Pilgrim-memories;

II Baerister- At- Law

"The handwriting is on the wall; the fiat has gone forth; the ancient empire shall be subverted ; the dominion of superstition, already decaying, shall break away and crumble into dust ; and it shall be clearly seen that, from the beginning, there has been no discrepancy, no incongruity, no disorder, no interruption, no interference."

Buckle, History of Civilisation.

NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND CO., BROADWAY

HSioi .Q55

4 8 6 5 5 5

PEE FACE.

It was during the two last Long- Vacations, — the former, at a spa in a beautiful ravine, rather than glen, of the great German forest of the Schwartzwald ; and the latter, on a mountain-side in the greater Scottish forest in which tower Lochnagar and Ben-muich-dhui, — that these Pilgrim- Memories — these memories of pilgrimage, with the late Mr. Buckle, to the Holy Places of Christianity, — were recalled and put-together. As verifying materials, I had my Eastern Diary and Letters, and various papers, both published and unpublished, written shortly after my return home. And such is the strange nature of consciousness that, by this twofoldness of my existence, — actually amid the pines of the North, ideally amid the palms of the Orient, — the activity of memory was quickened greatly, and greatly vivified were its representations.

A dozen years have elapsed since these 6 travels and discussions in the Birth-countries of Christianity ; ' and it may well be asked, why not have given an account of them sooner; or, — if not worth sooner giving an account of, — why give an account of them now ?

vi

Preface

Simply because it did not seem to me worth while to give any ampler account of these travels and discussions than I had already, in magazine-articles, given, unless I were able to make such ampler narrative of distinct service as Preface, or Prooemium, to my general work on 4 The Modern Eevolution.' But, just as the Preface to a book, though it stands first, is the last part to be written, so the ideas, at least, of a series of books must be got clear before the book, intended as a General Preface to them, can be written. Only now, however, do I find myself thus able to endeavour, at least, to make the narrative of my Eastern journey with Mr. Buckle of such service as, not merely, I hope, to justify, but to make desirable, an ampler account of it than I have as yet given. And hence the reason of my not having sooner written the following chapters ; and the reason of my writing them now.

As Procemium, then, to my work on 6 The Modern Eevolution,' let me briefly state the main objects I have had in view in writing these Pilgrim- Memories. Of that general work, the purpose is, the enunciation, verification, and application of a Law of Thought, which will, I believe, be found to be the Eational, or Ultimate Law of History. But, as the verification of a General Law of History must evidently be the work of a lifetime, I would desire, before proceeding to attempt such verification, at least to make, in some degree, clear

PREFACE. vii

the general meaning and grounds of the Law I devote myself to verifying. In no way, however, perhaps, is the meaning, and are the grounds of a new hypothesis, theory, or principle, more readily made clear than by giving an account of the way in which the author himself reached it. And the first aim, therefore, of this prefatory volume is to lead the reader up to this Law through the consideration of those facts which, — and particularly in travel and discussion with Mr. Buckle, — led myself to its discovery.

For I had already, before the publication of Mr. Buckle's first volume, conceived a project similar to that of his £ History of Civilisation in England,' the project, namely, of a 'History of British Law.' I had also seen that the scientific basis of such a History must, as he maintained, with reference to his £ History of Civilisation,' be a Law, or Laws, derived from the larger History of Thought. A certain general Law of Thought, — a Law of Change in men's notions of the Causes of Chang e^ — I had likewise, before meeting with Mr. Buckle, arrived at. But the middle stage, the stage of the advance from the earlier to the later mode of conceiving the Causes of Change, was as yet undefined. And hence, this general Law I was as yet unable to enunciate in a sufficiently complete form to be of much practical use in the interpretation of History.

The question, therefore, with me was, Were those Mental Laws on which Mr. Buckle had founded his

PREFACE.

6 History,' or rather projected ' History of Civilisation in England,' true and sufficient; or, if, in some very limited application, true and sufficient, were they, and particularly was that one as to the effect of Moral Forces as historical causes, true and sufficient as the basis of a General History of Civilisation? This, the general question in all my discussions with Mr. Buckle, naturally ran-out into all those special questions ordinarily discussed between Materialists and Idealists. Nor, I hope, will my account of these discussions be without service in making popularly clear the mutual connection of all these questions. Not, however, to mere metaphysical questions were these discussions confined. If Moral Forces were of no effect as historical Causes, how was the origin of Christianity to be accounted for; how, the origin of Islamism which followed, and how, that of Buddhism which preceded, it by five hundred years ? And it was in the discussion, more particularly, of this question with Mr. Buckle, in the suggestions, with respect to it, of travel, in the birth-countries of Christianity, and in after-study, that that middle stage in the history of the conception of Causation was, at length, discovered, the defining of which was, when I met Mr. Buckle, still wanting in my enunciation of wThat I believed to be the Ultimate Law of History.

PREFACE.

ix

But the discovery even of an Ultimate Law of History was not, with me, an end, but only a means. For, through all the weak or worldly sophisms of contemporary presentations of Christianity, it was clear that the backbone of it, as a religion, is a certain theory, or philosophy of History. It was clear that this Christian Philosophy of History is opposed, in the very conceptions that are its bases, to that New Philosophy of History which, especially since Hume and Kant, it has been the great and variouslylabouring aim of Modern Science to construct. And, so, just as the Christian Synthesis of History has been, it appeared that a Scientific Synthesis of History, — expressed in the characteristic scientific form of a Law, — would be, in the moral or emotional presentation of it, an Ideal, a Eeligion. Clear it was, therefore, that the scientific inquirer who has for his aim the discovery of an Ultimate Law of History, must aim also, if he has a true consciousness of the nature of his task, at discovering what will alone be an adequate basis of that New Ideal rendered necessary by the incredibility now of the Christian theory of History. And clear also it was that, conversely, the religious inquirer who would gain a more satisfying Ideal than that Christian one which Science makes more and more incredible, must, if he has a true knowledge of the conditions of such an Ideal, aim, first of all, at the discovery of an Ultimate Law of History. And the second, therefore, of my three

X

PREFACE.

main objects in recording these Pilgrim,- Memories is to suggest, at least, to the reader, something both of the moral and poetic grandeur of that New Ideal which gradually dawns on us as we gain a glimpse of the Law of Progress, the Law of Human Development.

But, in order to do this without ambiguity, those contemporary presentations of Christianity, to which I have alluded, make it necessary that I should here state what I mean, — and what, as I hold, can alone, by a scientific historian, be meant, — by the terms Christianity and Christianism. By Christianity I mean that great historical system which culminated in the philosophy of Scholasticism, the religion of Catholicism, and the polity of Feudalism. And by Christianism I mean that historical theory which represents Jesus of Nazareth as a supernatural being who came on earth for the good of mankind, was put to death, and rose again to sit on the right hand of God. In a word, by this term I mean that central theory held in common by the Greek, the Latin, and the Protestant Churches. Against talk, therefore, about Christianity as if it meant but a certain morality, or sentiment, I protest as, at once, dishonest and untruthful ; dishonest, because those from whom, by lauding Christianity in the esoteric sense of a mere sentiment, a cheer is caught, understand by it a theory as well as a sentiment ; untruthful, because every scholar well knows that what was distinctive of Christian morality was, not

PREFACE.

xi its maxims, but its sanctions, and these were, and are, wholly dependent on its historical theory.

Considering, then, the historical theory of Christianity as the backbone of it, — the Christian Gospel being essentially a theory of History, — the above-stated second object of the record of these Pilgrim-Memories is, it must be confessed, destructive as well as re-constructive. For the question implicitly, in the following narrative, put to the reader will be — whether, placing oneself in the very scenes of the Miracles of the Biblical History, and realising all one certainly knows of the order of Nature, and the development of Mind, and — with respect more especially to the last, — what, in Egypt, one so clearly, as I think, sees to be the physically necessitated ignorance in which those primitive conceptions and myths originated which are to be found so wonderfully little changed in the Creed of Christianity,— can one, then, venture to affirm that one truly and honestly believes that these Biblical Miracles actually occurred ? But, stripped as thus the Holy Places of Christianity may be imagined to be of all their profoundly stirring interest, and shorn, the scenes of this pilgrimage both of idyllic romance and of tragic pathos ; the second question which will, in the following narrative, be implicitly put to the reader, will be, whether it is not the fact that, notwithstanding, or rather as a consequence of, the vanishing of popular beliefs concerning these Holy Places, thoughts are, by xii

PREFACE.

actual or ideal presence on these scenes of pilgrimage, suggested which give to Man's history an incommensurably grander aspect than under Christian beliefs ; an aspect, indeed, which only the highest poetic genius could adequately present in the sublimity of its romance, its comedy, and its tragedy ?

But yet a third object I have had in view in writing these Pilgrim-Memories. My first aim I have stated as being to lead the reader up, and particularly through an account of my discussions with Mr. Buckle, to that Law which I trust to be hereafter able to verify as the Ultimate Law of History. But profoundly as I differed from Mr. Buckle, greatly I was indebted to my discussions with him for the discovery of that Law. Most truly does Miss Shirreff say of him : 4 Nothing roused his sympathy more than the efforts of another mind to reach or to spread knowledge ; . . . and his temper in discussion was perfect ; he was a most candid opponent and an admirable listener.' And hence, — and particularly as no biography of Mr. Buckle, and but certain biographical materials only have been published, — it has seemed by no means beyond the scope of this Procemium that I should endeavour in it to make as complete a farther contribution as was in my power to the biography of him to whom I was thus indebted.

With reference, however, more particularly to my discussions with Mr. Buckle, as there must always be a

PREFACE.

xiii certain delicacy and difficulty in reporting what lias been said by a dead man, it may be desirable to state trie principles by which I have been guided. In the first place, a conversation should be either fully and literally reported, or it should be distinctly stated that no attempt has been made to represent conversational power. Let it be understood, therefore, that no such attempt is here made, and that, what I have in my dialogues given, is, not reports of conversations, but merely very summary abstracts of arguments or discussions extending, each of them, over many hours, and ^sometimes many days. Secondly, while in such abstracts, the actual worlds used can evidently not be given except here and there, there ought to be the most scrupulous endeavour to give fair and forcible expression to the opinions reported. To ensure such force and fairness, I have given all Mr. Buckle's more important opinions in the very words of his published writings. And, thirdly, it should be reckoned a betrayal of the confidence of companionship to report any opinion whatever not found in published writings, or not of such a nature as to have been expressed freely, and without reserve, to others. No such opinions of Mr. Buckle's will be found in the following pages. And I trust that, conforming as they do to such principles as these, no objection will be found sustainable to my reports of discussions with him.

As to personal characterization, I have been guided xiv

PREFACE.

by similar principles. Nothing whatever of a private nature is even alluded to. For, as nothing in life is more valuable than friendship, nothing should be more strictly guarded than those confidences, either voluntary or necessary, fear of the betrayal of which makes friendly intimacy so excusably shunned, because so generally regretted. But, with this limit, I have interwoven in my narrative, not only my own, but all other reminiscences of Mr. Buckle. And for the sake of farther completeness, I have given, in an Appendix, a brief account of Mr. Buckle's student-life, an American's reminiscences of Mr. Buckle at Cairo, and three letters on the death of Mr. Buckle.

In reference to the title of this volume, let me say that this Eastern journey was distinctly a pilgrimage, rather than a tour. For not otherwise is, I think, a journey to be characterized in which the places visited are regarded as of the profoundest historical — nay, if you will — even ' sacred ' interest ; and a journey of which the chief object is to gain that enlargement of sympathy, and greater truthfulness of view which is true spiritual advancement. Truth, indeed, has been sought, not in the attempt to preserve the atmosphere of traditional belief, but in the attempt, on the contrary, to submit this atmosphere to the test of new and varied conditions ; and so to discover whether it is a really true and natural one,

PREFACE.

xv or one which, more or less false and artificial, distorts and discolours everything we see through it. But a conviction of the profound truth of the great Baconian doctrine of 4 Idols ' — that the Mind is, from nature and education, full of notions mostly false, the sceptical testing of all of which, without exception, is the first duty of whoever would endeavour to see things as they really are — a conviction of this is the ground and basis of all scientific method. And among the worst of these 4 Idols,' Bacon accounted the false notions with which Theology and Superstition have corrupted Philosophy — 4 At corruptio Philosophise ex Superstitione et Theologia admista, latius omnino patet, et plurimum mali infert, aut in philosophias integras, aut in earum partes.'

But long as, from various circumstances, this volume has been in passing through the press, I do not now issue it without feeling the need of much indulgence from those who may peruse it. One or two ideas run through it which, I venture to think, are, in the main, true and important. But the art of expression is difficult. And, indeed, the more one feels and knows of the complexity of human existence, the more convinced, I think, one must become that fully truthful expression is the prerogative, not of Philosophy, but of Art only, and especially Shakespearian Art. And yet, inadequate in all as this book will certainly, and erroneous in much as it will not improbably be found,

a xvi

PREFACE.

I would fain hope that there may still be truth and fruitfulness enough in it ever to give me pleasure in associating with these memories of Oriental pilgrimage those mountain-and-forest-scenes of the North amid which they were recalled ; the German forest with its sunsets behind a ridge of pines that, cresting the deep shadow of a long wooded ravine, stood out, in a black fretwork, against crimson and gold ; and the Scottish forest, where he sank in a grandly tumultuous sea of bare mountain-summits, athwart which, under a heaven of every magnificence of colour, there was shed every tender and every tragic tone of that darkness and light which is the most significant symbol, or material expression, of the facts of our spiritual existence.

Lincoln's Inn:

Appendix

ADDITIONAL PERSONAL DETAILS.

I. Mr. Buckle's Student-life and Character . . 485 II. An American's Reminiscences of Mr. Buckle at

III. The Death and Grave of Mr. Buckle . . . 507

PAST I.

EGYPT.

CHAPTEE I.

AT TEE GATE OF FTEIOPIA.

After a sojourn of three weeks at Malta, and three days spent in slipping swiftly through the calm waters of the great Midland Sea, I arrived at Alexandria and found myself suddenly amid a vast and strangely mixed throng of Western and Eastern life. Not here, however, shall I say anything either of explorations of the antiquities 1 of the Empire-city founded by Alexander, whither his body was carried from Babylon for sepulture ; or of reflections on the Neoplatonic struggles of the intellectual Capital of the World during the great age* of the birth and establishment of Christianity; or of experiences of the society of the commercial Emporium of Europe, Africa, and Asia, — though most interesting was the mixture of Muslim and Christian manners and customs, and most charming, not only the beauty of certain Uranies and Athenes, but their enthusiasm for Greece, the country of their mother, and everything that was Greek. For in a personal narrative connected with but myself there could be little interest ; and I propose, therefore, to overleap all the

1 See Mahmoud Bay, Memoir e sur V antique Alexandrie, ses Faubourgs et Environs, decouverts par les fouilles, sondages, nivellements et autres recherches faits apres les ordres de S.A. le Khedive. Copenhague, 1871.

B 2

PIL GRIM-MEMORIES.

Part I

months of my Eastern journey till my first meeting with Mr. Buckle ; as I shall also spare the reader all the months of it after his lamentable death.

So, with reference to Alexandria, I shall here but note that, at the house at which I happened to lunch the day after my arrival, I was told by my fair hostess, a daughter of Lady Duff-Gordon, the authoress of the charmingly sympathetic Letters from Egypt, that they had had the pleasure of giving a party for Mr. Buckle some three weeks previously. But he had by that time left Cairo some ten days on his voyage up the Nile. Scarce a chance, therefore, appeared there to be of my meeting him. Still less could I imagine that, during a third of my whole journey in the East, we should be fellow-travellers. And the improbability of even meeting him became greater as, by the historic interest to me of the place, and the kindly hospitality of the people — most of the principal Europeans, including the British Consul-General, Mr. (afterwards Sir Eobert) Colquhoun, being Scotsmen and countrymen — I was induced to stay a full week at Alexandria. But what seems most improbable is often that which actually occurs. And at the classical Syene, — Asouan, the Egyptian Souan, the 6 Opening ' into, or £ Gate ' of Nubia, or, as it was called by the Greeks, Ethiopia, — more than seven hundred miles up the Nile, on the 9th of January, 1862, I at length met Mr. Buckle.

We— Mr. P , his brother, Captain E. P ,

and myself— had arrived the previous day in our dahabeah, 6 La Nina,' s The Pet,' (so named from a Spanish reminiscence). But we had been variously occupied till

Chap. I. THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA

late into a moonlit night. For1 the Governor has here to be seen, and arrangements made for the passage of the Cataract. And besides the many objects of a past, there are more of a present, interest. The beauty of the women is divine in its physical perfection. It is a woman, Lady Duff-Gordon, who has said that 4 it is worth while going to Nubia to see the girls. Up to twelve or thirteen, they are neatly dressed in a bead necklace, and a leather fringe, four inches wide, round their loins ; and anything so absolutely perfect as their shapes, or so sweetly innocent as their look, cannot be conceived. . . [The married women wear a single loose blue shift or robe.] I was in raptures at seeing how superb an animal man (and woman) really is. . . I never knew what a woman's breast can be before I came here ; it is the most beautiful thing in the world, and gloriously independent of stays or any support. n And so, Mr. Warburton says of a girl at Phike, 4 she approached more nearly the ideal of perfect loveliness than any other I have ever seen, and might have passed for the very spirit of that wild and beautiful region. Her complexion, though very dark, was of that bronze colour so familiar to our eyes in statues, that it formed no detraction to the general beauty. And with her large lustrous gentle eyes, and voice, sweet and low and plaintive, she was what Eve might well have been.' 2

So it was not till the next day, the 9th, that, lunching with some friends who had got up before us,

1 Letters from Egypt, pp. 52, 86, and 166.

2 The Crescent and the Cross, p. 46 (11th edition).

TIL GRIM-MEMORIES.

Part I.

I chanced to hear that the occupant of the only dahabeah that was downward-bound was Mr. Buckle, and that already all his preparations were made for departure. I called, therefore, that afternoon, having great political news to communicate which a wealthy countryman of mine, much favoured by the Viceroy, and who had come up in one of his steamers, had brought us the previous evening. So, — through the throng of Arabs, Copts, and Nubians, vendors of ostrich eggs and other wares and curiosities ; Dancinggirls, Abyssinian and Ghawazee, handsome, goldbedecked Hamdas and Lateefehs ; and, less venal than these, divinely-shaped, speaking-eyed Baccheetas, from the Nubian island of Elephantine opposite, fitly called the 6 Isle of Flowers,' — I, with some difficulty , made my way, and crossed the plank from the sands to the lower deck of Mr. Buckle's dahabeah. Thence, I was ushered into the little saloon-cabin under the quarter-deck, and was first of all struck by the change in Mr. Buckle from what I remembered him, on the only occasion on which I had previously seen him, when delivering at the Eoyal Institution, with the fluency and eloquence of the most accustomed and accomplished speaker, his lecture c On the Influence of Women,' — his first, and unfortunately his last, public address. Yet perhaps it was the beard he now wore, and his negligent dress, that chiefly made it difficult for me to recognise, in the worn-out student, the successful author, and lion of a London season. For he had now almost completely recovered his health, and indeed wrote of his state at this time — 8 I feel very joyous

Chap. I.

THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA.

and altogether full of pugnacity, so that I wish some one would attack me, I mean attack me speculatively — I have no desire for a practical combat.'

The news I had to give was the death of the Prince Consort, and, in consequence of the Trent affair, the threatened war with America. The latter, Mr. Buckle, as I, most heartily wished might never occur. The former event, however much to be regretted for the Queen's sake, neither he nor I could see any important political results from, except so far as, in its indirect effects, it would probably be one of many causes working to the Bepublican transformation of Constitutional Monarchy. And how far this forecast has been fulfilled is for those to say who can truly compare the state of political feeling and opinion now with what it was twelve years ago, and connect the change with its individual, as well as with its general causes. But by a reference to the works of Burke and of Junius, we were led from politics to the subject of Style ; then, to that of Method ; and thence, by the link of the application of Method, our conversation passed to the subject of so-called 4 Spiritualism.'

Mr. Buckle gave me an account of a seance to which he had been specially invited, at the house of

Mrs. M G , and under the presidency of Mr.

Home. And such, he said, had been the effect on him of what he then saw, in his overwrought state, after the publication of his second volume, that he had never ventured to go to a second sitting. But he expressed himself in the most sanguine manner as to the possibility, nay, probability of the most revolu-

PIL GRIM-MEMORIES.

Paet I.

tionary discoveries in the thorough investigation of these phenomena of e Spiritualism.' I thought that these phenomena should be clearly distinguished from the vulgar theory of them ; and that an unscientific petitio principii would be avoided if they were qualified as Homian rather than as Spiritualist. In the scientific explanation of such of these Homian phenomena as are not already scientifically explained, if any such there are, our knowledge might possibly be greatly extended.1 In the spiritualist, or rather spiritist, theory of them, we should but return to that earliest mode of explaining things, no longer current among civilised races, except in reference to those sacred supernaturalisms, which one is branded ' Infidel ' for examining. For

1 In the course of a correspondence in the Pall Mall Gazette, May, 1868, on Science and Spiritualism, I gave fuller expression to this opinion in the following terms : — ' I venture to doubt the logic of the dilemma stated by Dr. Tyndall in reference to a meeting with Mr. Home. " The investigation can have but one of two results : either his phenomena will be proved delusive, or I shall be converted to the ranks of Spiritualism."

1 There is surely a third hypothesis tenable with respect to so-called spiritualistic phenomena, namely, that they are neither wholly delusive, nor entirely caused by Spirits, but that they are, in part at least, real, and, as far as they are so, to be accounted for by natural causes.

'It is because, if these phenomena are pronounced by competent authority not to be delusive, I believe that their explanation will lead, not to Spiritualism or the knowledge of a Spirit-world, but to a greatly extended knowledge of the interaction of bodies on each other, and particularly of the correlations of physical and psychological forces, that I, with many others, rejoice in the prospect of a scientific investigation of the assertions of Spiritualists.

'If, however, these phenomena are real, and naturally explicable, their explanation will tax all the ingenuity, not of physicists only, but of biologists and psychologists.

' That, if real, these phenomena should, in the first stage of their investigation, be attributed to Spirits, is evidently in accordance with that general historic law formulated by Comte.'

Chap. I.

THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA.

Spiritualism, or rather Spiritism,1 is simply that theory in which events are attributed to Supernatural Agents, or that theory of Personal Causes, which is, in all its forms, essentially identical with the primitive theory of Causation. Witchcraft, — from which, however, we must distinguish Magic, as conceived by the greater Neoplatonists, — is really, if we consider it fundamentally, but the experimental science based on the Spiritist Philosophy ; and the so-called modern Spiritism is thus but a new development of one of the oldest forms of Witchcraft, — Necromancy. But the foundation of both the earlier and the later Necromancy' — the hypothesis of the real existence of Spirits — seems to me now, with all our later knowledge, to be the last to be even for a moment considered in the attempt to explain any phenomena whatever.

This, however, appeared to Mr. Buckle to be going too far. He admitted, indeed, that the large circular drawing-room table, which he averred that he had seen floating in mid-air, was a phenomenon pro-

1 Mr. Tylor prefers using the term 1 Animism ' in this general sense, because 'the word " Spiritualism," though it may be, and sometimes is, used in a general sense, has this obvious defect to us, that it has become the designation of a particular modern sect, who indeed hold extreme spiritualistic views, but cannot be taken as typical representatives of these views in the world at large.' — Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 388. But I would avoid the inconvenience noted by Mr. Tylor, rather by introducing the new term ' Homianism,' than by giving to 'Animism,' hitherto chiefly used to denote the special theory of Stahl, not only a new meaning, but a meaning already, sometimes at least, as he himself admits, attached to ' Spiritualism.' For, as I have elsewhere pointed-out, Causes are at first conceived as Spirits, then, during a transitional stage (beginning, in General History, about the sixth century B.C.), as Entities, and ultimately as Relations ; and no terms seem better to denote these three successive Philosophies than 4 Spiritism,' ' Eutitism,' and ' Relationism.'