Chapter XXVIII: Part 28

The Principles of Human Knowledge follow up the attack on abstract ideas made in the New Theory of Vision. The introduction, with its attack on Conceptualism,[226] prepares the way for a more sweeping assault on abstractions. Now Berkeley almost invariably attacks a general question by making an assault on one special form which it takes. His method is borrowed from Locke, who shows that all our ideas may be reduced to ideas of sensation and reflection by selecting one or two most unlikely to conform to such a reduction, and proving by analysis that they do. Berkeley begins to attack the Lockian doctrine of abstract ideas by showing that there is no abstract extension common to sight and touch; he proves the providence of God by explaining the beauty and value of the language of vision; and he exhibits the organism of the universe by tracing the connection between the virtues of tar-water and the hidden mysteries of things. He always seeks a concrete instance of the abstract fact, and assails a particular case of the general principle he wishes to attack. This method is carried out in the 'Principles.' He does not assail the doctrine of abstract ideas in general, nor endeavour to strip Lockianism of all its notionalism. He fastens on one particular abstract idea, which because of its importance and prevailing influence may be considered as the champion of the rest, and puts to flight the armies of the Philistines by slaying their Goliath.

The sum and head of all abstract ideas is the idea of matter, as this was used in the new philosophy of the seventeenth century. For what is an abstract idea? It is a connecting link between sensations--something to which they may be referred, in which they are supposed to inhere, and which is thought to account for their permanence of objective reality. For example, 'white' is a single quality or a single sensation felt by me now and here when I look at a sheet of paper. But 'whiteness' is the abstract idea to which all these single sensations may be referred, and in which they may inhere and so have a permanence and objective reality, so that this sheet of paper, because it has 'whiteness,' is always and by every one seen to be 'white.' The abstract ideas of extension, of situation, and of number, are examples which are supposed to be of more importance, and to include a vastly larger number of individuals. Now the one idea to which every sense-particular, without exception, may be referred is the idea of matter or material substance. It gives them permanence, reality, and objectivity. It is the germ, the centre, the vital spot of the whole system of abstractions. Destroy it, and the system perishes. Show that it is an illusion, a mere word,--that it can give no reality, no permanence,--that it cannot afford a basis for scientific knowledge nor community of belief, and the whole doctrine which seeks to build science and reality on such a foundation disappears, and on the ground thus cleared a more substantial, real, and living structure of belief and opinion may be erected. This seems to be the guiding thought in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' and in the 'Dialogues.' It is mainly negative,--a denial of matter, and therefore of all abstractions. But amidst the negative or destructive reasonings there are traces, as there must be, of positive construction. The _one_ positive principle which is always present is that spiritual intuition which we have already spoken of,--the all-pervading belief inherited from the mystics, and particularly from Malebranche and Norris, that mind or spirit is the one reality and the one fount of active agency. But this intuition, always present, is never adequately expressed nor applied. Berkeley either meant to reserve its discussion for another 'Part,' or his natural impatience made him overlook the necessity of explaining the steps in his analysis of all _reality_ into personal spirit, and all _causality_ into the conscious activity of such personal spirits. He is always confused, hesitating, and sometimes conflicting in his statements about the way in which 'mind' becomes the only real existence, and the 'activity of mind' the only real agency; and it is in the skill with which he has pierced together the scattered hints into one really complete and so far adequate explanation of the universe of things that Professor Fraser's unwearied patient study and just appreciation of his author is seen to most advantage.

Our experience as given us in the senses is made up 'of sensations, ideas, or phenomena,--facts of which there is a perception or consciousness.' These sensations, and nothing else, make the material of the sensible universe which we see and know and live in,--they are the material out of which the shifting scenes in this wonderful panorama of sense-life are formed,--they are the exciting causes of all the various forms of our mental life, of our joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, hopes and despairings. When we are conscious of the outward world, it is of a world of sensations which is _immediately_ present to our minds and in our minds; for the essence of an idea or sensation is that it is perceived,--its _esse_ is _percipi_. But this is not the whole of Berkeley's theory of matter, as many critics would have us believe. There is along with this 'immediate perception of extended sensible reality' a 'mediate perception or a presumptive inference of the existence of sensible things and their relations.' The knowledge we have of the external world of the senses cannot be reduced to the sensations of which we are actually conscious for the time being. There are, besides the sensations immediately present, clustering groups of others which we do not immediately perceive. Tangible things are signified by visual sensations, and sounds recall colours and shapes. Every isolated sensation is significant of more than itself, and _mere_ sensation is impossible. And this significance of sensations, the reality of their _relations_ to each other, recognised and insisted upon by Berkeley, makes his scheme different from any system of merely subjective idealism, and supplies a basis for objective or scientific knowledge. 'For,' as Professor Fraser says, 'faith in an established or external association between our sense-phenomena is the basis of the constructive activity of intellect in all inductive interpretation of sensible things.' It is this 'external,' or imposed association, which _universalizes_ and gives objective existence to sensations and the sense-world, and so far Berkeley's explanation does not differ very much from that of Mr. Mill or Professor Bain.

But then, what is Berkeley's 'association'? It is, as Professor Fraser well puts it, 'his religious faith in the constancy of the Divine constitution of the Cosmos.' The associative relations of things which give permanence and objective reality and intelligibility to the world of sense-phenomena are not to be explained by any hap-hazard one-coming-after-another, as modern psychologists do. They are due to the active agency of the Supreme Mind which links sensations together in ways of His own, so that there exists, not a chaos of varying, changing phenomena, but an orderly intelligible system of sense things, co-existing and successive, significant of each other, and all together making the interpretable language of Him whose designs they embody, and by whose constant activity they are all maintained. 'And thus,' as Professor Fraser has beautifully expressed it:--

'The only conceivable and practical, and for us the only
possible, substantiality in the material world
is--permanence of co-existence or aggregation among
sensations; and the only conceivable and practical, and for
us the only possible, causality among phenomena
is--permanence or invariableness among their successions.

These two are almost (but not quite) one. The actual or
conscious co-existence of all the sensations which
constitute a particular tree, or a particular mountain,
cannot be simultaneously realized. A few co-existing visible
signs, for instance, lead us to expect that the many other
sensations of which the tree is the virtual co-constituent
would gradually be perceived by us, if the conditions for
our having actual sensations of all the other qualities were
fulfilled. The substantiality and causality of matter thus
resolve into a Universal Sense-symbolism, the interpretation
of which is the office of physical science. The material
world is a system of interpretable signs, dependent for its
actual existence in sense upon the sentient mind of the
interpreter; but significant of guaranteed pains and
pleasures, and the guaranteed means of avoiding and
attaining pains and pleasures: significant too of other
minds, and their thoughts, feelings, and volitions; and
significant above all of Supreme Mind, through whose
Activity the signs are sustained, and whose Archetypal Ideas
are the source of those universal or invariable relations of
theirs which make them both practically and scientifically
significant or objective. The permanence and efficiency
attributed to Matter is in God--in the constitutive
Universals of Supreme Mind: sensations or sense-given
phenomena themselves, and sensible things, so far as they
consist of sensations, can be neither permanent nor
efficient; they are in constant flux. This indeed is from
the beginning the tone of Berkeley himself--much deepened in
"Siris."'

In Berkeley's earlier philosophy, and even in his later, this grand conception of an orderly universe permeated and ever upheld by mind, is by no means fully or consistently worked out, as Professor Fraser himself acknowledges. The starting-point itself is somewhat confused. Berkeley starts with sensations. But the universe is not a universe of sensations, but of sensible things, and although the formula _esse est percipi_ will at once explain the meaning of a sensation, it will not, without some argument and explanation, account for the meaning of a sensible thing. Berkeley did not sufficiently recognise the difference, and he leaped to a conclusion which, however right, should have been reasoned out. A whole is not the aggregate number of its parts, it is the sum of the parts _plus_ their being placed together. There is a difference between a house and a heap of stones. Now Berkeley did not seem to see this, at least in his earlier philosophy. Tangible distance was to him a series of _minima tangibilia_, a series of tactual points; visible distance a series of _visible points_, and that only. Whereas, distance is really the sensible points _plus_ their arrangement. The sensible thing is really the complex of sensations _plus_ their unification. We are not disposed to believe with Professor Ueberweg[227] that this oversight amounted to a begging of the whole question, we hold with Professor Fraser that there is only a little confusion in apprehending the problem aright, and a rashness in leaping to a conclusion which should rather have been elaborated and proved. Berkeley thought, as Professor Fraser says, that 'the consciousness of my own permanence, amid the changes in my senses, is the only archetype, in my experience, of proper substance or permanence; and apart from this experience, permanence or substance is an unintelligible word.' His thought was not substantially distinct from Dr. Ueberweg's own,--who says[228] 'that individual intuitions gradually arise out of the original _blur_ of perception, when man first begins to recognise himself an individual essence in opposition to the external world,' and who elsewhere[229] makes the notion of self the type of the essence of things. That unique thing called 'self' or 'I' is the only real permanent unity known, and is therefore the type of all permanence and unity elsewhere. The _esse_ or the essence which gives shape and endurance to fleeting formless sensations is mind--my mind or the Supreme Mind. It is the _percipi_, _being perceived_, or coming under the formative influence of mind, which gives to a series of sensations that unity which we can call 'distance,' that shape and unity to the cluster of sensations which we call 'leaf' that orderly series arrangement and permanence which we call the system of things. The action of mind upon sensations, forming and arranging them, is not discussed by Berkeley. He contents himself with his vague spiritual intuition, and leaves his readers to work out his meaning. It does seem clear to us, however, both from his references to the archetypes of ideas in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge,' and more especially from his interesting discussions on the native archetypes of ideas in his letters to Johnson, that he did not altogether overlook the distinction between mere complexes of sensations and sensible things; but that he was sensible of this distinction, and wished to explain that the complex of sensations was transformed into an orderly stable sensible thing by the unifying formative mind putting as it were its stamp upon it.[230]

It was undoubtedly a hindrance to the completeness of Berkeley's thoughts that he had no clear and distinct scheme of ethical relations before his mind when he was investigating the relations between mind and phenomena. It is true that, as Professor Fraser says, 'the moral presumption of our individual free and proper agency is obscurely involved in Berkeley's philosophy of sense from the first.' But the ethical relations of the individual human spirit were nowhere clearly seen, and were not made its leading and peculiar characteristic. It was reserved for Kant to place the moral relations of these individuals and their significance in the world of things in due prominence, and it has been easier for men such as Schleiermacher and Herman Lotze, who have come after Kant, and who have maintained a doctrine of the spiritual relations which exist in and give order, cohesion, and permanence to the universe, not unlike Berkeley's, to develop the doctrine of these relations so far as the human spirit goes, and give more thoroughness and completeness to the scheme. We may conceive Berkeley carefully working out the double relation of human to divine spirit, and finding in the sensible universe the veil which hangs between, not merely the orderly and pregnant language of the Creator Spirit to be interpreted and made intelligible by the creature spirit, but also the shadowy reflection of the working of the Creator towards the creature, and of the striving of the creature towards the Creator. Each thing, class, order, genus, and race, with all its relations to all the other parts of the vast order of things, filling the place in the organism in which the Creator placed it, acting, influencing, and ruling, according to its function and place in the arrangement of the whole; just as the individual, or class, or nation fulfils, or ought to fulfil, the ethical duties which its hands find to do, so that the universe, in all its spheres of animate and inanimate life, of organic and inorganic bodies, becomes in its mutual action and reaction, as Schleiermacher says, a 'fainter ethic.'

Berkeley approaches this in his greatest metaphysical work, the 'Siris.' It is here that the thought of organism or development in things and in the universe, which comes in occasionally in his earlier writings, is more fully expressed and even elaborated. The very name suggests it, the book is a _chain_ of philosophical reflections and inquiries. Faithful to the method of his younger days, Berkeley takes a concrete instance of the concatenation of nature. He discourses on the virtues of tar-water, and thoughts on these lead up to the highest mysteries of the universe. But when we divest the thoughts of this particular form, we have such a system of the universe as Bacon working with Plotinus might have conceived. The centre source and light of all is the One Supreme Spirit--the personal omnipresent God in whom we and all things live and more and have our being. The universe is his reflection, it represents his thoughts, it is the revelation of his mind and will, it is his language. But the old puzzling word 'arbitrary' has disappeared, and this language of nature is seen to depend upon great laws and to be capable of interpretation because so dependent. The esse of sensation and of the sense-world generally, is still _percipi_, but the ambiguity lying in the word is carefully distinguished. On the one hand all things are dependent on the creative and upholding influence of the Supreme Spirit. He it is that, making all things after their _kinds_, sends forth and sustains the archetypes of things. On the other hand, the fleeting sense-world is framed and shaped by the individual mind into the universe of things, in accordance with the divine ideas or archetypes which lie hidden in it. There is a double meaning in the phrase, _esse_ is _percipi_. It means both that these ideas are dependent for the possibility of existence on the divine thoughts, or archetypes whose sensible shadows they are, and also that all sensible things are dependent for their particular formation and position on the formative powers of the human mind, which works in each man by general laws of human intelligence, in accordance with and for the discovery of the divine ideas lying immanent in things. And thus human knowledge is a reproduction, or discovery and representation of the thoughts which the divine creative thinking has built into things;[231] human science is a presaging or reading of the letters and words of nature which manifest its order and harmony, in the faith and expectancy that this same order and harmony now prevailing, because it depends on the divine ideas of the Creator, is fixed and enduring;[232] and the 'proper name of this world is Spirit--free immortal Spirit--Spirit in communication with Spirit--Spirit in dependence on and in reconciliation, through Christ, with the one absolute Spirit--God.'[233]

ART. IX.--_The Future of Europe._

(1) _Der Deutschen Volkszahl und Sprachgebiet in den Europaischen staaten eine statistische untersuchung von Richard Böekh._ Berlin: J. Guttenay. 1871.

(2.) _France, Alsace and Lorraine._ London: Trübner & Co. 1870.

(3.) _The French Case Truly Stated._ By AUGUSTUS GRANVILLE STAPLETON. London: E. Stanford. 1871.

(4.) _La France et la Prusse, pendant l'invasion de 1870._ Par ERARD DE CHOISEUL GOUFFIER. 2me Edition. Luxembourg: Pierre Bruck. 1870.

(5.) _La France devant l'Europe._ By JULES MICHELET. 2me Edition. Ferrier: Hachette and Cie. 1871.

(6.) _Elsass und Lothringen nachweise wie diese provenzen dem deutschen Reiche verloren gingen._ VON ADOLF SCHMIDT. Dritte auf. Leipzic: Vert and Co. 1870.

(7.) _Prussian Aggrandizement and English Policy._ London: Ridgway. 1870.

(8.) _Krieg und Friede._ VON D. F. STRAUSS. Leipzic: S. Herzel. 1870.

(9.) _The Interests of Europe in the Conditions of Peace._ London: Stanford. 1870.

(10.) _Recueil des Documents sur les Exactions, vols et cruautés des armées Prussiennes en France._ Bordeaux: Feret et fils. 1871.

(11.) _La République neutre d'Alsace._ Par le COMTE A. DE GASPARIN. Genève et Bäle. 1871.

(12.) _Who is responsible for the War?_ By SCRUTATOR. London: Rivingtons. 1871.

(13.) _Europe of the near Future._ By EMERITUS PROFESSOR FRANCIS W. NEWMAN. Trübner and Co. 1871.

(14.) _Diary of the French Campaign of 1870; with the Decrees, Telegrams, and Proclamations of his Majesty the King of Prussia._ London: Trübner and Co. 1871.

There are two antagonistic theories which profess to summarise history. Vico attempted, in the last century, to prove that the course of human events had, like the planets, an orbit of their own, into which they returned after a certain number of years. In fact, according to this philosopher, the tendency of history was to repeat itself, much like a compound circulating decimal. But the rapid development of physical science has, of late years, thrown this theory very much into the shade, by confronting it with the more glittering notion of human perfectibility. Mankind, instead of gyrating in an ellipse, move along a line of infinite progression. Scientific men fondly imagined that the march of intellect was destined to impel society, through stages of uninterrupted progress, to a fanciful millennium. Knowledge was to be the spiritual means of redeeming the nations. When mankind came to understand their relations to the surrounding universe, Astrea would again visit the earth, and the golden age return. There were not wanting many minor postulates which seemed to support this splendid vision. All the wars of Europeans found their root in dynastic interests, and would vanish, when the wishes of the million became the main-spring of politics. The knell of standing armies was rung by a citizen soldiery; and with standing armies vanished all fear of territorial aggrandisement. Economic inventions and the wide ramifications of industrial interests were fast binding mankind in a network of harmony and peace. Under war waged for the spell of these illusions, philosophers and statesmen had looked back upon the past as the wilderness of humanity, and, from the heights of Pisgah, sighted the promised land. Even Gioberti, priest though he was, did not shrink from avowing in his primato, that if the Jews looked forward to the Messiah as yet to come, in the light of the golden age, he was as staunch in that belief as the stoutest Israelite among them. The rationalist divines have vied with the poets of our own age in announcing the approach of the dawn of an era of universal peace and happiness. In the midst of these delightful anticipations a speck appears upon a sunny sky, no bigger than a man's hand. But it suddenly swells to gigantic dimensions and sheds disastrous twilight over the fairest regions of the earth. Without any rational pretext whatever, two of the most enlightened nations of Europe rush with murderous weapons at each other's throats. They close with deadly gripe; inflict upon each other mortal blows, until one sinks through sheer exhaustion. The collapsed state is then let blood. Heavy gyves are placed upon it, from which there is little chance of escape for many years to come, and then only by combination with some other power. Between two races who were, a little time ago, beginning to forget their old animosity in acts of amity and goodwill, the flames of hate are anew enkindled with a vehemence destined to last through all time. Now these phenomena may, doubtless, be explained by the usual philosophic method of assigning very simple causes to very complicated effects.

As to which power is humanly responsible for these multiplied disasters, is discussed at large in the pamphlets before us.[234] The question is not simply historical, but bears directly upon the reasonableness of the terms of peace which have been imposed. If Prussia is as blameless in the transactions which led to the outbreak, as Bismark would make out, it is obvious he had some reason for his recent severity. But this, we think, can in no way be sustained. We do not share the bias of the authors who have written on this subject. It is our opinion, having heard, with the impartiality of a _nisi prius_ judge, all that can be said upon the subject, that both parties have been lamentably in the wrong; that the diplomatic relations between France and Prussia for the last six years have been conducted upon principles more worthy of thieves than honest politicians; that each has been attempting to overreach the other; that Napoleon began these subterranean intrigues with a view to secure all the prizes of war without fighting for them, and that Bismark so manipulated events as to cause the Emperor to fight after all, and left him nothing but defeat for his pains. Each knew that the mining operations in which both were engaged, had gone so far, that they must explode somewhere, and each endeavoured to direct the train from his own territory to that of his neighbour. It is beyond question that Bismark, if he did not plan the Hohenzollern intrigue with his eyes open to all the consequences, knew of its existence when his Government denied all knowledge of it. It is also clear that Baron Von Theile, in a conference with Benedetti, repudiated, on the part of his Government, the very suggestion, after Bismark and the King had expressed their approval of the candidature.[235] From the declarations of the French ambassador on this occasion, Bismark must have known the irritating effect the avowal of the scheme must produce on the French Government. He also refused to advise the King simply to withdraw his consent from Leopold's acceptance of the Spanish crown, when pressed to do so by the British Government,[236] though that step would have probably induced France to give up the quarrel. When the Prince withdrew his claims to the Spanish throne at the instance of his father, Prussia sullenly refused to renounce her sanction to those claims, and thus bore a very conspicuous part in drawing upon Europe the consequences which followed. Then, there is a great deal of mystery about the telegram from Ems conveying the falsehood that the King, in a crowded watering-place, turned upon his heel when accosted by, and refused to speak with, the French ambassador. Now, it is expressly admitted by Bismark, that he sent copies of that telegram to all the German representatives abroad; and either himself or his subordinates must have caused its insertion in the official Berlin gazette, by which the war excitement in both countries was roused to fever height.[237] We all know it was that telegram which impelled the French Government to launch their declaration of war. It is also upon record that France, in the course of February, made, through Lord Clarendon, two overtures to Berlin for mutual disarmament, offering to reduce her various contingents to the extent of 90,000 men, which was, in fact, one-eighth of her army; but that Bismark, having churlishly refused to listen to the first proposal, did so far entertain the second as to forward it to the King, who, under the counsels of his astute chancellor, declined the proposition on the ground that the military organization of Prussia was the vital principle of her constitution, and that she was least of all inclined to modify it, in front of an aggressive Russia, and with the probability of an alliance between Austria and the South German States[238]--two pretexts, the hollowness of which, recent events sufficiently demonstrate. Now, though the conduct of France is utterly indefensible in provoking the conflict after the Hohenzollern grievance had been substantively withdrawn, we cannot acquit Prussia of irritating her adversary, and of provoking, in a great degree, the blow she seemed anxious to repel. In point of fact, both parties had their respective interests in the struggle; both desired to fight; both, like two pugilists, had been in training for the encounter during the last five years, and both were determined that so opportune an occasion should not be lost for bringing it on.

The indulgence of military vanity, and the desire to dominate Europe, are faults which may be ascribed to France in a larger degree than to Prussia. But Germany, after having disarmed her antagonist, has indulged these propensities with a mercenary spirit, and with the manifest intention of wiping France out of the list of the great powers. The frankness with which this is avowed is admirable in its simplicity. France must be hindered from being dangerous in the future. She must, therefore, be reduced to such a position as to render her alike both impotent and defenceless. She must be degraded from her state in the family of nations. She is, therefore, stripped of her armaments: her artillery, her muskets, her swords, her ammunition, her military stores, in fact, nearly all her implements and panoply of war, are carted off to Berlin. That she may not be in an immediate position to supply their place, she is loaded with a pecuniary indemnity which must exhaust the energies of another generation. The frontiers of the country are thrown back to the state in which they were in the middle of the sixteenth century. The strong chain of fortresses which France has erected or fortified during the last three hundred years, with two or three minor exceptions, have been wrenched from her by her enemy. Strasburg, Bitsche, Phalsburg, Thionville, and Metz, protecting that flank of France which is most exposed to attack, are now only so many reservoirs, ready, at a moment's notice, to open the rivers of invasion and deluge the country. Metz, which is only some 160 miles from Paris, is a naked rapier laid across the defenceless throat of France. With her greatest buckler of defence in the hands of Prussia, anything like independent action on the part of France is manifestly impossible. While Metz is in the hands of Prussia, she must remain as politically weak as Piedmont, with Austria in the Quadrilateral. With a bankrupt exchequer, with a pillaged population, with a disorganized government, with a defenceless frontier, with a mutilated territory, with civil feud in her capitals, with all her strongholds in the hands of the enemy, with an imposition of £200,000,000 sterling as a war indemnity, France is not likely to recover her physical strength in our day; and when vigour returns to her shattered frame, it will be only to feel she has lost her place in the councils of Europe.

There are, of course, many excellent reasons assigned for this sort of beneficence, which need only be stated to win common assent. Metz and Alsace belonged to the house of Hapsburg in the fourteenth century. They ought, therefore, to belong to the house of Hohenzollern in the nineteenth,--a convincing argument, which no country so consistently as Prussia could urge with elaborate effect. If every nation which has been disintegrated during the last two hundred years, should get back its own to-morrow, we all know how much Prussia would be a gainer by the transfer. But the inhabitants of Alsace speak a patois of German and French, which contains something of both, and is not either. They are, therefore, clearly entitled to be governed from Berlin. This principle is beautifully illustrated by the Sclave-speaking population of Silesia, the Polish community of Posen, and the Danes of Schleswig. What more in keeping with this piebald collection of people, in the name of nationality, than the French people at Metz? Then, were not Alsace and Lorraine taken by force and guile from Germany? and what more proper to retake them by the same openhanded violence? But it is forgotten that these provinces were first wrenched from France by Germany, so that to restore the original balance, France will have to scramble for them again. By this flux and reflux of empire, at least, one principle is fully assured. Nations are prevented from becoming stagnant. The standing pool of industrial affairs is defecated. War becomes, not an exceptional, but the normal condition of the universe. Civilization has the consolation of knowing that it has no sooner got on its legs, and is about to gather into its granaries an exuberant harvest, than it is knocked over again and its fruits are withered.

It is singular that German ideologists, whose views are so sound upon abstract subjects, should put forth such inconsistent trash, to justify their newly-adopted policy of territorial aggrandizement. There are, however, a large number of sentimentalists in the world, who have a strange hankering for the past, whose sympathies it was necessary to secure. The German archives have, therefore, been ransacked for every tittle of evidence to prove that Metz was a German province in the fourteenth century; and, therefore, if any Frenchmen are found there in the nineteenth, they ought to be under Prussian rule. But to do Bismark justice, he has a great contempt for trashy dialectics of this character. He takes his stand upon the firmer ground of political expediency. France has invaded Germany some twenty-seven times, stimulated entirely by her lust for the Rhine provinces. It is, therefore, necessary to reduce her to such conditions that she is not likely to offend again. In the case of the German ideologists, we grant the premise, but deny the inference. They are doubtless sincere in their unreason. But Bismark's premiss and conclusion are alike vicious, and no one knows that better than himself.

The earlier wars of France against the Empire arose out of the struggle for these border possessions when the posterity of Lothaire II., to whom they belonged, had died out; but in these wars, France, then being parcelled out among numerous vassals, had the worst of it. A series of German irruptions, under Henry the Fowler, and the Othos, united these domains to the Empire. They were, however, held more or less as fiefs of the crown of France. The French element within, and French intrigue without, always gave the German emperors great uneasiness; and this, combined with further schemes of obtaining fresh fiefs in Burgundy and Flanders, exposed France to two German invasions--one under Henry V., and the other under Otho IV., which made Louis the Fat and Philip Augustus tremble for their suzerainty. But the Germans soon found in Italy a richer field for their exploits, and France was left to constitute her unity without much hindrance, until the empire fell into Spanish hands. Afraid, then, of being bodily eaten up, her monarchs became aggressive; but their blows were aimed, not against Germany, but against Spain, unluckily without any great effect; for, the towns of France were some half dozen times invaded by the Emperor and his allies, her king captured, and her fortresses demolished. Our share in these plundering transactions helped us to Tournay and Boulogne. In the next series of wars, which arose out of the religious and political dissensions of the empire, if France intermeddled, she was invited to do so by the Protestant princes of Germany, with whom she was allied, and whose interests were menaced by the house of Austria. As the price of her intervention, she got a portion of the disputed frontier; but we never heard that Germany otherwise than freely conceded the long-coveted prize to her, or regarded this portion of the Treaty of Munster as a menace to her liberties. It was not until Louis Quatorze seized Franche Comté, and sent his legions over the Rhine, that Germany manifested any uneasiness at the ambition of France--an uneasiness which the league of Augsburg immediately dispelled, and an ambition which the armies of Eugene and Marlborough levelled to the ground. Hence, Lorraine soon afterwards fell as quietly into the hands of France, as if its exchange for the reversion of Tuscany had been an arrangement of Providence. We are rather curious, therefore, to know how Count Bismark gets his twenty-seven instances of French aggression against Germany, and whether he includes in the list the troops which France lent to Prussia to enable her to retain her hold upon Silesia, and the counter-support she gave Maria Theresa to enable the empress to defeat Prussia. It is evident no parties are responsible for such interventions except those who invite them; and to ascribe to the ambition of the people of France, wars which arose out of the rapacity of his own countrymen, is a phase given to the quarrel which outrages common sense. Even were all the wars carried on under the Louises, the Richelieus, and the feudal princes of France, as wantonly aggressive as Bismark would make out, the French people are no more responsible for them, than the horses which dragged their artillery to the field. They were waged frequently in their own despite, purely for dynastic interests, and as often undertaken to repel aggression, as to make it. Even when the people woke up to their sovereign rights, in 1789, from whom did the first deliberate act of aggression come? From mild and peace-loving Prussia. Scarcely five years ago, we saw both the Saxon and Bavarian palatinate entirely at the mercy of the first French regiment that might have ventured to cross the border, without a hand being stretched forth to snatch the defenceless prize. It is therefore false, in fact, to assign to the French such an incurable lust after German territory, as to warrant the necessity of her political servitude. The French have no specific hatred to the Germans as a people, any more than they have to the Italians, whose territory they have honoured no less frequently with their presence. The allegation of Bismark is not, therefore, very assuring. He revives the memory of these miserable feuds, as a reason why they should be stopped; and produces a treaty, for that purpose, which only transmits them to posterity, wrapped in a blaze of undying vehemence. It is monstrous for the conquerors of a country to assign, as a pretext for its abasement, the participation of its rulers in those quarrels which originated with themselves. The great shield of Germany against French interference is its unity. Had she further insisted upon the fortresses in Alsace and Lorraine being dismantled, with an adequate pecuniary indemnity, she would then have been doubly secure. But when, in addition, she requires the keys of France to be placed in her hands, and the country, bound hand and foot, to be cast under her feet, it is idle to say that Prussia is aiming at mere immunity from aggression. There is a weightier reason behind for the mutilation of France, which it would be inconvenient to avow, and that is the preservation, if not the increase, of her own military ascendancy.

Prussia in making peace consulted her own interests. Had her troops returned to Berlin after concluding with France a wise and durable treaty, that would have occurred which occurred after the peace of 1815--Germany would have demanded free and liberal institutions. There would have been no necessity for Prussian Cæsarism. Berlin would have had to modify her military constitution. There would have been no necessity for vast armaments. The world would have once more settled down to pacific ways. But in leaving behind her an exasperated France, Prussia has the strongest of all motives for inducing Germany to perpetuate her military dictatorship, and keep the war ferment at high pressure. But it is impossible that the most pacific country can remain long under the influence of such a military organization as Prussia commands, without using it as an instrument for further aggrandizement. Were it indeed otherwise, a marvel would occur, the like of which would be unknown in history. Who ever heard of a power suddenly overtopping Europe, and, amid a handful of weaker states, stopping short in her career of aggression? Those who believe in the pacific virtues of Bismark, and the pious sincerity of William, ask us to indulge in anticipations which have never been realised. Did Rome stop when it overran the Peninsula, Macedon when it fulminated over Greece, the Caliphs when they stormed Constantinople, or the Hapsburgs when they conquered Vienna? There is a momentum in all states, once entered upon a career of conquest, which hurries them along with a speed proportionate to the extent of their acquisitions. The law of rising kingdoms may be formulated almost with the same nicety as that of falling bodies. Nor are there any circumstances in this instance calculated to modify its tendency, except such as give it vastly preponderating force and direction.

It must not be overlooked in this case, that the states under the hegemony of Prussia are amongst the poorest in Europe. Some three hundred thousand annually are driven, by fell necessity, to seek that provision in foreign lands which is denied them at home. The little wealth possessed by the home population is not in the possession of their princes and feudal aristocracy, but in the hands of the mercantile class, to whom war would not be in the least distasteful, if it opened out new avenues for their trade. The poverty of the German Junker, however, has been up to the present only equalled by his pretentiousness. Sheridan advised the last generation of them, to sell their high-sounding titles, to buy worsted to mend their stockings. Yet some of our statesmen would have us believe that these gentlemen, long suffering under a painful sense of impecuniosity, will, on waking up to the reality of their being masters of the world, continue to go about, as heretofore, with empty pockets. Can we suppose that a strong state, steeped up to the ears in poverty, will continue quiescent, surrounded by weak states who oppose no barriers to her possession of superabundant wealth? The inference is against everything we know of human nature, even upon the supposition that Prussia, to whom the people have entrusted their fortunes, is the most pacific state in the world, and that they have been attempted to be worried like bleating lambs, in the recent struggle. The only rational conclusion is that the Junkers of Germany will, like every other impoverished class, make the most of their new position. They will sit down to consider what countries contain the great reservoirs of commerce, and by what accession of territory the stream of wealth may be diverted to their own land. Germany is in the condition of the miller who had large mills but no water. Is it likely, when she has the power, she will refrain from entering her neighbour's territory, to divert the course of the element which sweeps by her with such majestic abundance, without rendering any service to herself? If she did not withhold her hand from a few barren roods in the case of Denmark, is she likely to do so when the prize is more tempting, the power to snatch it a thousand degrees more startling, and the chances of failure so much less? There can be only one reply to these questions. If the _bourgeoisie_ condemned the movement, their opposition would be treated with the same indifference as the opposition of the great commercial class to the war of 1866. But the Minister has only to show the trading class that the movement is a commercial venture, and he will convert them into his staunchest adherents.

The German people have acquired of late years a peace-loving character, which, however, is rather adventitious than real, springing more out of the helplessness into which they were thrown by the dissensions of the Diet, than out of any innate disposition to be less quarrelsome than their neighbours. That they are more phlegmatic, more industrious, and less easily roused than the French may be readily admitted. But we should be strangely oblivious of the thirty years' war, of the Silesian wars, of the Swedish and Italian wars, of the Danish and Austrian wars, if we came to the conclusion that, if left to themselves, and in possession of their united strength, they would be the most benignant people in the world. The Germans have always evinced a conservative disposition to follow their feudal chiefs, and, by espousing their quarrels, have kept Europe embroiled for many centuries. In no other country could a small state like Prussia spring out of a mere society of Knight Templars, and in less than two hundred years, take her place among the first powers of the globe. While the smaller states of the empire followed their indolent habits, and cultivated the _dilettante_ tastes of their rulers, Prussia was perpetually sharpening her sword, carving out of her neighbours fresh slices of territory, and using one acquisition as a stepping-stone to another. The acceptance of the peaceful pursuits to which the inaction of the minor states, and the jealous rivalries and despotic tendencies of the larger, impelled their respective populations, as a pledge of the new era of quiet harmony upon which Europe is about to enter, is only another instance of taking the forced and exceptional state of a people for its normal and natural condition. If the German people could be divorced from their feudal leanings, if they could bind up their unity with free institutions, and sink the interest of each particular state in that of the entire community, we should regard their assumption of military supremacy as a blessing to Europe. But this state of things, so near being accomplished in 1848, is now further off than ever. Prussia, then, by the free voice of Germany, was offered the Imperial crown, upon condition of merging her individual sovereignty in that of the commonwealth. But she refused. Now she has got it upon her own terms--that of merging the commonwealth into herself. All the power and might of Germany, instead of being allied with liberal institutions, is wielded by one despotic hand. Instead of Germany swallowing up Prussia, Prussia has swallowed up Germany. Germany in inaugurating her unity, like the young man coming to his heritage, was surrounded by two candidates for her favours,--free institutions and military despotism--and, succumbing to the tempter, she has flung herself into the embraces of military despotism.

Prussia, who first intoxicated Germany with the idea of unity, has debauched her with the doctrine of nationality. The lure was in the Elbe Duchies, which she first held out to the Fatherland, and then appropriated to herself. The overthrow of Austria induced the Northern states to submit, some out of compulsion, and others out of love, but all out of a hope that under so puissant a leader, an impoverished state of independence might be changed for one of wealthy servility. Hence, the Confederation or Staatenbund of the North, which placed the armaments and international relationships of all the states on the Prussian side of the Main completely under the control of Berlin. The Treaty of Prague guaranteed independent action, as well as a separate confederation to the German states south of the Main. But while the ink wherewith that treaty was signed was scarcely dry, and while Napoleon was congratulating his subjects on having set up two confederations in Germany instead of one, Bismark signed treaties of offensive and defensive alliance with each of the Southern States, which made their confederation an impossibility, by placing all their armaments as completely in the hands of Prussia as if they belonged to the Northern Bund. But, in these days, changes take place so rapidly as to exhaust our breath in recounting them. The goal of Prussian ambition to-day, is its starting-post to-morrow. The North German Confederation, with their treaties of defensive and offensive alliance, which have done their work so effectually in the subjugation of France, has already made room for another edifice of a more momentous character. The Staatenbund, which has disappeared, was, as its name imports, a mere confederacy. The union was effective for federal purposes, but too much individual action was left to the component bodies. The armies of the Confederacy, though under the command of the King of Prussia, as President of the Bund, owed fealty to their respective chiefs. There is something naïve in the declaration that they should have command of their own troops in time of peace. But now this poor shadow of sovereignty is taken away, and the armies of the Northern States, both in peace and war, are handed over to the King of Prussia, and constitute part and parcel of the Prussian force. The joints have, therefore, been tightened in proportion as the area has been extended. In point of fact, the former mediatized states have been virtually incorporated with Prussia; while the semi-independent sovereignties of the south have been reduced to the position of the former mediatized states. They have only one railway and water communication, one system of post and telegraph, one mercantile marine, one tariff, one code of civil and criminal judicature, one consulate, and one army and navy. The states south of the Main now find themselves bound up in closer ligatures with those of the north than formerly united these with each other. In other words, the Staatenbund has been changed into a Bundesstaat, or a confederacy into one allied State. The whole of Germany, from the Baltic to the Vosges, from the frontiers of Gallicia to the mouth of the Weser, is now united in a single commonwealth, with an hereditary emperor, with a central parliament, and a common capital: we need hardly add that the majority of that parliament are Prussian subjects, that the Emperor is the Prussian monarch, and that the capital is Berlin.

It is curious to notice the careful guarantees by which Prussia has secured the increase of her ascendancy in the new institution, and the growth of centralization in her hands. No change can be effected in the charter which is opposed by fourteen votes of the Federal Council. But as she has seventeen of these, it is clear Germany cannot enter upon a more liberal regime unless Prussia wishes it. Baden and Hesse have, like the Northern States, handed over their armies to Prussia, with whose forces they are henceforth incorporated. The King of Bavaria has the command of his own troops only in times of peace; in war he is liable to be superseded by a Federal commander, appointed by the Emperor. Würtemburg has consented to consign her troops to a Federal commander, nominated by Prussia, both in peace and war. For this concession the King has been allowed to appoint his inferior officers, subject to the approval of the Emperor. Throughout the rest of Germany, the appointment of all the officers rests entirely with the Emperor. All the citadels and fortresses of every state, without exception, are surrendered into his hands. He can give the keys of all the strong places to whom he chooses. The Emperor alone can make war or conclude peace; though unless the country be invaded, he has been restricted, at the instance of Bavaria, from making war without the consent of the Federal Council. But, as King of Prussia, he can make war when he pleases, which renders him as practically independent of control as if the restriction did not exist. The armaments of Germany are, therefore, as practically in the hands of Prussia, as the armaments of Russia are in those of the Czar. The concessions in favour of the Kings of Würtemburg and Bavaria are so trifling, that to call these princelings kings any longer is trifling with the name. Their sovereignties are virtually absorbed in the crown of Prussia. Let the phantom monarchs, who have signed their own death-warrants at Munich and Stuttgart, presume to interfere with the mandates of Berlin, and they will be dealt with as summarily as any provincial _maire_ who ventured to disobey imperial decrees under the Napoleonic _régime_.

These results we ventured to predict some five years ago, but they have been brought about with a celerity and completeness which even have surprised ourselves.[239] The fact is, there is a splendour and glitter about military achievements which the soberest cannot withstand, when they appear in the shape of victories over those who have been perpetually disparaging our strength or crowing over our weakness. It would, indeed, have been a great advantage to German liberty, had the different states been allowed to consolidate their unity in peace. Prussia would then have been obliged to make terms with the southern populations, who would have been alive to the necessity of obtaining solid pledges from her, that the resources of the German commonwealth should not be squandered to gratify the ambition of the house of Hohenzollern. But the astonishing exploits of Prussia, the unparalleled series of triumphs which have laid France prostrate at her feet, have carried away the judgments of the populations of the South, and induced them to call for indiscriminate amalgamation with the conqueror, in terms which their princes could not withstand. The sovereigns of Stuttgart and Munich had, therefore, no choice between deposition and obedience to the popular voice. They therefore made a virtue of necessity, and were the first to offer the Imperial Crown to the King of Prussia. In the Salle des Glaces at Versailles, surrounded by the pictures and medallions which perpetuate the triumphs of Louis XIV. in Franche Comté and the Netherlands, and beneath the roof of the edifice dedicated to all the glories of France, King William was solemnly proclaimed Emperor, on the anniversary of the day when, 170 years ago, the Elector Frederick first assumed the crown of Prussia. Before all the representatives of Germany, ranged beneath the banners of their respective states, at the gates of the French capital, already quivering in the throes of capitulation, and girt round with all the panoply and pride of victorious armies, the German cannon thundered out the ominous title in the ears of dying France. In the power which the title created, the lofty pinnacle to which it elevated the sovereign upon whom it was conferred, in the proud circumstances under which the transfer of the Imperial Crown was accomplished, the imagination is carried back to the days of Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa in order to find a parallel. For, the pageant represented the assumption of no mere primatial dignity, but the extension of direct sovereign power, absorbing some three kingdoms, with twenty-four principalities, which at once enables it to become supreme in Europe, both in war and peace. The nominal federal ties, by which the princes of the Southern States are allowed to flatter their hereditary vanity, cannot even outlast the present generation; for the new elections to the Federal Parliament have returned a large majority, to strengthen the autocratic interests and centralizing policy of Prussia. The need of simplification in the laws which bind up the different states into one homogeneous body, will powerfully contribute to the same end, so that, in a few years, Prussia will find herself wielding the power of the Cæsars, with a single national authority.