aright we have Delitzsch! To speak of Wundt and Delitzsch is as if one
were to bracket together John Stuart Mill and Frederick Denison Maurice.
And then comes the admirable Lotze, whom Mr. Cook is continually setting
off as a foil to Herbert Spencer. On page 179 of the lectures on
"Heredity" he enumerates, with emphasis, those opinions of Lotze which
he deems of especial importance with regard to the relations between
matter and mind, and then proceeds to deprecate the "thunder" which he
presumes he has evoked "from all quarters of the Spencerian sky." But,
considering that the propositions he quotes from Lotze express the very
views of Herbert Spencer, only somewhat inadequately worded, it would
seem that the lecturer's alarm cannot be very real, and the thunder in
question is only a kind of comic-opera thunder manufactured behind the
curtain for the benefit of the acquiescent audience. For example, the
fourth proposition quoted with approval from Lotze reads thus: "Physical
phenomena point to an underlying being to which they belong, but do not
determine whether that being is material or immaterial." Now this is
Spencerism, pure and simple, and it is a crucial proposition, too,
pointing out the drift of the whole philosophy before which it is set
up. The fact that Mr. Cook adopts such an opinion when stated by Lotze,
but vituperates the same opinion when stated by Spencer, reveals to us,
with a pungent though not wholly delicious flavour, the "true
inwardness" of his fundamental method of procedure.
That method, it must be acknowledged with due regard to the _bon mot_ of
the old Greek statesman, is a method well adapted to conciliate the
favour of an immense audience,--even in Boston. We are all descended
from fighting ancestors, and many of us, who care little for the
disinterested discussion of scientific theories, still like to see a man
knocked down or impaled, provided the knocking down be done with a
syllogistic club, or the impaling be restricted to such a hard substance
as is afforded by the horns of a dilemma. It satisfies our combative
instincts, without shocking our physical sympathies or making any great
demand on our keener thinking powers, which most people do most of all
dislike to be called upon to exercise. To this kind of feeling Mr.
Cook's lectures appeal, and the peculiar character of his success seems
to show that he knows well how to deal with it. In a moment of winning
frankness he exclaims: "Do you suppose that I think that this audience
can be _cheated_? I do not know where in America there is another weekly
audience with as many brains in it; at least, I do not know where in New
England I should be so likely to be tripped up, if I were to make an
incorrect statement, as here."[34] After this coaxing little dose, Mr.
Cook proceeds to show his respect for the learning of his audience in
some remarks on _bathybius_, which, as he condescendingly explains, is a
name derived from two Greek words, meaning _deep_ and _sea_!! The
profound knowledge of Greek thus exhibited is quite equalled by his
account of bathybius from the zoölogical point of view. He begins by
telling his hearers that, in a paper published in the "Microscopical
Journal" in 1868, Professor Huxley "announced his belief that the
gelatinous substance found in the ooze of the beds of the deep seas is a
sheet of living matter extending around the globe." Furthermore, of
"this amazingly strategic [!!] and haughtily trumpeted substance ...
Huxley assumed that it was in the past, and would be in the future, the
progenitor of all the life on the planet." Now it is not true that, in
the paper referred to, Huxley announces any such belief or makes any
such assumption as is here ascribed to him; but we shall see, in a
moment, that Mr. Cook's system of quotation is peculiar in enabling him
to extract from the text of an author any meaning whatever that may
happen to suit his purposes. This ingenious garbling enables the
lecturer to come in with telling effect at the close of his third
lecture, and earn an ignoble round of applause by holding up the current
number of the "American Journal of Science and Arts" (which he would
appear to have picked up at a bookstall on his way to the lecture room)
and citing from it, as the fifty-first and closing "concession" of
evolutionists, "that bathybius has been discovered in 1875, by the ship
Challenger, to be--hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth!--sulphate of
lime; and that when dissolved it crystallizes as gypsum. [Applause.]"
This is what Mr. Cook calls striking, with the "latest scientific
intelligence," at the "bottom stem" of the great tree of evolution. The
"latest scientific intelligence," with him, means the last book or
article which he has glanced over without comprehending its import, but
from which he has contrived to glean some statement calculated to edify
his audience and scatter the hosts of Midian. In point of fact, the
identification of bathybius with sulphate of lime was set down by Sir
Wyville Thomson only as a suspicion, to which Huxley, like a true man of
science, at once accorded all possible weight, while leaving the
question open for further discussion. Only a mountebank, dealing with an
audience upon whose ignorance of the subject he might safely rely, could
pretend to suppose that the fate of the doctrine of evolution was in any
way involved in the question as to the organic nature of bathybius. The
amazing strategy was all Mr. Cook's own, and the haughty trumpeting
appears to have been chiefly done with his own very brazen instrument.
I said a moment ago that Mr. Cook's system of quotation is peculiar. The
following instance is so good that it will bear citing at some length.
According to Mr. Cook, Professor Huxley says, in his article on Biology
in the ninth edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica:" "_Throughout
almost the whole series of living beings, we find agamogenesis, or
not-sexual generation._" After a pause, Mr. Cook proceeded in a lower
voice: "When the topic of the origin of the life of our Lord on the
earth is approached from the point of view of the microscope, some men,
who know not what the holy of holies in physical and religious science
is, say that we have no example of the origin of life without two
parents." He went on to cite the familiar instances of parthenogenesis
in bees and silk moths, and then proceeded as follows: "Take up your
Mivart, your Lyell, your Owen, and you will read [where?] this same
important fact which Huxley here asserts, when he says that the law that
perfect individuals may be virginally born extends to the higher forms
of life. I am in the presence of Almighty God; and yet, when a great
soul like that tender spirit of our sainted Lincoln, in his early days,
with little knowledge but with great thoughtfulness, was troubled by his
difficulty, and almost thrown into infidelity by not knowing that the
law that there must be two parents is not universal, I am willing to
allude, even in such a presence as this, to the latest science
concerning miraculous conception. [Sensation.]"
The vulgarity of this rhetoric is as glaring as its absurdity. All that
concerns me now, however, is to point out the Brobdignagian dimensions
of the misstatement of facts. Let us look back for a moment at the
italicized quotation from Huxley, upon which Mr. Cook builds up the
wondrous assertion "that the law that perfect individuals may be
virginally born extends to the higher forms of life." Then let us turn
to Huxley's article and see what he really does say.
Treating of the whole subject of agamogenesis in the widest possible way
by including it under the more general process of cell-multiplication,
Huxley says: "Common as the process is in plants and in the lower
animals, it becomes rare among the higher animals. In these, the
reproduction of the whole organism from a part, in the way indicated
above, ceases. At most we find that the cells at the end of an amputated
portion of the organism are capable of reproducing the lost part, and in
the very highest animals even this power vanishes in the adult....
_Throughout almost the whole series of living beings, however, we find
concurrently with the process of agamogenesis, or asexual generation_,
another method of generation, in which the development of the germ into
an organism resembling the parent depends on an influence exerted by
living matter different from the germ. This is _gamogenesis_, or sexual
generation."[35]
Comparing the italicized passage here with Mr. Cook's italicized
quotation, we see vividly illustrated the fundamental method of
procedure by which the "Monday Lectureship" jumps from a statement
about the reproduction of a lobster's claw to the inference that a man
may be born without a father. It reminds one of that worthy clergyman
who introduced a scathing sermon on a new-fangled variety of ladies'
headdress by the appropriate text, "Top-knot come down!" On being
reminded by one of his deacons that the full verse seemed to read, "Let
him that is upon the housetop not come down," the pastor boldly
justified his abridgment on the ground that any particular collocation
of words in Scripture is as authoritative as any other, since all parts
of the Bible are equally inspired. Perhaps there are some who would
justify Mr. Cook's peculiar principle of abridgment on the familiar
ground that the end sanctifies the means, and that if a statement seems
helpful to "the truth" in general, it is no matter whether the statement
itself is true or not.
Enough of this. If we were to go through with these volumes in detail,
we should find little else but misrepresentations of facts,
misconceptions of principles, and floods of tawdry rhetoric, of which
the specimens here quoted are quite sufficient to illustrate the
lecturer's "fundamental method of procedure." If I have treated him
somewhat lightly, it is because there is nothing in his matter or in
his manner that would justify, or even excuse, a more serious style of
treatment. The only aspect of his career which affords matter for grave
reflection is the ease with which he succeeded for a moment in imposing
on the credulity and in appealing to the prejudices of his public. The
eagerness with which the orthodox world hailed the appearance of this
new champion could not but remind one, with sad emphasis, of
Oxenstjern's famous remark: "Quam parva sapientia mundus regitur!" It is
comforting to remember that one of the world's greatest naturalists, Asa
Gray,--whose orthodoxy is as unimpeachable as his science,--very
promptly declared in print that such championship is something of which
orthodoxy has no reason to feel proud.
_December, 1880._
XIII
FORTY YEARS OF BACON-SHAKESPEARE FOLLY[36]
Some time ago, while I happened to be looking over a wheelbarrow-load of
rubbish written to prove that such plays as "King Lear" and "The Merry
Wives of Windsor" emanated from one of the least poetical and least
humorous minds of modern times, I was reminded of a story which I heard
when a boy. I forget whether it was some whimsical man of letters like
Charles Lamb, or some such professional wag as Theodore Hook, who took
it into his head one day to stand still on a London street, with face
turned upward, gazing into the sky. Thereupon the next person who came
that way forthwith stopped and did likewise, and then the next, and the
next, until the road was blocked by a dense crowd of men and women, all
standing as if rooted in the ground, and with solemn sky-ward stare. The
enchantment was at last broken when some one asked what they were
looking at, and nobody could tell. It was simply an instance of a
certain remnant of primitive gregariousness of action on the part of
human beings, which exhibits itself from time to time in sundry queer
fashions and fads.
So when Miss Delia Bacon, in the year which saw the beginning of "The
Atlantic Monthly," published a book purporting to unfold the
"philosophy" of Shakespeare's dramas, it was not long before other
persons began staring intently into the silliest mare's nest ever
devised by human dulness; and the fruits of so much staring have
appeared in divers eccentric volumes, of which more specific mention
will presently be made. Neither in number nor in quality are they such
as to indicate that the Bacon-Shakespeare folly has yet become
fashionable, and we shall presently observe in it marked suicidal
tendencies which are likely to prevent its ever becoming so; but there
are enough of such volumes to illustrate the point of my anecdote.
Another fad, once really fashionable, and in defence of which some
plausible arguments could be urged, was the Wolfian theory of the
Homeric poems, which dazzled so many of our grandparents. It is worth
our while to mention it here by way of prelude. The theory that the
Iliad and Odyssey are mere aggregations of popular ballads, collected
and arranged in the time of Pisistratus, was perhaps originally
suggested by the philosopher Vico, but first attracted general attention
in 1795, when set forth by Friedrich August Wolf, one of the most
learned and brilliant of modern scholars. Thus eminently respectable in
its parentage and quite reasonable on the surface, this ballad theory
came to be widely fashionable; forty years ago it was accepted by many
able scholars, though usually with large modifications.
The Wolfians urged that we know absolutely nothing about the man Homer,
not even when or where he lived. His existence is merely matter of
tradition, or of inference from the existence of the poems. But as the
poems know nothing of Dorians in Peloponnesus, their date can hardly be
so late as 1100 B. C. What happened, then, when "an edition of Homer"
was made at Athens, about 530 B. C., by Pisistratus, or under his
orders? Did the editor simply edit two great poems already six centuries
old, or did he make up two poems by piecing together a miscellaneous lot
of ancient ballads? Wolf maintained the latter alternative, chiefly
because of the alleged impossibility of composing and preserving such
long poems in the alleged absence of the art of writing. Having thus
made a plausible start, the Wolfians proceeded to pick the poems to
pieces, and to prove by "internal evidence" that there was nothing like
"unity of design" in them, etc.; and so it went on, till poor old Homer
was relegated to the world of myth. As a schoolboy I used to hear the
belief in the existence of such a poet derided as "uncritical" and
"unscholarly."
In spite of these terrifying epithets, the ballad theory never made any
impression upon me; for it seemed to ignore the most conspicuous and
vital fact about the poems, namely, the _style_, the noble, rapid,
simple, vivid, supremely poetical style,--a style as individual and
unapproachable as that of Dante or Keats. For an excellent
characterization of it, read Matthew Arnold's charming essays "On
Translating Homer." The style is the man, and to suppose that this
Homeric style ever came from a democratic multitude of minds, or from
anything save one of those supremely endowed individual natures such as
get born once or twice in a millennium, is simply to suppose a
psychological impossibility. I remember once talking about this with
George Eliot, who had lately been reading Frederick Paley's ingenious
restatement of the ballad theory, and was captivated by its ingenuity.
I told her I did not wonder that old dry-as-dust philologists should
hold such views, but I was indeed surprised to find such a literary
artist as herself ignoring the impassable gulf between Homer's language
and that which any ballad theory necessarily implies. She had no answer
for this except to say that she should have supposed an evolutionist
like me would prefer to regard the Homeric poems as gradually evolved
rather than suddenly created! A retort so clever and amiable most surely
entitled her to the woman's privilege of the last word.
The Wolfian theory may now be regarded as a thing of the past; it has
had its day and been flung aside. If Wolf himself were living, he would
be the first to laugh at it. Its original prop has been knocked away,
since it has become pretty clear that the art of writing was practised
about the shores of the Ægean Sea long before 1100 B. C. Even Wolf would
now admit that it might have been a real letter that Bellerophon carried
to the father of Anteia.[37] All attempts to show a lack of unity in the
design of the Iliad and the Odyssey have failed irretrievably, and the
discussion has served only to make more and more unmistakable the work
of the mighty master. The ballad theory is dead and buried, and he who
would read its obituary may find keen pleasure, as well as many a
wholesome lesson in sound criticism, in the sensible and brilliant book
by Andrew Lang on "Homer and the Epic."
The Bacon-Shakespeare folly has never been set forth by scholars of
commanding authority, like Wolf and Lachmann, or Niese and Wilamowitz
Moellendorff. Among Delia Bacon's followers not one can by any
permissible laxity of speech be termed a scholar, and their theory has
found acceptance with very few persons. Nevertheless, it illustrates as
well as the Wolfian theory the way in which such notions grow. It starts
from a false premise, hazily conceived, and it subsists upon arguments
in which trivial facts are assigned higher value than facts of vital
importance. Mr. Lang's remark upon certain learned Homeric commentators,
"that they pore over the hyssop on the wall, but are blind to the cedar
of Lebanon," applies with tenfold force to the Bacon-Shakespeare
sciolists. In them we always miss the just sense of proportion which is
one of the abiding marks of sanity. The unfortunate lady who first
brought their theory into public notoriety in 1857 was then sinking
under the cerebral disease of which she died two years later, and her
imitators have been chiefly weak minds of the sort that thrive upon
paradox, closely akin to the circle-squarers and inventors of perpetual
motion. Underlying all the absurdities, however, there is something that
deserves attention. Like many other morbid phenomena, the
Bacon-Shakespeare folly has its natural history which is instructive.
The vagaries of Delia Bacon and her followers originated in a group of
conditions which admit of being specified and described, and which the
historian of nineteenth-century literature will need to notice. In order
to understand the natural history of the affair, it is necessary to
examine the Delia Bacon theory at greater length than it would otherwise
deserve. Let us see how it is constructed.
It starts with a syllogism, of which the major premise is that the
dramas ascribed to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and ever since
believed to be his, abound in evidences of extraordinary book-learning.
The minor premise is that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon could
not have acquired or possessed so much book-learning. The conclusion is
that he could not have written those plays.
The question then arises, Which of Shakespeare's contemporaries had
enough book-lore to have written them? No doubt Francis Bacon had
enough. The conclusion does not follow, however, that he wrote the
plays; for there were other contemporaries with learning enough and to
spare, as for example George Chapman and Ben Jonson. These two men, to
judge from their acknowledged works, were great poets, whereas in
Bacon's fifteen volumes there is not a paragraph which betrays poetical
genius. Why not, then, ascribe the Shakespeare dramas to Chapman or
Jonson? Here the Baconizers endeavour to support their assumption by
calling attention to similarities in thought and phrase between Francis
Bacon and the writer of the dramas. Up to this point their argument
consists of deductions from assumed premises; here they adduce inductive
evidence, such as it is. We shall see specimens of it by and by. At
present we are concerned with the initial syllogism.
And first, as to the major premise, it must be met with a flat denial.
The Shakespeare plays do not abound with evidences of scholarship or
learning of the sort that is gathered from profound and accurate study
of books. It is precisely in this respect that they are conspicuously
different from many of the plays contemporary with them, and from other
masterpieces of English literature. Such plays as Jonson's "Sejanus" and
"Catiline" are the work of a scholar deeply indoctrinated with the
views and mental habits of classic antiquity; he has soaked himself in
the style of Lucan and Seneca, until their mental peculiarities have
become like a second nature to him, and are unconsciously betrayed alike
in the general handling of his story and in little turns of expression.
Or take Milton's "Lycidas:" no one but a man saturated in every fibre
with Theocritus and Virgil could have written such a poem. An extremely
foreign and artificial literary form has been so completely mastered and
assimilated by Milton that he uses it with as much ease as Theocritus
himself, and has produced a work that even the master of idyls had
scarcely equalled. After the terrific invective against the clergy and
the beautiful invocation to the flowers, followed by the triumphant
hallelujah of Christian faith, observe the sudden reversion to pagan
sentiment where Lycidas is addressed as the genius of the shore. Only
profound scholarship could have written this wonderful poem,--could have
brought forth the Christian thought as if spontaneously through the
medium of the pagan form. Now there is nothing of this sort in
Shakespeare. He uses classical materials, or anything else under the sun
that suits his purpose. He takes a chronicle from Holinshed, a biography
from North's translation of Plutarch, a legend from Saxo Grammaticus
through Belleforest's French version, a novel of Boccaccio, a miracle
play,--whatever strikes his fancy; he chops up his materials and weaves
them into a story without much regard to classical models; defying rules
of order and unity, and not always heeding probability, but never
forgetful of his abiding purpose, to create live men and women. These
people may have Greek or Latin names, and their scene of action may be
Rome or Mitylene, decorated with scraps of classical knowledge such as a
bright man might pick up in miscellaneous reading; but all this is the
superficial setting, the mere frame to the picture. The living canvas is
human nature as Shakespeare saw it in London and depicted with supreme
poetic faculty. Among the new books within his reach was Chapman's
magnificent translation of the Iliad, which at a later day inspired
Keats to such a noble outburst of encomium; and in "Troilus and
Cressida" we have the Greek and Trojan heroes set before us with an
incisive reality not surpassed by Homer himself. This play shows how
keenly Shakespeare appreciated Homer, how delicately and exquisitely he
could supplement the picture; but there is nothing in its five acts that
shows him clothed in the garment of ancient thought as Milton wore it.
Shakespeare's freedom from such lore is a great advantage to him; in
"Troilus and Cressida" there is a freedom of treatment hardly possible
to a professional scholar. It is because of this freedom that
Shakespeare reaches a far wider public of readers and listeners than
Milton or Dante, whose vast learning makes them in many places "caviare
to the general." Book-lore is a great source of power, but one may
easily be hampered by it. What we forever love in Homer is the freshness
that comes with lack of it, and in this sort of freshness Shakespeare
agrees with Homer far more than with the learned poets.
It is not for a moment to be denied that Shakespeare's plays exhibit a
remarkable wealth of varied knowledge. The writer was one of the keenest
observers that ever lived. In the woodland or on the farm, in the
printing shop or the alehouse, or up and down the street, not the
smallest detail escaped him. Microscopic accuracy, curious interest in
all things, unlimited power of assimilating knowledge, are everywhere
shown in the plays. These are some of the marks of what we call
_genius_,--something that we are far from comprehending, but which
experience has shown that books and universities cannot impart. All the
colleges on earth could not by combined effort make the kind of man we
call a genius, but such a man may at any moment be born into the world,
and it is as likely to be in a peasant's cottage as anywhere.