feel greatly complimented at having William James admitted at all when
so many other important moderns of Germany and France and America are
excluded. But so long as unimportant English philosophical writers are
given biographies, we have a right to expect, in a work which calls
itself an “international dictionary of biography,” the adequate inclusion
of the more deserving philosophers of other nations.
But what do we actually find? You may hunt the _Encyclopædia Britannica_
through, yet you will not see the names of John Dewey and Stanley Hall
mentioned! John Dewey, an American, is perhaps the world’s leading
authority on the philosophy of education; but the British editors of
the Encyclopædia do not consider him worth noting, even in a casual way.
Furthermore, Stanley Hall, another American, who stands in the front
rank of the world’s genetic psychologists, is not so much as mentioned.
And yet Hall’s great work, _Adolescence_, appeared five years before the
_Britannica_ went to press! Nor has Josiah Royce a biography, despite
the fact that he was one of the leaders in the philosophical thought of
America, and was even made an LL.D. by Aberdeen University in 1900. These
omissions furnish excellent examples of the kind of broad and universal
culture which is supposed to be embodied in the _Britannica_.
But these are by no means all the omissions of the world’s important
modern thinkers. Incredible as it may seem, there is no biography of
Hermann Cohen, who elaborated the rationalistic elements in Kant’s
philosophy; of Alois Riehl, the positivist neo-Kantian; of Windelband
and Rickert, whose contributions to the theory of eternal values in
criticism are of decided significance to-day; of Freud, a man who has
revolutionized modern psychology and philosophic determinism; of Amiel
Boutroux, the modern French philosopher of discontinuity; of Henri
Bergson, whose influence and popularity need no exposition here; of
Guyau, one of the most effective critics of English utilitarianism and
evolutionism; or of Jung.
When we add Roberto Ardigò, Weininger, Edelmann, Tetans, and Sibbern
to this list of philosophic and psychologic writers who are not
considered of sufficient importance to receive biographical mention in
the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, we have, at a glance, the prejudicial
inadequacy and incompleteness of this “great” English reference work.
Nor can any excuse be offered that the works of these men appeared after
the _Britannica_ was printed. At the time it went to press even the most
modern of these writers held a position of sufficient significance or
note to have been included.
In closing, and by way of contrast, let me set down some of the modern
British philosophical writers who are given liberal biographies; Robert
Adamson, the Scottish critical historian of philosophy; Alexander Bain;
Edward and John Caird, Scottish philosophic divines; Harry Calderwood,
whose work was based on the contention that fate implies knowledge and
on the doctrine of divine sanction; David George Ritchie, an unimportant
Scotch thinker; Henry Sidgwick, an orthodox religionist and one of the
founders of the Society for Psychical Research; James H. Stirling, an
expounder of Hegel and Kant; William Wallace, an interpreter of Hegel;
and Garth Wilkinson, the Swedenborgian homeopath.
Such is the brief record of the manner in which the world’s modern
philosophers are treated in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. From this work
hundreds of thousands of Americans are garnering their educational ideas.
XI
RELIGION
Throughout several of the foregoing chapters I have laid considerable
emphasis on the narrow parochial attitude of the _Britannica’s_ editors
and on the constant intrusion of England’s middle-class Presbyterianism
into nearly every branch of æsthetics. The _Britannica_, far from being
the objective and unbiased work it claims to be, assumes a personal
and prejudiced attitude, and the culture of the world is colored and
tinctured by that viewpoint. It would appear self-obvious to say
that the subject of religion in any encyclopædia whose aim is to be
universal, should be limited to the articles on religious matters. But
in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ this is not the case. As I have shown,
those great artists and thinkers who do not fall within the range of
_bourgeois_ England’s suburban morality, are neglected, disparaged, or
omitted entirely.
Not only patriotic prejudice, but evangelical prejudice as well,
characterizes this encyclopædia’s treatment of the world’s great
achievements; and nowhere does this latter bias exhibit itself more
unmistakably than in the articles relating to Catholicism. The trickery,
the manifest ignorance, the contemptuous arrogance, the inaccuracies, the
venom, and the half-truths which are encountered in the discussion of the
Catholic Church and its history almost pass the bounds of credibility.
The wanton prejudice exhibited in this department of the _Britannica_
cannot fail to find resentment even in non-Catholics, like myself; and
for scholars, either in or out of the Church, this encyclopædia, as a
source of information, is not only worthless but grossly misleading.
The true facts relating to the inclusion of this encyclopædia’s article
on Catholicism, as showing the arrogant and unscholarly attitude of
the editors, are as interesting to those outside of the Church as to
Catholics themselves. And it is for the reason that these articles are
typical of a great many of the Encyclopædia’s discussions of culture in
general that I call attention both to the misinformation contained in
them and to the amazing refusal of the _Britannica’s_ editors to correct
the errors when called to their attention at a time when correction
was possible. The treatment of the Catholic Church by the _Britannica_
is quite in keeping with its treatment of other important subjects,
and it emphasizes, perhaps better than any other topic, not only the
Encyclopædia’s petty bias and incompleteness, but the indefensible and
mendacious advertising by which this set of books was foisted upon the
American public. And it also gives direct and irrefutable substantiation
to my accusation that the spirit of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ is
closely allied to the provincial religious doctrines of the British
_bourgeoisie_; and that therefore it is a work of the most questionable
value.
Over five years ago T. J. Campbell, S. J., in _The Catholic Mind_, wrote
an article entitled _The Truth About the Encyclopædia Britannica_—an
article which, from the standpoint of an authority, exposed the utter
unreliability of this Encyclopædia’s discussion of Catholicism. The
article is too long to quote here, but enough of it will be given to
reveal the inadequacy of the _Britannica_ as a source of accurate
information. “The _Encyclopædia Britannica_,” the article begins, “has
taken an unfair advantage of the public. By issuing all its volumes
simultaneously it prevented any protests against misstatements until the
whole harm was done. Henceforth prudent people will be less eager to put
faith in prospectuses and promises. The volumes were delivered in two
installments a couple of months apart. The article _Catholic Church_,
in which the animus of the Encyclopædia might have been detected, should
naturally have been in the first set. It was adroitly relegated to the
end of the second set, under the caption _Roman Catholic Church_.
“It had been intimated to us that the Encyclopædia’s account of the
Jesuits was particularly offensive. That is our excuse for considering it
first. Turning to it we found that the same old battered scarecrow had
been set up. The article covers ten and a half large, double-columned,
closely-printed pages, and requires more than an hour in its perusal.
After reading it two or three times we closed the book with amazement,
not at the calumnies with which the article teems and to which custom
has made us callous, but at the lack of good judgment, of accurate
scholarship, of common information, and business tact which it reveals in
those who are responsible for its publication.
“It ought to be supposed that the subscribers to this costly encyclopædia
had a right to expect in the discussion of all the questions presented
an absolute or quasi-absolute freedom from partisan bias, a sincere and
genuine presentation of all the results of the most modern research, a
positive exclusion of all second-hand and discredited matter, and a
scrupulous adherence to historical truth. In the article in question all
these essential conditions are woefully lacking.
“Encyclopædias of any pretence take especial pride in the perfection and
completeness of their bibliographies. It is a stamp of scholarship and
a guarantee of the thoroughness and reliability of the article, which
is supposed to be an extract and a digest of all that has been said or
written on the subject. The bibliography annexed to the article on the
_Jesuits_, is not only deplorably meagre, but hopelessly antiquated.
Thus, for instance, only three works of the present century are quoted;
one of them apparently for no reason whatever, viz.: _The History of
the Jesuits of North America_, in three volumes, by Thomas Hughes, S.
J., for, as far as we are able to see, the Encyclopædia article makes
no mention of their being with Lord Baltimore in Maryland, or of the
preceding troubles of the Jesuits in England, which were considered
important enough for a monumental work, but evidently not for a compiler
of the Encyclopædia. Again, the nine words, ‘laboring amongst the Hurons
and Iroquois of North America,’ form the sum total of all the information
vouchsafed us about the great missions of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, though we are referred to the seventy-three volumes of
Thwaites’ edition of the _Jesuits Relations_. Had the author or editor
even glanced at these books he might have seen that besides the Huron
and Iroquois missions, which were very brief in point of time and very
restricted in their territorial limitations, the Jesuit missions with the
Algonquins extended from Newfoundland to Alaska, and are still continued;
he would have found that most of the ethnological, religious, linguistic
and geographical knowledge we have of aboriginal North America comes
from those _Jesuit Relations_; and possibly without much research the
sluggish reader would have met with a certain inconspicuous Marquette;
but as Englishmen, up to the Civil War, are said to have imagined that
the Mississippi was the dividing line between the North and South, the
value of the epoch-making discovery of the great river never entered this
slow foreigner’s mind. Nor is there any reference to the gigantic labors
of the Jesuits in Mexico; but perhaps Mexico is not considered to be in
North America.
“Nor is there in this bibliography any mention of the _Monumenta
Historica Societatis Jesu_, nor of the _Monumenta Pædagogica_,
nor is there any allusion to the great and learned works of Duhr,
Tacchi-Venturi, Fouqueray, and Kroes, which have just been published
and are mines of information on the history of the Society in Spain,
Germany, Italy and France; and although we are told of the _Historia
Societatis Jesu_ by Orlandini, which bears the very remote imprint of
1620, is very difficult to obtain, and covers a very restricted period,
there is apparently no knowledge of the classic work of Jouvency, nor
is Sacchini cited, nor Polanco. The _Bibliothèque des écrivains de la
Compagnie de Jésus_, by De Backer, not ‘Backer,’ as the Encyclopædia
has it, is listed; but it is simply shocking to find that there was no
knowledge of Sommervogel, who is the continuator of De Backer, and who
has left us a most scholarly and splendid work which is brought down to
our own times, and for which De Backer’s, notable though it be, was only
a preparation. In brief, the bibliography is absolutely worthless, not
only for a scholar, but even for the average reader.
“On the other hand it is quite in keeping with the character of the
writers who were chosen for the article. The New York _Evening Post_
informs us that before 1880, when a search for a suitable scribe for the
Jesuit article was instituted, some one started on a hunt for Cardinal
Newman, but the great man had no time. Then he thought of Manning, who,
of course, declined, and finally knowing no other ‘Jesuit’ he gave the
work to Littledale. Littledale, as everyone knows, was an Anglican
minister, notorious not only for his antagonism to the Jesuits, but also
to the Catholic Church. He gladly addressed himself to the task, and
forthwith informed the world that ‘the Jesuits controlled the policy of
Spain’; that ‘it was a matter of common knowledge that they kindled the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870’; that ‘Pope Julius II dispensed the Father
General from his vow of poverty,’ though that warrior Pope expired eight
years before Ignatius sought the solitude of Manresa, and had as yet no
idea of a Society of Jesus; again, that ‘the Jesuits from the beginning
never obeyed the Pope’; that ‘in their moral teaching they can attenuate
and even defend any kind of sin’; and, finally, not to be too prolix in
this list of absurdities, that, prior to the Vatican Council, ‘they had
filled up all the sees of Latin Christendom with bishops of their own
selection.’
“It is true that only the last mentioned charge appears in the present
edition, and it is a fortunate concession for Littledale’s suffering
victims; for if ‘there are no great intellects among the Jesuits,’ and
if they are only a set of ‘respectable mediocrities,’ as this ‘revised’
article tells us, they can point with pride to this feat which makes a
dozen Franco-Prussian wars pale into insignificance alongside it. We
doubt, however, if the 700 prelates who sat in the Vatican Council would
accept that explanation of their promotion in the prelacy; and we feel
certain that Cardinal Manning, who was one of the great figures in that
assembly, would resent it, at least if it be true, as the Encyclopædia
assures us, that he considered the suppression of the Society in 1773 to
be the work of God, and was sure that another 1773 was coming.
“The wonder is that a writer who can be guilty of such absurdities
should, after twenty years, be summoned from the dead as a witness to
anything at all. But on the other hand it is not surprising when we see
that the Rev. Ethelred Taunton, who is also dead and buried, should be
made his yoke-fellow in ploughing over this old field, to sow again these
poisonous weeds. There are many post-mortems in the Encyclopædia. Had the
careless editors of the Encyclopædia consulted Usher’s _Reconstruction
of the English Church_, they would have found Taunton described as an
author ‘who makes considerable parade of the amount of his research, but
has not gone very far and has added little, if anything, to what we knew
before. As a whole, his book on _The History of the Jesuits in England_
is uncritical and prejudiced.’
“Such is the authority the Encyclopædia appeals to for information. That
is bad enough, but in the list of authors Taunton is actually described
as a ‘Jesuit.’ Possibly it is one of the punishments the Almighty has
meted out to him for his misuse of the pen while on earth. But he never
did half the harm to the Jesuits by his ill-natured assaults as he has
to the Encyclopædia in being mistaken for an ‘S. J.’; for although there
are some people who will believe anything an encyclopædia tells them,
there are others who are not so meek and who will be moved to inquire
how, if the editor of this publication is so lamentably ignorant of the
personality and antecedents of his contributors, he can vouch for the
reliability of what newspaper men very properly call the stuff that comes
into the office. We are not told who revised the writings of those two
dead men, one of whom departed this life twenty, the other four years
ago; and we have to be satisfied with a posthumous and prejudiced and
partly anonymous account of a great Order, about which many important
books have been written since the demise of the original calumniators,
and with which apparently the unknown reviser is unacquainted.
“It may interest the public to know that many of these errors were
pointed out to the managers of the Encyclopædia at their New York office
when the matter was still in page proof and could have been corrected.
Evidently it was not thought worth while to pay any attention to the
protest.
“It is true that in the minds of some of their enemies, especially in
certain parts of the habitable globe, Catholics have no right to resent
anything that is said of their practices and beliefs, no matter how
false or grotesque such statements may be; and, consequently, we are
not surprised at the assumption by the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ of
its usual contemptuous attitude. Thus, for instance, on turning to the
articles _Casuistry_ and _Roman Catholic Church_ we find them signed
‘St. C.’ Naturally and supernaturally to be under the guidance of a
Saint C. or a Saint D. always inspires confidence in a Catholic; but
this ‘St. C.’ turns out to be only the Viscount St. Cyres, a scion of
the noble house of Sir Stafford Northcote, the one time leader of the
House of Commons, who died in 1887. In the Viscount’s ancestral tree we
notice that Sir Henry Stafford Northcote, first Baronet, has appended
to his name the title ‘Prov. Master of Devonshire Freemasons.’ What
‘Prov.’ means we do not know, but we are satisfied with the remaining
part of the description. The Viscount was educated at Eton, and Merton
College, Oxford. He is a layman and a clubman, and as far as we know is
not suspected of being a Catholic. A search in the ‘Who’s Who?’ failed to
reveal anything on that point, though a glance at the articles over his
name will dispense us from any worry about his religious status.
“We naturally ask why he should have been chosen to enlighten the world
on Catholic topics? ‘Because,’ says the editor of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_, ‘the Viscount St. Cyres has probably more knowledge of the
development of theology in the Roman Catholic Church than any other
person in that Church.’
“The Church was unaware that it had at its disposal such a source of
information. It will be news to many, but we are inclined to ask how the
Viscount acquired that marvelous knowledge. It would require a life-long
absorption in the study of divinity quite incompatible with the social
duties of one of his station. Furthermore, we should like to know whence
comes the competency of the editor to decide on the ability of the
Viscount, and to pass judgment on the correctness of his contribution?
That also supposes an adequate knowledge of all that the dogmatic, moral
and mystic theologians ever wrote, a life-long training in the language
and methods of the science, and a special intellectual aptitude to
comprehend the sublime speculations of the Church’s divines.
“It will not be unkind to deny him such qualifications, especially now,
for did he not tell his friends at the London banquet: ‘During all these
(seven) years I have been busy in the blacksmith’s shop (of the editor’s
room) and I do not hear the noise that is made by the hammers all around
me’—nor, it might be added, does he hear what is going on outside the
_Britannica’s_ forge.
“Meantime, we bespeak the attention of all the Catholic theologians in
every part of the world to the preposterous invitation to come to hear
the last word about ‘the development of theology’ in the Catholic Church
from a scholar whose claim to theological distinction is that ‘he has
written about Fénélon and Pascal.’ The _Britannica_ shows scant respect
to Catholic scholarship and Catholic intelligence.”
Father Campbell then devotes several pages to a specific indictment of
the misstatements and the glaring errors to be found in several of the
articles relating to the Catholic Church. He quotes eight instances of
St. Cyres’ inaccurate and personal accusations, and also many passages
from the articles on _Papacy_, _Celibacy_ and _St. Catherine of
Siena_—passages which show the low and biased standard of scholarship by
which they were written. The injustice contained in them is obvious even
to a superficial student of history. At the close of these quotations
he accuses the _Britannica_ of being neither up-to-date, fair, nor
well-informed. “It repeats old calumnies that have been a thousand times
refuted, and it persistently selects the Church’s enemies who hold her
up to ridicule and contempt. We are sorry for those who have been lavish
in their praises of a book which is so defective, so prejudiced, so
misleading and so insulting.”
It seems that while the _Britannica’s_ contributions to the general
misinformation of the world were being discussed, the editor wrote to one
of his subscribers saying that the Catholics were very much vexed because
the article on the Jesuits was not “sufficiently eulogistic.”
“He is evidently unaware,” Father Campbell goes on to comment, “that the
Society of Jesus is sufficiently known both in the Church and the world
not to need a monument in the graveyard of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.
Not the humblest Brother in the Order expected anything but calumny and
abuse when he saw appended to the article the initials of the well-known
assassins of the Society’s reputation. Not one was surprised, much less
displeased, at the absence of eulogy, sufficient or otherwise; but,
on the contrary, they were all amazed to find the loudly trumpeted
commercial enterprise, which had been so persistently clamorous of its
possession of the most recent results of research in every department of
learning, endeavoring to palm off on the public such shopworn travesties
of historical and religious truth. The editor is mistaken if he thinks
they pouted. Old and scarred veterans are averse to being patted on the
back by their enemies.
“It is not, however, the ill-judged gibe that compels us to revert to the
Society, as much as the suspicion that the editor of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_ seems to fancy that we had nothing to say beyond calling
attention to his dilapidated bibliography, which he labels with the very
offensive title of ‘the bibliography of _Jesuitism_’—a term which is as
incorrect as it is insulting—or that we merely objected to the employment
of two dead and discredited witnesses to tell the world what kind of an
organization the Society is.
“It may be, moreover, that we misjudged a certain portion of the reading
public in treating the subject so lightly, and as the Encyclopædia is
continually reiterating the assertion that it has no ‘bias’ and that its
statement of facts is purely ‘objective,’ a few concrete examples of the
opposite kind of treatment—the one commonly employed—may not be out of
place.