account, fetishism, polytheism, monotheism, religion is felt to be a
personal relation--a relation between the human personality and some
personality more than human; and the human heart is reaching out and
groping after some divine personality, if peradventure it may find Him.
But there is yet another form of religion proceeding from the human
heart in which this does not seem to be the case--and that is Buddhism.
The Buddha definitely renounced the search after God and would not allow
his disciples to engage in the pursuit. Practically the pursuit was
useless, according to the Buddha: escape from suffering is all that man
can want or strive or hope for. Escape from suffering is possible only
by cessation from existence; and that cessation from existence, here and
hereafter, can be attained by man himself, who can reach Nirvana without
the aid of gods, if gods there be. From the point of view of metaphysics
the idea that there is any relation between the human personality and
the divine falls to the ground, according to the Buddha, because,
whether there be gods or not, at any rate there is no human personality.
As in a conflagration--and according to the Buddha the whole world,
burning with desire, is in a state of conflagration--the flames leap
from one house that is burning to the next, so in its transmigrations
the self, or rather the character, _Karman_, like a flame, leaps from
one form of existence to another. The flame indeed appears to be there
all the time the fire is burning; but the flame has no permanence, it is
changing all the time the process of combustion is going on; and 'I'
have no more permanence than the flame. 'I' only appear to be there as
long as the process of life goes on. And as the flame only continues so
long as there is something for it to feed on, so the process of
transmigration or re-birth continues only so long as the thirst for
being continues: the escape from re-birth is conditional on the
extinction of that thirst or desire; and the disciple who has succeeded
in putting off lust and desire has attained to deliverance from death
and re-birth, has attained to rest, to Nirvana.
Thus, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of religion, Buddhism is
a radiation from the common centre, from the heart of man, though it
radiates in a direction very different from that followed by any other
religion. The direction is indeed one which, as the history of religion
shows, it has been impossible for man long to follow, for, wherever
Buddhism has been established, it has relapsed; and the Buddha, who
strove to divert man from prayer and from the worship of gods, has
himself become a god to whom prayer and worship are addressed. Whether
in the future the direction may be pursued more permanently than it has
been by Buddhism up to now lies with the future to show.
Buddhism, however, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of
religion, is not the only radiation from the common centre, of which we
have to take account, in addition to fetishism, polytheism, and
monotheism. From the human heart also proceeds 'the religion of
humanity', the Positivist Church. Here, as originally in Buddhism, the
conception of a divine personality plays no part; but here the human
personality, the very existence of which is denied by the Buddha, is
raised to a high, indeed to the highest, level. There is no such thing
as an individual, if by 'individual' is meant a man existing solely by
himself, for a man can neither come into existence nor continue in
existence by himself alone. It is an essential part of the conception of
personality that it includes fellowship: a person to be a person must
stand in some relation to other persons. They are presented to him, the
subject, as objects of his awareness; and he, the subject, is also an
object of their awareness. Humanity is thus a complex, in which alone
persons are found and apart from which they have in fact no existence.
Humanity thus plays in Positivism, as a religion, the part of 'the great
Being', _le grand Être_, which in other religions is fulfilled by God,
but with this difference, that humanity is human always and never
divine.
The ruler of a country steers the ship of state, but he is a pilot only
metaphorically. Whether the terms worship and prayer are used more than
metaphorically by the Positivist seems hard to decide. On the one hand,
if it is felt that worship and prayer are indispensable to religion, it
may be argued that in religions other than Positivism they prove not
only on analysis, but in the course of history, to be, as by Positivism
they are recognized to be, of purely subjective import. On the other
hard, it may be that they provide merely a means of transition from the
religions of the past to the religion of the future.
Another matter of interest is the place of morality in Positivism as a
religion. According to M. Alfred Loisy in his book _La Religion_,
morality and religion are bound up together. They cannot exist apart
from one another: they might, he says, 'be dissociated in fact and
thought, were it not that they are inseparable in the life of
humanity.' And in his view morality is summed up in the idea of duty. He
says, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity, and duty was
humanity. Duty was at the beginning in humanity. By it all things were
made, and without it nothing was made.' Thus, where duty is, there also
is religion. Not only, according to Loisy, has that always been so in
every stage through which the evolution of religion has passed, but it
will also be the case with the religion of the future. Thus the
conception of evolution which Loisy holds is the same as that
entertained by Robertson Smith, the difference being that, whereas on
the one view the idea of God and of communion with Him has been present
from the beginning, and, much though it may have changed, it remains to
the end the same thing; on the other view it is the idea of duty--the
duty which is humanity--that was in the beginning and will continue to
the end. Both views are applications of the 'pre-formation' theory of
evolution.
But Positivism perhaps is not necessarily tied to the 'pre-formation'
theory. It seems equally capable of being fitted in to the 'dispersive'
theory, and of being regarded as an emanation or radiation proceeding
direct from the human heart. It may be so regarded, if we consider the
essence of it to be found not in the concept of duty, which seems to
imply the existence of some superior who imposes duties on man, but in
that love of one's fellow-man which, to be love, must be given freely,
and simply because one loves. The sense of obligation, the feeling of
duty, obedience to the commandments of authority and to the prohibitions
which the community both enforces and obeys, are, all of them, various
expressions of the primitive feeling of taboo--a feeling of alarm and
fear. If we confine our attention to this set of facts, we may say,
with M. Loisy, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity'. We
may however hesitate to follow him when he goes on to say, 'by duty all
things were made, and without it nothing was made'. We may hesitate and
the Positivist may hesitate, because, primitive though the feeling of
fear may be, the feeling of love is equally original: on it and in it
the family and society have their base and their origin; and to it they
owe not only their origin but their continuance. Love however is not a
matter of duty and obedience; it is not subject to commandment or
prohibition; nor does it strive by commands or authority to enforce
itself. In the process by which duty--legal and moral
obligation--evolves out of the primitive feeling of taboo, love is not
implicated: love springs from its own source, the human heart, and runs
its own course. Taboo may have existed from the beginning; but to the
end, whatever its form--duty, obligation, obedience to authority--it
remains in character what it was at first, prohibitive, negative. Love
alone is creative: without it 'was not anything made that was made'.
There seems, therefore, no necessity to regard the 'pre-formation'
theory of evolution, rather than the 'dispersive theory, as essential to
Positivism.
Common to all the views about the evolution of religion that have been
mentioned in this paper is the belief that, the more religion changes,
the more it remains the same thing. If identified with duty, then duty
it was in the beginning, and duty it will remain to the end. For those
who conceive it to be merely magic, magic it was and magic it remains.
Those who define it as belief in a god and communion with him find that
belief in the earliest as well as the latest stages. All would agree in
rejecting Bergson's view of evolution--that in evolution there is
change, but nothing which changes. All would agree that in the evolution
of religion there is something which, change though it may, remains the
same thing, and that is religion itself. But on the question what
religion is, there is no agreement: no definition of religion as
yet--and there have been many attempts to define it--has gained general
acceptance. We may even surmise, and admit, that no attempt ever will be
successful. Such admission, indeed, may at first to some seem equivalent
to admitting that religion is a nullity, and the admission may
accordingly be welcomed or rejected. But a moment's reflection will show
that the admission has no such consequence. None of our simple feelings
can be defined: pleasure and pain can neither be defined; nor, when
experienced, doubted. And some of our general terms, those at any rate
which are ultimate, are beyond our power either to define or doubt: no
one imagines that 'life' can be defined, but no one doubts its
existence. And religion both as a term and as a fact of experience is
ultimate, and, because ultimate, incapable of definition. It is not to
be defined but only to be felt. It is an affair not merely of the
intellect, but still more of the heart.
In what sense, then, can we speak of the evolution of religion?
Evolution implies change; and no one doubts that there have been changes
in religion. No one can imagine that it has from the beginning till now
remained identically the same. What seems conceivable is that throughout
there has been, not identity but continuity--change indeed in continuity
but also continuity in change. The child 'learns to speak the words and
think the ideas, to reproduce the mode of thought, as he does the form
of speech' of the community into which he is born. In the speech,
thought, and feelings--even in the religious feelings--of the community,
from generation to generation, there is continuity, but not identity.
From generation to generation they are not identical but are
continuously changing; and they change because each child who takes them
over reproduces them; and, in reproducing them, changes them, not much
in most cases, but very considerably in the case of men of genius and
the great religious reformers. The heart is the treasure-house in which
not only old things are stored, but from which also new things are
brought forth. The process of evolution implies indeed that the old
things, though not everlasting, persist for a time; but it also implies
the manifestation of that which, though continuous with the old, is at
the same time new. It is from the heart of man, of some one man, that
what is new proceeds: the community it is which is conservative of the
old. The heart of man, or man himself, exhibits both change in
continuity and continuity in change.
The acorn, the sapling, and the oak are different stages of one
continuous process. But it is the same tree throughout the whole
process. So, too, perhaps it may be said, religion is a term which
includes or is applicable to all stages in the one process, and not to
the stage of monotheism alone, or of polytheism alone, or even to those
stages alone in which there is a reference to personal beings. Each of
these stages is a stage in the process of religion but no stage is by
itself the whole process. But this view of the evolution of religion
regards religion as though it were an organism, self-subsistent,
existing and evolving as independently of man as the oak-tree does;
whereas in truth religion has no such independent existence or
evolution. It is not from polytheism that monotheism proceeds; nor does
polytheism proceed from fetishism: it is from the heart of man that they
and all other forms of religion emanate and radiate. To conceive
fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism as three successive stages in one
process, to represent the evolution of religion by a straight line
marked off into three parts, or any other number of parts, is to forget
that they do not produce one another but that each emanates from the
heart of man. The fact that they emanate in temporal succession does not
prove that one springs from the other.
Nor can we say that values--religious or aesthetic--are to be determined
on the simple principle that the latest edition is the best. To say that
an _editio princeps_ has value only for the bibliophile is to admit that
all values are personal, as are all thoughts and all feelings, all
goodness and all love.
FOR REFERENCE
Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_ (A. & C. Black, 1889).
J.G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_ (Macmillan & Co., 1890-1915).
Grant Allen, _The Evolution of the Idea of God_ (Grant Richards, 1897).
H. Bergson, _L'Évolution créatrice_ (F. Alcan, 1908).
F.B. Jevons, _The Idea of God in Early Religions_ (1910), and
_Comparative Religion_ (1913) (Cambridge University Press).
G.F. Moore, _History of Religions_ (T. & T. Clark, 1914).
A. Loisy, _La Religion_ (E. Nourry, 1917).
IV
RECENT TENDENCIES IN EUROPEAN POETRY
WITH OCCASIONAL REFERENCES TO THE NOVEL, DRAMA, AND CRITICISM
PROFESSOR C.H. HERFORD
When Matthew Arnold declared that every age receives its best
interpretation in its poetry, he was making a remark hardly conceivable
before the century in which it was made. Poetry in the nineteenth
century was, on the whole, more charged with meaning, more rooted in the
stuff of humanity and the heart of nature, less a mere province of
_belles-lettres_ than ever before. Consciously or unconsciously it
reflected the main currents in the mentality of European man, and the
reflection was often most clear where it was least conscious. Two of
these main currents are:
(1) The vast and steady enlargement of our knowledge of the compass, the
history, the potencies, of Man, Nature, the World.
(2) The growth in our sense of the _worth_ of every part of existence.
Certain aspects of these two processes are popularly known as 'the
advance of science', and 'the growth of democracy'. But how far
'science' reaches beyond the laboratory and the philosopher's study, and
'democracy' beyond political freedom and the ballot-box, is precisely
what poetry compels us to understand; and not least the poetry of the
last sixty years with which we are to-day concerned.
How then does the history of poetry in Europe during these sixty years
stand in relation to these underlying processes? On the surface, at
least, it hardly resembles growth at all. In France above all--the
literary focus of Europe, and its sensitive thermometer--the movement of
poetry has been, on the surface, a succession of pronounced and even
fanatical schools, each born in reaction from its precursor, and
succumbing to the triumph of its successor. Yet a deeper scrutiny will
perceive that these warring artists were, in fact, groups of successive
discoverers, who each added something to the resources and the scope of
poetry, and also retained and silently adopted the discoveries of the
past; while the general line of advance is in the direction marked by
the two main currents I have described. Nowhere else is the succession
of phases so sharp and clear as in France. But since France does reflect
more sensitively than any other country the movement of the mind of
Europe, and since her own mind has, more than that of any other country,
radiated ideas and fashions out over the rest of Europe, these phases
are in fact traceable also, with all kinds of local and national
variations, in Italy and Spain, Germany and England, and I propose to
take this fact as the basis of our present very summary and diagrammatic
view. The three phases of the sixty years are roughly divided by the
years 1880 and 1900.
The first, most clearly seen in the French Parnassians, is in close, if
unconscious, sympathy with the temper of science. Poetry, brought to the
limit of expressive power, is used to express, with the utmost veracity,
precision, and impersonal self-suppression, the beauty and the tragedy
of the world. It sought Hellenic lucidity and Hellenic calm--in the
example most familiar to us, the Stoic calm and 'sad lucidity' of
Matthew Arnold.
The second, best seen in the French Symbolists, was directly hostile to
science. But they repelled its confident analysis of material reality in
the name of a part of reality which it ignored or denied, an immaterial
world which they mystically apprehended, which eluded direct
description, frustrated rhetoric, and was only to be come at by the
magical suggestion of colour, music, and symbol. It is most familiar to
us in the 'Celtic' verse of Mr. Yeats and 'A.E.'.
The third, still about us, and too various and incomplete for final
definition, is in closer sympathy with science, but, in great part, only
because science has itself found accommodation between nature and
spirit, a new ideality born of, and growing out of, the real. If the
first found Beauty, the end of art, in the plastic repose of sculpture,
and the second in the mysterious cadences of music, the poetry of the
twentieth century finds its ideal in life, in the creative evolution of
being, even in the mere things, the 'prosaic' pariahs of previous
poetry, on which our shaping wills are wreaked. We know it in poets
unlike one another but yet more unlike their predecessors, from
D'Annunzio and Dehmel and Claudel to our Georgian experimenters in the
poetry of paradox and adventure.
I. POETIC NATURALISM
The third quarter of the nineteenth century opened, in western Europe,
with a decided set-back for those who lived on dreams, and a
corresponding complacency among those who throve on facts. The political
and social revolution which swept the continent in 1848 and 1849, and
found ominous echoes here, was everywhere, for the time, defeated. The
discoveries of science in the third and fourth decades, resting on
calculation and experiment, were investing it with the formidable
prestige which it has never since lost; and both metaphysics and
theology reeled perceptibly under the blows delivered in its name. The
world exhibition of 1851 seemed to announce an age of settled
prosperity, peace, and progress.
In literature the counterpart of these phenomena was the revolt from
_Romanticism_, a movement, in its origins, of poetic liberation and
discovery, which had rejuvenated poetry in Germany and Italy, and yet
more signally in England and in France, but was now petering out in
emotional incoherence, deified impulse, and irresponsible caprice.
The revolt accordingly everywhere sought to bring literature into closer
conformity with reality; with reality as interpreted by science; and to
make art severe and precise. In the novel, Flaubert founded modern
naturalism with his enthralling picture of dull provincials, _Mme
Bovary_ (1857); two years later George Eliot tilted openly in _Adam
Bede_ against the romancers who put you off with marvellous pictures of
dragons, but could not draw the real horses and cattle before their
eyes.[3]
Realism, at once more unflinching and more profoundly poetic, and yet
penetrated, especially in Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, with an intensity of
moral conviction beside which the ethical fervour of George Eliot seems
an ineffectual fire, was one of the roots of the Russian Novel; which
also reached its climax in the third quarter of the century. But though
it concurred with analogous movements in the West, it drew little of
moment from them; even Turgenjev, a greater Maupassant in artistry, drew
his inner inspiration from wholly alien springs of Slavonic passion and
thought. And it was chiefly through them that the Russian novel later
helped to nourish the radically alien movement of Symbolism in France.
In drama, Ibsen broke away from the Romantic tradition of his country
with the iconoclastic energy of one who had spent his own unripe youth
in offering it a half-reluctant homage. The man of actuality in him
denounced the drama built upon the legends of the Scandinavian past--the
mark for him of a people of dreamers oblivious of the calls of the hour.
On the morrow of the disastrous (and for Norway in his view ignominious)
Danish war of 1864, his scorn rang out with prophetic intensity in the
fierce tirade of _Brand_. Happily for his art, revolt against romance in
him was united, more signally than in more than two or three of his
contemporaries, with the power of seizing and presenting contemporary
life. 'Realism' certainly expresses inadequately enough the genius of an
art like his, enormously alive rather than fundamentally like life, and
no less charged with purpose and idea than the work of the great
Russians, though under cover of reticences and irony little known to
them. The great series of prose dramas--from 1867 (_The League of
Youth_) onwards--with their experimental prelude _Love's Comedy_
(1863)--were to be for all Europe the most considerable literary event
of the fourth quarter of the century, and they generated affiliated
schools throughout the West. They did not indeed themselves remain
untouched by the general intellectual currents of the time, and it will
be noticed below that the later plays (from _The Lady of the Sea_
onward) betray affinities, like the Russian novel, with what is here
called the second phase of the European movement.
In Criticism, the showy generalizations of Villemain gave place to
Sainte-Beuve's series of essays towards a 'natural history of minds'[4]
and Taine's more sweeping attempt to explain literature by
environment.[5] Among ourselves, Meredith's _Essay on Comedy_ (1872)
brilliantly restated Molière's dictum that the comic is founded on the
real, and not on a fantastic distortion of it, while Matthew Arnold
applied alike to literature and to theology a critical insight
fertilized by his master Sainte-Beuve's delicate faculty for disengaging
the native quality of minds from the incrustations of tradition and
dogma.
In poetry the French Parnassians created the most brilliant poetry that
has, since Milton, been built upon erudition and impeccable art. Their
leader, Leconte de Lisle, in the preface of his _Poèmes antiques_
(1853), scornfully dismissed Romanticism as a second-hand, incoherent,
and hybrid art, compounded of German mysticism, reverie, and Byron's
stormy egoism. Sully Prudhomme addressed a sterner criticism to the
shade of Alfred de Musset--the Oscar Wilde of the later
Romantics[6]--who had never known the stress of thought, and had filled
his poetry with light love and laughter and voluptuous despairs; the new
poets were to be no such gay triflers, but workers at a forge, beating
the glowing metal into shape, and singing as they toiled.[7] Carducci,
too, derisively contrasts the 'moonlight' of Romanticism--cold and
infructuous beams, proper for Gothic ruins and graveyards--with the
benignant and fertilizing sunshine he sought to restore; for him, too,
the poet is no indolent caroller, and no gardener to grow fragrant
flowers for ladies, but a forge-worker with muscles of steel.[8] Among
us, as usual, the divergence is less sharply marked; but when Browning
calls Byron a 'flat fish', and Arnold sees the poet of _Prometheus_
appropriately pinnacled in the 'intense inane', they are expressing a
kindred repugnance to a poetry wanting in intellectual substance and in
clear-cut form.