Contemporary evolution

Front matter

••

AN ESSAY

RECENT SOCIAL C

Chapter I. Introductory

/ "T^HE inexperienced traveller who, having been wearied by the repeated slow ascents and drag-wheeled descents of a tedious coach road, afterwards surveys from a neighbouring mountain the route he has pursued, may not improbably feel surprise at the inconspicuousness of undulations which, while being traversed, seemed so considerable.

The survey of the path of human social evolution from a stand-point as yet inaccessible to us, would no doubt in most cases similarly affect that estimate of the importance of his own epoch which each observer, reflecting on contemporary social phenomena, is apt to form.

Nevertheless, as in spite of the relative evenness of the world's surface as a whole, there are here and there exceptional conditions — sheer precipices of both ascent and descent ; so history exhibits parallel phenomena which exceptionally demarcate comparatively uneventful areas.

Amidst the grassy plains of North-western America,

Contemporary Evolution.

one region has obtained the title of " Mauvaise Terre" from the numerous furrows and depressions by which progression is again and again arrested. Farther south, the great Rio Colorado has by the secular attrition of its stream worn for itself a course here and there bounded by parallel precipices descending vertically some five hundred feet or more from the level plain above, and forming the celebrated canons of California.

The slow, secular action of social change has resulted here and there, under special conditions, in the production of more or less sudden and abrupt manifestations, serving for all future time as sociological landmarks, canons on the plain of history.

If a Greek who had watched the solemn procession of the crocus-coloured Peplos to the Parthenon on the great Panathenaic festival, or had laughed with Aristophanes at the tiresome old sophist whose moral obstetrics wearied his ears as his ugliness offended his Attic taste for beauty ; or if one of the succeeding generation who, having listened in the Pnyx to a philippic from the greatest orator who ever filled the bema y consoled himself for existing political troubles with Herodotus or with Homer, — if either of these Greeks, reflecting on his surroundings, deemed himself a witness of a social culmination in art, the drama, oratory, history, and poetry, constituting his fellow-citizens the models and the teachers of mankind for thousands of years to come, he would

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not have been in error, would not have over-estimated the significance of his epoch.

A Roman who had just witnessed the decapitation of a criminal for violating the laws and defying the majesty of the state by refusing to burn incense to the gods and to invoke the genius of the emperor, might have reflected that the criminal was one of a class possessed by an " exitiabilis super stitio " and a certain " odium humani generis" who met together at night amidst the dead to sing "charms" and adore with magic rites a crucified malefactor represented with an ass's head, and who were so rapidly and mysteriously increasing that no citizen could feel quite sure he might not even himself be seized unwittingly by this degrading and insane superstition, — had such a Roman, so reflecting, considered his era to be one critical for the empire, and himself a witness of the commencement of a social cataclysm, he would not have exaggerated the importance of the phenomena surrounding him.

A refined Florentine, revelling in the brilliancy of a reviving Platonism (which was beginning to replace what he deemed "narrow scholasticism/' as the noble classical architecture was banishing the endlessly repeated details of the latest Gothic), and hospitably entertaining a Spanish Jew whom mendacious conformity had failed to screen from the jealous scrutiny of the Inquisition of 1495, and who in turn regaled his host with strange details of the plants, animals, and men brought from the lately discovered western lands to Castile, — such a Florentine, if he (considering the coincidence of' the disinterment of an old world with the discovery of a new) consoled his Israelitish guest with the assurance that they were the beholders of events destined to result in the overthrow of the existing theocratic forms, would in no way have overstated the consequence and meaning of the period in which he lived.

That spectator who -in 1789 — when witnessing the long train of black-coated members of the "tiers e'tat" preceding the plumed nobles and brilliant court on their way to the solemn mass of the Holy Ghost before the opening of the States-General — exclaimed, " There goes the funeral procession of the French monarchy," showed a remarkably correct appreciation of the fatal significance of the passing pageant Not, of course, but that the conditions for the coming explosion had been slowly, almost imperceptibly, accumulating for centuries before ; yet the fact of such accumulation in no way detracts from the truth that the end of the eighteenth century in France will be for ever memorable as the . epoch of the actual occurrence of those changes which had taken so long in becoming proximately potential.

We in England (and, indeed, in Europe generally) may not improbably be traversing an epoch destined to be memorable for a long time to come, and one which

Introductory.

many deem to be as critical as, even if not more so than, either of the two periods last referred to ; and this for two reasons.

First, because it may prove to be the occasion for the open and complete manifestation of latent tendencies which those two periods but imperfectly revealed.

Secondly, because present changes are distinguished from all that have gone before by their intense self-consciousness. As was well remarked by Mr. Tylor in the Contemporary Review*: "Our social science has a new character and power, inasmuch as we live near a turningpoint in the history of mankind. The unconscious evolution of society is giving place to its conscious development.''

To perceive that we are living in a critical epoch is one thing, to appraise that epoch and estimate its tendencies correctly is another and a much more difficult one. No one of course can withdraw himself completely from the special influence of his age and country, however vigorous may be his will or extensive his culture ; yet to estimate such phenomena correctly, and with as little bias as possible, is about the most important task to which a thinker can in these days apply his intellect.

It is so supremely important, because we are all called upon to contribute to social evolution, and more or less distinctly to take sides, and of course only by rare accident can beneficial action directly result from erroneous judgments.

How easily erroneous sociological judgments may be formed by the most able and generally best informed men recent events make singularly plain to us.

Those who are old enough to recollect the passing of the first Reform Bill, and have sympathetically followed the train of political ideas thenceforward popular, can hardly fail to view with amazement the more recent acts or manifestoes of advocates of Liberalism. Our comic journals were never tired of ridiculing everything military ; free-trade and toleration were ideals, and in 185 1 idyllic rhapsodies celebrated the speedy end of wars and the apotheoses of Watt and Arkwright.

As to religious liberty, except that feeble persecution might linger in the benighted peninsulas of South-western Europe, it was treason to doubt its maintenance and triumphant propagation. Lord Brougham — the eloquent representative of the whole school — spoke of the "evil spirits of tyranny and persecution which haunted the long night now gone down the sky," while there were few of his sympathisers but would have scouted the idea that theological conceptions could again have force to involve Europe in bloody struggles, or that the advocates of any form of Christianity would be almost tempted to defend themselves sword in hand against the oppression of their persecutors.

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This falsification of such benevolent hopes, as also of the pontifical vaticinations of Auguste Comte, is a demonstration that the current Liberal conception of social philosophy as applied to recent and contemporaneous phenomena was inadequate, just as the philosophy accepted at the period of the great French Revolution was proved by the event to have been superficial and delusory, and as the ideas which found expression in that most fascinating period the early Renaissance, gave no warning of dire events to come like the Thirty Years' War and the bloody and prolonged struggle of the League.

Social and political events being as they are the ultimate outcome of the involved interaction of most numerous, complex, and remote causes, it is evident that such causes must be sought in conditions antedating by many centuries the events we would seek to explain. This truth has been perceived and acted on by all who of late have occupied themselves with the Philosophy of History, and have, like De Tocqueville, sought to trace out such hidden connections. No writer would any longer venture to explain the crisis of 1789 exclusively by the reigns of the fifteenth and sixteenth Louis, or that of 1688 only by the corruption and errors of the Restoration.

The great prominence which religious questions have of late assumed is, as has just been remarked, strangely in contrast with the expectations generally prevalent before the outbreak of 1848. Now our daily press seeks again and again to impress on its readers that the fundamental questions and divisions amongst men are religious ones, while every sort of journal remarks on, deplores, or exults in, the widespread process of religious disintegration, and predicts or speculates about possible reconstructions.

The very same character of religious excitation marks, however, both the French revolutionary epoch and the period of the Renaissance as well as that in which we now live ; nor would it be denied by many of our more philosophical thinkers, that the most striking phenomena of these three periods are but indications of different stages of one prolonged movement, though such thinkers would differ as to the nature and tendency of the movement itself.

Three questions then seem to demand our attention.

I. The first of these is, Whether in fact one spirit and tendency has or has not really animated these great movements which have marked the post-mediaeval epoch ?

II. The second question is, If there has been one such inspiration, what has been its true nature and character ?

III. The third question is, What is likely to be the further effect of such a spirit, and is it likely henceforward to increase or to diminish ?

Complex and difficult as the first question may appear

Introductory.

at the outset, it does not seem difficult to fix upon a leading characteristic whereby to connect together, on the one hand, the period of the Renaissance with that of the Revolution ; on the other, the latter event with contemporaneous phenomena.

That wide-spread break-up of definite religious systems, accompanied by a more or less marked tendency to democracy in politics, which exists to-day, is generally allowed to be the expression of a spirit similar to, if not identical with, that which predominantly influenced the great French movement of the last century.

Similarly, the affected imitation of ancient Rome, the studious reproduction of classical customs, which were practised by so many of the " citizens " of France, as well as by its " senators " and " consuls/' marks a certain similarity of spirit between the revolutionary movement of the eighteenth century and the elegant and refined period of the Renaissance.

Moreover, though the last-named period was not, except more or less in Italy, avowedly anti-Christian (like the French Revolution), it was, nevertheless, speedily followed by religious disruptions, which are deemed by many who heartily approve them as but the logical precursors of that absolute negation of Christianity which has, in fact, become so widespread in Switzerland, Germany, France, and Holland, and is now openly avowed by many of those who lineally represent the initiators of such disruptions.

io Contemporary Evolution.

One spirit then may, at least to a certain extent, be said to have influenced the course of events from the commencing disintegration of mediaeval civilisation down to the present day. Such, at least appears at first sight, to be the case. Further reflection may, or may not, confirm this view, and may indicate what is the true nature of that spirit.

The persistence of national characteristics, and the strange latent vitality of apparently extinct modes of thought and feeling, frequently cause surprise.

In how many respects do not the Gauls of Caesar live to-day under the presidency of the gallant marshal, Duke of Magenta ?

Who can fail to see in Prince Bismarck the representative of one of those Teutons who gained baptism through the sword of Charlemagne, and who in turn now seeks, consciously or unconsciously, to replace the symbol of the Cross by the hammer of Thor, and the last relics of a Christian polity by an avowed system of " blood and iron."

In the existing Spanish civil war between the Carlist north and the passionately democratic south with its strong infusion of Moorish blood, we see (whatever maybe its result) a certain resemblance to that struggle between the Mahometan hosts and those Christians who in the fortresses of the Pyrenees turned the tide of the Saracenic invasion.

In Belgium, the conflict of the sixteenth century in a modified form still endures, and the very name of " Gueux " is now assumed by those who represent the spirit of the original bearers of that appellation.

We all recollect Gibbon's vivid picture of the complete restoration by Artaxerxes of the old religion of Persia, which had lingered on in spite of an apparent interruption dating back from the Alexandrian conquest — a noteworthy instance of persistence in ancient times.

To-day, French missionaries find to their amazement that in spite of a persecution deemed exterminating, Christianity in Japan still flourishes, having been secretly handed down for generations without the aid of a single priest, and with no sacraments but baptism and matrimony.

If survival and revival may ensue under such circumstances, surely a system of unknown antiquity, universal in extent and eminently congenial to most men as they actually exist, may be confidently expected to possess a life of extreme tenacity and to show an increasing tendency to revival as impediments and restrictions are successively removed.

Such a system was that essentially pantheistic paganism and nature-worship which Christianity seemed for a time, in Europe, to have so thoroughly succeeded in supplanting.

Even, however, at that period which has by common consent been accepted as representing the culmination of the mediaeval theocracy and of the purely Christian monarchy — the epoch, that is, of Innocent III. and of St. Louis — the spirit of paganism was far enough from being extinct, as is evidenced to us by a multitude of local superstitions, by such institutions as the fete des fous, and by the wide-spread belief in, and practice of, magic rites. Nay, already it showed signs of returning strength and activity in the poetry of Provence, the legend of Heloise and Abelard, and various kindred phenomena, constituting what has* been well termed* the " Mediaeval Renaissance."

To this very day, according to some writers, the Baal fires of Phoenicia live in the Norwegian bonfires of St. John's Eve.

The talismans against the evil eye, so common in Naples, are almost as expressive of paganism as the forbidden emblems, sold as late as lygof in the neighbourhood of the rocky mound with its old round church dedicated to SS. Cosmo e Damiano.

" Even recently an oak copse at Loch Siant, in the Isle of Skye, was held so sacred that no person would venture to cut the smallest branch from it." The pilgrims at St. Fillan's well in 1791, "walked or were carried deasil {sunwise) round the well. They also threw each a white

* By Walter H. Pater, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, in his " Studies in the History of the Renaissance." f To Sir Richard Colt Hoare.

stone on an adjacent cairn, and left behind a scrap of their clothing as an offering."*

" The Carinthian peasant will fodder the wind by setting a dish of food in a tree before his house, and the fire by casting in lard and dripping, in order that gale and conflagration may not hurt him. At least up to the end of the last century, this most direct elemental sacrifice might be seen in Germany at the midsummer festival in the most perfect form ; some of the porridge from the table was thrown into the fire, and some into running water, some was buried in the earth, and some smeared on leaves and put on the chimney-top for the winds. " In France, at Andrieux in Dauphiny, "at the solstice the villagers went out upon the bridge when the sun rose, and offered him an omelet. The custom of burning alive the finest calf to save a murrain-struck herd had its examples in Cornwall in the present century/'f

At the vintage festival of the Madonna del Arco, signs of practices connected with the old Greek nature-worship reappear in the leaf-wreathed poles brandished by youths, themselves garnished with strings of filberts on their necks and arms — their juice-smeared faces shaded by wreaths of vine-leaves.

It is not, however, to such mere external practices that

* Quoted by Sir John Lubbock in his " Origin of Civilisation," pp. 192 and 198. f See Edward B. Tylor's " Primitive Culture," vol. ii. pp. 369, 370.

it is here intended mainly to direct attention, but to a deeper underlying spirit. Such phenomena are patent survivals likely to long linger amidst an unlettered peasantry, the sons of the Pagani of earlier Christian times. The movements of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries sprang rather from above than below, and the anti-Christian developments of to-day are mainly due to men of culture and education not generally intent upon a restoration of paganism, nor consciously imbued with its spirit.

Nevertheless, it is here maintained that the deeply pantheistic and pagan spirit with which the Aryan mind was once saturated (which shows itself superficially in the modern practices just referred to) profoundly modifies and actuates, not the minds of the poor only, but of the rich and educated, who, from whatever cause, have either failed to master or who (in rare instances) having mastered have deliberately rejected Christian philosophy and theology. The result is the assumption of no merely negative attitude towards Christianity, but of a profound and violent antagonism to it springing from a keen, often passionate, attachment to an opposed system.

It is happily very possible to attribute this antagonism in the case of many to a narrow zeal for truth partially apprehended. The beauty, the truth, and the goodness of nature when revealed to some men with a force and vivacity new and strange seem to them to be incompatible with the supernaturalism of Christianity.

The extreme narrowness and want of flexibility of many minds are nothing less than amazing, and the effects of "bias" have been lately well illustrated by Mr. Herbert Spencer. *

It is then little to be wondered at that when, after centuries of comparative neglect, the study of nature was resumed with energy and passion, an accompanying depreciation of the Christian supernatural should have manifested itself, and the wonder becomes even less when it is recollected how such revived naturalistic tendencies harmonised with one of the deepest chords in the composition of the Aryan race — the universal, ancient, and persistent worship of the powers and forces of nature.

The chaos resulting from the break-up of the Western Empire being reduced to order mainly by the action of the Christian Church, at a period when the early germs of natural science had withered under the influence of the barbarian invasions, considerations relating to the next world occupied all mental activity not directly employed in ministering to the immediate and most pressing wants of this.

The art of the Middle Ages exhibits, as it were, the petrified embodiment of this spirit. Not only cathedral, church, chapel, religious-house, and parsonage were adorned with religious symbols and imagery, but such

* See " The Study of Sociology," chapters viii. to xii.

imagery all but as exclusively decorated the cottage, the palace, and the market-place. The purity of Christian morality had accidentally resulted in the banishment of the nude, and the vigour and perseverance with which the strongest natures and the acutest intellects devoted themselves to philosophy bore an inverse ratio to the energy with which traditional physics were almost unprofitably cultivated.

It is no difficult matter even now to realise the joyousness, the feeling of relief with which many minds must have hailed the first blossoming of that sweet artistic spring — the early Renaissance. Soon on each edifice, as if struck by a magic wand, every decorative detail, every niche and pinnacle blossoms out with a new life spreading over the architectural masses (the masses, as in St. Eustache, of Paris, still continuing as before), disguising them as some fair creeper may seem to replace the proper foliage of the tree it clasps.

To appreciate the delicacy and refinement, the full charm of the great movement architecturally, we must seek it in the land of its birth — in Italy, where the Certosa of Pavia, that dream of beauty, presents us with perhaps its most perfect expression — still essentially belonging to mediaeval Christian art, yet modified by the movement to come, — a maiden with the blush of an approaching revelation, Margaret for the first time essaying Faust's fatal offering of pearls.

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This artistic revolution, the changed aspect of church and oratory, must have reacted on and intensified the very movement which that change expressed. But if a mere modification in the architecture of cities had a tendency to modify men's minds, how much stronger must have been the effect of changed views as to the architecture of the universe (terrestrial and cosmical) induced by geographical, physical, and astronomical discovery !

The discovery of the New World has already been adverted to, and certainly no augmentation of knowledge in our own day — not even the revelations of spectrum analysis — can have had an effect nearly so startling. Yet even the shock of this geographical revelation must have been inferior in degree to that imparted by the uplifting of the solid earth from its foundations, and the casting of it forth from its proud physical supremacy to wander through space, a globe relatively insignificant, — effects which must have seemed to ensue in the minds of men when they first accepted heliocentric astronomy.

Yet later, when the full current of physical discovery had set in, and the disciples of Descartes and Bacon by diligent investigations and happily devised experiments were daily adding to the accumulated store of accurate knowledge in biology, in chemistry, and physics, the passionate pursuit of natural science grew by what it fed upon, and investigations which were begun, as alchemy and astrology, with utilitarian views only, were continued from pure love of and devotion to sciences which repaid persevering inquirers with responses definite, trustworthy, and capable of reiterated verification.

The transition which took place at the period of the Renaissance was a change from a social condition in which considerations relating to a future world still, at least apparently, predominated, to one revelling and exulting in physical nature and in this world as it offers itself spontaneously to our senses and our intellect. Such a change must* have been like that which would be induced by passing from within some grand mediaeval abbey church into a modern museum. Perhaps no man could, for the first time, so pass without unjustly depreciating the merits and the beauties of the one or of the other, so great seems at first the divergence between the spirits respectively embodied in those two manifestations.

Let us enter an old English abbey — Catherine of Arragon being still queen ! The massive pillars of its nave, in long drawn series, have for five hundred years looked down on worshippers at the daily office. The successive styles of different portions of the fabric speak of the continued zeal for the beauty of God's house in successive generations of its cloistered inmates. Every window glows with colours artistically blended, revealing saintly forms. The light of day struggles in with difficulty, while here and there, in deeply shaded nooks, twinkling lamps burn before sacred images, and the

Inti'odtictory. 19 shrine of the patron is brilliant with many tapers. On the walls may be seen the legend of his life, his temptations, martyrdom, and miracles. Above the rood, on the spectator's left, he sees depicted the joyful resurrection to a better life, while on his right the torments of the damned within the gaping "jaws of hell" are forcibly pourtrayed. As the monks give forth the Magnificat with sonorous chant, the incense rises before the lighted altar blazing with gold and jewels, and smell, in addition to sight and hearing, ministers to devotion. The daylight fades as, in the closing office of compline, the choir-boys' voices sing : " In mantes tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum inenm" and the sweet " Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordice " peacefully dismisses the religious to their dormitory and the faithful to their homes. This world, its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, pale before the mind of one who thoroughly sympathises with such a scene ; visions of holiness, of loving self-abnegation, of celestial beauty and divine love, rise up before him. Well may such a one, full of devout happiness, exclaim with heart and soul, "Domine, dilexi decorem domas tnce et locum habitationis glorice tucz" A mind so influenced may at first tend to appreciate but faintly the merely natural creation, and feel but scanty reverence for its forces, and a qualified admiration for its beauties.

Let us now enter a modern museum. When its multitudinous contents have been so mastered that the intellect can grasp it as a whole, what a marvellous revelation of the physical universe it offers to the intellect attuned to its contemplation !

The organic and inorganic worlds combine to present to the duly instructed mind a vision of majesty and harmony undreamed of only two centuries ago.

In its geological section, even the tertiary fossiliferous rocks speak of an antiquity compared with which the pyramids of Egypt are but of yesterday. Majestic remains of vast creatures once living but now extinct exercise the mind in fruitful conjectures, which mentally bring back forms passed away for ever to live again for the wonder and delight of the votaries of science. The crystalline minerals reveal innate laws of symmetry and beauty, which, as it were, lend a sort of life even to inorganic nature.

In the section devoted to the illustration of the organic world as it lives around us now, we may note the harmonious organisation (so fitted to its needs) of each species of animal and plant, proclaiming a nature instinct with intelligence as w r ell as with beauty. Here also we may learn how slight differences of colour or form may protect the individual life, and what fatal effects may ensue from an apparently trifling defect of structure. Teeming nature is seen to be the mother of myriads of creatures of which but few can reach maturity, and seems to proclaim trumpet-tongued a natural gospel of happiness for the healthy, the beautiful, the strong.

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The loveliest tints displayed by birds as well as their springtide melody, the blossom of all flowers as well as their sweetest perfumes, all become known to us as but subordinate agencies ministering to the great reproductive function — spontaneous tributes of organic life to Alma Venus. Such phenomena seem to combine with the evidences of the destructive and apparently cruel processes of nature to inculcate the brief lesson of the grim symbol at the Egyptian festival — " Enjoy/'

But in our temple of nature it is not only the creatures of this planet which offer themselves to our scrutiny, but even portions of other spheres ; and meteorolites prove to us that similar substances and similar laws to those existing on this earth pervade regions of space remote from and inaccessible to us.

How strongly does a nature so replete with interest, with wonder, with beauty, with pleasure, and with awe, solicit the devotion of man's faculties ! The courts of such a scientific temple tend to produce in not a few minds feelings of delight mingled with a quasi-religious sentiment ; and when, instructed by such teaching, we wander forth amidst the living products of nature, that feeling becomes intensified indeed.

Tropical scenes full of exuberant organic life are, of course, best calculated to call it forth ; but even in our own land there is ample material for evoking it.

When from some smooth-browed, chalky down we, reposing amidst fragrant wild flowers and the hum of busy insect life, look down on the peaceful ocean rippling in sun-lit splendour at our feet, as we mark the sea-fowl sailing in circles with rarely flapping wing, or listen to the lark rising blithely through the summer air, — how strong with many will be the impulse towards a joyous cultus of an underlying soul of which such visible beauty is the living and palpitating garment ! The great Pan lives once more, nor is Aphrodite unlikely to receive a mute and mental homage. This world is felt to be lovely and sweet indeed, and visions of exclusively terrestrial joy pass before the mind, and tend to produce in it scanty reverence for the forms and but slight admiration for the beauties of Christian supernaturalism.

It is in a sense which the foregoing comparison may serve to illustrate that the whole modern movement dating from the very first breath of the Renaissance may be regarded as being essentially a return towards paganism— not of course (at least in the first instance) to the worship of the old gods, but to much of the spirit which underlay that worship.