possession of a common medium of intercourse! If it were once agreed by a
union of nations (of which the present Postal Union may be the forerunner)
that the learning of the universal language should be encouraged, that
language would be learned with a zest and eagerness of which our present
languid linguistic attempts give but a faint idea. There would be such
powerful reasons for learning it! All those studies that interest men in
different nations would lead to intercommunication in the common tongue.
Many books would be written in it, to be circulated everywhere, without
being enfeebled and falsified by translation. International commerce would
be transacted by its means. Travelling would be enormously facilitated.
There would be such a gain to human intercourse by language that it might
be preferred, in many cases, to the old-fashioned international
intercourse by means of bayonets and cannon-balls.

ESSAY XII.

THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION.

Human intercourse, on equal terms, is difficult or impossible for those
who do not belong to that religion which is dominant in the country where
they live. The tendency has always been either to exclude such persons
from human intercourse altogether (a fate so hard to bear during a whole
life-time that they have often compromised the matter by outward
conformity), or else to maintain some degree of intercourse with them in
placing them at a social disadvantage. In barbarous times such persons,
when obstinate, are removed by taking away their lives; or if somewhat
less obstinate they are effectually deterred from the profession of
heretical opinions by threats of the most pitiless punishments. In
semi-barbarous times they are paralyzed, so far as public action is
concerned, by political disabilities expressly created for their
inconvenience. In times which pride themselves on having completely
emerged from barbarism political disabilities are almost entirely removed,
but certain class-exclusions still persist, by which it is arranged
(whilst avoiding all appearance of persecution) that although heretics are
no longer banished from their native land they may be excluded from their
native class, and either deprived of human intercourse altogether, or
left to seek it in classes inferior to their own.

The religious obstacle differs from all other obstacles in one remarkable
characteristic. It is maintained only against honest and truth-speaking
persons. Exemption from its operation has always been, and is still,
uniformly pronounced in favor of all heretics who will consent to lie. The
honorable unbeliever has always been treated harshly; the unbeliever who
had no sense of honor has been freely permitted, in every age, to make the
best use of his abilities for his own social advancement. For him the
religious obstacle is simply non-existent. He has exactly the same chances
of preferment as the most orthodox Christian. In Pagan times, when public
religious functions were a part of the rank of great laymen, unbelief in
the gods of Olympus did not hinder them from seeking and exercising those
functions. Since the establishment of Christianity as a State religion,
the most stringently framed oaths have never prevented an unscrupulous
infidel from attaining any position that lay within reach of his wits and
his opportunities. He has sat in the most orthodox Parliaments, he has
been admitted to Cabinet councils, he has worn royal crowns, he has even
received the mitre, the Cardinal's hat, and the Papal tiara. We can never
sufficiently admire the beautiful order of society by which
heretic-plus-liar is so graciously admitted everywhere, and
heretic-plus-honest man is so cautiously and ingeniously kept out. It is,
indeed, even more advantageous to the dishonest unbeliever than at first
sight appears; for not only does it open to him all positions accessible
to the orthodox, but it even gives him a noteworthy advantage over honest
orthodoxy itself by training him daily and hourly in dissimulation. To be
kept constantly in the habit of dissimulation on one subject is an
excellent discipline in the most serviceable of social arts. An atheist
who reads prayers with a pious intonation, and is exemplary in his
attendance at church, and who never betrays his real opinions by an
unguarded word or look, though always preserving the appearance of the
simplest candor, the most perfect openness, is, we may be sure, a much
more formidable person to contend with in the affairs of this world than
an honest Christian who has never had occasion to train himself in
habitual imposture. Yet good Christians willingly admit these dangerous,
unscrupulous rivals, and timidly exclude those truthful heretics who are
only honest, simple people like themselves.

After religious liberty has been nominally established in a country by its
lawgivers, its enemies do not consider themselves defeated, but try to
recover, through the unwritten law of social customs and observances, the
ground they have lost in formal legislation. Hence we are never sure that
religious liberty will exist within the confines of a class even when it
is loudly proclaimed in a nation as one of the most glorious conquests of
the age. It is often enjoyed very imperfectly, or at a great cost of
social and even pecuniary sacrifice. In its perfection it is the liberty
to profess openly, and in their full force, those opinions on religious
subjects which a man holds in his own conscience, and without incurring
any kind of punishment or privation on account of them, legal or social.
For example, a really sincere member of the Church of England enjoys
perfect religious liberty in England.[12] He can openly say what he
thinks, openly take part in religious services that his conscience
approves, and without incurring the slightest legal or social penalty for
so doing. He meets with no hindrance, no obstacle, placed in the path of
his worldly life on account of his religious views. True liberty is not
that which is attainable at some cost, some sacrifice, but that which we
can enjoy without being made to suffer for it in any way. It is always
enjoyed, to the full, by every one whose sincere convictions are heartily
on the side of authority. Sincere Roman Catholics enjoyed perfect
religious liberty in Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, and in England
under Mary Tudor. Even a Trappist who loves the rule of his order enjoys
the best kind of liberty within the walls of his monastery. He is not
allowed to neglect the prescribed services and other obligations; but as
he feels no desire to neglect them he is a free agent, as free as if he
dwelt in the Abbaye de Thélème of Rabelais, with its one rule, "Fay ce que
vouldras." We may go farther, and say that not only are people whose
convictions are on the side of authority perfectly free agents, but, like
successful artists, they are rewarded for doing what they themselves
prefer. They are always rewarded by the approval of their superiors and
very frequently by opportunities for social advancement that are denied to
those who think differently from persons in authority.

There are cases in which liberty is less complete than this, yet is still
spoken of as liberty. A man is free to be a Dissenter in England and a
Protestant in France. By this we mean that he will incur no legal
disqualification for his opinions; but does he incur no social penalty?
The common answer to this question is that the penalty is so slight that
there is nothing to complain of. This depends upon the particular
situation of the Dissenter, because the penalty is applied very
differently in different cases, and may vary between an unperceived
hindrance to an undeveloped ambition and an insurmountable obstacle to an
eager and aspiring one. To understand this thoroughly, let us ask whether
there are any positions in which a member of the Church of England would
incur a penalty for leaving it. Are there any positions that are socially
considered to be incompatible with the religious profession of a
Dissenter?

It will be generally admitted that royal personages do not enjoy any
religious liberty at all. A royal personage _must_ profess the State
religion of his country, and it is so well understood that this is
obligatory and has nothing to do with the convictions of the conscience
that such personages are hardly expected to have any conscience in the
matter. They take up a religion as part of their situation in the world. A
princess may abjure her faith for that of an imperial lover, and if he
dies before marriage she may abjure her adopted faith; and if she is asked
again in marriage she may abjure the religion of her girlhood a second
time without exciting comment, because it is well understood that her
private convictions may remain undisturbed by such changes, and that she
submits to them as a necessity for which she has no personal
responsibility.[13] And whilst princes are compelled to take up the
religion which best suits their worldly interests, they are not allowed
simply to bear the name of the State Church but must also conform to its
services with diligent regularity. In many cases they probably have no
objection to this, as they may be really conscientious members of the
State Church, or they may accept it in a general way as an expression of
duty towards God (without going into dogmatic details), or they may be
ready and willing to conform to it for political reasons, as the best
means of conciliating public opinion; but however this may be, all human
fellowship, so far as religion is concerned, must, for them, be founded on
deference to the State religion and a conciliatory attitude towards its
ministers. The Court circulars of different countries register the
successive acts of outward conformity by which the prince acknowledges the
power of the national priesthood, and it would be impossible for him to
suspend these acts of conformity for any reason except illness. The daily
account of the life of a French sovereign during the hunting season used
to be, "His Majesty heard mass; His Majesty went out to hunt." Louis
XVIII. had to hear mass like his ancestors; but after the long High Mass
which he was compelled to listen to on Sundays, and which he found
extremely wearisome, he enjoyed a compensation and a consolation in
talking impiously to his courtiers, and was maliciously pleased in
shocking pious people and in forcing them to laugh against their
conscience, as by courtly duty bound, at the blasphemous royal jests. This
is one of the great evils of a compulsory conformity. It drives the victim
into a reaction against the religion that tyrannizes over him, and makes
him _anti_-religious, when without pressure he would have been simply and
inoffensively _non_-religious. To understand the pressure that weighs upon
royal personages in this respect, we have only to remember that there is
not a sovereign in the whole world who could venture to say openly that he
was a conscientious Unitarian, and would attend a Unitarian place of
worship. If a King of England held Unitarian opinions, and was at the same
time scrupulously honest, he would have no resource but abdication, for
not only is the King a member of the Anglican Church, but he is its living
head. The sacerdotal position of the Emperor of Russia is still more
marked, and he can no more avoid taking part in the fatiguing ceremonies
of the orthodox Greek religion than he can avoid sitting on horseback and
reviewing troops.

The religious slavery of princes is, however, exclusively in ceremonial
acts and verbal professions. With regard to the moral side of religion,
with regard to every religious doctrine that is practically favorable to
good conduct, exalted personages have always enjoyed an astonishing amount
of liberty. They are not free to hold themselves aloof from public
ceremonies, but they are free to give themselves up to every kind of
private self-indulgence, including flagrant sexual immoralities, which are
readily forgiven them by a loyal priesthood and an admiring populace, if
only they show an affable condescension in their manners. Surely morality
is a part of Christianity; surely it is as unchristian an act to commit
adultery as to walk out during service-time on Sunday morning; yet
adultery is far more readily forgiven in a prince, and far easier for him,
than the merely negative religious sin of abstinence from church-going.
Amongst the great criminal sovereigns of the world, the Tudors, Bourbons,
Bonapartes, there has never been any neglect of ceremonies, but they have
treated the entire moral code of Christianity as if it were not binding
on persons of their degree.

Every hardship is softened, at least in some measure, by a compensation;
and when in modern times a man is so situated that he has no outward
religious liberty it is perfectly understood that his conformity is
official, like that of a soldier who is ordered to give the Host a
military salute without regard for his private opinion about
transubstantiation. This being understood, the religious slavery of a
royal personage is far from being the hardest of such slaveries. The
hardest cases are those in which there is every appearance of liberty,
whilst some subtle secret force compels the slave to acts that have the
appearance of the most voluntary submission. There are many positions of
this kind in the world. They abound in countries where the right of
private judgment is loudly proclaimed, where a man is told that he may act
in religious matters quite freely according to the dictates of his
conscience, whilst he well knows, at the same time, that unless his
conscience happens to be in unison with the opinions of the majority, he
will incur some kind of disability, some social paralysis, for having
obeyed it.

The rule concerning the ceremonial part of religion appears to be that a
man's liberty is in inverse proportion to his rank. A royal personage has
none; he must conform to the State Church. An English nobleman has two
churches to choose from: he may belong to the Church of England or the
Church of Rome. A simple private gentleman, a man of good family and
moderate independent fortune, living in a country where the laws are so
liberal as they are in England, and where on the whole there is so little
bitterness of religious hatred, might be supposed to enjoy perfect
religious liberty, but he finds, in a practical way, that it is scarcely
possible for him to do otherwise than the nobility. He has the choice
between Anglicanism and Romanism, because, though untitled, he is still a
member of the aristocracy.

As we go down lower in the social scale, to the middle classes, and
particularly to the lower middle classes, we find a broader liberty,
because in these classes the principle is admitted that a man may be a
good Christian beyond the pale of the State Churches. The liberty here is
real, so far as it goes, for although these persons are not obliged by
their own class opinion to be members of a State Church, as the
aristocracy are, they are not compelled, on the other hand, to be
Dissenters. They may be good Churchmen, if they like, and still be
middle-class Englishmen, or they may be good Methodists, Baptists,
Independents, and still be respectable middle-class Englishmen. This
permits a considerable degree of freedom, yet it is still by no means
unlimited freedom. The middle-class Englishman allows dissent, but he does
not encourage honesty in unbelief.

There is, however, a class in English society in which for some time past
religious liberty has been as nearly as possible absolute,--I mean the
working population in the large towns. A working-man may belong to the
Church of England, or to any one of the dissenting communities; or, if he
does not believe in Christianity, he may say so and abstain from
religious hypocrisy of all kinds. Whatever his opinions, he will not be
regarded very coldly on account of them by persons of his own class, nor
prevented from marrying, nor hindered from pursuing his trade.

We find, therefore, that amongst the various classes of society, from the
highest to the humblest, religious liberty increases as we go lower. The
royal family is bound to conform to whatever may be the dominant religion
for the time being; the nobility and gentry have the choice between the
present dominant faith and its predecessor; the middle class has, in
addition, the liberty of dissent; the lower class has the liberty, not
only of dissent, but also of abstinence and negation. And in each case the
increase of liberty is real; it is not that illusory kind of extension
which loses in one direction the freedom that it wins in another. All the
churches are open to the plebeian secularist if he should ever wish to
enter them.

We have said that religious liberty increases as we go lower in the social
scale. Let us consider, now, how it is affected by locality. The rule may
be stated at once. _Religious liberty diminishes with the number of
inhabitants in a place._

However humble may be the position of the dweller in a small village at a
distance from a town, he must attend the dominant church because no other
will be represented in the place. He may be in heart a Dissenter, but his
dissent has no opportunity of expressing itself by a different form of
worship. The laws of his country may be as liberal as you please; their
liberality is of no practical service in such a case as this because
religious profession requires public worship, and an isolated family
cannot institute a cult.

If, indeed, there were the liberty of abstinence the evil would not be so
great. The liberty of rejection is a great and valuable liberty. If a
particular kind of food is unsuited to my constitution, and only that kind
of food is offered me, the permission to fast is the safeguard of my
health and comfort. The loss of this negative liberty is terrible in
convivial customs, when the victim is compelled to drink against his will.

The Dissenter in the country can be forced to conform by his employer or
by public opinion, acting indirectly. The master may avoid saying, "I
expect you to go to Church," but he may say, "I expect you to attend a
place of worship," which attains precisely the same end with an appearance
of greater liberality. Public opinion may be really liberal enough to
tolerate many different forms of religion, but if it does not tolerate
abstinence from public services the Dissenter has to conform to the
dominant worship in places where there is no other. In England it may seem
that there is not very much hardship in this, as the Church is not extreme
in doctrine and is remarkably tolerant of variety, yet even in England a
conscientious Unitarian might feel some difficulty about creeds and
prayers which were never intended for him. There are, however, harder
cases than those of a Dissenter forced to conform to the Church of
England. The Church of Rome is far more extreme and authoritative, far
more sternly repressive of human reason; yet there are thousands of rural
places on the Continent where religious toleration is supposed to exist,
and where, nevertheless, the inhabitants are compelled to hear mass to
avoid the imputation of absolute irreligion. A man like Wesley or Bunyan
would, in such a position, have to choose between apparent Romanism and
apparent Atheism, if indeed the village opinion did not take good care
that he should have no choice in the matter.

It may be said that people should live in places where their own form of
worship is publicly practised. No doubt many do so. I remember an
Englishman belonging to a Roman Catholic family who would not spend a
Sunday in an out-of-the-way place in Scotland because he could not hear
mass. Such a person, having the means to choose his place of residence,
and a faith so strong that religious considerations always came first with
him, would compel everything to give way to the necessity for having mass
every Sunday, but this is a very exceptional case. Ordinary people are the
victims of circumstances and not their masters.

If a villager has little religious freedom he does not greatly enlarge it
when he becomes a soldier. He has the choice between the Church of England
and the Church of Rome. In some countries even this very moderate degree
of liberty is denied. Within the present century Roman Catholic soldiers
were compelled to attend Protestant services in Prussia. The truth is that
the genuine military spirit is strongly opposed to individual opinion in
matters of religion. Its ideal is that every detail in a soldier's
existence should be settled by the military authorities, his religious
belief amongst the rest.

What may be truly said about military authority in religious matters is
that as the force employed is perfectly well known,--as it is perfectly
well known that soldiers take part in religious services under
compulsion,--there is no hypocrisy in their case, especially where the
conscription exists, and therefore but slight moral hardship. Certainly
the greatest hardship of all is to be compelled to perform acts of
conformity with all the appearance of free choice. The tradesman who must
go to mass to have customers is in a harder position than the soldier. For
this reason, it is better for the moral health of a nation, when there is
to be compulsion of some kind, that it should be boldly and openly
tyrannical; that its work should be done in the face of day; that it
should be outspoken, uncompromising, complete. To tyranny of that kind a
man may give way without any loss of self-respect, he yields to _force
majeure_; but to that viler and meaner kind of tyranny which keeps a man
in constant alarm about the means of earning his living, about the
maintenance of some wretched little peddling position in society, he
yields with a sense of far deeper humiliation, with a feeling of contempt
for the social power that uses such miserable means, and of contempt for
himself also.

ESSAY XIII.

PRIESTS AND WOMEN.

PART I.--SYMPATHY.

Women hate the Inexorable. They like a condition of things in which
nothing is so surely fixed but that the rule may be broken in their favor,
or the hard decision reversed. They like concession for concession's sake,
even when the matter is of slight importance. A woman will ask a favor
from a person in authority when a man will shrink from the attempt; and if
the woman gains her point by entreaty she will have a keen and peculiar
feminine satisfaction in having successfully exercised what she feels to
be her own especial power, to which the strong, rough creature, man, may
often be made to yield. A woman will go forth on the most hopeless errands
of intercession and persuasion, and in spite of the most adverse
circumstances will not infrequently succeed. Scott made admirable use of
this feminine tendency in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian." Jeanie Deans, with a
woman's feelings and perseverance, had a woman's reliance on her own
persuasive powers, and the result proved that she was right. All things in
a woman combine to make her mighty in persuasion. Her very weakness aids
her; she can assume a pitiful, childlike tenderness. Her ignorance aids
her, as she seems never to know that a decision can be fixed and final;
then she has tears, and besides these pathetic influences she has
generally some magnetism of sex, some charm or attraction, at least, in
voice or manner, and sometimes she has that marvellous--that all but
irresistible--gift of beauty which has ruled and ruined the masters of the
world.

Having constantly used these powers of persuasion with the strongest being
on this planet, and used them with such wonderful success that it is even
now doubtful whether the occult feminine government is not mightier than
the open masculine government, whilst it is not a matter of doubt at all,
but of assured fact, that society is ruled by queens and ladies and not by
kings and lords,--with all these evidences of their influence in this
world, it is intelligible that women should willingly listen to those who
tell them that they have similar influence over supernatural powers, and,
through them, on the destinies of the universe. Far less willingly would
they listen to some hard scientific teacher who should say, "No, you have
no influence beyond this planet, and that which you exercise upon its
surface is limited by the force that you are able to set in motion. The
Empress Eugénie had no supernatural influence through the Virgin Mary, but
she had great and dangerous natural influence through her husband; and it
may be true, what is asserted, that she caused in this way a disastrous
war." An exclusively _originating_ Intelligence, acting at the beginning
of Evolution,--a setter-in-motion of a prodigious self-acting machinery
of cause producing effect, and effects in their turn becoming a new
complexity of causes,--an Intelligence that we cannot persuade because we
are born millions of years too late for the first impulse that started all
things,--this may be the God of the future, but it will be a distant
future before the world of women will acknowledge him.

There is another element in the feminine nature that urges women in the
same direction. They have a constant sense of dependence in a degree
hardly ever experienced by men except in debilitating illness; and as this
sense of dependence is continual with them and only occasional with us, it
becomes, from habit, inseparable from their mental action, whereas even in
sickness a man looks forward to the time when he will act again freely for
himself. Men choose a course of action; women choose an adviser. They feel
themselves unable to continue the long conflict without help, and in spite
of their great patience and courage they are easily saddened by solitude,
and in their distress of mind they feel an imperious need for support and
consolation. "Our valors are our best gods," is a purely masculine
sentiment, and to a woman such self-reliance seems scarcely
distinguishable from impiety. The feminine counterpart of that would be,
"In our weakness we seek refuge in Thy strength, O Lord!"

A woman is not satisfied with merely getting a small share in a vast
bounty for the general good; she is kind and affectionate herself, she is
personally attentive to the wants of children and animals, and cares for
each of them separately, and she desires to be cared for in the same way.
The philosopher does not give her any assurance of this whatever; but the
priest, on the contrary, gives it in the most positive form. It is not
merely one of the doctrines of religion, but the central doctrine, the
motive for all religious exercises, that God cares for every one of us
individually; that he knows Jane Smith by name, and what she is earning a
week, and how much of it she devotes to keeping her poor paralyzed old
mother. The philosopher says, "If you are prudent and skilful in your
conformity to the laws of life you will probably secure that amount of
mental and physical satisfaction which is attainable by a person of your
organization." There is nothing in this about personal interest or
affection; it is a bare statement of natural cause and consequence. The
priest holds a very different language; the use of the one word _love_
gives warmth and color to his discourse. The priest says, "If you love God
with all your soul and with all your strength He will love and cherish you
in return, and be your own true and tender Father. He will watch over
every detail and every minute of your existence, guard you from all real
evil, and at last, when this earthly pilgrimage shall be over, He will
welcome you in His eternal kingdom." But this is not all; God may still
seem at too unapproachable a distance. The priest then says that means
have been divinely appointed to bridge over that vast abyss. "The Father
has given us the Son, and Christ has instituted the Church, and the Church
has appointed _me_ as her representative in this place,--_me_, to whom you
may come always for guidance and consolation that will never be refused
you."

This is the language for which the ears of a woman thirst as parched
flowers thirst for the summer rain. Instead of a great, blank universe
with fixed laws, interesting to _savans_ but not to her, she is told of
love and affection that she thoroughly understands. She is told of an
affectionate Creator, of His beloved and loving Son, of the tender care of
the maternal Church that He instituted; and finally all this chain of
affectionate interest ends close to her in a living link,--a man with
soft, engaging manners, with kind and gentle voice, who takes her hand,
talks to her about all that she really cares for, and overflows with the
readiest sympathy for all her anxieties. This man is so different from
common men, so very much better and purer, and, above all, so much more
accessible, communicative, and consolatory! He seems to have had so much
spiritual experience, to know so well what trouble and sorrow are, to
sympathize so completely with the troubles and sorrows of a woman! With
him, the burden of life is ten times easier to bear; without his precious
fellowship, that burden would be heavy indeed!

It may be objected to this, that the clergy do not entirely teach a
religion of love; that, in fact, they curse as well as bless, and foretell
eternal punishment for the majority. All this, it may be thought, must be
as painful to the feelings of women as Divine kindness and human felicity
must be agreeable to them. Whoever made this objection would show that he
had not quite understood the feminine nature. It is at the same time
kinder and tenderer than the masculine nature, and more absolute in
vindictiveness. Women do not generally like the infliction of pain that
they believe to be undeserved;[14] they are not generally advocates for
vivisection; but as their feelings of indignation against evil-doers are
very easily aroused, and as they are very easily persuaded that severe
punishments are just, they have often heartily assented to them even when
most horrible. In these cases their satisfaction, though it seems to us
ferocious, may arise from feeling themselves God's willing allies against
the wicked. When heretics were burnt in Spain the great ladies gazed
calmly from their windows and balconies on the grotesque procession of
miserable _morituri_ with flames daubed on their tabards, so soon to be
exchanged for the fiery reality. With the influence that women possess
they could have stopped those horrors; but they countenanced them; and yet
there is no reason to believe that they were not gentle, tender,
affectionate. The most relentless persecutor who ever sat on the throne of
England was a woman. Nor is it only in ages of fierce and cruel
persecution that women readily believe God to be on the side of the
oppressor. Other ages succeed in which human injustice is not so bold and
bloodthirsty, not so candid and honest, but more stealthily pursues its
end by hampering and paralyzing the victim that it dares not openly
destroy. It places a thousand little obstacles in his way, the
well-calculated effect of which is to keep him alive in impotent
insignificance. In those ages of weaker malevolence the heretic is quietly
but carefully excluded from the best educational and social advantages,
from public office, from political power. Wherever he turns, whatever he
desires to do, he feels the presence of a mysterious invisible force that
quietly pushes him aside or keeps him in shadow. Well, in this milder,
more coldly cruel form of wrong, vast numbers of the gentlest and most
amiable women have always been ready to acquiesce.[15]

I willingly pass from this part of the subject, but it was impossible not
to make one sad reference to it, for of all the sorrowful things in the
history of the world I see none more sorrowful than this,--that the
enormous influence of women should not have been more on the side of
justice. It is perhaps too much to expect that they should have placed
themselves in advance of their age, but they have been innocent abettors
and perpetuators of the worst abuses, and all from their proneness to
support any authority, however corrupt, if only it can succeed in
confounding itself with goodness.

As the representatives of a Deity who tenderly cares for every one of His
creatures, the clergy themselves are bound to cultivate all their own
powers and gifts of sympathy. The best of them do this with the important
result that after some years spent in the exercise of their profession
they become really and unaffectedly more sympathetic than laymen generally
are. The power of sympathy is a great power everywhere, but it is so
particularly in those countries where the laity are not much in the habit
of cultivating the sympathetic feelings, and timidly shrink from the
expression of them even when they exist. I remember going with a French
gentleman to visit a lady who had very recently lost her father; and my
friend made her a little speech in which he said no more than what he
felt, but he said it so elegantly, so delicately, so appropriately, and in
such feeling terms, that I envied him the talent of expressing condolence
in that way. I never knew an English layman who could have got through
such an expression of feeling, but I have known English clergymen who
could have done it. Here is a very great and real superiority over us,
and especially with women, because women are exquisitely alive to
everything in which the feelings are concerned, and we often seem to them
dead in feeling when we are only awkward, and dumb by reason of our
awkwardness.

I think it probable that most readers of this page will find, on
consulting their own recollections, that they have received warmer and
kinder expressions of sympathy from clerical friends than from laymen. It
is certainly so in my own case. On looking back to the expressions of
sympathy that have been addressed to me on mournful occasions, and of
rejoicing on happy ones, I find that the clearest and most ample and
hearty utterances of these feelings have generally come either from
clergymen of the Church of England, or priests of the Church of Rome.

The power of sympathy in clergymen is greatly increased by their easy
access to all classes of society. They are received everywhere on terms
which may be correctly defined as easily respectful; for their sacred
character gives them a status of their own, which is neither raised by
association with rich people nor degraded by friendliness with the poor or
with that lower middle class which, of all classes, is the most perilous
to the social position of a layman. They enter into the joys and sorrows
of the most different orders of parishioners, and in this way, if there is
any natural gift of sympathy in the mind of a clergyman, it is likely to
be developed and brought to perfection.

Partly by arrangements consciously devised by ecclesiastical authorities,
and partly by the natural force of circumstances, the work of the Church
is so ordered that her representatives are sure to be present on the most
important occasions in human life. This gives them some influence over
men, but that which they gain by it over women is immeasurably greater,
because the minds of women are far more closely and exclusively bound up
in domestic interests and events.

Of these the most visibly important is marriage. Here the priest has his
assured place and conspicuous function, and the wonderful thing is that
this function seems to survive the religious beliefs on which it was
originally founded. It seems to be not impossible that a Church might
still survive for an indefinite length of time in the midst of surrounding
scepticism simply for the purpose of performing marriage and funeral
rites. The strength of the clerical position with regard to marriage is so
great, even on the Continent, that, although a woman may have scarcely a
shred of faith in the doctrines of the Church, it is almost certain that
she will desire the services of a priest, and not feel herself to be
really married without them. Although the civil ceremony may be the only
one recognized by the law, the woman openly despises it, and reserves all
her feelings and emotions for the pompous ceremony at the church. On such
occasions women laugh at the law, and will even sometimes declare that the
law itself is not legal. I once happened to say that civil marriage was
obligatory in France, but only legal in England; on which an English lady
attacked me vehemently, and stoutly denied that civil marriage was legal
in England at all. I asked if she had never heard of marriages in a
Registrar's office. "Yes, I have," she answered, with a shocked expression
of countenance, "but they are not legal. The Church of England does not
recognize them, and that is the legal church."

As soon as a child is born the mother begins to think about its baptism;
and at a time of life when the infant is treated by laymen as a little
being whose importance lies entirely in the future the clergyman gives it
consequence in the present by admitting it, with solemn ceremony, to
membership in the Church of Christ. It is not possible to imagine anything
more likely to gratify the feelings of a mother than this early admission
of her unconscious offspring to the privileges of a great religious
community. Before this great initiation it was alone in the world, loved
only by her, and with all its prospects darkened by original sin; now it
is purified, blessed, admitted into the fellowship of the holy and the
wise. A certain relationship of a peculiar kind is henceforth established
between priest and infant. In after years he prepares it for confirmation,
another ceremony touching to the heart of a mother when she sees her son
gravely taking upon himself the responsibilities of a thinking being. The
marriage of a son or daughter renews in the mother all those feelings
towards the friendly, consecrating power of the Church which were excited
at her own marriage.

Then come those anxious occasions when the malady of one member of the
family casts a shadow on the happiness of all. In these cases any
clergyman who unites natural kindness of heart with the peculiar training
and experience of his profession can offer consolation incomparably
better than a layman; he is more accustomed to it, more _authorized_. A
friendly physician is a great help and a great stay so long as the disease
is not alarming, but when he begins to look very grave (the reader knows
that look), and says that recovery is not probable, by which physicians
mean that death is certain and imminent, the clergyman says there is hope
still, and speaks of a life beyond the grave in which human existence will
be delivered from the evils that afflict it here. When death has come, the
priest treats the dead body with respect and the survivors with sympathy,
and when it is laid in the ground he is there to the last moment with the
majesty of an ancient and touching form of words already pronounced over
the graves of millions who have gone to their everlasting rest.[16]

PART II. ART.

I have not yet by any means exhausted the advantages of the priestly
position in its influence upon women. If the reader will reflect upon the
feminine nature as he has known it, especially in women of the best kind,
he will at once admit that not only are women more readily moved by the
expression of sympathy than men, and more grateful for it, but they are
also more alive to poetical and artistic influences. In our sex the
æsthetic instinct is occasionally present in great strength, but more
frequently it is altogether absent; in the female sex it seldom reaches
much creative force, but it is almost invariably present in minor degrees.
Almost all women take an interest in furniture and dress; most of them in
the comfortable classes have some knowledge of music; drawing has been
learned as an accomplishment more frequently by girls than by boys. The
clergy have a strong hold upon the feminine nature by its æsthetic side.
All the external details of public worship are profoundly interesting to
women. When there is any splendor in ritual the details of vestments and
altar decorations are a constant occupation for their thoughts, and they
frequently bestow infinite labor and pains to produce beautiful things
with their own hands to be used in the service of the Church. In cases
where the service itself is too austere and plain to afford much scope for
this affectionate industry, the slightest pretext is seized upon with
avidity. See how eagerly ladies will decorate a church at Christmas, and
how they will work to get up an ecclesiastical bazaar! Even in that Church
which most encourages or permits æsthetic industry, the zeal of ladies
sometimes goes beyond the desires of the clergy, and has to be more or
less decidedly repressed. We all can see from the outside how fond women
generally are of flowers, though I believe it is impossible for us to
realize all that flowers are to them, as there are no inanimate objects
that men love with such affectionate and even tender solicitude. However,
we see that women surround themselves with flowers, in gardens, in
conservatories, and in their rooms; we see that they wear artificial
flowers in their dress, and that they paint flowers in water-color and on
china. Now observe how the Church of Rome and the Ritualists in England
show sympathy with this feminine taste! Innumerable millions of flowers
are employed annually in the churches on the Continent; they are also
used in England, though in less lavish profusion, and a sermon on flowers
is preached annually in London, when every pew is full of them.

It is well known that women take an unfailing interest in dress. The
attention they give to it is close, constant, and systematic, like an
orderly man's attention to order. Women are easily affected by official
costumes, and they read what great people have worn at levees and
drawing-rooms. The clergy possess, in ecclesiastical vestments, a very
powerful help to their influence. That many of them are clearly aware of
this is proved by their boldness and perseverance in resuming ornamental
vestments; and (as might be expected) that Church which has the most
influence over women is at the same time the one whose vestments are most
gorgeous and most elaborate. Splendor, however, is not required to make a
costume impressive. It is enough that it be strikingly peculiar, even in
simplicity, like the white robe of the Dominican friars.

Costume naturally leads our minds to architecture. I am not the first to
remark that a house is only a cloak of a larger size. The gradation is
insensible from a coat to a cathedral: first, the soldier's heavy cloak
which enabled the Prussians to dispense with the little tent, then the
tent, hut, cottage, house, church, cathedral, heavier and larger as we
ascend the scale. "He has clothed himself with his church," says Michelet
of the priest; "he has wrapped himself in this glorious mantle, and in it
he stands in triumphant state. The crowd comes, sees, admires. Assuredly,
if we judge the man by his covering, he who clothes himself with a _Notre
Dame de Paris_, or with a Cologne Cathedral, is, to all appearance, the
giant of the spiritual world. What a dwelling such an edifice is, and how
vast the inhabitant must be! All proportions change; the eye is deceived
and deceives itself again. Sublime lights, powerful shadows, all help the
illusion. The man who in the street looked like a village schoolmaster is
a prophet in this place. He is transfigured by these magnificent
surroundings; his heaviness becomes power and majesty; his voice has
formidable echoes. Women and children are overawed."

To a mind that does not analyze but simply receives impressions,
magnificent architecture is a convincing proof that the words of the
preacher are true. It appears inconceivable that such substantial glories,
so many thousands of tons of masonry, such forests of timber, such acres
of lead and glass, all united in one harmonious work on which men lavished
wealth and toil for generations,--it appears inconceivable that such a
monument can perpetuate an error or a dream. The echoing vaults bear
witness. Responses come from storied window and multitudinous imagery.
When the old cosmogony is proclaimed to be true in York Minster, the
scientists sink into insignificance in their modern ordinary rooms; when
the acolyte rings his bell in Rouen Cathedral, and the Host is lifted up,
and the crowd kneels in silent adoration on the pavement, who is to deny
the Real Presence? Does not every massive pillar stand there to affirm
sturdily that it is true; and do not the towers outside announce it to
field and river, and to the very winds of heaven?

The musical culture of women finds its own special interest in the vocal
and instrumental parts of the church service. Women have a direct
influence on this part of the ritual, and sometimes take an active share
in it. Of all the arts music is the most closely connected with religion,
and it is the only one that the blessed are believed to practise in a
future state. A suggestion that angels might paint or carve is so
unaccustomed that it seems incongruous; yet the objection to these arts
cannot be that they employ matter, since both poets and painters give
musical instruments to the angels,--

  "And angels meeting us shall sing
     To their citherns and citoles."

Worship naturally becomes musical as it passes from the prayer that asks
for benefits to the expression of joyful praise; and though the austerity
of extreme Protestantism has excluded instruments and encouraged reading
instead of chanting, I am not aware that it has ever gone so far as to
forbid the singing of hymns.

I have not yet touched upon pulpit eloquence as one of the means by which
the clergy gain a great ascendency over women. The truth is that the
pulpit is quite the most advantageous of all places for any one who has
the gift of public speaking. He is placed there far more favorably than a
Member of Parliament in his place in the House, where he is subject to
constant and contemptuous interruptions from hearers lounging with their
hats on. The chief advantage is that no one present is allowed either to
interrupt or to reply; and this is one reason why some men will not go to
church, as they say, "We may hear our principles misrepresented and not be
permitted to defend them." A Bishop, in my hearing, touched upon this very
point. "People say," he remarked, "that a preacher is much at his ease
because no one is allowed to answer him; but I invite discussion. If any
one here present has doubts about the soundness of my reasoning, I invite
him to come to me at the Episcopal Palace, and we will argue the question
together in my study." This sounded unusually liberal, but how the
advantages were still on the side of the Bishop! His attack on heresy was
public. It was uttered with long-practised professional eloquence, it was
backed by a lofty social position, aided by a peculiar and dignified
costume, and mightily aided also by the architecture of a magnificent
cathedral. The doubter was invited to answer, but not on equal terms. The
attack was public, the answer was to be private, and the heretic was to
meet the Bishop in the Episcopal Palace, where, again, the power of rank
and surroundings would be all in the prelate's favor.

Not only are clergymen privileged speakers, in being as secure from
present contradiction as a sovereign on the throne, but they have the
grandest of all imaginable subjects. In a word, they have the subject of
Dante,--they speak to us _del Inferno_, _del Purgatorio_, _del Paradiso_.
If they have any gift of genius, any power of imagination, such a subject
becomes a tremendous engine in their hands. Imagine the difference between
a preacher solemnly warning his hearers that the consequences of
inattention may be everlasting torment, and a politician warning the
Government that inattention may lead to a deficit! The truth is, that
however terrible may be the earthly consequences of imprudence and of sin,
they sink into complete insignificance before the menaces of the Church;
nor is there, on the other hand, any worldly success that can be proposed
as a motive comparable to the permanent happiness of Paradise. The good
and the bad things of this world have alike the fatal defect, as subjects
for eloquence, that they equally end in death; and as death is near to all
of us, we see the end to both. The secular preacher is like a man who
predicts a more or less comfortable journey, which comes to the same end
in any case. A philosophic hearer is not very greatly elated by the
promise of comforts so soon to be taken away, nor is he overwhelmed by the
threat of evils that can but be temporary. Hence, in all matters belonging
to this world only, the tone of quiet advice is the reasonable and
appropriate tone, and it is that of the doctor and lawyer; but in matters
of such tremendous import as eternal happiness and misery the utmost
energy of eloquence can never be too great for the occasion; so that if a
preacher can threaten like peals of thunder, and appal like flashes of
lightning, he may use such terrible gifts without any disproportionate
excess. On the other hand, if he has any charm of language, any brilliancy
of imagination, there is nothing to prevent him from alluring his hearers
to the paths of virtue by the most lavish and seductive promises. In
short, his opportunities in both directions are of such a nature that
exaggeration is impossible; and all his power, all his charm, are as free
to do their utmost as an ocean wave in a tempest or the nightingale in the
summer woods.

I cannot quit the subject of clerical oratory without noticing one of its
marked characteristics. The priest is not in a position of disinterested
impartiality, like a man of science, who is ready to renounce any doctrine
when he finds evidence against it. The priest is an advocate whose
life-long pleading must be in favor of the Church as he finds her, and in
opposition to her adversaries. To attack adversaries is therefore one of
the recognized duties of his profession; and if he is not a man of
uncommon fairness, if he has not an inborn love of justice which is rare
in human nature, he will not only attack his adversaries but misrepresent
them. There is even a worse danger than simple misrepresentation. A priest
may possibly be a man of a coarse temper, and if he is so he will employ
the weapons of outrage and vituperation, knowing that he can do so with
impunity. One would imagine that these methods must inevitably repel and
displease women, but there is a very peculiar reason why they seldom have
this effect. A highly principled woman is usually so extremely eager to be
on the side of what is right that suspension of judgment is most difficult
for her. Any condemnation uttered by a person she is accustomed to trust
has her approval on the instant. She cannot endure to wait until the crime
is proved, but her feelings of indignation are at once aroused against the
supposed criminal on the ground that there must be clear distinctions
between right and wrong. The priest, for her, is the good man,--the man on
the side of God and virtue; and those whom he condemns are the bad
men,--the men on the side of the Devil and vice. This being so, he may
deal with such men as roughly as he pleases. Nor have these men the
faintest chance of setting themselves right in her opinion. She quietly
closes the avenues of her mind against them; she declines to read their
books; she will not listen to their arguments. Even if one of them is a
near relation whose opinions inflict upon her what she calls "the deepest
distress of mind," she will positively prefer to go on suffering such
distress until she dies, rather than allow him to remove it by a candid
exposition of his views. She prefers the hostile misrepresentation that
makes her miserable, to an authentic account of the matter that would
relieve her anguish.

PART III.--ASSOCIATION.

The association of clergymen with ladies in works of charity affords
continual opportunities for the exercise of clerical influence over women.
A partnership in good works is set up which establishes interesting and
cordial relations, and when the lady has accomplished some charitable
purpose she remembers for long afterwards the clergyman without whose
active assistance her project might have fallen to the ground. She sees in
the clergyman a reflection of her own goodness, and she feels grateful to
him for lending his masculine sense and larger experience to the
realization of her ideas. There are other cases of a different nature in
which the self-esteem of the lady is deeply gratified when she is selected
by the clergyman as being more capable of devoted effort in a sacred cause
than women of inferior piety and strength of mind. This kind of clerical
selection is believed to be very influential in furthering clerical
marriages. The lady is told that she will serve the highest of all causes
by lending a willing ear to her admirer. Every reader will remember how
thoroughly this idea is worked out in "Jane Eyre," where St. John urges
Jane to marry him on the plain ground that she would be a valuable
fellow-worker with a missionary. Charlotte Brontë was, indeed, so strongly
impressed with this aspect of clerical influence that she injured the best
and strongest of her novels by an almost wearisome development of that
episode.

Clerical influence is immensely aided by the possession of leisure.
Without underrating the self-devotion of hard-working clergymen (which is
all the more honorable to them that they might take life more easily if
they chose), we see a wide distinction, in point of industry, between the
average clergyman and the average solicitor, for example. The clergyman
has leisure to pay calls, to accept many invitations, and to talk in full
detail about the interests that he has in common with his female friends.
The solicitor is kept to his office by strictly professional work
requiring very close application and allowing no liberty of mind.

Much might be said about the effect of clerical leisure on clerical
manners. Without leisure it is difficult to have such quiet and pleasant
manners as the clergy generally have. Very busy men generally seem
preoccupied with some idea of their own which is not what you are talking
about, but a leisurely man will give hospitality to your thought. A busy
man wants to get away, and fidgets you; a man of leisure dwells with you,
for the time, completely. Ladies are exquisitely sensitive to these
differences, and besides, they are generally themselves persons of
leisure. Overworked people often confound leisure with indolence, which is
a great mistake. Leisure is highly favorable to intelligence and good
manners; indolence is stupid, from its dislike to mental effort, and
ill-bred, from the habit of inattention.

The feeling of women towards custom draws them strongly to the clergy,
because a priesthood is the instinctive upholder of ancient customs and
ceremonies, and steadily maintains external decorum. Women are naturally
more attracted by custom than we are. A few men have an affectionate
regard for the sanctities of usage, but most men only submit to them from
an idea that they are generally helpful to the "maintenance of order;" and
if women could be supposed absent from a nation for a time, it is probable
that external observances of all kinds would be greatly relaxed. Women do
not merely submit passively to custom; they uphold it actively and
energetically, with a degree of faith in the perfect reasonableness of it
which gives them great decision in its defence. It seems to them the
ultimate reason from which there is no appeal. Now, in the life of every
organized Church there is much to gratify this instinct, especially in
those which have been long established. The recurrence of holy seasons,
the customary repetition of certain forms of words, the observance at
stated intervals of the same ceremonies, the adherence to certain
prescribed decencies or splendors of dress, the reservation of sacred days
on which labor is suspended, give to the religious life a charm of
customariness which is deeply gratifying to good, order-loving women. It
is said that every poet has something feminine in his nature; and it is
certainly observable that poets, like women, are tenderly affected by the
recurrence of holy seasons, and the observance of fixed religious rites. I
will only allude to Keble's "Christian Year," because in this instance it
might be objected that the poet was secondary to the Christian; but the
reader will find instances of the same sentiment in Tennyson, as, for
example, in the profoundly affecting allusions to the return of Christmas
in "In Memoriam." I could not name another occupation so closely and
visibly bound up with custom as the clerical profession, but for the sake
of contrast I may mention one or two others that are completely
disconnected from it. The profession of painting is an example, and so is
that of literature. An artist, a writer, has simply nothing whatever to do
with custom, except as a private man. He may be an excellent and a famous
workman without knowing Sunday from week-day or Easter from Lent. A man of
science is equally unconnected with traditional observances.

It may be a question whether a celibate or a married clergy has the
greater influence over women.

There are two sides to this question. The Church of Rome is, from the
worldly point of view, the most astute body of men who have ever leagued
themselves together in a corporation; and that Church has decided for
celibacy, rejecting thereby all the advantages to be derived from rich
marriages and good connections. In a celibate church the priest has a
position of secure dignity and independence. It is known from the first
that he will not marry, so there is no idle and damaging gossip about his
supposed aspirations after fortune, or tender feelings towards beauty.
Women can treat him with greater confidence than if he were a possible
suitor, and then can confess to him, which is felt to be difficult with a
married or a marriageable clergy. By being decidedly celibate the clergy
avoid the possible loss of dignity which might result from allying
themselves with families in a low social position. They are simply
priests, and escape all other classification. A married man is, as it
were, made responsible for the decent appearance, the good manners, and
the proper conduct of three different sets of people. There is the family
he springs from, there is his wife's family, and, lastly, there is the
family in his own house. Any one of these may drag a man down socially
with almost irresistible force. The celibate priest is only affected by
the family he springs from, and is generally at a distance from that. He
escapes the invasion of his house by a wife's relations, who might
possibly be vulgar, and, above all, he escapes the permanent degradation
of a coarse and ill-dressed family of his own. No doubt, from the
Christian point of view, poverty is as honorable as wealth; but from the
worldly point of view its visible imperfections are mean, despicable, and
even ridiculous. In the early days of English Protestants the liberty to
marry was ruinous to the social position of the clergy. They generally
espoused servant-girls or "a lady's maid whose character had been blown
upon, and who was therefore forced to give up all hope of catching the
steward."[17] Queen Elizabeth issued "special orders that no clergyman
should presume to marry a servant-girl without the consent of the master
or mistress." "One of the lessons most earnestly inculcated on every girl
of honorable family was to give no encouragement to a lover in orders; and
if any young lady forgot this precept she was almost as much disgraced as
by an illicit amour." The cause of these low marriages was simply poverty,
and it is needless to add that they increased the evil. "As children
multiplied and grew, the household of the priest became more and more
beggarly. Holes appeared more and more plainly in the thatch of his
parsonage and in his single cassock. His boys followed the plough, and his
girls went out to service."

When clergymen can maintain appearances they gain one advantage from
marriage which increases their influence with women. The clergyman's wife
is almost herself in holy orders, and his daughter often takes an equally
keen interest in ecclesiastical matters. These "clergywomen," as they have
been called, are valuable allies, through whom much may be done that
cannot be effected directly. This is the only advantage on the side of
marriage, and it is but relative; for a celibate clergy has also its
female allies who are scarcely less devoted; and in the Church of Rome
there are great organized associations of women entirely under the control
of ecclesiastics. Again, there is a lay element in a clergyman's family
which brings the world into his own house, to the detriment of its
religious character. The sons of the clergy are often anything but
clerical in feeling. They are often strongly laic, and even sceptical, by
a natural reaction from ecclesiasticism. On the whole, therefore, it seems
certain that an unmarried clergy more easily maintains both its own
dignity and the distinction between itself and the laity.

Auricular confession is so well known as a means of influencing women that
I need scarcely do more than mention it; but there is one characteristic
of it which is little understood by Protestants. They fancy (judging from
Protestant feelings of antagonism) that confession must be felt as a
tyranny. A Roman Catholic woman does not feel it to be an infliction that
the Church imposes, but a relief that she affords. Women are not naturally
silent sufferers. They like to talk about their anxieties and interests,
especially to a patient and sympathetic listener of the other sex who will
give them valuable advice. There is reason to believe that a good deal of
informal confession is done by Protestant ladies; in the Church of Rome it
is more systematic and leads to a formal absolution. The subject which the
speaker has to talk about is that most interesting of all subjects, self.
In any other place than a confessional to talk about self at any length is
an error; in the confessional it is a virtue. The truth is that pious
Roman Catholic women find happiness in the confessional and try the
patience of the priests by minute accounts of trifling or imaginary sins.
No doubt confession places an immense power in the hands of the Church,
but at an incalculable cost of patience. It is not felt to weigh unfairly
on the laity, because the priest who to-day has forgiven your faults will
to-morrow kneel in penitence and ask forgiveness for his own. I do not see
in the confessional so much an oppressive institution as a convenience for
both parties. The woman gets what she wants,--an opportunity of talking
confidentially about herself; and the priest gets what he wants,--an
opportunity of learning the secrets of the household.

Nothing has so powerfully awakened the jealousy of laymen as this
institution of the confessional. The reasons have been so fully treated by
Michelet and others, and are in fact so obvious, that I need not repeat
them.

The dislike for priests that is felt by many Continental laymen is
increased by a cause that helps to win the confidence of women. "Observe,"
the laymen say, "with what art the priest dresses so as to make women feel
that he is without sex, in order that they may confess to him more
willingly. He removes every trace of hair from his face, his dress is half
feminine, he hides his legs in petticoats, his shoulders under a tippet,
and in the higher ranks he wears jewelry and silk and lace. A woman would
never confess to a man dressed as we are, so the wolf puts on sheep's
clothing."

Where confession is not the rule the layman's jealousy is less acrid and
pungent in its expression, but it often manifests itself in milder forms.
The pen that so clearly delineated the Rev. Charles Honeyman was impelled
by a layman's natural and pardonable jealousy. A feeling of this kind is
often strong in laymen of mature years. They will say to you in
confidence, "Here is a man about the age of one of my sons, who knows no
more concerning the mysteries of life and death than I do, who gets what
he thinks he knows out of a book which is as accessible to me as it is to
him, and yet who assumes a superiority over me which would only be
justifiable if I were ignorant and he enlightened. He calls me one of his
sheep. I am not a sheep relatively to him. I am at least his equal in
knowledge, and greatly his superior in experience. Nobody but a parson
would venture to compare me to an animal (such a stupid animal too!) and
himself to that animal's master. His one real and effective superiority is
that he has all the women on his side."

You poor, doubting, hesitating layman, not half so convinced as the ladies
of your family, who and what are you in the presence of a man who comes
clothed with the authority of the Church? If you simply repeat what he
says, you are a mere echo, a feeble repetition of a great original, like
the copy of a famous picture. If you try to take refuge in philosophic
indifference, in silent patience, you will be blamed for moral and
religious inertia. If you venture to oppose and discuss, you will be the
bad man against the good man, and as sure of condemnation as a murderer
when the judge is putting on the black cap. There is no resource for you
but one, and that does not offer a very cheering or hopeful prospect. By
the exercise of angelic patience, and of all the other virtues that have
been preached by good men from Socrates downwards, you may in twenty or
thirty years acquire some credit for a sort of inferior goodness of your
own,--a pinchbeck goodness, better than nothing, but not in any way
comparable to the pure golden goodness of the priest; and when you come to
die, the best that can be hoped for your disembodied soul will be mercy,
clemency, indulgence; not approbation, welcome, or reward.

ESSAY XIV.

WHY WE ARE APPARENTLY BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS.

It has happened to me on more than one occasion to have to examine papers
left by ladies belonging to the last generation, who had lived in the
manner most esteemed and respected by the general opinion of their time,
and who might, without much risk of error, be taken for almost perfect
models of English gentlewomen as they existed before the present
scientific age. The papers left by these ladies consisted either of
memoranda of their private thoughts, or of thoughts by others which seemed
to have had an especial interest for them. I found that all these papers
arranged themselves naturally and inevitably under two heads: either they
concerned family interests and affections, or they were distinctly
religious in character, like the religious meditations we find in books of
devotion.

There may be nothing extraordinary in this. Thousands of other ladies may
have left religious memoranda; but consider what a preponderance of
religious ideas is implied when written thoughts are entirely confined to
them! The ladies in question lived in the first half of the nineteenth
century, a period of great intellectual ferment, of the most important
political and social changes, and of wonderful material progress; but
they did not seem to have taken any real interest in these movements. The
Bible and the commentaries of the clergy satisfied not only their
spiritual but also their intellectual needs. They seem to have desired no
knowledge of the universe, or of the probable origin and future of the
human race, which the Bible did not supply. They seem to have cared for no
example of human character and conduct other than the scriptural examples.

This restfulness in Biblical history and philosophy, this substitution of
the Bible for the world as a subject of study and contemplation, this
absence of desire to penetrate the secrets of the world itself, this want
of aspiration after any ideal more recent than the earlier ages of
Christianity, permitted a much more constant and uninterrupted dwelling
with what are considered to be religious ideas than is possible to any
active and inquiring mind of the present day. Let it be supposed, for
example, that a person to whom the Bible was everything desired
information about the origin of the globe, and of life upon it; he would
refer to the Book of Genesis as the only authority, and this reference
would have the character of a religious act, and he would get credit for
piety on account of it; whilst a modern scientific student would refer to
some great modern paleontologist, and his reference would not have the
character of a religious act, nor bring him any credit for piety; yet the
prompting curiosity, the desire to know about the remote past, would be
exactly the same in both cases. And I think it may be easily shown that if
the modern scientific student appears to be less religious than others
think he ought to be, it is often because he possesses and uses more
abundant sources of information than those which were accessible to the
ancient Jews. It is not his fault if knowledge has increased; he cannot be
blamed if he goes where information is most copious and most exact; yet
his preference for such information gives an unsanctified aspect to his
studies. The study of the most ancient knowledge wears a religious aspect,
but the study of modern knowledge appears to be non-religious.

Again, when we come to the cultivation of the idealizing faculties, of the
faculties which do not seek information merely, but some kind of
perfection, we find that the very complexity of modern life, and the
diversity of the ideal pleasures and perfections that we modern men
desire, have a constant tendency to take us outside of strictly religious
ideals. As long as the writings which are held to be sacred supply all
that our idealizing faculties need, so long will our imaginative powers
exercise themselves in what is considered to be a religious manner, and we
shall get credit for piety; but when our minds imagine what the sacred
writers could not or did not conceive, and when we seek help for our
imaginative faculty in profane writers, we appear to be less religious. So
it is with the desire to study and imitate high examples of conduct and
character. There is no nobler or more fruitful instinct in man than a
desire like this, which is possible only to those who are at once humble
and aspiring. An ancient Jew who had this noble instinct could satisfy it
by reading the sacred books of the Hebrews, and so his aspiration appeared
to be wholly religious. It is not so with an active-minded young
Englishman of the present day. He cannot find the most inspiriting models
amongst the ancient Hebrews, for the reason that their life was altogether
so much simpler and more primitive than ours. They had nothing that can
seriously be called science; they had not any organized industry; they had
little art, and hardly any secular literature, so that in these directions
they offer us no examples to follow. Our great inspiriting examples in
these directions are to be found either in the Renaissance or in recent
times, and therefore in profane biography. From this it follows that an
active modern mind seems to study and follow non-religious examples, and
so to differ widely, and for the worse, from the simpler minds of old
time, who were satisfied with the examples they found in their Bibles.
This appearance is misleading; it is merely on the surface; for if we go
deeper and do not let ourselves be deceived by the words "sacred" and
"profane," we shall find that when a simple mind chooses a model from a
primitive people, and a cultivated one chooses a model from an advanced
people, and from the most advanced class in it, they are both really doing
the same thing, namely, seeking ideal help of the kind which is best for
each. Both of them are pursuing the same object,--a mental discipline and
elevation which may be comprised under the general term _virtue_; the only
difference being that one is studying examples of virtue in the history of
the ancient Jews, whilst the other finds examples of virtue more to his
own special purpose in the lives of energetic Englishmen, Frenchmen, or
Germans.

A hundred such examples might be mentioned, for every occupation worth
following has its own saints and heroes; but I will confine myself to two.
The first shall be a French gentleman of the eighteenth century, to whom
life offered in the richest profusion everything that can tempt a man to
what is considered an excusable and even a respectable form of idleness.
He had an independent fortune, excellent health, a good social position,
and easy access to the most lively, the most entertaining, the most
amiable society that ever was, namely, that of the intelligent French
nobility before the Revolution. There is no merit in renouncing what we do
not enjoy; but he enjoyed all pleasant things, and yet renounced them for
a higher and a harder life. At the age of thirty-two he retired to the
country, made a rule of early rising and kept it, sallied forth from his
house every morning at five, went and shut himself up in an old tower with
a piece of bread and a glass of water for his breakfast, worked altogether
eleven or twelve hours a day in two sittings, and went to bed at nine.
This for eight months in the year, regularly, the remaining four being
employed in scientific and administrative work at the Jardin des Plantes.
He went on working in this way for forty years, and in the whole course of
that time never let pass an ill-considered page or an ill-constructed
sentence, but always did his best, and tried to make himself able to do
better.

Such was the great life of Buffon; and in our own time another great life
has come to its close, inferior to that of Buffon only in this, that as it
did not begin in luxury, the first renunciation was not so difficult to
make. Yet, however austere his beginnings, it is not a light or easy thing
for a man to become the greatest intellectual worker of his time, so that
one of his days (including eight hours of steady nocturnal labor) was
equivalent to two or more of our days. No man of his time in Europe had so
vast a knowledge of literature and science in combination; yet this
knowledge was accompanied by perfect modesty and by a complete
indifference to vulgar distinctions and vain successes. For many years he
was the butt of coarse and malignant misrepresentation on the part of
enemies who easily made him odious to a shallow society; but he bore it
with perfect dignity, and retained unimpaired the tolerance and charity of
his nature. His way of living was plain and frugal; he even contented
himself with narrow dwellings, though the want of space must have
occasioned frequent inconvenience to a man of his pursuits. He
scrupulously fulfilled his domestic duties, and made use of his medical
education in ministering gratuitously to the poor. Such was his courage
that when already advanced in life he undertook a gigantic task, requiring
twenty years of incessant labor; and such were his industry and
perseverance that he brought it to a splendidly successful issue. At
length, after a long life of duty and patience, after bearing calumny and
ridicule, he was called to endure another kind of suffering,--that of
incessant physical pain. This he bore with perfect fortitude, retaining to
the last his mental serenity, his interest in learning, and a high-minded
patriotic thoughtfulness for his country and its future, finding means in
the midst of suffering to dictate long letters to his fellow-citizens on
political subjects, which, in their calm wisdom, stood in the strongest
possible contrast to the violent party writing of the hour.

Such was the great life of Littré; and now consider whether he who studies
lives like these, and wins virtue from their austere example, does not
occupy his thoughts with what would have been considered religious
aspirations, if these two men, instead of being Frenchmen of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had happened to be ancient Jews. If
it had been possible for so primitive a nation as the Jewish to produce
men of such steady industry and so large a culture, we should have read
the story of their lives in the Jewish sacred books, and then it would
have been a part of the popular religion to study them, whereas now the
study of such biography is held to be non-religious, if not (at least in
the case of Littré) positively irreligious. Yet surely when we think of
the virtues which made these lives so fruitful, our minds are occupied in
a kind of religious thought; for are we not thinking of temperance,
self-discipline, diligence, perseverance, patience, charity, courage,
hope? Were not these men distinguished by their aspiration after higher
perfection, by a constant desire to use their talents well, and by a
vigilant care in the employment of their time? And are not these virtues
and these aspirations held to be parts of a civilized man's religion, and
the best parts?

The necessity for an intellectual expansion beyond the limits of the Bible
was felt very strongly at the time of the Renaissance, and found ample
satisfaction in the study of the Greek and Latin classics. There are many
reasons why women appear to be more religious than men; and one of them is
because women study only one collection of ancient writings, whilst men
have been accustomed to study three; consequently that which women study
(if such a word is applicable to devotional, uncritical reading) occupies
their minds far more exclusively than it occupies the mind of a classical
scholar. But, though the intellectual energies of men were for a time
satisfied with classical literature, they came at length to look outside
of that as their fathers had looked outside of the Bible. Classical
literature was itself a kind of religion, having its own sacred books; and
it had also its heretics,--the students of nature,--who found nature more
interesting than the opinions of the Greeks and Romans. Then came the
second great expansion of the human mind, in the midst of which we
ourselves are living. The Renaissance opened for it a world of mental
activity which had the inappreciable intellectual advantage of lying well
outside of the popular beliefs and ideas, so that cultivated men found in
it an escape from the pressure of the uneducated; but the new scientific
expansion offers us a region governed by laws of a kind peculiar to
itself, which protect those who conform to them against every assailant.
It is a region in which authority is unknown, for, however illustrious any
great man may appear in it, every statement that he makes is subject to
verification. Here the knowledge of ancient writers is continually
superseded by the better and more accurate knowledge of their successors;
so that whereas in religion and learning the most ancient writings are the
most esteemed, in science it is often the most recent, and even these have
no authority which may not be called in question freely by any student.
The new scientific culture is thus encouraging a habit of mind different
from old habits, and which in our time has caused such a degree of
separation that the most important and the most interesting of all topics
are those upon which we scarcely dare to venture for fear of being
misunderstood.

If I had to condense in a short space the various reasons why we are
apparently becoming less religious, I should say that it is because
knowledge and feeling, embodied or expressed in the sciences and arts, are
now too fully and too variously developed to remain within the limits of
what is considered sacred knowledge or religious emotion. It was possible
for them to remain well within those limits in ancient times, and it is
still possible for a mind of very limited activity and range to dwell
almost entirely in what was known or felt at the time of Christ; but this
is not possible for an energetic and inquiring mind, and the consequence
is that the energetic mind will seem to the other, by contrast, to be
negligent of holy things, and too much occupied with purely secular
interests and concerns. A great misunderstanding arises from this, which
has often had a lamentable effect on intercourse between relations and
friends. Pious ladies, to whom theological writings appear to contain
almost everything that it is desirable to know, often look with secret
misgiving or suspicion on young men of vigorous intellect who cannot rest
satisfied with the old knowledge, and what such ladies vaguely hear of the
speculations of the famous scientific leaders inspires them with profound
alarm. They think that we are becoming less religious because theological
writings do not occupy the same space in our time and thoughts as they do
in theirs; whereas, if such a matter could be put to any kind of positive
test, it would probably be found that we know more, even of their own
theology, than they do, and that, instead of being indifferent to the
great problems of the universe, we have given to such problems an amount
of careful thought far surpassing, in mental effort, their own simple
acquiescence. The opinions of a thoughtful and studious man in the present
day have never been lightly come by; and if he is supposed to be less
religious than his father or his grandfather it may be that his religion
is different from theirs, without being either less earnest or less
enlightened. There is, however, one point of immense importance on which I
believe that we really are becoming less religious, indeed on that point
we seem to be rapidly abandoning the religious principle altogether; but
the subject is of too much consequence to be treated at the end of an
Essay.

ESSAY XV.

HOW WE ARE REALLY BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS.

The reader may remember how, after the long and unsuccessful siege of
Syracuse, the Athenian general Nikias, seeing his discouraged troops ill
with the fever from the marshes, determined to raise the siege; and that,
when his soldiers were preparing to retreat, and striking their tents for
the march, there occurred an eclipse of the moon. Nikias, in his anxiety
to know what the gods meant by this with reference to him and his army, at
once consulted a soothsayer, who told him that he would incur the Divine
anger if he did not remain where he was for three times nine days. He
remained, doing nothing, allowing his troops to perish and his ships to be
shut up by a line of the enemy's vessels chained together across the
entrance of the port. At length the three times nine days came to an end,
and what was left of the Athenian army had to get out of a situation that
had become infinitely more difficult during its inaction. The ships tried
to get out in vain; the army was able to retreat by land, but only to be
harassed by the enemy, and finally placed in such distress that it was
compelled to surrender. Most of the remnant died miserably in the old
quarries of Syracuse.

The conduct of Nikias throughout these events was in the highest degree
religious. He was fully convinced that the gods concerned themselves about
him and his doings, that they were watching over him, and that the eclipse
was a communication from them not to be neglected without a breach of
religious duty. He, therefore, in the spirit of the most perfect religious
faith, which we are compelled to admire for its sincerity and
thoroughness, shut his eyes resolutely to all the visible facts of a
situation more disastrous every day, and attended only to the invisible
action of the invisible gods, of which nothing could be really known by
him. For twenty-seven days he went on quietly sacrificing his soldiers to
his faith, and only moved at last when he believed that the gods allowed
it.

In contrast with this, let us ask what we think of an eclipse ourselves,
and how far any religious emotion, determinant of action or of inaction,
is connected with the phenomenon in our experience. We know, in the first
place, that eclipses belong to the natural order, and we do not feel
either grateful to the supernatural powers, or ungrateful, with regard to
them. Even the idea that eclipses demonstrate the power of God is hardly
likely to occur to us, for we constantly see terrestrial objects eclipsed
by cast shadows; and the mere falling of a shadow is to us only the
natural interruption of light by the intervention of any opaque object. In
the true theory of eclipses there is absolutely no ground whatever for
religious emotion, and accordingly the phenomenon is now entirely
disconnected from religious ideas. The consequence is that where the
Athenian general had a strong motive for religious emotion, a motive so
strong that he sacrificed his army to the supposed will of Heaven, a
modern general in the same situation would feel no emotion and make no
sacrifice.

If this process stopped at eclipses the result would be of little
importance, as eclipses of the celestial bodies are not frequently
visible, and to lose the opportunity of emotion which they present is not
a very sensible loss. But so far is the process from stopping at eclipses,
that exactly the same process is going on with regard to thousands of
other phenomena which are one by one, yet with increasing rapidity,
ceasing to be regarded as special manifestations of Divine will, and
beginning to be regarded as a part of that order of nature with which, to
quote Professor Huxley's significant language, "nothing interferes." Every
one of these transferrences from supernatural government to natural order
deprives the religious sentiment of one special cause or motive for its
own peculiar kind of emotion, so that we are becoming less and less
accustomed to such emotion (as the opportunities for it become less
frequent), and more and more accustomed to accept events and phenomena of
all kinds as in that order of nature "with which nothing interferes."

This single mental conception of the unfailing regularity of nature is
doing more in our time to affect the religious condition of thoughtful
people than could be effected by many less comprehensive conceptions.

It has often been said, not untruly, that merely negative arguments have
little permanent influence over the opinions of men, and that institutions
which have been temporarily overthrown by negation will shortly be set up
again, and flourish in their old vigor, unless something positive can be
found to supply their place. But here is a doctrine of a most positive
kind. "The order of nature is invariably according to regular sequences."
It is a doctrine which cannot be proved, for we cannot follow all the
changes which have ever taken place in the universe; but, although
incapable of demonstration, it may be accepted until something happens to
disprove it; and it _is_ accepted, with the most absolute faith, by a
constantly increasing number of adherents.

To show how this doctrine acts in diminishing religious emotion by taking
away the opportunity for it, let me narrate an incident which really
occurred on a French line of railway in the winter of 1882. The line, on
which I had travelled a few days before, passes between a river and a
hill. The river has a rocky bed and is torrential in winter; the hill is
densely covered with a pine forest coming down to the side of the line.
The year 1882 had been the rainiest known in France for two centuries, and
the roots of the trees on the edge of this pine forest had been much
loosened by the rain. In consequence of this, two large pine-trees fell
across the railway early one morning, and soon afterwards a train
approached the spot by the dim light of early dawn. There was a curve just
before the engine reached the trees, and it had come rapidly for several
miles down a decline. The driver reversed his steam, the engine and tender
leaped over the trees, and then went over the embankment to a place within
six feet of the rapid river. The carriages remained on the line, but were
much broken. Nobody was killed; nobody was seriously injured. The
remarkable escape of the passengers was accounted for as follows by the
religious people in the neighborhood. There happened to be a priest in the
train, and at the time when the shock took place he made what is called "a
pious ejaculation." This, it was said, had saved the lives of the
passengers. In the ages of faith this explanation would have been received
without question; but the notion of natural sequences--Professor Huxley's
"order with which nothing interferes"--had obtained such firm hold on the
minds of the townsmen generally that they said the priest was trying to
make ecclesiastical capital out of an occurrence easily explicable by
natural causes. They saw nothing supernatural either in the production of
the accident or its comparative harmlessness. The trickling of much water
had denuded the roots of the trees, which fell because they could not
stand with insufficient roothold; the lives of the passengers were saved
because they did not happen to be in the most shattered carriage; and the
men on the engine escaped because they fell on soft ground, made softer
still by the rain. It was probable, too, they said, that if any beneficent
supernatural interference had taken place it would have maintained the
trees in an erect position, by preventive miracle, and so spared the
slight injuries which really were inflicted, and which, though treated
very lightly by others because there were neither deaths nor amputations,
still caused suffering to those who had to bear them.

Now if we go a little farther into the effects of this accident on the
minds of the people who shared in it, or whose friends had been imperilled
by it, we shall see very plainly the effect of the modern belief in the
regularity of natural sequences. Those who believed in supernatural
intervention would offer thanksgivings when they got home, and probably go
through some special religious thanksgiving services for many days
afterwards; those who believed in the regularity of natural sequences
would simply feel glad to have escaped, without any especial sense of
gratitude to supernatural powers. So much for the effect as far as
thanksgiving is concerned; but there is another side of the matter at
least equally important from the religious point of view,--that of prayer.
The believers in supernatural interference would probably, in all their
future railway journeys, pray to be supernaturally protected in case of
accident, as they had been in 1882; but the believers in the regularity of
natural sequences would only hope that no trees had fallen across the
line, and feel more than usually anxious after long seasons of rainy
weather. Can there be a doubt that the priest's opinion, that he had won
safety by a pious ejaculation, was highly favorable to his religious
activity afterwards, whilst the opinion of the believers in "the natural
order with which nothing interferes" was unfavorable both to prayer and
thanksgiving in connection with railway travelling?

Examples of this kind might easily be multiplied, for there is hardly any
enterprise that men undertake, however apparently unimportant, which
cannot be regarded both from the points of view of naturalism and
supernaturalism; and in every case the naturalist manner of regarding the
enterprise leads men to study the probable influence of natural causes,
whilst the supernaturalist opinion leads them to propitiate supernatural
powers. Now, although some new sense may come to be attached to the word
"religion" in future ages, so that it may come to mean scientific
thoroughness, intellectual ingenuousness, or some other virtue that may be
possessed by a pure naturalist, the word has always been understood, down
to the present time, to imply a constant dependence upon the supernatural;
and when I say that we are becoming less religious, I mean that from our
increasing tendency to refer everything to natural causes the notion of
the supernatural is much less frequently present in our minds than it was
in the minds of our forefathers. Even the clergy themselves seem to be
following the laity towards the belief in natural law, at least so far as
matter is concerned. The Bishop of Melbourne, in 1882, declined to order
prayers for rain, and gave his reason honestly, which was that material
phenomena were under the control of natural law, and would not be changed
in answer to prayer. The Bishop added that prayer should be confined to
spiritual blessings. Without disputing the soundness of this opinion, we
cannot help perceiving that if it were generally received it would put an
end to one half of the religious activity of the human race; for half the
prayers and half the thanksgivings addressed to the supernatural powers
are for material benefits only. It is possible that, in the future,
religious people will cease to pray for health, but take practical
precautions to preserve it; that they will cease to pray for prosperity,
but study the natural laws which govern the wealth of nations; that they
will no longer pray for the national fleets and armies, but see that they
are well supplied and intelligently commanded. All this and much more is
possible; but when it comes to pass the world will be less religious than
it was when men believed that every pestilence, every famine, every
defeat, was a chastisement specially, directly, and intentionally
inflicted by an angry Deity. Even now, what an immense step has been made
in this direction! In the fearful description of the pestilence at
Florence, given with so much detail by Boccaccio, he speaks of "l'ira di
Dio a punire la iniquità degli uomini con quella pestilenza;" and he
specially implies that those who sought to avoid the plague by going to
healthier places in the country deceived themselves in supposing that the
wrath of God would not follow them whithersoever they went. That is the
old belief expressing itself in prayers and humiliations. It is still
recognized officially. If the plague could occur in a town on the whole so
well cared for as modern London, the language of Boccaccio would still be
used in the official public prayers; but the active-minded practical
citizens would be thinking how to destroy the germs, how to purify air and
water. An instance of this divergence occurred after the Egyptian war of
1882. The Archbishop of York, after the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, ordered
thanksgivings to be offered in the churches, on the ground that God was in
Sir Garnet Wolseley's camp and fought with him against the Egyptians,
which was a survival of the antique idea that national deities fought
with the national armies. On this a Member of Parliament, Mr. George
Palmer, said to his constituents in a public meeting at Reading, "At the
same time I cannot agree with the prayers that have been made in churches.
Though I respect the consciences of other men, I must say that it was not
by Divine interference, but from the stuff of which our army was made and
our great ironclads, that victory was achieved." I do not quote this
opinion for any originality in itself, as there have always been men who
held that victory was a necessary result of superior military efficiency,
but I quote it as a valuable test of the change in general opinion. It is
possible that such views may have been expressed in private in all ages of
the world; but I doubt if in any age preceding ours a public man, at the
very time when he was cultivating the good graces of his electors, would
have refused to the national Deity a special share in a military triumph.
To an audience imbrued with the old conception of incessant supernatural
interferences, the doctrine that a victory was a natural result would have
sounded impious; and such an audience, if any one had ventured to say what
Mr. Palmer said, would have received him with a burst of indignation. But
Mr. Palmer knew the tendencies of the present age, and was quite correct
in thinking that he might safely express his views. His hearers were not
indignant, they were not even grave and silent, as Englishmen are when
they simply disapprove, but they listened willingly, and marked their
approbation by laughter and cheers. Even a clergyman may hold Mr.
Palmer's opinion. Soon after his speech at Reading the Rev. H. R. Haweis
said the same thing in the pulpit. "Few people," he said, "really doubt
that we have conquered the Egyptians, not because we were in the right and
they were in the wrong, but because we had the heaviest hand." The
preacher went on to say that the idea of God fighting on one side more
than another in particular battles seemed to him to be a Pagan or at most
a Jewish one. How different was the old sentiment as expressed by Macaulay
in the stirring ballad of Ivry! "We of the religion" had no doubt about
the Divine interference in the battle,

  "For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave,
   And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valor of the brave;
   Then glory to his holy name from whom all glories are,
   And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre!"

The way in which the great mental movement of our age towards a more
complete recognition of natural order is affecting human intercourse may
be defined in a few words. If the movement were at an equal rate of
advance for all civilized people they would be perfectly agreed amongst
themselves at any one point of time, as it would be settled which events
were natural in their origin and which were due to the interposition of
Divine or diabolical agency. Living people would differ in opinion from
their predecessors, but they would not differ from each other. The change,
however, though visible and important, is not by any means uniform, so
that a guest sitting at dinner may have on his right hand a lady who sees
supernatural interferences in many things, and on his left a student of
science who is firmly convinced that there are no supernatural
interferences in the present, and that there never have been any in the
past. Private opinion, out of which public opinion slowly and gradually
forms itself, is in our time in a state of complete anarchy, because two
opposite doctrines are held loosely, and one or the other is taken up as
it happens to seem appropriate. The interpositions of Providence are
recognized or rejected according to political or personal bias. The French
Imperialists saw the Divine vengeance in the death of Gambetta, whilst in
their view the death of Napoleon III. was the natural termination of his
disease, and that of the Prince Imperial a simple accident, due to the
carelessness of his English companions. Personal bias shows itself in the
belief, often held by men occupying positions of importance, that they are
necessary, at least for a time, to fulfil the intentions of Providence.
Napoleon III. said in a moment of emotion, "So long as I am needed I am
invulnerable; but when my hour comes I shall be broken like glass!" Even
in private life a man will sometimes think, "I am so necessary to my wife
and family that Providence will not remove me," though every newspaper
reports the deaths of fathers who leave their families destitute.
Sometimes men believe that Providence takes the same view of their
enterprises that they themselves take; and when a great enterprise is
drawing near to its termination they feel assured that supernatural power
will protect them till it is quite concluded, but they believe that the
enterprises of other men are exposed to all the natural risks. When Mr.
Gifford Palgrave was wrecked in the sea of Oman, he was for some time in
an open boat, and thus describes his situation: "All depended on the
steerage, and on the balance and support afforded by the oars, and even
more still on the Providence of Him who made the deep; nor indeed could I
get myself to think that He had brought me thus far to let me drown just
at the end of my journey, and in so very unsatisfactory a way too; for had
we then gone down, what news of the event off Sowadah would ever have
reached home, or when?--so that altogether I felt confident of getting
somehow or other on shore, though by what means I did not exactly know."
Here the writer thinks of his own enterprise as deserving Divine
solicitude, but does not attach the same importance to the humbler
enterprises of the six passengers who went down with the vessel. I cannot
help thinking, too, of the poor passenger Ibraheem, who swam to the boat
and begged so piteously to be taken in, when a sailor "loosened his grasp
by main force and flung him back into the sea, where he disappeared
forever." Neither can I forget the four who imprudently plunged from the
boat and perished. We may well believe that these lost ones would have
been unable to write such a delightful and instructive book as Mr.
Palgrave's "Travels in Arabia," yet they must have had their own humble
interests in life, their own little objects and enterprises.

The calculation that Providence would spare a traveller towards the close
of a long journey may be mistaken, but it is pious; it affords an
opportunity for the exercise of devout emotion which the scientific
thinker would miss. If Mr. Herbert Spencer had been placed in the same
situation he would, no doubt, have felt the most perfect confidence that
the order of nature would not be disturbed, that even in such a turmoil of
winds and waters the laws of buoyancy and stability would be observed in
every motion of the boat to the millionth of an inch; but he would not
have considered himself likely to escape death on account of the important
nature of his undertakings. Mr. Spencer's way of judging the situation as
one of equal peril for himself and his humble companions would have been
more reasonable, but at the same time he would have lost that opportunity
for special and personal gratitude which Mr. Palgrave enjoyed when he
believed himself to be supernaturally protected. The curious inconsistency
of the common French expression, "C'est un hasard providentiel" is another
example of the present state of thought on the question. A Frenchman is
upset from a carriage, breaks no bones, and stands up, exclaiming, as he
dusts himself, "It was un hasard vraiment providentiel that I was not
lamed for life." It is plain that if his escape was providential it could
not be accidental at the same time, yet in spite of the obvious
inconsistency of his expression there is piety in his choice of an
adjective.

The distinction, as it has usually been understood hitherto, between
religious and non-religious explanations of what happens, is that the
religious person believes that events happen by supernatural direction,
and he is only thinking religiously so long as he thinks in that manner;
whilst the non-religious theory is that events happen by natural sequence,
and so long as a person thinks in this manner, his mind is acting
non-religiously, whatever may be his religious profession. "To study the
universe as it is manifested to us; to ascertain by patient inquiry the
order of the manifestations; to discover that the manifestations are
connected with one another after regular ways in time and space; and,
after repeated failures, to give up as futile the attempt to understand
the power manifested, is condemned as irreligious. And meanwhile the
character of religious is claimed by those who figure to themselves a
Creator moved by motives like their own; who conceive themselves as seeing
through His designs, and who even speak of Him as though He laid plans to
outwit the Devil!"

Yes, this is a true account of the way in which the words irreligious and
religious have always been used and there does not appear to be any
necessity for altering their signification. Every event which is
transferred, in human opinion, from supernatural to natural action is
transferred from the domain of religion to that of science; and it is
because such transferrences have been so frequent in our time that we are
becoming so much less religious than our forefathers were. In how many
things is the modern man perfectly irreligious! He is so in everything
that relates to applied science, to steam, telegraphy, photography,
metallurgy, agriculture, manufactures. He has not the slightest belief in
spiritual intervention, either for or against him, in these material
processes. He is beginning to be equally irreligious in government.
Modern politicians have been accused of thinking that God cannot govern,
but that is not a true account of their opinion. What they really think is
that government is an application of science to the direction of national
life, in which no invisible powers will either thwart a ruler in that
which he does wisely, or shield him from the evil consequences of his
errors.

But though we are less religious than our ancestors because we believe
less in the interferences of the supernatural, do we deserve censure for
our way of understanding the world? Certainly not. Was Nikias a proper
object of praise because the eclipse seen by him at Syracuse seemed a
warning from the gods; and was Wolseley a proper object of blame because
the comet seen by him on the Egyptian plain was without a Divine message?
Both these opinions are quite outside of merit, although the older opinion
was in the highest degree religious, and the later one is not religious in
the least. Such changes simply indicate a gradual revolution in man's
conception of the universe, which is the result of more accurate
knowledge. So why not accept the fact, why not admit that we have really
become less religious? Possibly we have a compensation, a gain equivalent
to our loss. If the gods do not speak to us by signs in the heavens; if
the entrails of victims and the flight of birds no longer tell us when to
march to battle and where to remain inactive in our tents; if the oracle
is silent at Delos, and the ark lost to Jerusalem; if we are pilgrims to
no shrine; if we drink of no sacred fountain and plunge into no holy
stream; if all the special sanctities once reverenced by humanity are
unable any longer to awaken our dead enthusiasm, have we gained nothing in
exchange for the many religious excitements that we have lost? Yes, we
have gained a keener interest in the natural order, and a knowledge of it
at once more accurate and more extensive, a gain that Greek and Jew might
well have envied us, and which a few of their keener spirits most ardently
desired. Our passion for natural knowledge is not a devout emotion, and
therefore it is not religious; but it is a noble and a fruitful passion
nevertheless, and by it our eyes are opened. The good Saint Bernard had
his own saintly qualities; but for us the qualities of a De Saussure are
not without their worth. Saint Bernard, in the perfection of ancient
piety, travelling a whole day by the lake of Geneva without seeing it, too
much absorbed by devout meditation to perceive anything terrestrial, was
blinded by his piety, and might with equal profit have stayed in his
monastic cell. De Saussure was a man of our own time. Never, in his
writings, do you meet with any allusion to supernatural interferences
(except once or twice in pity for popular superstitions); but fancy De
Saussure passing the lake of Geneva, or any other work of nature, without
seeing it! His life was spent in the continual study of the natural world;
and this study was to him so vigorous an exercise for the mind, and so
strict a discipline, that he found in it a means of moral and even of
physical improvement. There is no trace in his writings of what is called
devout emotion, but the bright light of intelligent admiration illumines
every page; and when he came to die, if he could not look back, like
Saint Bernard, upon what is especially supposed to be a religious life, he
could look back upon many years wisely and well spent in the study of that
nature of which Saint Bernard scarcely knew more than the mule that
carried him.

ESSAY XVI.

ON AN UNRECOGNIZED FORM OF UNTRUTH.

In the art of painting there are two opposite ways of dealing with natural
color. It may be intensified, or it may be translated by tints of inferior
chromatic force. In either case the picture may be perfectly harmonious,
provided only that the same principle of interpretation be consistently
followed throughout.

The first time that I became acquainted with the first of these two
methods of interpretation was in my youth, when I met with a Scottish
painter who has since become eminent in his art. He was painting studies
from nature; and I noticed that whenever in the natural object there was a
trace of dull gold, as in some lichen, he made it a brighter gold, and
whenever there was a little rusty red he made it a more vivid red. So it
was with every other tint. His eye seemed to become excited by every hue,
and he translated it by one of greater intensity and power.

Now that is a kind of exaggeration which is very commonly recognized as a
departure from the sober truth. People complain that the sky is too blue,
the fields too green, and so on.

Afterwards I saw French painters at work, and I noticed that they (in
those days) interpreted natural color by an intentional lowering of the
chromatic force. When they had to deal with the splendors of autumnal
woods against a blue sky they interpreted the azure by a blue-gray, and
the flaming gold by a dull russet. They even refused themselves the more
quiet brightness of an ordinary wheat-field, and translated the yellow of
the wheat by an earthy brown.

Unlike falsehood by exaggeration, this other kind of falsehood (by
diminution) is very seldom recognized as a departure from the truth. Such
coloring as this French coloring excited but few protests, and indeed was
often praised for being "modest" and "subdued."

Both systems are equally permissible in the fine arts, if consistently
followed, because in art the unity and harmony of the work are of greater
importance than the exact imitation of nature. It is not as an art-critic
that I should have any fault to find with a well-understood and thoroughly
consistent conventionalism in the interpretation of nature; but the two
kinds of falsity we have noticed are constantly found in action outside of
the fine arts, and yet only one of them is recognized in its true
character, the other being esteemed as a proof of modesty and moderation.

The general opinion, in our own country, condemns falsehood by
exaggeration, but it does not blame falsehood by diminution. Overstatement
is regarded as a vice, and understatement as a sort of modest virtue,
whilst in fact they are both untruthful, exactly in the degree of their
departure from perfect accuracy.

If a man states his income as being larger than it really is, if he adopts
a degree of ostentation which (though he may be able to pay for it)
conveys the idea of more ample means than he really possesses, and if we
find out afterwards what his income actually is, we condemn him as an
untruthful person; but lying by diminution with reference to money matters
is looked upon simply as modesty.

I remember a most respectable English family who had this modesty in
perfection. It was their great pleasure to represent themselves as being
much less rich than they really were. Whenever they heard of anybody with
moderate or even narrow means, they pretended to think that he had quite
an ample income. If you mentioned a man with a family, struggling on a
pittance, they would say he was "very comfortably provided for," and if
you spoke of another whose expenses were the ordinary expenses of
gentlemen, they wondered by what inventions of extravagance he could get
through so much money. They themselves pretended to spend much less than
they really spent, and they always affected astonishment when they heard
how much it cost other people to live exactly in their own way. They
considered that this was modesty; but was it not just as untruthful as the
commoner vice of assuming a style more showy than the means warrant?

In France and Italy the departure from the truth is almost invariably in
the direction of overstatement, unless the speaker has some distinct
purpose to serve by adopting the opposite method, as when he desires to
depreciate the importance of an enemy. In England people habitually
understate, and the remarkable thing is that they believe themselves to be
strictly truthful in doing so. The word "lying" is too harsh a term to be
applied either to the English or the Continental habit in this matter; but
it is quite fair to say that both of them miss the truth, one in falling
short of it, the other in going beyond it.

An English family has seen the Alps for the first time. A young lady says
Switzerland is "nice;" a young gentleman has decided that it is "jolly."
This is what the habit of understatement may bring us down to,--absolute
inadequacy. The Alps are not "nice," and they are not "jolly;" far more
powerful adjectives are only the precise truth in this instance. The Alps
are stupendous, overwhelming, magnificent, sublime. A Frenchman in similar
circumstances will be embarrassed, not by any timidity about using a
sufficiently forcible expression, but because he is eager to exaggerate;
and one scarcely knows how to exaggerate the tremendous grandeur of the
finest Alpine scenery. He will have recourse to eloquent phraseology, to
loudness of voice, and finally, when he feels that these are still
inadequate, he will employ energetic gesture. I met a Frenchman who tried
to make me comprehend how many English people there were at Cannes in
winter. "Il y en a--des Anglais--il y en a,"--then he hesitated, whilst
seeking for an adequate expression. At last, throwing out both his arms,
he cried, "_Il y en a plus qu'en Angleterre!_"

The English love of understatement is even more visible in moral than in
material things. If an Englishman has to describe any person or action
that is particularly admirable on moral grounds, he will generally
renounce the attempt to be true, and substitute for the high and
inspiring truth some quiet little conventional expression that will
deliver him from what he most dreads,--the appearance of any noble
enthusiasm. It does not occur to him that this inadequacy, this
insufficiency of expression, is one of the forms of untruth; that to
describe noble and admirable conduct in commonplace and non-appreciative
language is to pay tribute of a kind especially acceptable to the Father
of Lies. If we suppose the existence of a modern Mephistopheles watching
the people of our own time and pleased with every kind of moral evil, we
may readily imagine how gratified he must be to observe the moral
indifference which uses exactly the same terms for ordinary and heroic
virtue, which never rises with the occasion, and which always seems to
take it for granted that there are neither noble natures nor high purposes
in the world. The dead mediocrity of common talk, too timid and too
indolent for any expression equivalent either to the glory of external
nature or the intellectual and moral grandeur of great and excellent men,
has driven many of our best minds from conversation into literature,
because in literature it is not thought extraordinary for a man to express
himself with a degree of force and clearness equivalent to the energy of
his feelings, the accuracy of his knowledge, and the importance of his
subject. The habit of using inadequate expression in conversation has led
to the strange result that if an Englishman has any power of thought, any
living interest in the great problems of human destiny, you will know
hardly anything of the real action of his mind unless he becomes an
author. He dares not express any high feelings in conversation, because
he dreads what Stuart Mill called the "sneering depreciation" of them; and
if such feelings are strong enough in him to make expression an imperative
want, he has to utter them on paper. By a strange result of
conventionalism, a man is admired for using language of the utmost
clearness and force in literature, whilst if he talked as vigorously as he
wrote (except, perhaps, in extreme privacy and even secrecy with one or
two confidential companions) he would be looked upon as scarcely
civilized. This may be one of the reasons why English literature,
including the periodical, is so abundant in quantity and so full of
energy. It is a mental outlet, a _dérivatif_.

The kind of untruthfulness which may be called _untruthfulness by
inadequacy_ causes many strong and earnest minds to keep aloof from
general society, which seems to them insipid. They find frank and clear
expression in books, they find it even in newspapers and reviews, but they
do not find it in social intercourse. This deficiency drives many of the
more intelligent of our countrymen into the strange and perfectly
unnatural position of receiving ideas almost exclusively through the
medium of print, and of communicating them only by writing. I remember an
Englishman of great learning and ability who lived almost entirely in that
manner. He received his ideas through books and the learned journals, and
whenever any thought occurred to him he wrote it immediately on a slip of
paper. In society he was extremely absent, and when he spoke it was in an
apologetic and timidly suggestive manner, as if he were always afraid
that what he had to say might not be interesting to the hearer, or might
even appear objectionable, and as if he were quite ready to withdraw it.
He was far too anxious to be well-behaved ever to venture on any forcible
expression of opinion or to utter any noble sentiment; and yet his
convictions on all important subjects were very serious, and had been
arrived at after deep thought, and he was capable of real elevation of
mind. His writings are the strongest possible contrast to his oral
expression of himself. They are bold in opinion, very clear and decided in
statement, and full of well-ascertained knowledge.

ESSAY XVII.

ON A REMARKABLE ENGLISH PECULIARITY.

In De Tocqueville's admirable book on "Democracy in America" there is an
interesting chapter on the behavior of Englishmen to each other when they
meet in a foreign country:--

    "Two Englishmen meet by chance at the antipodes; they are surrounded
    by foreigners whose language and mode of life are hardly known to
    them.

    "These two men begin by studying each other very curiously and with a
    kind of secret uneasiness; they then turn away, or, if they meet, they
    are careful to speak only with a constrained and absent air, and to
    say things of little importance.

    "And yet they know nothing of each other; they have never met, and
    suppose each other to be perfectly honorable. Why, then, do they take
    such pains to avoid intercourse?"

De Tocqueville was a very close observer, and I hardly know a single
instance in which his faculty of observation shows itself in greater
perfection. In his terse style of writing every word tells; and even in my
translation, unavoidably inferior to the original, you actually see the
two Englishmen and the minute details of their behavior.

Let me now introduce the reader to a little scene at a foreign _table
d'hôte_, as described with great skill and truth by a well-known English
novelist, Miss Betham-Edwards:--

    "The time, September; the scene, a _table d'hôte_ dinner in a
    much-frequented French town. For the most part nothing can be more
    prosaic than these daily assemblies of English tourists bound for
    Switzerland and the South, and a slight sprinkling of foreigners, the
    two elements seldom or never blending; a visitant from another planet
    might, indeed, suppose that between English and French-speaking people
    lay such a gulf as divides the blond New Englander from the swarth
    African, so icy the distance, so unbroken the reserve. Nor is there
    anything like cordiality between the English themselves. Our imaginary
    visitant from Jupiter would here find matter for wonder also, and
    would ask himself the reason of this freezing reticence among the
    English fellowship. What deadly feud of blood, caste, or religion
    could thus keep them apart? Whilst the little knot of Gallic
    travellers at the farther end of the table straightway fall into
    friendliest talk, the long rows of Britons of both sexes and all ages
    speak only in subdued voices and to the members of their own family."

Next, let me give an account of a personal experience in a Parisian hotel.
It was a little, unpretending establishment that I liked for its quiet and
for the honest cookery. There was a _table d'hôte_, frequented by a few
French people, generally from the provinces, and once there came some
English visitors who had found out the merits of the little place. It
happened that I had been on the Continent a long time without revisiting
England, so when my fellow-countrymen arrived I had foolish feelings of
pleasure on finding myself amongst them, and spoke to them in our common
English tongue. The effect of this bold experiment was extremely curious,
and to me, at the time, almost inexplicable, as I had forgotten that
chapter by De Tocqueville. The new-comers were two or three young men and
one in middle life. The young men seemed to be reserved more from timidity
than pride. They were quite startled and frightened when spoken to, and
made answer with grave brevity, as if apprehensive of committing
themselves to some compromising statement. With an audacity acquired by
habits of intercourse with foreigners, I spoke to the older Englishman.
His way of putting me down would have been a charming study for a
novelist. His manner resembled nothing so much as that of a dignified
English minister,--Mr. Gladstone for example, when he is questioned in the
House by some young and presumptuous member of the Opposition. A few brief
words were vouchsafed to me, accompanied by an expression of countenance
which, if not positively stern, was intentionally divested of everything
like interest or sympathy. It then began to dawn upon me that perhaps this
Englishman was conscious of some august social superiority; that he might
even know a lord; and I thought, "If he does really know a lord we are
very likely to hear his lordship's name." My expectation was not fulfilled
to the letter, but it was quite fulfilled in spirit; for in talking to a
Frenchman (for me to hear) our Englishman shortly boasted that he knew an
English duchess, giving her name and place of abode. "One day when I was
at ---- House I said to the Duchess of ----," and he repeated what he had
said to Her Grace; but it would have no interest for the reader, as it
probably had none for the great lady herself. Shade of Thackeray! why
wast thou not there to add a paragraph to the "Book of Snobs"?

The next day came another Englishman of about fifty, who distinguished
himself in another way. He did not know a duchess, or, if he did, we were
not informed of his good fortune; but he assumed a wonderful air of
superiority to his temporary surroundings, that filled me, I must say,
with the deepest respect and awe. The impression he desired to produce was
that he had never before been in so poor a little place, and that our
society was far beneath what he was accustomed to. He criticised things
disdainfully, and when I ventured to speak to him he condescended, it is
true, to enter into conversation, but in a manner that seemed to say, "Who
and what are you that you dare to speak to a gentleman like me, who am, as
you must perceive, a person of wealth and consideration?"

This account of our English visitors is certainly not exaggerated by any
excessive sensitiveness on my part. Paris is not the Desert; and one who
has known it for thirty years is not dependent for society on a chance
arrival from beyond the sea. For me these Englishmen were but actors in a
play, and perhaps they afforded me more amusement with their own peculiar
manners than if they had been pleasant and amiable. One result, however,
was inevitable. I had been full of kindly feeling towards my
fellow-countrymen when they came, but this soon gave place to
indifference; and their departure was rather a relief. When they had left
Paris, there arrived a rich French widow from the south with her son and
a priest, who seemed to be tutor and chaplain. The three lived at our
_table d'hôte_; and we found them most agreeable, always ready to take
their share in conversation, and, although far too well-bred to commit the
slightest infraction of the best French social usages, either through
ignorance or carelessness, they were at the same time perfectly open and
easy in their manners. They set up no pretensions, they gave themselves no
airs, and when they returned to their own southern sunshine we felt their
departure as a loss.

The foreign idea of social intercourse under such conditions (that is, of
intercourse between strangers who are thrown together accidentally) is
simply that it is better to pass an hour agreeably than in dreary
isolation. People may not have much to say that is of any profound
interest, but they enjoy the free play of the mind; and it sometimes
happens, in touching on all sorts of subjects, that unexpected lights are
thrown upon them. Some of the most interesting conversations I have ever
heard have taken place at foreign _tables d'hôte_, between people who had
probably never met before and who would separate forever in a week. If by
accident they meet again, such acquaintances recognize each other by a
bow, but there is none of that intrusiveness which the Englishman so
greatly dreads.

Besides these transient acquaintanceships which, however brief, are by no
means without their value to one's experience and culture, the foreign way
of understanding a _table d'hôte_ includes the daily and habitual meeting
of regular subscribers, a meeting looked forward to with pleasure as a
break in the labors of the day, or a mental refreshment when they are
over. Nothing affords such relief from the pressure of work as a free and
animated conversation on other subjects. Of this more permanent kind of
_table d'hôte_, Mr. Lewes gave a lively description in his biography of
Goethe:--

    "The English student, clerk, or bachelor, who dines at an
    eating-house, chop-house, or hotel, goes there simply to get his
    dinner, and perhaps look at the 'Times.' Of the other diners he knows
    nothing, cares little. It is rare that a word is interchanged between
    him and his neighbor. Quite otherwise in Germany. There the same
    society is generally to be found at the same table. The _table d'hôte_
    is composed of a circle of _habitués_, varied by occasional visitors
    who in time become, perhaps, members of the circle. _Even with
    strangers conversation is freely interchanged_; and in a little while
    friendships are formed over these dinner-tables, according as natural
    tastes and likings assimilate, which, extending beyond the mere hour
    of dinner, are carried into the current of life. Germans do not rise
    so hastily from the table as we, for time with them is not so
    precious; life is not so crowded; time can be found for quiet
    after-dinner talk. The cigars and coffee, which appear before the
    cloth is removed, keep the company together; and in that state of
    suffused comfort which quiet digestion creates, they hear without
    anger the opinions of antagonists."