own version of the Religion of Humanity, I have at remark, as I find
others remarking, that it amounts, if not to an abandonment of his
original position, still to an entire change of front. Anxious, as he
has professed himself, to retain the “magnificent word, Religion” (p.
504), it now appears that when “the Religion of Humanity” is spoken
of, the usual connotations of the word are to be in a large measure
dropped: to give it these connotations is “to foist in theological
ideas where none are suggested by us” (p. 369). While, in his first
article, one of the objections raised to the “neo-theisms” as well
as “the Unknowable,” was that there is offered “no relation whatever
between worshipper and worshipped” (p. 505) (an objection tacitly
implying that Mr. Harrison’s religion supplies this relation), it now
appears that humanity is not to be worshipped in any ordinary sense;
but that by worship is simply meant “intelligent love and respect
for our human brotherhood,” and that “in plain words, the Religion
of Humanity means recognising your duty to your fellow-man on human
grounds” (p. 369). Certainly this is much less than what I and others
supposed to be included in Mr. Harrison’s version of the Religion of
Humanity. If he preaches nothing more than an ecstatic philanthropy,
few will object; but most will say that his name for it conveyed
to them a much wider meaning. Passing over all this, however, I am
concerned chiefly to point out another extreme misrepresentation made
by Mr. Harrison when discussing my criticism of Comte’s assertion
that “veneration and gratitude” are due to the Great Being Humanity.
After showing why I conceive “veneration and gratitude” are not due
to Humanity, I supposed an opponent to exclaim (putting the passage
within quotation marks) “But surely ‘veneration and gratitude’ are due
somewhere,” since civilized society, with all its products “must be
credited to some agency or other.” [This apostrophe, imagined as coming
from a disciple of Comte, Mr. Harrison, on p. 373, actually represents
as made in my own person!] To this apostrophe I have replied (p. 22)
that “if ‘veneration and gratitude’ are due at all, they are due to
that Ultimate Cause from which Humanity, individually and as a whole,
in common with all other things has proceeded.” Whereupon Mr. Harrison
changes my hypothetical statement into an actual statement. He drops
the “_if_,” and represents me as positively affirming that “veneration
and gratitude” are due somewhere: saying that Mr. Spencer “lavishes
his ‘veneration and gratitude,’ called out by the sum of human
civilization, upon his Unknowable and Inconceivable Postulate” (p.
373). I should have thought that even the most ordinary reader, much
more Mr. Harrison, would have seen that the argument is entirely an
argument _ad hominem_. I deliberately and carefully guarded myself by
the “_if_” against the ascription to me of any opinion, one way or
the other: being perfectly conscious that much is to be said for and
against. The optimist will unhesitatingly affirm that veneration and
gratitude are due; while by the pessimist it will be contended that
they are not due. One who dwells exclusively on what Emerson calls
“the saccharine” principle in things, as illustrated for example in
the adaptation of living beings to their conditions—the becoming
callous to pains that have to be borne, and the acquirement of liking
for labors that are necessary—may think there are good reasons for
veneration and gratitude. Contrariwise, these sentiments may be
thought inappropriate by one who contemplates the fact that there
are some thirty species of parasites which prey upon man, possessing
elaborate appliances for maintaining their hold on or within his body,
and having enormous degrees of fertility proportionate to the small
individual chances their germs have of getting into him and torturing
him. Either view may be supported by masses of evidence; and knowing
this I studiously avoided complicating the issue by taking either
side. As anyone may see who refers back, my sole purpose was that of
showing the absurdity of thinking that “veneration and gratitude” are
due to the product and not to the producer. Yet, Mr. Harrison having
changed my proposition “_if_ they are due, etc.” into the proposition
“they are due, etc.,” laughs over the contradictions in my views which
he deduces, and to which he time after time recurs, commenting on my
“astonishing perversity.”
In this division of Mr. Harrison’s article occur five other cases in
which, after his manner, propositions are made to appear untenable or
ludicrous; though anyone who refers to them as expressed by me will
find them neither the one nor the other. But to show all this would
take much trouble to small purpose. Indeed, I must here close the
discussion, so far as my own desistence enables me. It is a wearisome
and profitless business, this of continually going back on the
record, now to show that the ideas ascribed to me are not the ideas I
expressed, and now to show that the statements my opponent defends are
not the statements he originally made. A controversy always opens side
issues. Each new issue becomes the parent of further ones. The original
questions become obscured in a swarm of collateral questions; and
energies, in my case ill-spared, are wasted to little purpose.
* * * * *
Before closing, however, let me again point out that nothing has been
said which calls for change of the views expressed in my first article.
Setting out with the statement that “unlike the ordinary consciousness,
the religious consciousness is concerned with that which lies beyond
the sphere of sense,” I went on to show that the rise of this
consciousness begins among primitive men with the belief in a double
belonging to each individual, which, capable of wandering away from him
during life, becomes his ghost or spirit after death; and that from
this idea of a being eventually distinguished as supernatural, there
develop, in course of time, the ideas of supernatural beings of all
orders up to the highest. Mr. Harrison has alleged that the primitive
religion is not belief in, and propitiation of, the ghost, but is
worship of “physical objects treated frankly as physical objects” (p.
498). That he has disproved the one view and proved the other, no one
will, I think, assert. Contrariwise, he has given occasion for me to
cite weighty authorities against him.
Next it was contended that in the assemblage of supernatural beings
thus originating in each tribe, some, derived from chiefs, were
superior to others; and that, as the compounding and recompounding of
tribes gave origin to societies having social grades and rulers of
different orders, there resulted that conception of a hierarchy of
ghosts or gods which polytheism shows us. Further it was argued that
while, with the growth of civilization and knowledge, the minor
supernatural agents became merged in the major supernatural agent, this
single great supernatural agent, gradually losing the anthropomorphic
attributes at first ascribed, has come in our days to retain but
few of them; and, eventually losing these, will then merge into a
consciousness of an Omnipresent Power to which no attributes can be
ascribed. This proposition has not been contested.
In pursuance of the belief that the religious consciousness naturally
arising, and thus gradually transformed, will not disappear wholly, but
that “however much changed it must continue to exist,” it was argued
that the sentiments which had grown up around the conception of a
personal God, though modified when that conception was modified into
the conception of a Power which cannot be known or conceived, would not
be destroyed. It was held that there would survive, and might even
increase, the sentiments of wonder and awe in presence of a Universe of
which the origin and nature, meaning and destiny, can neither be known
nor imagined; or that, to quote a statement afterwards employed, there
must survive those emotions “which are appropriate to the consciousness
of a Mystery that cannot be fathomed and a Power that is omnipresent.”
This proposition has not been disproved; nor, indeed, has any attempt
been made to disprove it.
Instead of assaults on these propositions to which alone I am
committed, there have been assaults on various propositions
gratuitously attached to them; and then the incongruities evolved have
been represented as incongruities for which I am responsible.
I end by pointing out as I pointed out before, that “while the things I
have said have not been disproved, the things which have been disproved
are things I have not said.”—_Nineteenth Century._
LITERARY NOTICES.
THE CORRESPONDENCE AND DIARIES OF JOHN WILSON CROKER,
SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY FROM 1809 TO 1830; A FOUNDER
AND FOR MANY YEARS A CHIEF CONTRIBUTOR TO THE QUARTERLY
REVIEW; AND THE POLITICAL, LITERARY OR PERSONAL
ASSOCIATE OF NEARLY ALL THE LEADING CHARACTERS IN THE
LIFE OF HIS TIME.
Edited by Louis J. Jennings. With portrait.
Two volumes. New York: _Charles Scribner’s Sons_.
John Wilson Croker was one of the most noted men of his day, not
perhaps to the world at large, but to those who knew him in the
important relations he bore to the many distinguished personages
of his era. He knew everybody worth knowing; he was often in the
secret councils of the great; he had an official position of great
confidence; he was a literary man of brilliant ability which he,
however, sometimes used unscrupulously; he was the principal power
in one of the great English reviews, which fifty years ago were
formidable agencies in making and unmaking men and opinions. These
things make his reminiscences highly fascinating. He takes us into the
best company, Wellington, Canning, Lyndhurst, Peel, Lord Ashburton,
Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, Guizot, Metternich, Sir Walter Scott,
Isaac D’Israeli, Lockhart, Madame de Staël and innumerable others of
similar celebrity. It need hardly be said that personal information,
anecdotes and gossip about such people, who filled a large place in
the public eye and mind, are all very fascinating. So we find, on
opening these thick volumes anywhere, a mine of the deepest interest,
and one can hardly go astray in turning over the pages. There can be
no doubt that aside from the personal interest of these reminiscences,
they constitute material of the richest character to the early history
of our century. The only way properly to represent the value of such
a work, is to give extracts from it indicating its quality, and this
we shall propose to do. Among the things to which we shall first call
attention, are the conversations with the Duke of Wellington, taken
down as they occurred. The Iron Duke expressed the following opinion of
his great antagonist, Napoleon, whom it seems he thoroughly despised
as a man, however much he admitted his military genius: “I never was a
believer in him, and I always thought that in the long-run we should
overturn him. He never seemed himself at his ease, and even in the
boldest things he did there was always a mixture of apprehension and
meanness. I used to call him _Jonathan Wild the Great_, and at each
new _coup_ he made I used to cry out ‘Well done, Jonathan,’ to the
great scandal of some of my hearers. But, the truth was, he had no
more care about what was right or wrong, just or unjust, honorable
or dishonorable, than _Jonathan_, though his great abilities, and
the great stakes he played for, threw the knavery into the shade.”
Again, he tells the following of Napoleon: “Buonaparte’s mind was,
in its details, low and ungentlemanlike. I suppose the narrowness of
his early prospects and habits stuck to him; what _we_ understand by
_gentlemanlike_ feelings he knew nothing at all about; I’ll give you a
curious instance.
“I have a beautiful little watch, made by Breguet, at Paris, with a
map of Spain most admirably enamelled on the case. Sir Edward Paget
bought it at Paris, and gave it to me. What do you think the history
of this watch was—at least the history that Breguet told Paget, and
Paget told me? Buonaparte had ordered it as a present to his brother,
the King of Spain, but when he heard of the battle of Vittoria—he was
then at Dresden in the midst of all the preparations and negotiations
of the armistice, and one would think sufficiently busy with other
matters—when he heard of the battle of Vittoria, I say, he remembered
the watch he had ordered for one whom he saw would never be King of
Spain, and with whom he was angry for the loss of the battle, and
he wrote from Dresden to countermand the watch, and if it should be
ready, to forbid its being sent. The best apology one can make for this
strange littleness is, that he was offended with Joseph; but even in
that case, a _gentleman_ would not have taken the moment when the poor
devil had lost his _châteaux en Espagne_, to take away his watch also.”
In a letter to Croker, the duke tells the story of the truth of his
order to the Household troops at Waterloo, “Up, Guards, and at ’em,”
so often quoted as the _mot d’ordre_ of that famous charge which
finally decided the day: “I certainly did not draw my sword. I may have
ordered, and I dare say I did order, the charge of the cavalry, and
pointed out its direction; but I did not charge as a common trooper.
“I have at all times been in the habit of covering as much as possible
the troops exposed to the fire of cannon. I place them behind the top of
the rising ground, and make them sit and lie down, the better to cover
them from the fire.
“After the fire of the enemy’s cannon, the enemy’s troops may have
advanced, or a favorable opportunity of attacking might have arrived.
What I must have said, and possibly did say was, Stand up, Guards! and
then gave the commanding officers the order to attack.
“My common practice in a defensive position was to attack the enemy at
the very moment at which he was about to attack our troops.”
Of Madame De Staël, of whom he saw much in London, he has many
interesting anecdotes. He enlarges on her facial ugliness, redeemed
by an eye of extraordinary brilliancy and meaning, her egotistic
eloquence, her dazzling coruscations of wit, and her mannishness with
a good deal of vigor. On the whole, Croker was not a great admirer
of this brilliant woman, and declares that some of her most pungent
sayings were audacious plagiarisms. He writes: “Moore in his lately
published ‘Life of Sheridan,’ has recorded the laborious care with
which he prepared his _bons-mots_. Madame de Staël condescended to
do the same. The first time I ever saw her was at dinner at Lord
Liverpool’s at Coombe Wood. Sir James Mackintosh was to have been
her guide, and they lost their way, and went to Addiscombe and some
other places by mistake, and when they got at last to Coombe Wood
they were again bewildered, and obliged to get out and walk in the
dark, and through the mire up the road through the wood. They arrived
consequently two hours too late and strange draggled figures, she
exclaiming by way of apology, ‘Coombe par ci, Coombe par là; nous avons
été par tous les Coombes de l’Angleterre.’ During dinner she talked
incessantly but admirably, but several of her apparently spontaneous
_mots_ were borrowed or prepared. For instance, speaking of the
relative states of England and the Continent at that period, the high
notion we had formed of the danger to the world from Buonaparte’s
despotism, and the high opinion the Continent had formed of the riches,
strength, and spirit of England; she insisted that these opinions were
both just, and added with an elegant _élan_, ‘Les étrangers sont la
postérité contemporaine.’ This striking expression I have since found
in the journal of Camille Desmoulins.”
Several very funny stories were told him by Sir Walter Scott, as among
the traditions of Dr. Johnson’s visit to Scotland, and certainly they
well establish the reputation of this great man as a rude and unsocial
bear, except when he chose to be otherwise: “At Glasgow, Johnson had
a meeting with Smith (Adam Smith), which terminated strangely. John
Millar used to report that Smith, obviously much discomposed, came into
a party who were playing at cards. The Doctor’s appearance suspended
the amusement, for as all knew he was to meet Johnson that evening,
every one was curious to hear what had passed. Adam Smith, whose
temper seemed much ruffled, answered only at first, ‘He is a brute!
he is a brute!’ Upon closer examination it appeared that Dr. Johnson
no sooner saw Smith than he brought forward a charge against him for
something in his famous letter on the death of Hume. Smith said he had
vindicated the truth of the statement. ‘And what did the Doctor say?’
was the universal query: ‘Why, he said—he said—’ said Smith, with the
deepest impression of resentment, ‘he said—“_You lie!_”’ ‘And what did
you reply?’ ‘I said, “You are a————!”’ On such terms did these
two great moralists meet and part, and such was the classic dialogue
betwixt them.
“Johnson’s rudeness possibly arose from his retaining till late in life
the habits of a pedagogue, who is a man among boys and a boy among
men, and having the bad taste to think it more striking to leap over
the little differences and courtesies which form the turnpike gates in
society, and which fly open on payment of a trifling tribute. The _auld
Dominie_ hung vilely about him, and was visible whenever he was the
coaxed man of the company—a sad symptom of a _parvenu_. A lady who was
still handsome in the decline of years, and must have been exquisitely
beautiful when she was eighteen, dined in company with Johnson, and was
placed beside him at table with no little awe of her neighbor. He then
always drank lemonade, and the lady of the house desired Miss S——h to
acquaint him there was some on the sideboard. He made no answer except
an indistinct growl. ‘Speak louder, Miss S——h, the Doctor is deaf.’
Another attempt, with as little success. ‘You do not speak loud enough
yet, my dear Miss S——h.’ The lady then ventured to raise her voice as
high as misses of eighteen may venture in the company of old doctors,
and her description of the reply was that she heard an internal
grumbling like Etna before explosion, which rolled up his mouth, and
there formed itself into the distinct words, ‘When I want any, I’ll
ask for it,’ which were the only words she heard him speak during
the day. Even the sirup food of flattery was rudely repelled if not
cooked to his mind. I was told that a gentleman called Pot, or some
such name, was introduced to him as a particular admirer of his. The
Doctor growled and took no further notice. ‘He admires in especial your
“Irene” as the finest tragedy of modern times,’ to which the Doctor
replied, ‘If Pot says so, Pot lies!’ and relapsed into his reverie.”
Croker was in Paris during the days after Waterloo, just subsequent to
the accession of the Bourbon dynasty, and he is full of anecdotes of
the people he met there, among others Talleyrand and Fouché.
“_July 17th._—We dined yesterday at Castlereagh’s with, besides the
Embassy, Talleyrand, Fouché, Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, and the Baron
de Vitrolles, Lords Cathcart, Clancarty, Stewart, and Clive, and two
ladies, the Princesse de Vaudemont, a fat, ugly old woman, and a
Mademoiselle Chasse, her friend, a pretty young one. At so quiet a
dinner you may judge there was not much interesting conversation, and
accordingly I have not often been at a dinner of which I had less to
tell. The wonder was to find ourselves at table with Fouché, who, to be
sure, looks very like what one would naturally suppose him to be—a sly
old rogue; but I think he seems to feel a passion of which I did not
expect to find him capable; I mean _shame_, for he looks conscious and
embarrassed. He is a man about 5ft. 7in. high, very thin, with a grey
head, cropped and powdered, and a very acute expression of countenance.
Talleyrand, on the other hand, is fattish for a Frenchman; his ankles
are weak and his feet deformed, and he totters about in a strange way.
His face is not at all expressive, except it be of a kind of drunken
stupor; in fact, he looks altogether like an old fuddled, lame, village
schoolmaster, and his voice is deep and hoarse. I should suspect that
at the Congress his most natural employment would be keeping the unruly
boys in order. We dined very late—that is, for Paris, for we were not
at table till half-past six.”
Macaulay hated Croker bitterly, on account of the latter’s severe
critiques on him in _The Quarterly_, and in no way was any love lost
between the two men. This personal quarrel is described in an amusing
way. Croker, by the way, was just as bitterly hated by Disraeli: though
the former had been a highly esteemed friend of Disraeli the elder,
author of the “Curiosities of Literature.” Among the amenities of the
Macaulay squabble we have the following:
“Macaulay, as it clearly appears from his own letters,
was irritated beyond measure by Croker; he grew to
‘detest’ him. Then he began casting about for some means
of revenge. This would seem incredible if he had not,
almost in so many words, revealed the secret. In July,
1831, he wrote thus: ‘That impudent, leering Croker
congratulated the House on the proof which I had given
of my readiness. He was afraid, he said, that I had been
silent so long on account of the many allusions which
had been made to Calne. Now that I had risen again he
hoped that they should hear me often. _See whether I do
not dust that valet’s jacket for him in the next number
of the Blue and Yellow._ I _detest him_ more than cold
boiled veal.’ From that time forth he waited impatiently
for his opportunity to settle his account with Mr.
Croker.
“In the previous month of March he had been looking out
eagerly for the publication of the ‘Boswell.’ ‘_I will
certainly review Croker’s “Boswell” when it comes
out_,’ he wrote to Mr. Napier. He was on the watch for
it, not with the object of doing justice to the book,
but of ‘dusting the jacket’ of the author. But as his
letters had not yet betrayed his malice to the world,
he gravely began the dusting process by remarking,
‘This work has greatly disappointed us.’ What did he
hope for, when he took it up, but precisely such a
‘disappointment?’ ‘Croker,’ he wrote, ‘looks across
the House of Commons at me with a leer of hatred,
which I repay with a gracious smile of pity.’ He had
cultivated his animosity of Croker until it became a
morbid passion. Yet it is conceivable that he did not
intend posterity to see him in the picture drawn by his
own hand, spending his time in the House of Commons
straining his eyes to see if there was a ‘leer’ on
Croker’s countenance, and returning it with gracious
smiles of pity.”
Among the budget of anecdotes so profusely strewn through the book,
the following may be given at random. The following is from a letter
of Lady Ashburton to Croker, and reflects severely on one of the suave
defects of Sir Robert Peel, then recently returned from office: “I
must tell you an anecdote of Sir Bobby. If you read the list of people
congregated to see his pictures, you will have seen there, not only all
the artists, drawing-masters, men of science, but reporters and writers
for journals. Thackeray, who furnishes the wit for ‘Punch,’ told Milnes
that the ex-Minister came up to him and said, with the blandest smile:
‘Mr. Thackeray, I am rejoiced to see you. I have read with delight
_every line_ you ever wrote,’ Thackeray would have been better pleased
if the compliment had not included all his works; so, to turn the
subject, he observed that it must be a great gratification to live
surrounded by such interesting objects of art. Sir R. replied: ‘I can
assure you that it does not afford me the same satisfaction as finding
myself in such society as yours!!!’ This seeking popularity by fulsome
praise will not succeed.”
Here we have a capital French story:
“Old Languet, the celebrated Curé of St. Sulpice, was remarkable and
disagreeable for the importunity with which he solicited subscriptions
for finishing his church, which is not yet finished. One day at supper,
where Cardinal de Fleury was, he happened to say that he had seen his
Eminence’s portrait at some painter’s. The old Cardinal, who was stingy
in private as well as economical in public expenditure, was glad to
raise a laugh at the troublesome old curé, and replied, ‘I dare swear,
then, you asked it (the picture) to subscribe;’ ‘Oh, no, my Lord,’ said
Languet, ‘it was too like!’”
The richness of the following situation could hardly be paralleled:
“Every one knows the story of a gentleman’s asking Lord North who
‘that frightful woman was?’ and his lordship’s answering, that is my
wife. The other, to repair his blunder, said I did not mean _her_,
but that monster next to her. ‘Oh,’ said Lord North, ‘that monster is
my daughter.’ With this story Frederick Robinson, in his usual absent
enthusiastic way, was one day entertaining a lady whom he sat next to
at dinner, and lo! the lady was Lady Charlotte Lindsay—the monster in
question.”
These chance excerpts (and just as good things lie scattered on every
page, so as to make a veritable _embarras des richesses_), indicate the
character of the book, and how amply it will repay, both for pleasure
and instruction, the reader who sits down to peruse it. Few works of
recent times are so compact and meaty in just those qualities which
make a work valuable alike for reference and continuous perusal.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE. By J. Marion Sims, M.D., L.L.D..
Edited by his son, H. Marion Sims, M.D.
New York: _D. Appleton & Co._
The great name of Dr. Marion Sims in gynæcology, or the treatment
of women’s diseases, has never been equalled in the same line in
America, and the story of his life related in language of the plainest
homespun is quite a fascinating record. Dr. Sims has several titles
to fame, which we think will secure the perpetuity of his name in the
annals of surgery and medicine. These are: his treatment and care
of vesico-vaginal fistula, a most loathsome disease, before deemed
incurable; his invention of the speculum; his exposition of the true
pathology and method of treatment of trismus nascentium, or the lockjaw
of infants; and the fact that he was the founder and organizer of “The
Woman’s Hospital, of the State of New York,” the first institution ever
endowed exclusively for the treatment of women’s diseases.