accurate memory of it, does not mean that one's view of the past is
continually changing. Only a fool can think, for instance, that some
document somewhere will be discovered to show that the mass of the
people of London had for James II an ardent veneration, or that the
national defence organised by the Committee of Public Safety during the
French Revolution was due to the unpopular tyranny of a secret society.
But research in either of these cases, and a minute and increasing
acquaintance with detail, does show one London largely apathetic in the
first place, and does show one large sections of rebellious feeling
in the armies of the Terror. It permits one to appreciate what energy
and what initiative were needed for the overthrow of the Stuarts, and
to see from how small a body of wealthy and determined men that policy
proceeded. It permits one to understand how the battles of '93 could
never have been fought upon the basis of popular enthusiasm alone;
it permits one to assert without exaggeration that the autocratic
power of the Committee of Public Safety and the secrecy of its action
was a necessary condition of the National defence during the French
Revolution.
One might conclude by saying what might seem too good to be true:
namely, that minute and accurate information upon details (the
characteristic of our time in the science of history) must of its own
nature so corroborate just and general judgments of the past, that
through it, when the modern phase of wilful distortion is over, mere
blind scholarship will restore tradition.
I say it sounds too good to be true. But three or four examples of such
action are already before us. Consider the Gospel of St. John, for
instance, or what is called "the Higher Criticism" of the old Hebrew
literature, and ask yourselves whether modern scholarship has not
tended to restore the long and sane judgment of men, which, when that
scholarship was still imperfect, seemed to imperil.
XXXIV
THE HIGHER CRITICISM
I have long desired to make some protest against the attitude which
the Very Learned take towards literary evidence. I know that the Very
Learned chop and change. I know that they are in this country about
fifty years behind the Continent. I know that their devotion to the
extraordinary unintelligent German methods will soon be shaken by their
discovery that new methods are abroad--in both senses of the word
"abroad": for new methods have been abroad, thank Heaven, for a very
long time.
But I also know that a mere appeal to reason will be of very little
use, so I propose here to give a concrete instance, and I submit it to
the judgment of the Very Learned.
The Very Learned when they desire to fix the date or the authenticity
or both of a piece of literature, adopt among other postulates, these:
(1) That tradition doesn't count.
(2) That common sense, one's general knowledge of the time, and all
that multiplex integration which the same mind effects from a million
tiny data to a general judgment, is too tiny to be worthy of their
august consideration.
(3) That the title "Very Learned" (which gives them their authority) is
tarnished by any form of general knowledge and can only be acquired by
confining oneself to a narrow field in which any fool could become an
absolute master in about two years.
These are their negative postulates in dealing with a document.
As to their positive methods, of one hundred insufficient tricks I
choose in particular these:
(1) The establishment of the date of the document against tradition and
general air, by allusion discovered within it.
(2) The conception that all unusual events recorded in it are mythical,
and therefore necessarily anterior to the document.
(3) The supposition that religious emotion, or indeed emotion of any
kind, vitiates record.
(4) The admission of a single piece of correlative documentary evidence
to destroy the reader's general judgment.
(5) The fixed dogma that most writers of the past have spent most of
their time in forging.
Now to test these nincompoops I will consider a contemporary document
which I know a good deal about, called _The Path to Rome_. It professes
to be the record of a journey by one H. Belloc in the year 1901
from Toul in Lorraine to Rome in Italy. I will suppose that opus to
have survived through some accident into a time which preserved few
contemporary documents, but which had, through tradition and through
a knowledge of surrounding circumstance, a popular idea of what the
opening of the twentieth century was like, and a pathetic belief that
Belloc had taken this journey in the year 1901.
This is how the Very Learned would proceed to teach the vulgar a lesson
in scepticism.
"A critical examination of the document has confirmed me in the
conclusion that the so-called _Path to Rome_ is composed of three
distinct elements, which I will call A, W, and [Greek: theta]." (See my
article E.H.R., September 3, 113, pp. 233 _et seq._ for [Greek: theta].
For W, see Furth in Die Quellen Critik, 2nd Semestre, 3117.)
Of these three documents A is certainly much earlier than the rather
loose criticism of Polter in England and Bergmann upon the Continent
decided some years ago in the Monograph of the one, and the Discursions
which the other has incorporated in his _Neo-Catholicism in the
Twenty-Second Century_.
The English scholar advances a certain inferior limit of A.D.
2208, and a doubtful superior limit of A.D. 2236. The German
is more precise and fixes the date of A in a year certainly lying
between 2211 and 2217. I need not here recapitulate the well-known
arguments with which this view is supported (See Z.M. fs. (Mk. 2)
Arch., and the very interesting article of my friend Mr. Gouch in the
Pursuits of the A.S.) I may say generally that their argument reposes
upon two considerations:
(1) The _Centime_, a coin which is mentioned several times in the book,
went out of circulation before the middle of the twenty-first century,
as we know from the only extant letter (undoubtedly genuine) of Henri
Perro to the Prefect of Aude.
This gives them their superior limit. But it is the Inferior Limit
which concerns us most, and here the argument reposes upon one phrase.
(Perkins' edition, p..) This phrase is printed in italics, and runs,
"_Deleted by the Censor_."
It is advanced that we know that a censorship of books was first
established in America (where, as I shall show, _The Path to Rome_ was
written) in the year 2208, and there is ample evidence of the fact that
no such institution was in actual existence before the twenty-second
century in the English-speaking countries, though there is mention
of it elsewhere in the twenty-first, and a fragment of the twentieth
appears to allude to something of the kind in Russia at that time.
(Baker has confused the Censorship of _Books_ with that of _Plays_, and
an unknown form of art called "Morum"; probably a species of private
recitation.)
Now Dr. Blick has conclusively shown in his critical edition of the
mass of ancient literature, commonly known as _The Statute Book_, that
the use of italics is common to distinguish _later_ interpolation.
This discovery is here of the first importance. Not only does it
destroy the case for the phrase, "_Deleted by the Censor_," as a proof
of an Inferior Limit, 2208, but in this particular instance it is
conclusive evidence that we have interpolation here, for it is obvious
that _after_ the establishment of a Censorship the right would exist
to delete a name in the text, and a contemporary Editor would warn the
reader in the fashion which he has, as a fact, employed.
So much for the negative argument. We can be certain after Dr. Blick's
epoch-making discovery that even the year 2208 is not our Inferior
Limit for A, but we have what is much better, conclusive evidence of a
much earlier _Superior_ Limit, to which I must claim the modest title
of discoverer.
There is a passage in A (pp. 170-171) notoriously corrupt, in which a
dramatic dialogue between three characters, the Duchess, Major Charles
and Clara, is no longer readable. All attempts to reconstitute it have
failed, and on that account scholars have too much tended to neglect it.
Now I submit that though the passage is hopelessly corrupt its very
corruption affords us a valuable indication.
The Duchess, in a stage indication, is made to address "Major Charles."
It is notorious that the term "Major" applied to a certain functionary
in a religious body probably affiliated to the Jesuits, known to modern
scholars under a title drawn from the only contemporary fragment
concerning it, as "Old Booth's Ramp." This society was suppressed in
America in the year 2012, _and the United States were the last country
in which it survived_.
No matter how correct, therefore, the text is in this passage, we
may be certain that even the careless scribe took the contemporary
existence of a "major" for granted. And we may be equally certain
that even our existing version of A incorporated in the only text we
possess, was not written later than the first years of the twenty-first
century. We have here, therefore, a new superior limit of capital
importance, but, what is even more important, we can fix with fair
accuracy a new inferior limit as well.
In the Preface (whose original attachment to A is undoubted) we have
the title "Captain Monologue," p. XII (note again the word "Captain,"
an allusion to "Booth's Ramp,") and in an anonymous fragment (B.M.
m.s.s., 336 N., (60)), bearing the title, "Club Gossip," I have found
the following conclusive sentence: "He used to bore us stiff, and old
Burton invented a brand new title for him, 'Captain Monologue,' about
a year before he died, which the old chap did an hour or two after
dinner on Derby Day."
Now this phrase is decisive. We have several allusions to "dinner" (in
all, eight, and a doubtful ninth, tabulated by Ziethen in his _Corpus.
Ins. Am._). They all refer to some great public function the exact
nature of which is lost, but which undoubtedly held a great place in
political life. At what intervals this function occurred we cannot
tell, but the coincident allusion to Derby Day settles it.
The only Lord Derby canonized by the Church died in 1960 and the
promulgation of Beatification (the earliest date that would permit the
use of the word "day" for this Saint) was issued by Pope Urban XV in
May, 2003. It is, therefore, absolutely certain that A was written at
some time between the years 2003 to 2012. Nearer than that I do not
profess to fix it; but I confess that the allusion (p. 226) to drinking
coffee coupled with the corresponding allusion to drinking coffee in
a license issued for a Lockhart's Restaurant in 2006 inclines me to
that precise year as the year in which A appeared, or at any rate was
written.
I think in the above I have established the date of A beyond dispute.
I have no case to bring forward of general conclusions, and I know that
many scholars will find my argument, however irrefutable, disturbing,
for it is universally admitted that excluding the manifestly miraculous
_Episodes of the Oracle_, _The Ointment of Epinal_, _The View of the
Alps over a Hundred Miles_, etc., which are all of them properly
referred to in W. and [Greek: theta] respectively, A itself contains
numerous passages too closely connected with the text to be regarded as
additions, yet manifestly legendary--such as the perpetual allusions to
spirits, and in particular to a spirit called "Devil," the inordinate
consumption of wine, the gift of tongues, etc. etc. But I submit that
a whole century, especially in a time which pullulated with examples
of credulity, such as the "Flying Men," "The Telephone," "Wireless
Telegraphy," etc., is ample to allow for the growth of these mythical
features.
I take it, therefore, as now established, that A in its entirety is
not later than 2012 and probably as early as 2006. Upon W I cannot yet
profess to have arrived at a decision, but I incline to put it at about
forty years later, while [Greek: theta] (which includes most of the
doggerel and is manifestly in another style, and from another hand) is
admitted to be at least a generation later than "W" itself.
In a further paper I shall discuss the much-disputed point of
authorship, and I shall attempt to show that Belloc, though the subject
of numerous accretions, was a real historical figure, and that the
author of A may even have worked upon fragments preserved by oral
tradition from the actual conversation of that character.
That is how the damned fools write: and with brains of that standard
Germans ask me to deny my God.
XXXV
THE FANATIC
"I asked Old Biggs (as the Duke of Racton used to be called) what
he thought of Charlie Wilson. Old Biggs answered, 'Man like that's
one of two things: a _Fan_atic or a Fa_nat_ic.' I thought this
very funny."--_St. Germans Sporting Memoirs_, Vol. II, p. 186.
This is a kind of man whom we all love and yet all desire to moderate.
He is excessive only in good, but his excess therein is dangerous. He
proceeds from less to more; first irritated, then exasperated, then
mad. He will not tolerate the necessary foibles of mankind. No, nor
even their misunderstandings. He himself commonly takes refuge in some
vice or other, but a small one, and from this bastion defends himself
against all comers.
The Fanatic will exaggerate the operations of war. If it be necessary
in the conquest of a province to murder certain women, he will
cry shame blindly, without consideration of martial conditions
or remembrance that what we do in war is absolved by indemnities
thereafter following. It is the same with the death of children in
warfare, whether these be starved to death in concentration camps
or more humanely spitted, or thrown down wells, or dealt with in
some other fashion, such as the braining of them against walls and
gateposts: nothing will suit the Fanatic in these matters but a
complete and absolute abstention from them, without regard to strategy
or tactics or any other part of military science. Now many a man shall
argue against practices of one sort or another, as against excesses.
But the Fanatic is nothing so reasonable, being bound by a law of his
nature or rather a lack of law, to violent outburst with no restraint
upon it, and to impotent gnashings.
It is so also in affairs of State when peace reigns, for the Fanatic
is for ever denouncing what all men know must be and making of common
happenings an uncommon crime. Thus, when a minister shall borrow of
a money-lender certain sums which this last generously puts before
him without condition or expense, what must your Fanatic do, but poke
and pry into the whole circumstance, and when the usurer has his just
reward, and is made a Peer to settle our laws for us, the Fanatic will
go vainly about from one newspaper to another seeking which shall print
his foolish "protest" (as he calls it). Mark you also that the Fanatic
is quite indifferent to this: that his foolishness is of no effect. He
will roar in an empty field as loud as any bull and challenge all men
to meet him, and seems well pleased whether they come or no.
It is of the fanatical temper to regard some few men as heroes, or
demigods, and then again, these having failed in something, to revile
them damnably. Thus by the old religious sort you will find the Twelve
Apostles in the Gospel very foolishly revered and made much of as
though they were so many Idols, but let one of these (Judas to wit)
show statesmanship and a manly sense, and Lord! how the Fanatic does
rail at him!
So it is also with foreign nations. The Fanatic has no measure there
and speaks of them as though they were his province, seeing that it
is of his essence never to comprehend diversity of circumstance or
measure. Thus our cousins oversea will very properly burn alive the
negroes that infest them in those parts, and their children and young
people will, when the negro has been thus despatched, collect his bones
or charred clothing to keep the same in their collections, which later
they compare one with another. This is their business not ours, and
has proved in the effect of great value to their commonwealth. But
the Fanatic will have none of it. To hear him talk you might imagine
himself a negro or one that had in his own flesh tasted the fire, and
in his rage he will blame one man and another quite indiscriminately:
now the good President of these people (Mr. Roosevelt as he once was),
now the humble instrument of justice who should have put a match to
the African. And all this without the least consideration of those
surrounding things and haps which made such dealing with negroes a very
necessary thing.
There is nothing workable or of purpose in what this man does. He is
for ever quarrelling with other men for their lack of time or memory
or even courtesy to himself, for on this point he is very tender. He
wearies men with repeating to them their own negotiations, as though
these were in some way disgraceful. Thus if a man has taken a sum of
money in order to write of the less pleasing characters of his mother;
or if he has sold his vote in Parliament, or if he has become for his
own good reasons the servant of some one wealthier than he, or if he
has seen fit to deal with the enemies of his country, the Fanatic will
blurt out and blare such a man's considered action, hoping, it would
seem, to have some support in his mere raving at it. But this he never
gets, for mankind in the lump is too weighty and reasonable to accept
any such wildness.
There is no curing the Fanatic, neither with offers of Money nor with
blows, nor is there any method whatsoever of silencing him, save
imprisonment, which, in this country, is the method most commonly
taken. But in the main there is no need to act so violently by him,
seeing that all men laugh at him for a fool and that he will have no
man at his side. Commonly, he is of no effect at all, and we may remain
his friend though much contemptuous of him, since contempt troubles him
not at all. But there are moments, and notably in the doubt of a war,
when the Fanatic may do great ill indeed. Then it is men's business to
have him out at once and if necessary to put him to death, but whether
by beheading, by hanging, or by crucifixion it is for sober judges to
decide.
The Irish are very fanatical, and have driven from their country many
landlords formerly wealthy who were the support and mainstay of all
the island. It may be seen in Ireland how fanaticism can impoverish.
Upon the other hand, the people of the Mile End Road and round by the
north into Hackney Downs and so southward and westward into the City
of London by Houndsditch are not fanatical at all, and enjoy for their
reward an abounding prosperity.
XXXVI
A LEADING ARTICLE
After the failure of the numerous conferences which have been held
between Charles Stuart and the Commissioners of Parliament, and after
a trial in Westminster Hall the incidents of which it would be painful
to recall, the Court appointed for the purpose has reached a conclusion
with which we think the mass of Englishmen will, however reluctantly,
agree. The courtesy and good feeling upon which we pride ourselves in
our political life seem to have been strangely forgotten during the
controversies of the last few months. It would be invidious to name
particular instances, and we readily admit that the circumstances
were abnormal. Feeling ran high, and with Englishmen at least, who
are accustomed to call a spade a spade, strong words will follow upon
strong emotions; but we can hope that the final decision of the Court
will have put behind us for ever one of the most critical periods of
discussion, with all its deplorable excesses and wild and whirling
words, which we can remember in modern times.
Upon the principle of the conclusion to which the Court has come there
is a virtual unanimity. Men as different as Colonel Harrison on the one
hand and Mr. Justice Bradshaw on the other, Mr. Cromwell--whom surely
all agree in regarding as a representative Englishman--and that very
different character, Mr. Ireton, whom we do not always agree with, but
who certainly stands for a great section of opinion, are at one upon a
policy which has received no serious criticism, and recommends itself
even to such various social types as the blunt soldier, Colonel Pride,
and the refined aristocrat, Lord Grey of Groby.
But though a matter of such supreme importance to the mass of the
people, a measure which it is acknowledged will bring joy to the
joyless, light to those who sit in darkness, and a new hope in their
old age to fifteen millions of British working men and women, may
be unanimously agreed to in principle, it is unfortunately possible
to defeat even so beneficent a measure by tactics of delay and by a
prolonged criticism upon detail. The Government have therefore, in our
opinion, acted wisely in determining to proceed with due expedition
to the execution of Charles Stuart, and we do not anticipate any such
resistance, even partial and sporadic, as certain rash freelances of
politics have prophesied. There was indeed some time ago some doubt as
to the success of a policy to which the Government was pledged, and in
spite of the strong and disciplined majority which they commanded in
the House, in spite of the fact that the House was actually unanimous
upon the general lines of that policy, many people up and down the
country, who did not fully comprehend it, had been led to act rashly
and even riotously against its proposals. All that we may fairly say is
now over, and we trust that the Government will have the firmness to
go forward with a piece of work in which it now undoubtedly has the
support of every class of society.
We should be the last to deny the importance of meeting any serious
objection in detail that still remains. Thus the inhabitants of Charing
Cross have a legitimate grievance when they say that the scene of the
execution will be hidden from them by the brick building which stands
at the northern end of Whitehall, but they must remember that all
practical measures involve compromise and that if their point of view
alone had been considered and the scaffold were to be erected upon the
north of that annex, the crowd for which the Home Secretary has made
such wise provision by the erection of strong temporary barriers in the
Court of the Palace would have no chance of attending at the ceremony.
We confess that the more serious point seems to us to arise on the
Bishop of London's suggestion that only the clergy of the Established
Church should be present upon the platform, and we very much fear that
this pretension--in our view a very narrow and contemptible one--will
receive the support of that large number of our fellow citizens which
is still attached to the Episcopal forms of Christianity. But we take
leave to remind them, and the Bishop of London himself, that the
present moment, when the Free Churches have so fully vindicated their
rights to public recognition, is hardly one in which it is decent to
press these old-fashioned claims of privilege.
There is a third matter which we cannot conclude without mentioning:
we refer to the attitude of Charles Stuart himself. While the matter
was still _sub judice_ we purposely refrained from making any comment,
as is the laudable custom, we are glad to say, in the country. But
now the sentence has been pronounced we think it our duty to protest
against the attitude of Charles Stuart during the last scene of this
momentous political controversy. He is too much of an English gentleman
and statesman to exaggerate the significance of our criticism, or to
fail to understand the spirit in which it is offered, for that is
entirely friendly, but he must surely recognise by this time, that
such petty ebullitions of temper as he exhibited in refusing to plead
and in wearing his hat in the presence of men of such eminence as Mr.
Justice Bradshaw were unworthy of him and of the great cause which he
represents. He would have done well to take a lesson from the humble
tipstaff of the Court, who, though not required to do so by the Judges,
instantly removed his cap when they appeared and only put it on again
when he was conducting the prisoner back after the rising of Court.
Finally, we hope that all those who have been permitted by the Home
Secretary to be present at Whitehall upon next Tuesday will remember
our national reputation for sobriety and judgment in great affairs of
the State, and will be guilty of nothing that might make it necessary
for the Government to use severe measures utterly repugnant to the
spirit of English liberty.
XXXVII
THE OBITUARY NOTICE
Mr. Herod, whose death has just been announced by a telegram from
Lyons, was one of the most striking and forceful personalities of our
time.
By birth he was a Syrian Jew, suffering from the prejudice attaching to
such an origin, and apparently with little prospect of achieving the
great place which he did achieve in the eager life of our generation.