet it is only by comparison of what is after all akin,--of mind with
mind,--even though so far apart as the works of the divine and the human
reason, that we may arrive at some idea, however dim, of the mental
operations of the Creative Intellect.
It is, then, in their whole bulk that any one of these groups is above
any other. We may represent the relative positions of the classes by a
diagram in which each successive class in every type starts at a lower
point than that at which the preceding class closes. Taking the Polyps
as the lowest class of Radiates, for instance, its highest animals rise
above the lowest members of the Acalephs, but then the higher members of
the class of Acalephs reach a point far above any of the Polyps,--and so
on.
RADIATES. MOLLUSKS. ARTICULATES. VERTEBRATES.
| | | |
| | | | |
| | | | | | | Mammalia.
| | | | | | | |
| | Echinoderms. | | Cephalopoda. | | Insects. | | Birds.
| | | | | | | |
| Acalephs. | Gasteropoda. | Crustacea. | Reptiles.
| | | |
Polyps. Acephala. Worms Fishes.
If this view be correct, it sets aside the possibility of any
uninterrupted series based on absolute superiority or inferiority of
structure, on which so much ingenuity and intellectual power have been
wasted.
But it is not merely upon the structural relations established between
these groups by anatomical features in the adult that we must decide
this question. We must examine it also from the embryological point of
view. Every animal in its growth undergoes a succession of changes: is
there anything in these changes implying a transition of one type into
another? Baer has given us the answer to this question. He has shown
that there are four distinct modes of development, as well as four plans
of structure; and though we have seen that higher animals of one class
pass through phases of growth in which they transiently resemble lower
animals of the same class, yet each one of these four modes of
development is confined within the limits of the type, and a Vertebrate
never resembles, at any stage of its growth, anything but a Vertebrate,
or an Articulate anything but an Articulate, or a Mollusk anything but a
Mollusk, or a Radiate anything but a Radiate.
Yet, although there is no embryological transition of one type into
another, the gradations of growth within the limits of the same type and
the same class, already alluded to, are very striking throughout the
Animal Kingdom. There are periods in the development of the germs of the
higher members of all the types, when they transiently resemble in their
general outline the lower representatives of the same type, just as we
have seen that the higher orders of one class pass through stages of
development in which they transiently resemble lower orders of the same
class. This gradation of growth corresponds to the gradation of rank in
adult animals, as established upon comparative complication of
structure. For instance, according to their structural character, all
naturalists have placed Fishes lowest in the scale of Vertebrates. Now
all the higher Vertebrates have a Fish-like character at first, and pass
successively through phases in which they vaguely resemble other lower
forms of the same type before they assume their own characteristic form;
and this is equally true of the other great divisions, so that the
history of the individual is, in some sort, the history of its type.
There is still another aspect of this question,--that of time. If
neither the gradation of structural rank among adult animals, nor the
gradation of growth in their embryological development gives us any
evidence of a transition between types, does not the sequence of animals
in their successive introduction upon the globe afford any proof of such
a connection? In this relation, I must briefly allude to the succession
of geological formations that compose the crust of our globe. The limits
of this article will not allow me to enter at any length into the
geological details connected with this question; but I will, in the most
cursory manner, give a sketch of the great geological periods, as
generally accepted now by geologists. The first of these periods has
been called the Azoic or lifeless period, because it is the only one
that contains no remains of organic life, and it is therefore supposed
that at that early stage of the world's history the necessary conditions
for the maintenance of animals and plants were not yet established.
After this, every great geological period that follows has been found to
be characterized by a special set of animals and plants, differing from
all that follow and all that precede it, till we arrive at our own
period, when Man, with the animals and plants that accompany him on
earth, was introduced.
There is, then, an order of succession in time among animals; and if
there has been any transition between types and classes, any growth of
higher out of lower forms, it is here that we should look for the
evidence of it. According to this view, we should expect to find in the
first period in which organic remains are found at all only the lowest
type, and of that type only the lowest class, and, indeed, if we push
the theory to its logical consequences, only the lowest forms of the
lowest class. What are now the facts? This continent affords admirable
opportunities for the investigation of this succession, because, in
consequence of its mode of formation, we have, in the State of New York,
a direct, unbroken sequence of all the earliest geological deposits.
The ridge of low hills, called the Laurentian Hills, along the line of
division between Canada and the States was the first American land
lifted above the ocean. That land belongs to the Azoic period, and
contains no trace of life. Along the base of that range of hills lie the
deposits of the next great geological period, the Silurian; and the
State of New York, geologically speaking, belongs almost entirely to
this Silurian period, with its lowest Taconic division, and the Devonian
period, the third in succession of these great epochs. I need hardly
remind those of my readers who have travelled through New York, and have
visited Niagara or Trenton, or, indeed, any of the localities where the
broken edges of the strata expose the buried life within them, how
numerous this early population of the earth must have been. No one who
has held in his hand one of the crowded slabs of sand--or lime-stone,
full of Crustacea, Shells, and Corals, from any of the old Silurian or
Devonian beaches which follow each other from north to south across the
State of New York, can suppose that the manifestation of life was less
multitudinous then than now. Now, what does this fossil creation tell
us? It says this: that, in the Silurian period, the first in which
organic life is found at all, there were the three classes of Radiates,
the three classes of Mollusks, two of the classes of Articulates, and
one class of Vertebrates. In other words, at the dawn of life on earth,
the plan of the animal creation with its four fundamental ideas was laid
out,--Radiates, Mollusks, Articulates, and Vertebrates were present at
that first representation of life upon our globe. If, then, all the
primary types appeared simultaneously, one cannot have grown out of
another,--they could not be at once contemporaries and descendants of
each other.
The diagram on the opposite page represents the geological periods in
their regular succession, and the approximate time at which all the
types and all the classes of the Animal Kingdom were introduced; for
there is still some doubt as to the exact period of the introduction of
several of the classes, though all geologists are agreed respecting
them, within certain limits, not very remote from each other, according
to geological estimates of time.
RADIATES.
Polyps. Acalephs. Echinoderms.
T | Present,.........|.........|...........|......
E | | | |
R | Pliocene,........|.........|...........|......
T | | | |
I | Miocene,.........|.........|...........|......
A | | | |
R | Eocene,..........|.........|...........|......
Y | | | |
| | |
S | Cretaceous,......|.........|...........|......
E | | | |
C | Jurassic,........|.........|...........|......
O | | | |
N | Triassic,........|.........|...........|......
D | | | |
A | Permian,.........|.........|...........|......
R | | | |
Y | Carboniferous,...|.........|...........|......
| | |
P | | | |
R | Devonian,........|.........|...........|......
I | | | |
M | Silurian,.....Polyps. Acalephs. Echinoderms...
A |
R | Azoic.
Y |
MOLLUSKS.
Acephala. Gasteropoda. Cephalopoda.
T | Present,.........|.........|...........|......
E | | | |
R | Pliocene,........|.........|...........|......
T | | | |
I | Miocene,.........|.........|...........|......
A | | | |
R | Eocene,..........|.........|...........|......
Y | | | |
| | |
S | Cretaceous,......|.........|...........|......
E | | | |
C | Jurassic,........|.........|...........|......
O | | | |
N | Triassic,........|.........|...........|......
D | | | |
A | Permian,.........|.........|...........|......
R | | | |
Y | Carboniferous,...|.........|...........|......
| | |
P | | | |
R | Devonian,........|.........|...........|......
I | | | |
M | Silurian,.....Acephala. Gasteropoda. Cephalopoda.
A |
R | Azoic.
Y |
ARTICULATES.
Worms. Crustacea. Insects.
T | Present,.........|.........|...........|......
E | | | |
R | Pliocene,........|.........|...........|......
T | | | |
I | Miocene,.........|.........|...........|......
A | | | |
R | Eocene,..........|.........|...........|......
Y | | | |
| | |
S | Cretaceous,......|.........|...........|......
E | | | |
C | Jurassic,........|.........|...........|......
O | | | |
N | Triassic,........|.........|...........|......
D | | | |
A | Permian,.........|.........|...........|......
R | | | |
Y | Carboniferous,...|.........|.........Insects..
| |
P | | |
R | Devonian,........|.........|..................
I | | |
M | Silurian,.....Worms. Crustacea...............
A |
R | Azoic.
Y |
VERTEBRATES.
Fishes. Reptiles. Birds. Mammalia.
T | Present,.........|.........|.........|........|.......
E | | | | |
R | Pliocene,........|.........|.........|........|.......
T | | | | |
I | Miocene,.........|.........|.........|........|.......
A | | | | |
R | Eocene,..........|.........|.........|..True Mammalia.
Y | | | | |
| | | |
S | Cretaceous,......|.........|.........|........|.......
E | | | | |
C | Jurassic,........|.........|.........|....Marsupials..
O | | | |
N | Triassic,........|.........|.......Birds..............
D | | |
A | Permian,.........|.........|..........................
R | | |
Y | Carboniferous,...|......Reptiles......................
|
P | |
R | Devonian,........|....................................
I | |
M | Silurian,.......Fishes................................
A |
R | Azoic.
Y |
If such discussions were not inappropriate here from their technical
character, I think I could show upon combined geological and zoological
evidence that the classes which are not present with the others at the
beginning, such as Insects among Articulates, or Reptiles, Birds, and
Mammalia among Vertebrates, are always introduced at the time when the
conditions essential to their existence are established,--as, for
instance, Reptiles, at the period when the earth was not fully redeemed
from the waste of waters, and extensive marshes afforded means for the
half-aquatic, half-terrestrial life even now characteristic of all our
larger Reptiles, while Insects, so dependent on vegetable growth, make
their appearance with the first forests; so that we need not infer,
because these and other classes come in after the earlier ones, that
they are therefore a growth out of them, since it is altogether probable
that they would not be created till the conditions necessary for their
maintenance on earth were established. From a merely speculative point
of view it seems to me natural to suppose that the physical and the
organic world have progressed together, and that there is a direct
relation between the successive creations and the condition of the earth
at the time of those creations. We know that all the beings of the
Silurian and Devonian periods were marine; the land, so far as it
existed in their time, was a great beach, and along those shores,
wherever any part of the continents was lifted above the level of the
waters, the Silurian and Devonian animals lived. Later, in the marshes
and the fern-forests of the Carboniferous period, Reptiles and Insects
found their place; and only when the earth was more extensive, when
marshes had become dry land, when islands had united to form continents,
when mountain-chains had been thrown up to make the inequalities of the
surface, were the larger quadrupeds introduced, to whose mode of
existence all these circumstances are important accessories.
But while all the types and most of the classes were introduced upon the
earth simultaneously at the beginning, these types and classes have
nevertheless been represented in every great geological period by
different sets or species of animals. In this sense, then, there has
been a gradation in time among animals, and every successive epoch of
the world's physical history has had its characteristic population. We
have found that there is a correspondence between the gradation of
structural complication among adult animals as known to us to-day, which
we may call the Series of Rank, and the gradation of embryological
changes in the same animals, which we may call the Series of Growth; and
there is also a correspondence between these two series and the order of
succession in time, that establishes a certain gradation in the
introduction of animals upon earth, and which we may call the Series of
Time. Take as an illustration the class of Echinoderms. The first
representatives of this class were a sort of Star-Fishes on stems; then
were introduced animals of the same order without stems; in later
periods come in the true Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins; and the highest
order of the class, the Holothurians, are introduced only in the present
geological epoch. Compare now with this the ordinal division of the
class as it exists today. The present representative of those earliest
Echinoderms on stems is an animal that upon structural evidence stands
lowest in the class; next above it are the Comatulæ, corresponding to
the early Echinoderms without stems; next in our classification are the
Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins; and the Holothurians stand highest, on
account of certain structural features that place them at the head of
their class. The Series of Time and the Series of Rank, then, accord
perfectly, and investigations of the embryological development of these
animals have shown that the higher Echinoderms pass through changes in
the egg that indicate the same kind of gradation, for the young in some
of them have a stem which is gradually dropped, and their successive
phases of development recall the adult forms of the lower orders. Take
as another illustration the class of Polyps. First in time we find a
kind of Polyp Coral, one among the early Reef-Builders, who built their
myriad lives into the solid crust of our globe then as their successors
do now. These old Corals have their representatives among the present
Polyps, and from their structure they are placed lowest in their class,
while the embryological development of the higher ones recalls in the
younger condition of the germ the same peculiar character. I might
multiply examples, and draw equally striking illustrations from the
other classes; and though these correspondences cannot be fully
established while our knowledge of the embryological growth of animals
is so scanty, and information about their geological succession, yet
wherever we have been able to trace the connected history of any group
of animals in time, and to compare it with the history of their
embryological development and their structural relations as they exist
to-day, the correspondence is found to be so complete that we are
justified in believing that it will not fail in other instances. I may
add that a gradation of exactly the same character controls the
geographical distribution of animals over the surface of the globe. Here
again I must beg my readers to take much of the evidence, which, if
expanded, would fill a volume, for granted, since it would be entirely
inappropriate here. But I may briefly state that animals are not
scattered over the surface of our globe at random, but that they are
associated together in what are called _faunæ_, and that these
faunæ have their homes within certain districts--called by naturalists
_zoölogical provinces_. The limits of these provinces are
absolutely fixed, in the ocean as well as on the land, by certain
physical conditions connected with climate, with altitude, with the
pressure of the atmosphere, the weight of the water, etc.; and this is
true even for animals of migratory habits, for all such migrations are
periodical, and have boundaries as definite and impassable as those that
limit the permanent homes of animals. There is a certain series
established by the relations between different kinds of animals, as thus
distributed over the globe, which agrees with the gradation in their
rank, their growth, and their succession in time;--the law which
distributes animals in successive faunæ, and in accordance both with
their relative superiority or inferiority, and with the physical
conditions essential to their existence, being the same as that which
controls their structural relations, their embryological development,
and their succession in time.
What, then, does this correspondence between the Series of Rank, the
Series of Growth, the Series of Time, and the Series of Geographical
Distribution in the life of animals teach us? Surely not that the
connection between animals is a material one; for the same kind of
relation exists between lower and higher animals of one type or one
class to-day, in their structural features, in their embryological
growth, and in their geographical distribution, as we trace in their
order of succession in time; and therefore, if this kind of evidence
proves that the later animals are the descendants of the earlier in any
genealogical sense, it should also prove that the animals living in one
part of the earth at present grow out of animals living in another part,
and that the higher animals of one class as it exists now are developed
out of the lower ones. The first of these propositions needs no
refutation; and with regard to the second, all our investigations go to
show that every being born into the world to-day adheres to its
individual law of life, and though it passes through transient phases of
growth that resemble other beings of its own kind, never pauses at a
lower stage of development, or passes on to a higher condition than the
one it is bound to fill. If, then, this connection is not a material
one, what is it?--for that such a connection does exist throughout the
Animal Kingdom, as intimate, as continuous, as complex as any series
which the development theorists have ever contended for, is not to be
denied. What can it be but an intellectual one? These correspondences
are correspondences of thought,--of a thought that is always the same,
whether it is expressed in the history of the type through all time, or
in the life of the individuals that represent the type at the present
moment, or in the growth of the germ of every being born into that type
to-day. In other words, the same thought that spans the whole succession
of geological ages controls the structural relations of all living
beings as well as their distribution over the surface of the earth, and
is repeated within the narrow compass of the smallest egg in which any
being undergoes its growth.
* * * * *
THE SOUTHERN CROSS.
Deem not the ravished glory thine;
Nor think the flag shall scathless wave
Whereon thou bidd'st its presage shine,--
Land of the traitor and the slave!
God never set that holy sign
In deathless light among His stars
To make its blazonry divine
A scutcheon for thine impious wars!
And surely as the Wrong must fail
Before the everlasting Right,
So surely thy device shall pale
And shrivel in the Northern Light!
Look, where its coming splendors stream!
The red and white athwart the blue,--
While far above, the unconquered gleam
Of Freedom's stars is blazing through!
Hark to the rustle and the sweep,
Like sound of mighty wings unfurled,
And bearing down the sapphire steep
Heaven's hosts to help the imperilled world!
Light in the North! Each bristling lance
Of steely sheen a promise bears;
And all the midnight where they glance
A rosy flush of morning wears!
Yon symbol of your Southern sky
Shall surely mean but grief and loss;
Then tremble, as ye raise on high,
In sacrilege, the Southern Cross!
O brothers! we entreat in pain,
Take ye the unblessed emblem down!
Or purge your standard of its stain,
And join it with the Northern Crown!
* * * * *
CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD.
Once upon a time, Mr. Smith, who was seven feet in height, went out for
a walk with Mr. Brown, whose stature was three feet and a half. It was
in a distant age, in which people were different from what they are now,
and in which events occurred such as do not usually occur in these days.
Smith and Brown, having traversed various paths, and having passed
several griffins, serpents, and mail-clad knights, came at length to a
certain river. It was needful that they should cross it; and the idea
was suggested that they should cross it by wading. They proceeded,
accordingly, to wade across; and both arrived safely at the farther
side. The water was exactly four feet deep,--not an inch more or less.
On reaching the other bank of the river, Mr. Brown said,--
"This is awful work; it is no joke crossing a river like _that_. I
was nearly drowned."
"Nonsense!" replied Mr. Smith; "why make a fuss about crossing a shallow
stream like this? Why, the water is only four feet deep: _that_ is
nothing at all!"
"Nothing to you, perhaps," was the response of Mr. Brown, "but a serious
matter for me. You observe," he went on, "that water four feet deep is
just six inches over my head. The river may be shallow to you, but it is
deep to me."
Mr. Smith, like many other individuals of great physical bulk and
strength, had an intellect not much adapted for comprehending subtile
and difficult thoughts. He took up the ground that things are what they
are in themselves, and was incapable of grasping the idea that greatness
and littleness, depth and shallowness, are relative things. An
altercation ensued, which resulted in threats on the part of Smith that
he would throw Brown into the river; and a coolness was occasioned
between the friends which subsisted for several days.
The acute mind of the reader of this page will perceive that Mr. Smith
was in error; and that the principle asserted by Mr. Brown was a sound
and true one. It is unquestionable that a thing which is little to one
man may be great to another man. And it is just as really and certainly
great in this latter case as anything ever can be. And yet, many people
do a thing exactly analogous to what was done by Smith. They insist that
the water which is shallow to them shall be held to be absolutely
shallow; and that, if smaller men declare that it is deep to themselves,
these smaller men shall be regarded as weak, fanciful, and mistaken.
Many people, as they look back upon the sorrows of their own childhood,
or as they look round upon the sorrows of existing childhood, think that
these sorrows are or were very light and insignificant, and their causes
very small. These people do this, because to them, as they are now,
_big people_, (to use the expressive phrase of childhood,) these
sorrows would be light, if they should befall. But though these sorrows
may seem light to us now, and their causes small, it is only as water
four feet in depth was shallow to the tall Mr. Smith. The same water was
very deep to the man whose stature was three feet and a half; and the
peril was as great to him as could have been caused by eight feet depth
of water to the man seven feet high. The little cause of trouble was
great to the little child. The little heart was as full of grief and
fear and bewilderment as it could hold.
Yes, I stand up against the common belief that childhood is our happiest
time. And whenever I hear grown-up people say that it is so, I think of
Mr. Smith, and the water four feet deep. I have always, in my heart,
rebelled against that common delusion. I recall, as if it were
yesterday, a day which I have left behind me more than twenty years. I
see a large hall, the hall of a certain educational institution, which
helped to make the present writer what he is. It is the day of the
distribution of the prizes. The hall is crowded with little boys, and
with the relations and friends of the little boys. And the chief
magistrate of that ancient town, in all the pomp of civic majesty, has
distributed the prizes. It is neither here nor there what honors were
borne off by me; though I remember well that _that_ day was the
proudest that ever had come in my short life. But I see the face and
hear the voice of the kind-hearted old dignitary, who has now been for
many years in his grave. And I recall especially one sentence he said,
as he made a few eloquent remarks at the close of the day's proceedings.
"Ah, boys," said he, "I can tell you this is the happiest time of all
your life!"
"Little you know about the matter," was my inward reply.
I knew that our worries, fears, and sorrows were just as great as those
of any one else.
The sorrows of childhood and boyhood are not sorrows of that complicated
and perplexing nature which sit heavy on the heart in after-years; but
in relation to the little hearts that have to bear them, they are very
overwhelming for the time. As has been said, great and little are quite
relative terms. A weight which is not absolutely heavy is heavy to a
weak person. We think an industrious flea draws a vast weight, if it
draw the eighth part of an ounce. And I believe that the sorrows of
childhood task the endurance of childhood as severely as those of
manhood do the endurance of the man. Yes, we look back now, and we smile
at them, and at the anguish they occasioned, because they would be no
great matter to us now. Yet in all this we err just as Mr. Smith the
tall man erred, in that discussion with the little man, Mr. Brown. Those
early sorrows were great things then. Very bitter grief may be in a very
little heart. "The sports of childhood," we know from Goldsmith,
"satisfy the child." The sorrows of childhood overwhelm the poor little
thing. I think a sympathetic reader would hardly read without a tear, as
well as a smile, an incident in the early life of Patrick Fraser Tytler,
recorded in his biography. When five years old, he got hold of the gun
of an elder brother and broke the spring of its lock. What anguish the
little boy must have endured, what a crushing sense of having caused an
irremediable evil, before he sat down and printed in great letters the
following epistle to his brother, the owner of the gun:--"Oh, Jamie,
think no more of guns, for the main-spring of that is broken, and _my
heart is broken!_" Doubtless the poor little fellow fancied that for
all the remainder of his life he never could feel as he had felt before
he touched the unlucky weapon. And looking back over many years, most of
us can remember a child crushed and overwhelmed by some trouble which it
thought could never be got over; and we can feel for our early self as
though sympathizing with another being.
What I wish in this essay is, that we should look away along the path we
have come in life; and that we should see, that, though many cares and
troubles may now press upon us, still we may well be content. I speak to
ordinary people, whose lot has been an ordinary lot. I know there are
exceptional cases; but I firmly believe, that, as for most of us, we
never have seen better days than these. No doubt, in the retrospect of
early youth, we seem to see a time when the summer was brighter, the
flowers sweeter, the snowy days of winter more cheerful, than we ever
find them now. But, in sober sense, we know that it is all an illusion.
It is only as the man travelling over the burning desert sees sparkling
water and shady trees where he knows there is nothing but arid sand.
I dare say you know that one of the acutest of living men has maintained
that it is foolish to grieve over past suffering. He says, truly enough
in one sense, that the suffering which is past is as truly non-existent
as the suffering which has never been at all; that, in fact, past
suffering is now nothing, and is entitled to no more consideration than
that to which nothing is entitled. No doubt, when bodily pain has
ceased, it is all over: we do not feel it any more. And you have
probably observed that the impression left by bodily pain passes very
quickly away. The sleepless night, or the night of torment from
toothache, which seemed such a distressing reality while it was dragging
over, looks a very shadowy thing the next forenoon. But it may be
doubted whether you will ever so far succeed in overcoming the fancies
and weaknesses of humanity as to get people to cease to feel that past
sufferings and sorrows are a great part of their present life. The
remembrance of our past life is a great part of our present life. And,
indeed, the greater part of human suffering consists in its anticipation
and in its recollection. It is so by the inevitable law of our being. It
is because we are rational creatures that it is so. We cannot help
looking forward to that which is coming, and looking back on that which
is past; nor can we suppress, as we do so, an emotion corresponding to
the perception. There is not the least use in telling a little boy who
knows that he is to have a tooth pulled out to-morrow, that it is absurd
in him to make himself unhappy to-night through the anticipation of it.
You may show with irrefragable force of reason, that the pain will last
only for the two or three seconds during which the tooth is being
wrenched from its place, and that it will be time enough to vex himself
about the pain when he has actually to feel it. But the little fellow
will pass but an unhappy night in the dismal prospect; and by the time
the cold iron lays hold of the tooth, he will have endured by
anticipation a vast deal more suffering than the suffering of the actual
operation. It is so with bigger people, looking forward to greater
trials. And it serves no end whatever to prove that all this ought not
to be. The question as to the emotions turned off in the workings of the
human mind is one of fact. It is not how the machine ought to work, but
how the machine does work. And as with the anticipation of suffering, so
with its retrospect. The great grief which is past, even though its
consequences no longer directly press upon us, casts its shadow over
after-years. There are, indeed, some hardships and trials upon which it
is possible that we may look back with satisfaction. The contrast with
them enhances the enjoyment of better days. But these trials, it seems
to me, must be such as come through the direct intervention of
Providence; and they must be clear of the elements of human cruelty or
injustice. I do not believe that a man who was a weakly and timid boy
can ever look back with pleasure upon the ill-usage of the brutal bully
of his school-days, or upon the injustice of his teacher in cheating him
out of some well-earned prize. There are kinds of great suffering which
can never be thought of without present suffering, so long as human
nature continues what it is. And I believe that past sorrows are a great
reality in our present life, and exert a great influence over our
present life, whether for good or ill. As you may see in the trembling
knees of some poor horse, in its drooping head, and spiritless paces,
that it was overwrought when young: so, if the human soul were a thing
that could be seen, you might discern the scars where the iron entered
into it long ago,--you might trace not merely the enduring remembrance,
but the enduring results, of the incapacity and dishonesty of teachers,
the heartlessness of companions, and the idiotic folly and cruelty of
parents. No, it will not do to tell us that past sufferings have ceased
to exist, while their remembrance continues so vivid, and their results
so great. You are not done with the bitter frosts of last winter, though
it be summer now, if your blighted evergreens remain as their result and
memorial. And the man who was brought up in an unhappy home in childhood
will never feel that that unhappy home has ceased to be a present
reality, if he knows that its whole discipline fostered in him a spirit
of distrust in his kind which is not yet entirely got over, and made him
set himself to the work of life with a heart somewhat soured and
prematurely old. The past is a great reality. We are here the living
embodiment of all we have seen and felt through all our life,--fashioned
into our present form by millions of little touches, and by none with a
more real result than the hours of sorrow we have known.
One great cause of the suffering of boyhood is the bullying of bigger
boys at school. I know nothing practically of the English system of
_fagging_ at public schools, but I am not prepared to join out and
out in the cry against it. I see many evils inherent in the system; but
I see that various advantages may result from it, too. To organize a
recognized subordination of lesser boys to bigger ones must
unquestionably tend to cut the ground from under the feet of the
unrecognized, unauthorized, private bully. But I know that at large
schools, where there is no fagging, bullying on the part of youthful
tyrants prevails to a great degree. Human nature is beyond doubt fallen.
The systematic cruelty of a school-bully to a little boy is proof enough
of _that_, and presents one of the very hatefullest phases of human
character. It is worthy of notice, that, as a general rule, the higher
you ascend in the social scale among boys, the less of bullying there is
to be found. Something of the chivalrous and the magnanimous comes out
in the case of the sons of gentlemen: it is only among such that you
will ever find a boy, not personally interested in the matter, standing
up against the bully in the interest of right and justice. I have
watched a big boy thrashing a little one, in the presence of half a
dozen other big boys, not one of whom interfered on behalf of the
oppressed little fellow. You may be sure I did not watch the transaction
longer than was necessary to ascertain whether there was a grain of
generosity in the hulking boors; and you may be sure, too, that that
thrashing of the little boy was, to the big bully, one of the most
unfortunate transactions in which he had engaged in his bestial and
blackguard, though brief, life. _I_ took care of _that_, you
may rely on it. And I favored the bully's companions with my sentiments
as to their conduct, with an energy of statement that made them sneak
off, looking very like whipped spaniels. My friendly reader, let us
never fail to stop a bully, when we can. And we very often can. Among
the writer's possessions might be found by the curious inspector several
black kid gloves, no longer fit for use, though apparently not very much
worn. Surveying these integuments minutely, you would find the thumb of
the right hand rent away, beyond the possibility of mending. Whence the
phenomenon? It comes of the writer's determined habit of stopping the
bully. Walking along the street, or the country-road, I occasionally see
a big blackguard fellow thrashing a boy much less than himself. I am
well aware that some prudent individuals would pass by on the other
side, possibly addressing an admonition to the big blackguard. But I
approve Thomson's statement, that "prudence to baseness verges still";
and I follow a different course. Suddenly approaching the blackguard, by
a rapid movement, generally quite unforeseen by him, I take him by the
arm, and occasionally (let me confess) by the neck, and shake him till
his teeth rattle. This, being done with a new glove on the right hand,
will generally unfit that glove for further use. For the bully must be
taken with a grip so firm and sudden as shall serve to paralyze his
nervous system for the time. And never once have I found the bully fail
to prove a whimpering coward. The punishment is well deserved, of
course; and it is a terribly severe one in ordinary cases. It is a
serious thing, in the estimation both of the bully and his companions,
that he should have so behaved as to have drawn on himself the notice of
a passer-by, and especially of a parson. The bully is instantly cowed;
and by a few words to any of his school-associates who may be near, you
can render him unenviably conspicuous among them for a week or two. I
never permit bullying to pass unchecked; and so long as my strength and
life remain, I never will. I trust you never will. If you could stand
coolly by, and see the cruelty you could check, or the wrong you could
right, and move no finger to do it, you are not the reader I want, nor
the human being I choose to know. I hold the cautious and sagacious man,
who can look on at an act of bullying without stopping it and punishing
it, as a worse and more despicable animal than the bully himself.
Of course, you must interfere with judgment; and you must follow up your
interference with firmness. Don't intermeddle, like Don Quixote, in such
a manner as to make things worse. It is only in the case of continued
and systematic cruelty that it is worth while to work temporary
aggravation, to the end of ultimate and entire relief. And sometimes
that is unavoidable. You remember how, when Moses made his application
to Pharaoh for release to the Hebrews, the first result was the
aggravation of their burdens. The supply of straw was cut off, and the
tale of bricks was to remain the same as before. It could not be helped.
And though things came right at last, the immediate consequence was that
the Hebrews turned in bitterness on their intending deliverer, and
charged their aggravated sufferings upon him. Now, my friend, if you set
yourself to the discomfiture of a bully, see you do it effectually. If
needful, follow up your first shaking. Find out his master, find out his
parents; let the fellow see distinctly that your interference is no
passing fancy. Make him understand that you are thoroughly determined
that his bullying shall cease. And carry out your determination
unflinchingly.
I frequently see the boys of a certain large public school, which is
attended by boys of the better class; and judging from their cheerful
and happy aspect, I judge that bullying among boys of that condition is
becoming rare. Still, I doubt not, there yet are poor little nervous
fellows whose school-life is embittered by it. I don't think any one
could read the poet Cowper's account of how he was bullied at school,
without feeling his blood a good deal stirred, if not entirely boiling.
If I knew of such a case within a good many miles, I should stop it,
though I never wore a glove again that was not split across the right
palm.
But, doubtless, the greatest cause of the sorrows of childhood is the
mismanagement and cruelty of parents. You will find many parents who
make favorites of some of their children to the neglect of others: an
error and a sin which is bitterly felt by the children who are held
down, and which can never by possibility result in good to any party
concerned. And there are parents who deliberately lay themselves out to
torment their children. There are two classes of parents who are the
most inexorably cruel and malignant: it is hard to say which class
excels, but it is certain that both classes exceed all ordinary mortals.
One is the utterly blackguard: the parents about whom there is no good
nor pretence of good. The other is the wrong-headedly conscientious and
religious: probably, after all, there is greater rancor and malice about
these last than about any other. These act upon a system of unnatural
repression, and systematized weeding out of all enjoyment from life.
These are the people whose very crowning act of hatred and malice
towards any one is to pray for him, or to threaten to pray for him.
These are the people who, if their children complain of their bare and
joyless life, say that such complaints indicate a wicked heart, or
Satanic possession; and have recourse to further persecution to bring
about a happier frame of mind. Yes: the wrong-headed and wrong-hearted
religionist is probably the very worst type of man or woman on whom the
sun looks down. And, oh! how sad to think of the fashion in which
stupid, conceited, malicious blockheads set up their own worst passions
as the fruits of the working of the Blessed Spirit, and caricature, to
the lasting injury of many a young heart, the pure and kindly religion
of the Blessed Redeemer! These are the folk who inflict systematic and
ingenious torment on their children: and, unhappily, a very contemptible
parent can inflict much suffering on a sensitive child. But of this
there is more to be said hereafter; and before going on to it, let us
think of another evil influence which darkens and embitters the early
years of many.
It is the cruelty, injustice, and incompetence of many schoolmasters. I
know a young man of twenty-eight, who told me, that, when at school in a
certain large city in Peru, (let us say,) he never went into his class
any day without feeling quite sick with nervous terror. The entire class
of boys lived in that state of cowed submission to a vulgar, stupid,
bullying, flogging barbarian. If it prevents the manners from becoming
brutal diligently to study the ingenuous arts, it appears certain that
diligently to teach them sometimes leads to a directly contrary result.
The bullying schoolmaster has now become an almost extinct animal; but
it is not very long since the spirit of Mr. Squeers was to be found, in
its worst manifestations, far beyond the precincts of Dotheboys Hall.
You would find fellows who showed a grim delight in walking down a class
with a cane in their hand, enjoying the evident fear they occasioned as
they swung it about, occasionally coming down with a savage whack on
some poor fellow who was doing nothing whatsoever. These brutal teachers
would flog, and that till compelled to cease by pure exhaustion, not
merely for moral offences, which possibly deserve it, (though I do not
believe any one was ever made better by flogging,) but for making a
mistake in saying a lesson, which the poor boy had done his best to
prepare, and which was driven out of his head by the fearful aspect of
the truculent blackguard with his cane and his hoarse voice. And how
indignant, in after-years, many a boy of the last generation must have
been, to find that this tyrant of his childhood was in truth a humbug, a
liar, a fool, and a sneak! Yet how that miserable piece of humanity was
feared! How they watched his eye, and laughed at the old idiot's
wretched jokes! I have several friends who have told me such stories of
their school-days, that I used to wonder that they did not, after they
became men, return to the schoolboy spot that they might heartily shake
their preceptor of other years, or even kick him!
If there be a thing to be wondered at, it is that the human race is not
much worse than it is. It has not a fair chance. I am not thinking now
of an original defect in the material provided: I am thinking only of
the kind of handling it gets. I am thinking of the amount of judgment
which may be found in most parents and in most teachers, and of the
degree of honesty which may be found in many. I suppose there is no
doubt that the accursed system of the cheap Yorkshire schools was by no
means caricatured by Mr. Dickens in "Nicholas Nickleby." I believe that
starvation and brutality were the rule at these institutions. And I do
not think it says much for the manliness of Yorkshire men and of
Yorkshire clergymen, that these foul dens of misery and wickedness were
suffered to exist so long without a voice raised to let the world know
of them. I venture to think, that, if Dr. Guthrie of Edinburgh had lived
anywhere near Greta Bridge, Mr. Squeers and his compeers would have
attained a notoriety that would have stopped their trade. I cannot
imagine how any one, with the spirit of a man in him, could sleep and
wake within sight of one of these schools without lifting a hand or a
voice to stop what was going on there. But without supposing these
extreme cases, I can remember what I have myself seen of the
incompetence and injustice of teachers. I burn with indignation yet, as
I think of a malignant blockhead who once taught me for a few months. I
have been at various schools; and I spent six years at one venerable
university (where my instructors were wise and worthy); and I am now so
old, that I may say, without any great exhibition of vanity, that I have
always kept well up among my school- and college-companions: but that
blockhead kept me steadily at the bottom of my class, and kept a
frightful dunce at the top of it, by his peculiar system. I have
observed (let me say) that masters and professors who are stupid
themselves have a great preference for stupid fellows, and like to keep
down clever ones. A professor who was himself a dunce at college, and
who has been jobbed into his chair, being quite unfit for it, has a
fellow-feeling for other dunces. He is at home with them, you see, and
is not afraid that they see through him and despise him. The injustice
of the malignant blockhead who was my early instructor, and who
succeeded in making several months of my boyhood unhappy enough, was
taken up and imitated by several lesser blockheads among the boys. I
remember particularly one sneaking wretch who was occasionally set to
mark down on a slate the names of such boys as talked in school; such
boys being punished by being turned to the bottom of their class. I
remember how that sneaking wretch used always to mark my name down,
though I kept perfectly silent: and how he put my name last on the list,
that I might have to begin the lesson the very lowest in my form. The
sneaking wretch was bigger than I, so I could not thrash him; and any
representation I made to the malignant blockhead of a schoolmaster was
entirely disregarded. I cannot think but with considerable ferocity,
that probably there are many schools to-day in Britain containing a
master who has taken an unreasonable dislike to some poor boy, and who
lays himself out to make that poor boy unhappy. And I know that such may
be the case where the boy is neither bad nor stupid. And if the school
be one attended by a good many boys of the lower grade, there are sure
to be several sneaky boys among them who will devote themselves to
tormenting the one whom the master hates and torments.
It cannot be denied that there is a generous and magnanimous tone about
the boys of a school attended exclusively by the children of the better
classes, which is unknown among the children of uncultivated boors. I
have observed, that, if you offer a prize to the cleverest and most
industrious boy of a certain form in a school of the upper class, and
propose to let the prize be decided by the votes of the boys themselves,
you will almost invariably find it fairly given: that is, given to the
boy who deserves it best. If you explain, in a frank, manly way, to the
little fellows, that, in asking each for whom he votes, you are asking
each to say upon his honor whom he thinks the cleverest and most
diligent boy in the form, nineteen boys out of twenty will answer
honestly. But I have witnessed the signal failure of such an appeal to
the honor of the bumpkins of a country school. I was once present at the
examination of such a school, and remarked carefully how the boys
acquitted themselves. After the examination was over, the master
proposed, very absurdly, to let the boys of each class vote the prize
for that particular class. The voting began. A class of about twenty was
called up: I explained to the boys what they were to do. I told them
they were not to vote for the boy they liked best, but were to tell me
faithfully who had done best in the class-lessons. I then asked the
first boy in the line for whom he gave his vote. To my mortification,
instead of voting for a little fellow who had done incomparably best at
the examination, he gave his vote for a big sullen-looking blockhead who
had done conspicuously ill. I asked the next boy, and received the same
answer. So all round the class: all voted for the big sullen-looking
blockhead. One or two did not give their votes quite promptly; and I
could discern a threatening glance cast at them by the big
sullen-looking blockhead, and an ominous clenching of the blockhead's
right fist. I went round the class without remark; and the blockhead
made sure of the prize. Of course this would not do. The blockhead could
not be suffered to get the prize; and it was expedient that he should be
made to remember the occasion on which he had sought to tamper with
justice and right. Addressing the blockhead, amid the dead silence of
the school, I said: "You shall not get the prize, because I can judge
for myself that you don't deserve it. I can see that you are the
stupidest boy in the class; and I have seen reason, during this voting,
to believe that you are the worst. You have tried to bully these boys
into voting for you. Their votes go for nothing; for their voting for
you proves either that they are so stupid as to think you deserve the
prize, or so dishonest as to say they think so when they don't think
so." Then I inducted the blockhead into a seat where I could see him
well, and proceeded to take the votes over again. I explained to the
boys once more what they had to do; and explained that any boy would be
telling a lie who voted the prize unfairly. I also told them that I knew
who deserved the prize, and that they knew it too, and that they had
better vote fairly. Then, instead of saying to each boy, "For whom do
you vote?" I said to each, "Tell me who did best in the class during
these months past." Each boy in reply named the boy who really deserved
the prize: and the little fellow got it. I need not record the means I
adopted to prevent the sullen-looking blockhead from carrying out his
purpose of thrashing the little fellow. It may suffice to say that the
means were thoroughly effectual; and that the blockhead was very meek
and tractable for about six weeks after that memorable day.
But, after all, the great cause of the sorrows of childhood is
unquestionably the mismanagement of parents. You hear a great deal about
parents who spoil their children by excessive kindness; but I venture to
think that a greater number of children are spoiled by stupidity and
cruelty on the part of their parents. You may find parents who, having
started from a humble origin, have attained to wealth, and who, instead
of being glad to think that their children are better off than they
themselves were, exhibit a diabolical jealousy of their children. You
will find such wretched beings insisting that their children shall go
through needless trials and mortifications, because they themselves went
through the like. Why, I do not hesitate to say that one of the thoughts
which would most powerfully lead a worthy man to value material
prosperity would be the thought that his boys would have a fairer and
happier start in life than he had, and would be saved the many
difficulties on which he still looks back with pain. You will find
parents, especially parents of the pharisaical and wrong-headedly
religious class, who seem to hold it a sacred duty to make the little
things unhappy; who systematically endeavor to render life as bare,
ugly, and wretched a thing as possible; who never praise their children
when they do right, but punish them with great severity when they do
wrong; who seem to hate to see their children lively or cheerful in
their presence; who thoroughly repel all sympathy or confidence on the
part of their children, and then mention as a proof that their children
are possessed by the Devil, that their children always like to get away
from them; who rejoice to cut off any little enjoyment,--rigidly
carrying out into practice the fundamental principle of their creed,
which undoubtedly is, that "nobody should ever please himself, neither
should anybody ever please anybody else, because in either case he is
sure to displease God." No doubt, Mr. Buckle, in his second volume,
caricatured and misrepresented the religion of Scotland as a country;
but he did not in the least degree caricature or misrepresent the
religion of some people in Scotland. The great doctrine underlying all
other doctrines, in the creed of a few unfortunate beings, is, that God
is spitefully angry to see his creatures happy; and of course the
practical lesson follows, that they are following the best example, when
they are spitefully angry to see their children happy.
Then a great trouble, always pressing heavily on many a little mind, is
that it is overtasked with lessons. You still see here and there idiotic
parents striving to make infant phenomena of their children, and
recording with much pride how their children could read and write at an
unnaturally early age. Such parents are fools: not necessarily malicious
fools, but fools beyond question. The great use to which the first six
or seven years of life should be given is the laying the foundation of a
healthful constitution in body and mind; and the instilling of those
first principles of duty and religion which do not need to be taught out
of any books. Even if you do not permanently injure the young brain and
mind by prematurely overtasking them,--even if you do not permanently
blight the bodily health and break the mind's cheerful spring, you gain
nothing. Your child at fourteen years old is not a bit farther advanced
in his education than a child who began his years after him; and the
entire result of your stupid driving has been to overcloud some days
which should have been among the happiest of his life. It is a woful
sight to me to see the little forehead corrugated with mental effort,
though the effort be to do no more than master the multiplication table:
it was a sad story I lately heard of a little boy repeating his Latin
lesson over and over again in the delirium of the fever of which he
died, and saying piteously that indeed he could not do it better. I
don't like to see a little face looking unnaturally anxious and earnest
about a horrible task of spelling; and even when children pass that
stage, and grow up into school-boys who can read Thucydides and write
Greek iambics, it is not wise in parents to stimulate a clever boy's
anxiety to hold the first place in his class. That anxiety is strong
enough already; it needs rather to be repressed. It is bad enough even
at college to work on late into the night; but at school it ought not to
be suffered for one moment. If a lad takes his place in his class every
day in a state of nervous tremor, he may be in the way to get his gold
medal, indeed; but he is in the way to shatter his constitution for
life.
We all know, of course, that children are subjected to worse things
than these. I think of little things early set to hard work, to add a
little to their parents' scanty store. Yet, if it be only work, they
bear it cheerfully. This afternoon, I was walking through a certain
quiet street, when I saw a little child standing with a basket at a
door. The little man looked at various passers-by; and I am happy to
say, that, when he saw me, he asked me to ring the door-bell for him:
for, though he had been sent with that basket, which was not a light
one, he could not reach up to the bell. I asked him how old he was.
"Five years past," said the child, quite cheerfully and independently.
"God help you, poor little man!" I thought; "the doom of toil has fallen
early upon you!" If you visit much among the poor, few things will touch
you more than the unnatural sagacity and trustworthiness of children who
are little more than babies. You will find these little things left in a
bare room by themselves,--the eldest six years old,--while the poor
mother is out at her work. And the eldest will reply to your questions
in a way that will astonish you, till you get accustomed to such things.
I think that almost as heart-rending a sight as you will readily see is
the misery of a little thing who has spilt in the street the milk she
was sent to fetch, or broken a jug, and who is sitting in despair beside
the spilt milk or the broken fragments. Good Samaritan, never pass by
such a sight; bring out your two-pence; set things completely right: a
small matter and a kind word will cheer and comfort an overwhelmed
heart. That child has a truculent step-mother, or (alas!) mother, at
home, who would punish that mishap as nothing should be punished but the
gravest moral delinquency. And lower down the scale than this, it is
awful to see want, cold, hunger, rags, in a little child. I have seen
the wee thing shuffling along the pavement in great men's shoes, holding
up its sorry tatters with its hands, and casting on the passengers a
look so eager, yet so hopeless, as went to one's heart. Let us thank God
that there is one large city in the empire where you need never see such
a sight, and where, if you do, you know how to relieve it effectually;
and let us bless the name and the labors and the genius of Thomas
Guthrie! It is a sad thing to see the toys of such little children as I
can think of. What curious things they are able to seek amusement in! I
have known a brass button at the end of a string a much prized
possession. I have seen a grave little boy standing by a broken chair in
a bare garret, solemnly arranging and rearranging two pins upon the
broken chair. A machine much employed by poor children in country places
is a slate tied to a bit of string: this, being drawn along the road,
constitutes a cart; and you may find it attended by the admiration of
the entire young population of three or four cottages standing in the
moorland miles from any neighbor.
* * * * *
You will not unfrequently find parents who, if they cannot keep back
their children from some little treat, will try to infuse a sting into
it, so as to prevent the children from enjoying it. They will impress on
their children that they must be very wicked to care so much about going
out to some children's party; or they will insist that their children
should return home at some preposterously early hour, so as to lose the
best part of the fun, and so as to appear ridiculous in the eyes of
their young companions. You will find this amiable tendency in people
intrusted with the care of older children. I have heard of a man whose
nephew lived with him, and lived a very cheerless life. When the season
came round at which the lad hoped to be allowed to go and visit his
parents, he ventured, after much hesitation, to hint this to his uncle.
Of course the uncle felt that it was quite right the lad should go, but
he grudged him the chance of the little enjoyment, and the happy thought
struck him that he might let the lad go, and at the same time make the
poor fellow uncomfortable in going. Accordingly he conveyed his
permission to the lad to go by roaring out in a savage manner,
"_Begone!_" This made the poor lad feel as if it were his duty to
stay, and as if it were very wicked in him to wish to go; and though he
ultimately went, he enjoyed his visit with only half a heart. There are
parents and guardians who take great pains to make their children think
themselves very bad,--to make the little things grow up in the endurance
of the pangs of a bad conscience. For conscience, in children, is a
quite artificial thing: you may dictate to it what it is to say. And
parents, often injudicious, sometimes malignant, not seldom apply hard
names to their children, which sink down into the little heart and
memory far more deeply than they think. If a child cannot eat fat, you
may instil into him that it is because he is so wicked; and he will
believe you for a while. A favorite weapon in the hands of some parents,
who have devoted themselves diligently to making their children
miserable, is to frequently predict to the children the remorse which
they (the children) will feel after they (the parents) are dead. In such
cases, it would be difficult to specify the precise things which the
children are to feel remorseful about. It must just be, generally,
because they were so wicked, and because they did not sufficiently
believe the infallibility and impeccability of their ancestors. I am
reminded of the woman mentioned by Sam Weller, whose husband
disappeared. The woman had been a fearful termagant; the husband, a very
inoffensive man. After his disappearance, the woman issued an
advertisement, assuring him, that, if he returned, he would be fully
forgiven; which, as Mr. Weller justly remarked, was very generous,
seeing he had never done anything at all.
Yes, the conscience of children is an artificial and a sensitive thing.
The other day, a friend of mine, who is one of the kindest of parents
and the most amiable of men, told me what happened in his house on a
certain _Fast-day_. A Scotch Fast-day, you may remember, is the
institution which so completely puzzled Mr. Buckle. That historian
fancied that _to fast_ means in Scotland to abstain from food. Had
Mr. Buckle known anything whatever about Scotland, he would have known
that a Scotch Fast-day means a week-day on which people go to church,
but on which (especially in the dwellings of the clergy) there is a
better dinner than usual. I never knew man or woman in all my life who
on a Fast-day refrained from eating. And quite right, too. The growth of
common sense has gradually abolished literal fasting. In a Oriental
climate, abstinence from food may give the mind the preeminence over the
body, and so leave the mind better fitted for religious duties. In our
country, literal fasting would have just the contrary effect: it would
give the body the mastery over the soul; it would make a man so
physically uncomfortable that he could not attend with profit to his
religious duties at all. I am aware, Anglican reader, of the defects of
my countrymen; but commend me to the average Scotchman for sound
practical sense. But to return. These Fast-days are by many people
observed as rigorously as the Scotch Sunday. On the forenoon of such a
day, my friend's little child, three years old, came to him in much
distress. She said, as one who had a fearful sin to confess, "I have
been playing with my toys this morning"; and then began to cry as if her
little heart would break. I know some stupid parents who would have
strongly encouraged this needless sensitiveness; and who would thus have
made their child unhappy at the time, and prepared the way for an
indignant bursting of these artificial trammels when the child had grown
up to maturity. But my friend was not of that stamp. He comforted the
little thing, and told her, that, though it might be as well not to play
with her toys on a Fast-day, what she had done was nothing to cry about.
I think, my reader, that, even if you were a Scotch minister, you would
appear with considerable confidence before your Judge, if you had never
done worse than failed to observe a Scotch Fast-day with the Covenanting
austerity.
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