Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Pasquin became a recognized institution, as we have said, under Leo X., and was taken under the protection of the Roman people.[6] His popularity was such as to lead to consequences of which he himself complained. He was made the vehicle of the effusions of worthless versifiers, and he was forced to cry out, "Woe is me! even the copyist fixes his verses upon me, and every one bestows on me his silly trifles."

The application of these verses was alike appropriate to the life of the Pope, or to the reigns of Alexander VI., Julius II., and the one just beginning.

"Me miserum! Copista etiam mihi carmina figit;
Et tribuit nugas jam mihi quisque suas."

He seems to have been successful in putting a stop to this injurious treatment; for not long after he declared, with a sarcasm directed against the prominent qualities of his fellow-citizens, "There is no better man at Rome than I. I seek nothing from any one. I am not wordy. I sit here and am silent."

"Non homo me melior Rome est. Ego nil peto ab ullo.
Non sum verbosus. Hic sedeo et taceo."

It had become the custom, upon occasions of public festivity, to adorn Pasquin with suits of garments, and with paint, forcing him to assume from time to time different characters according to the fancy of his protectors. Sometimes he appeared as Neptune, sometimes as Chance or Fate, as Apollo or Bacchus. Thus, in the year 1515, he became Orpheus, and, while adorned with the _plectrum_ and the lyre of the poet, Marforio addressed a distich to him in his new character, which hints at the popular appreciation of the Pope. The year 1515 was that of the descent of Francis I, into Italy, and of the bloody battle of Marignano. "In the midst of war and slaughter and the sound of trumpets," said Marforio, "you sing and strike your lyre: this is to understand the temper of your Lord."

"Inter bella, tubas, caedes, canis ipse, lyramque
Percutis. Hoc sapere est ingenium Domini."[7]

But the character of most of those pasquinades which belong to the pontificate of Leo is so coarse as to render them unfit for reproduction. A general licentiousness pervaded Rome, and the vices of the Pope and the higher clergy, veiled, but not hidden, under the displays of sensual magnificence and the pretended refinements of degraded art, were readily imitated by a people taught to follow and obey the teachings of their ecclesiastical rulers. Corruption of every sort was common. Virtue and vice, profane and sacred things, were alike for sale. The Pope made money by the sale of cardinalates and traffic in indulgences. "Give me gifts, ye spectators," begged Pasquin; "bring me not verses: divine Money alone rules the ethereal gods."

"Dona date, astantes; versus ne reddite: sola
Imperat aethereis alma Moneta deis."

Leo's fondness for buffoons, with whom he mercilessly amused himself by tormenting them and exciting them to make themselves ridiculous, is recorded in a question put to Pasquin on one of his changes of figure. "Why have you not asked, O Pasquil, to be made a buffoon? for at Rome everything is now permitted to the buffoons."

"Cur non te fingi scurram, Pasquille, rogâsti?
Cum Romae scurris omnia jam liceant."

Leo died in 1521. His death was sudden, and not without suspicion of poison. It was said that the last offices of the Church were not performed for the dying man, and an epigram sharply embodied the report. "Do you ask why at his last hour Leo could not take the sacred things? He had sold them."

"Sacra sub extremâ, si forte requiritis, horâ
Cur Leo non potuit sumere: Vendiderat."

The spirit of Luther had penetrated through the walls of Rome; and though all tongues but those of statues might be silenced, eyes were not blinded, nor could ears be made deaf. Nowhere was the need of reform so felt as at Rome, but nowhere was there so little hope for it; for the people stood in equal need of it with the Church, whose ministers had corrupted them, and whose rulers tyrannized over them. "Farewell, Rome!" said Pasquin.

"Roma, vale! Satis est vidisse. Revertar
Quum leno, meretrix, scurra, cinaedus ero."

When Leo's short-lived successor, the gloomy Fleming, Adrian VI., who was the author of the proposal to destroy Pasquin, despatched his nuncio to the diet of Nuremberg to oppose the progress of Luther, he told him in his instructions to "avow frankly that God has permitted this schism and this persecution on account of the sins of men, and, above all, of those of the priests and the prelates of the Church." Pasquin could not have improved on these words. And when, twenty months after his elevation to the papacy, this hard old man died, the inscription--which he ordered to be put upon his tomb was in words fit to disarm the satirist:--"Here lies Adrian VI., who esteemed nothing in his life more unhappy than that he had been called to rule": "_Adrianus VI. hîc situs est, qui nil sibi infelicius in vitâ quam quod imperaret duxit."

During the pontificate of Clement VII., Rome suffered under calamities too terrible and too depressing to admit of the frequent display of the humor or the satire of Pasquin. The siege and sack of the city by the army of the Constable de Bourbon wrought too much misery to be set in verse or to be sharpened in epigram. One shrewd jest of this time has, indeed, been preserved. Clement was for months a prisoner in the Castle of Sant' Angelo, unable to stir abroad. "_Papa non potest errare_" said Pasquin, or one of his friends, with a play on the double meaning of the last word, and a scoff at Papal pretension: "The Pope cannot err": he is too well guarded to stray. But when the Pope died in 1534, Pasquin did not spare his memory. He had lately changed his physician, and taken one named Matteo Curzio or Curtius; and when his death took place, not without suspicion of malpractice, the satisfaction of the people was expressed by the appearance of a portrait of this new doctor, with the inscription, in words borrowed from the Vulgate, "_Ecce agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi!_" "Curtius has killed Clement," said Pasquin. "Curtius, who has secured the public health, should be rewarded."

"Curtis occidit Clementem. Curtius auro
Donandus, per quem publica parta salus."

Nor was this all. Pasquin declared, that, on occasion of Clement's death, a bitter strife arose between Pluto and Saint Peter as to which should receive the Pope:--

"Noluit hunc coelum, noluit hunc barathrum."

The Saint has no place for him, and the ruler of the lower regions fears the disturbance that he will make in hell. The quarrel is cut short by the arrival of Clement himself upon the spot, who, finding no entrance into heaven, declares that he will force himself into hell:--

"Tartara tentemus, facilis descensus Averni."

The fifteen years of the pontificate of Clement's successor, Paul III.,--years, for the most part, of quiet and prosperity at Rome,--afforded ample opportunities for the display of Pasquin's spirit. The personal character of the Pope, the exactions which he laid upon the Romans for the profit of his favorites and his family, and his unblushing nepotism were the subjects of frequent satire. The Farnese palace, built in great part with stone taken from the Colosseum, is a standing monument of the justice of Pasquin's rebukes, the sharpness of which is concentrated in a single telling epigram. "Let us pray for Pope Paul," said Pasquin, "for zeal for his house is consuming him":--

"Oremus pro Papâ Paulo, quia zelus
Domus suae comedit illum."

At another time Marforio addressed a letter to Pasquin, in which he tells him of the Pope's reply to an angel who had been sent to him with the message, "Feed my sheep" "Charity begins at home," had been the answer of the Pope. And when the Roman people had prayed Paul to have pity on his people, Paul had replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and give it to dogs."

But Pasquin was now to be brought into greater notoriety than ever. In spite of the efforts of the successors of Adrian, the Reformation had rapidly advanced, and the Reformers, scorning no weapons that might serve their cause, determined to turn the wit of Pasquin to their account. In the year 1544, a little, but thick, volume appeared, with the title, "Pasquillorum Tomi duo." It bore no name of editor or printer, and professed to be published at Eleutheropolis, the City of Freedom, or, as it might be rendered in a free translation, the City of _Luther_. Its 637 pages were filled with satire; it was not merely a collection of Pasquin's sayings, but it contained epigrams and dialogues derived from other sources as well. The book was of a kind to be popular, as well as to excite the bitterest aversion of the adherents of the Roman Church. It long since became a volume of excessive rarity, most of the copies having been destroyed by zealous Romanists. The famous scholar, Daniel Heinsius, within a century after its publication, believed that a copy which he purchased, at a cost of a hundred ducats, was the only one remaining in the world, and he inscribed the following lines upon one of its blank pages:--

"Roma meos fratres igni dedit. Unica Phoenix
Vivo, aureis venio centum Heinsio."

"Rome gave my brothers to the fire.
A solitary Phoenix, I survive, and at cost
of a hundred gold pieces I come to Heinsius."

But Heinslus was mistaken in supposing his copy to be unique; and bibliographers of later date, while marking the rarity of the book, have recorded its existence in various libraries. At this moment two copies are lying before us, probably the only copies in America.[8]

The editor of this publication was the Piedmontese scholar and Reformer, Coelius Secundus Curio. His early life had been eventful, and he had experienced the tender mercies of the Roman Church. He had been persecuted, his property had been seized, he himself compelled to fly, on account of his liberal views. He had been in the prisons of the Inquisition, from which he had escaped only by a successful and ingenious stratagem. At length, wearied with contention, he took up his abode in Protestant Switzerland, where he passed in quiet the latter years of his useful and honored life.[9] It was while here that he compiled this book, and sent it as a missile into the camp of his opponents, the enemies of freedom of thought and of the right of private judgment. From this time Pasquin's fame became universal. The words _pasquil_ or _pasquinade_ were adopted info almost every European tongue, and soon embraced in their widening signification all sorts of satiric epigrams. A great part of the volume published by Curio is made up, indeed, of attacks on the Roman Church which have no connection with Pasquin as their author. The style and the subject of many of them betray a German origin; and some of the longer pieces so closely resemble, in point, in humor, and in expression, the celebrated "Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum," that there can be little doubt that Ulrich von Hutten, or some one of his coadjutors in that clever satire on the monks and clergy, had a hand in their composition.[10]

But, leaving the pasquinades of other people, let us come back to the sayings of Pasquin himself. No one has surpassed him in his own way, and his store of epigrams, illustrating life and manners at Rome, is abundant. The pontificate of Sixtus V., from 1585 to 1590, was full of material for his wit. The only man in Rome who did not tremble under the rod with which this hard old monk ruled his people and the Church was the free-spoken marble jester. The very morning after the election of Sixtus, Pasquin appeared with a plate of toothpicks, and to the question of Marforio, what he was doing with them, he replied, "I am taking them to Alexandrino, Medicis, and Rusticucci," the three cardinals who had been most active in securing the Papacy for the new Pope. The point of the joke was plain to the Romans: it meant that his adherents, instead of gaining anything by their efforts, had been deceived, and would have nothing to do now but to pick their teeth at leisure.

Leti, in his entertaining and gossipping life of this most merciless of Popes, tells a story of another pasquinade, which exhibits the temper of Sixtus. One morning Pasquin appeared clothed in a very dirty shirt, and, upon being asked by Marforio, why he wore such foul linen, replied, he could get no other, for the Pope had made his washerwoman a princess,--meaning thereby the Pope's sister, Donna Camilla, who had formerly been a laundress, but was now established with a fortune and a palace. "This stinging piece of raillery was carried directly to his Holiness, who ordered a strict search to be made for the author, but to no purpose. Upon which he stuck up printed papers in all the public places of the city, promising, upon the word of a Pope, to give the author of the pasquinade a thousand pistoles and his life, provided he would discover himself, but threatened to hang him, if he was found out by any one else, and offered the thousand pistoles to the informer." Upon this the author was simple enough to make confession and to demand the money. Sixtus paid him the sum, and then, saying that he had indeed promised him his life, but not freedom from punishment, ordered his hands to be cut off, and his tongue to be bored, "to prevent him from being so witty for the future." This act, says Leti, "filled every one with terror and amazement." And well might such a piece of Oriental barbarity excite the horror of the Romans.[11] Pasquin, however, was not alarmed, and a few days afterward he appeared holding a wet shirt to dry in the sun. It was a Sunday morning, and Marforio, naturally surprised at such a violation of the day, asked him why he could not wait till Monday before drying it Pasquin answered, that there was no time to lose; for, if he waited till to-morrow to dry his shirt, he might have to pay for the sunshine;--hinting at the heavy taxes which Sixtus had laid upon the necessaries of life, and from which the sunshine itself might not long be exempt.

It was near about this time that a caricature was circulated in Rome, representing Sixtus as King Stork and the Romans as frogs vainly attempting to escape from his devouring beak. _Merito haec patimur_, "We suffer deservedly," was the legend of the picture, and the moral it conveyed was a true one. Rome was in such a state as to require the harshest applications, and the despotic severity of Sixtus did much to restore decency and security to life. He left the Romans in a far better condition than he found them; and it would have been well for Rome, if among his successors there had been more to follow his example in repressing vice and violence,--in a word, had there been more King Storks and fewer King Logs.

The most poetic of pasquinades, and one in which wit rises into imagination, belongs to the pontificate of Urban VIII. (1623-1644.) This Pope issued a bull excommunicating all persons who took snuff in the churches of Seville; whereupon Pasquin quoted the following verse from Job (xiii. 25):--"_Contra folium_ _quod vento rapitur ostendis potentiam tuam? et stipulam siccam persequeris?_"

This is a very model of satire in its kind, and of a higher kind than the pasquil, which Coleridge quotes as an example of wit, upon the Pope who had employed a committee to rip up the errors of his predecessors.

"Some one placed a pair of spurs on the statue of St. Peter, and a label from the opposite statue of St. Paul.

"_St. Paul_. Whither, then, are you bound?

"_St. Peter_. I apprehend danger here;--they'll soon call me in question for denying my Master.

"_St. Paul_. Nay, then, I had better be off, too; for they'll question me for having persecuted the Christians before my conversion."[12]

In his distinction between the wit of thoughts, of words, and of images, Coleridge asserts that the first belongs eminently to the Italians. Such broad assertions are always open to exceptions, and Pasquin shows that the Romans at least are not less clever in the wit of words than in that of thoughts. Take, for example, the jest on Innocent X. which Howel reports in one of his entertaining letters. This Pope, who, says the candid historian, Mosheim, "to a profound ignorance of all those things which it was necessary for a Christian bishop to know, joined the most shameless indolence and the most notorious profligacy," abandoned his person, his dignity, and his government to the disposal of Donna Olympia Maldachini, the widow of his brother. The portrait of the Pope may be seen in the Doria Gallery at Rome; for it is still esteemed an honor by the noble family to which the gallery belongs to be able to trace a relationship to a Pope, even though so vile a one as Innocent "_Magis amat papa Olympiam quam Olympum_" said Pasquin; and the pun still clings to the memory of him whom his authorized biographer calls "_religiosissimo nelle cose divine e prudentissimo nelle umane."_ But superlatives often have a value in inverse ratio to their intention. There is a curious story told by the Catholic historian, Novaes, that, after the death of Innocent, which took place in 1655, no one could be found willing to assume the charge of burying him. Word was sent to Donna Olympia that she should provide a coffin for the corpse; but she replied that she was only a poor widow. Of the cardinals he had made, of the relations he had enriched, none was to be found who had charity enough to treat his remains with decency. His body was taken to a room where some masons were at work, and one of them out of compassion put a tallow candle at its head, while another, fearing lest the mice, of which there were many in the apartment, might disturb the corpse, secured a person to watch it through the night. At length one of the officers of the court procured a cheap coffin, and one of the canons of Saint Peter's gave five crowns to pay the expenses of the burial.[13] A moralist might comment on this story, and might compare it with another which is told in a life of Innocent, written during the reign of his successor, and published with approval at Rome. In this we are told that at the time of his death a marvellous prodigy was observed; for that, when his corpse was borne on a bier from Monte Cavallo to the Vatican, at the moment of a violent storm of wind and rain, not a drop of water fell upon it, but the bier remained perfectly dry, and the torches with which it was accompanied were none of them extinguished. What wonder, that, after this, it is added, "that his memory is venerated in many places at Rome"?[14] Of all the troublesome race of panegyrists, the Roman variety is the most ingenious and the least to be trusted.

When Bishop Burnet was travelling in Italy, in the year 1686, the doctrines of the Spanish priest Molinos, the founder of the famous sect of Quietists, had lately become the object of attack of the Jesuits and of suspicion at the Papal Court. His system of mystical divinity is still of interest from its connection with the lives of Fénelon and Madame Guyon, if not from its intrinsic character. Like most other mystical doctrines, his teachings seem to have been open to the charge, that, while professedly based on the highest spirituality, they had a direct tendency to encourage sensuality in its most dangerous form. Molinos was at first much favored at Rome and by the Pope himself; but at the time of Burnet's journey he was in the custody of the Holy Office, while his books were undergoing the examination which finally led to the formal condemnation of sixty-eight propositions contained in them, to the renunciation of these propositions by their author, and to his being sentenced to perpetual imprisonment Burnet relates that it happened "in one week that one man had been condemned to the galleys for somewhat he had said, another had been hanged for somewhat he had writ, and Molinos was clapt in prison, whose doctrine consisted chiefly in this, that men ought to bring their minds to a state of inward quietness. The Pasquinade upon all this was, "_Si parliamo, in galere; si scrivemmo, impiccati; si stiamo in quiete, all' Sant Uffizio. Eh! che bisogna fare?_" "If we speak, the galleys; if we write, the gallows; if we stay quiet, the Inquisition. Eh! what must we do, then?"

With the changes of times and the succession of Popes, new material was constantly afforded to Pasquin for the exercise of his peculiar talent. Each generation gave him fresh subject for laughter or for rebuke. Men quickly passed away, but folly and vice remained. "Do you wonder," said Pasquin, once, in his early days, referring to his changes of character, "do you wonder why Rome yearly changes me to a new figure? It is because of the shifting manners of the city, and the falling back of men. He who would be pious must depart from Rome."

"Praeteriens, forsan miraris, turba, quotannis
Cur me Roma novam mutet in effigiem.
Hoc urbis mores varios, hominumque recessus
Indicat: ergo abeat qui cupit esse pius."

During the eighteenth century Italy did not abound in poets or wits, and Master Pasquin seems to have shared in the dulness of the times. Toward its end, however, when Pius VI. was building the palace under the corner of which the statue was to find shelter, the marble representative of the tailor watched his proceedings with sharp observation. Long ago he had rebuked the nepotism of the Popes, but Pius had forgotten his epigrams. "Cerberus," he had said, "had three mouths with which he barked; but you have three, or even four, which bark not, but devour."

"Tres habuit fauces, et terno Cerberus ore
Latratus intra Tartara nigra dabat.
Et tibi plena fame tria sunt vel quatuor ora
Quae nulli latrant, quemque sed illa vorant."

Every one who has been in Rome remembers how often, on the repairs of ancient monuments, and on the pedestals of statues or busts, are to be seen the words, "_Munificentiâ Pii Sexti_" thrusting themselves into notice, and occupying the place which should be filled with some nobler inscription. The bad taste and impertinence of this epigraph are often enhanced by the slightness of the work or the gift which it commemorates. During a season of dearth at Rome, in the time of Pius, when the bakers had reduced the size of their loaves, Pasquin took the opportunity to satirize the selfishness and vanity of the Pope, by exhibiting one of these diminished loaves bearing the familiar words, "_Munificentiâ Pii VI._"

The French Revolution, the Napoleonic occupation of Rome, the brilliant essays of liberalism of Pius IX., the Republic, the siege of Rome, the reactionary government of late years, have alike supplied matter for Master Pasquin, which he has shaped according to the fashion of the times. He still pursues his ancient avocation. _Res acu tetigit._ But the point of the needle is not the means by which the rents in the garment of Rome are to be mended,--much less by which her wounds are to be cauterized and healed. The sharp satiric tongue may prick her moral sense into restlessness, but the Roman spirit is not thus to be roused to action. Still Pasquin deserves credit for his efforts; and while other liberty is denied, the Romans may be glad that there is a single voice that cannot be silenced, and a single censor who is not to be corrupted.

[Footnote 1: Bernini, being asked what was the most beautiful statue in Rome, replied, "That of Pasquin." This reply the sensible Milizia taxes with affectation,--saying, that, although an artist may discover in the work some marks of good design, it is now too maimed to pass for a beautiful statue. Possibly Bernini was thinking of his own works in comparison with it.]

[Footnote 2: Andreas Schott,--who published an Itinerary of Italy about the beginning of the seventeenth century, copies this account, and adds,--"At present this custom is prohibited under the heaviest penalties."]

[Footnote 3: Mrs. Piozzi, in her amusing _Journey through Italy_, ii. 113, quotes these verses and gives a translation of them which shows that she quite mistook their point. In spite of her quoting Latin, Greek, and even on occasion Hebrew, her scholarship was not very accurate or deep.]

[Footnote 4: The Historie of Guicciardin, reduced into English by Geffray Fenton. 1579. p. 308. Another epigram of barbarous bitterness against Alexander refers, if we understand it aright, to one of the gloomiest events of his pontificate, the murder of his son Giovanni, Duca di Gandia, by his other son, Caesar Borgia. Giovanni was killed at night, and his body was thrown into the Tiber, from which it was recovered the next morning.

Piscatorem hominum ne te non, Sexte, putemus,
Piscaris natum retibus ecce tuum."

"Lest we should not fancy you, O Sextus,
a fisher of men, you fish for your own son
with nets."]

[Footnote 5: Vasari relates, that Michel Angelo, when he was making the bronze statue of Julius, at Bologna, having asked the Pope if he should put a book in his left hand,--"No," replied the fiery old man, "put a sword in it, for I know not letters": "_Mettivi una spada, che io non so lettere._"]

[Footnote 6: At the beginning of his pontificate, upon occasion of Leo's taking possession of the Lateran with a solemn procession, an arch of triumph was erected at the bridge of Sant' Angelo, which bore an inscription worthy of the tailor's successor:--

"Olim habuit Cypria sua tempera, tempora Mavors
Olim habuit, sua nunc tempora Pallas habet."

"Venus once had her time, Mars also has
had his, but now Minerva rules."]

[Footnote 7: In Murray's _Handbook for Rome_, a book for the most part of great accuracy, there is a curious blunder in the account of Pasquin. It is said, that, "on the election of Pope Leo X., in 1440, the following satirical acrostic appeared, to mark the date MCCCCXL:--'_Multi caeci cardinales creaverunt caecum decimum (X) Leonem:_ 'Many blind cardinals have created a tenth blind Lion.'" Now in 1440 Leo was not born, and no Pope was chosen in that year. Leo was not made Pope till 1513, and the acrostic has apparently nothing to do with the date of his accession to the pontificate.]

[Footnote 8: One of those copies was formerly in the Royal Library at Munich, and sold as a duplicate. The other has the bookplate of the Baron de Warenghien. Colonel Stanley's copy sold for £11 lls. The book was printed at Basle, by Jean Oporin. See Clément, _Bibl. Cur. Hist, et Crit._, vii. 371. See also, for an account of it, Salleugre, _M.m. de Litt._, ii. 6, 203; and Schelhorn, _Amoen. Lit._, iii. 151.]

[Footnote 9: An entertaining and curious account of Curio and his family is to be found in a commemorative oration delivered in 1570 before the Academy of Basle by Stupanus, and printed by Schelhorn in _Amoen. Lit._, Tom. xiv.]

[Footnote 10: In two or three of the dialogues Hutten is introduced as one of the speakers; and several of the poetic epigrams are ascribed to him by name.]

[Footnote 11: In Luther's _Table-Talk_, he says, "Whoso in Rome is heard to speak one word against the Pope received either a Strappecordo or is punished with death, for his name is _Noli me tangere._" Pasquin himself has hardly said a shrewder saying than this. _Noli me tangere_ is the name under which Pius IX. pleads against the diminution of his temporal power, while he threatens his opponents with the Strappecorde.]

[Footnote 12: _Lectures upon Shakespeare and other Dramatists_, ii. 90.]

[Footnote 13: Novaes, x. 56. Artaud de Montor, _Hist. des Pont. Rom._, v. 523.]

[Footnote 14: _Vita d' Innocenzio X._, dal Cav. Ant. Bagatta.]

* * * * *

THE SUMMONS.

My ear is full of summer sounds,
With summer sights my languid eye;
Beyond the dusty village bounds
I loiter in my daily rounds,
And in the noon-time shadows lie.

The wild bee winds his drowsy horn,
The bird swings on the ripened wheat,
The long, green lances of the corn
Are tilting in the winds of morn,
The locust shrills his song of heat.

Another sound my spirit hears,
A deeper sound that drowns them all,--
A voice of pleading choked with tears,
The call of human hopes and fears,
The Macedonian cry to Paul!

The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows;
I know the word and countersign;
Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes,
Where stand or fall her friends or foes,
I know the place that should be mine.

Shamed be the hands that idly fold,
And lips that woo the reed's accord,
When laggard Time the hour has tolled
For true with false and new with old
To fight the battles of the Lord!

O brothers! blest by partial Fate
With power to match the will and deed,
To him your summons comes too late,
Who sinks beneath his armor's weight,
And has no answer but God-speed!

* * * * *

DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS.

The origin of species, like all origination, like the institution of any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses as to how they began.

Two hypotheses divide the scientific world, very unequally, upon the origin of the existing diversity of the plants and animals which surround us. One assumes that the actual kinds are primordial; the other, that they are derivative. One, that all kinds originated supernaturally and directly as such, and have continued unchanged in the order of Nature; the other, that the present kinds appeared in some sort of genealogical connection with other and earlier kinds, that they became what they now are in the course of time and in the order of Nature.

Or, bringing in the word _species_, which is well defined as "the perennial succession of individuals," commonly of very like individuals,--as a close corporation of individuals perpetuated by generation, instead of election,--and reducing the question to mathematical simplicity of statement: species are lines of individuals coming down from the past and running on to the future,--lines receding, therefore, from our view in either direction. Within our limited view they appear to be parallel lines, as a general thing neither approaching to nor diverging from each other. The first hypothesis assumes that they were parallel from the unknown beginning and will be to the unknown end. The second hypothesis assumes that the apparent parallelism is not real and complete, at least aboriginally, but approximate or temporary; that we should find the lines convergent in the past, if we could trace them far enough; that some of them, if produced back, would fall into certain fragments of lines, which have left traces in the past, lying not exactly in the same direction, and these farther back into others to which they are equally unparallel. It will also claim that the present lines, whether on the whole really or only approximately parallel, sometimes fork or send off branches on one side or the other, producing new lines, (varieties,) which run for a while, and for aught we know indefinitely, when not interfered with, near and approximately parallel to the parent line. This claim it can establish; and it may also show that these close subsidiary lines may branch or vary again, and that those branches or varieties which are best adapted to the existing conditions may be continued, while others stop or die out. And so we may have the basis of a real _theory_ of the _diversification_ of species; and here, indeed, there is a real, though a narrow, established ground to build upon. But, as systems of organic Nature, both are equally _hypotheses_, are suppositions of what there is no proof of from experience, assumed in order to account for the observed phenomena, and supported by such indirect evidence as can be had. Even when the upholders of the former and more popular system mix up revelation with scientific discussion,--which we decline to do,--they by no means thereby render their view other than hypothetical. Agreeing that plants and animals were produced by Omnipotent fiat does not exclude the idea of natural order and what we call secondary causes. The record of the fiat--"Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed," etc., "and it was so"; "let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so"--seems even to imply them. Agreeing that they were formed of "the dust of the ground" and of thin air only leads to the conclusion that the pristine individuals were corporeally constituted like existing individuals, produced through natural agencies. To agree that they were created "after their kinds" determines nothing as to what were the original kinds, nor in what mode, during what time, and in what connections it pleased the Almighty to introduce the first individuals of each sort upon the earth. Scientifically considered, the two opposing doctrines are equally hypothetical.

The two views very unequally divide the scientific world; so that believers in "the divine right of majorities" need not hesitate which side to take, at least for the present. Up to a time within the memory of a generation still on the stage, two hypotheses about the nature of light very unequally divided the scientific world. But the small minority has already prevailed: the emission theory has gone out; the undulatory or wave theory, after some fluctuation, has reached high tide, and is now the pervading, the fully established system. There was an intervening time during which most physicists held their opinions in suspense.

The adoption of the undulatory theory of light called for the extension of the same theory to heat, electricity, and magnetism, and this promptly suggested the hypothesis of a correlation, material connection, and transmutability of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, etc.; which hypothesis the physicists held in absolute suspense until very lately, but are now generally adopting. If not already established as a system, it promises soon to become so. At least, it is generally received as a tenable and probably true hypothesis.

Parallel to this, however less cogent the reasons, Darwin and others, having shown it likely that some varieties of plants or animals have diverged in time into cognate species, or into forms as different as species, are led to infer that all species of a genus may have thus diverged from a common stock, and thence to suppose a higher community of origin in ages still farther back, and so on. Following the safe example of the physicists, and acknowledging the fact of the diversification of a once homogeneous species into varieties, we may receive the theory of the evolution of these into species, even while for the present we hold the hypothesis of a further evolution in cool suspense or in grave suspicion. In respect to very many questions a wise man's mind rests long in a state neither of belief nor of unbelief. But your intellectually short-sighted people are apt to be preternaturally clear-sighted, and to find their way very plain to positive conclusions upon one side or the other of every mooted question.

In fact, most people, and some philosophers, refuse to hold questions in abeyance, however incompetent they may be to decide them. And, curiously enough, the more difficult, recondite, and perplexing the questions or hypotheses are, such, for instance, as those about organic Nature, the more impatient they are of suspense. Sometimes, and evidently in the present case, this impatience grows out of a fear that a new hypothesis may endanger cherished and most important beliefs. Impatience under such circumstances is not unnatural, though perhaps needless, and, if so, unwise.

To us the present revival of the derivative hypothesis, in a more winning shape than it ever before had, was not unexpected. We wonder that any thoughtful observer of the course of investigation and of speculation in science should not have foreseen it, and have learned at length to take its inevitable coming patiently; the more so as in Darwin's treatise it comes in a purely scientific form, addressed only to scientific men. The notoriety and wide popular perusal of this treatise appear to have astonished the author even more than the book itself has astonished the reading world. Coming, as the new presentation does, from a naturalist of acknowledged character and ability, and marked by a conscientiousness and candor which have not always been reciprocated, we have thought it simply right to set forth the doctrine as fairly and as favorably as we could. There are plenty to decry it, and the whole theory is widely exposed to attack. For the arguments on the other side we may look to the numerous adverse publications which Darwin's volume has already called out, and especially to those reviews which propose directly to refute it. Taking various lines and reflecting very diverse modes of thought, these hostile critics may be expected to concentrate and enforce the principal objections which can be brought to bear against the derivative hypothesis in general, and Darwin's new exposition of it in particular.

Upon the opposing side of the question we have read with attention, 1. an article in the "North American Review" for April last; 2. one in the "Christian Examiner," Boston, for May; 3. M. Pictet's article in the "Bibliothèque Universelle," which we have already made considerable use of, which seems throughout most able and correct, and which in tone and fairness is admirably in contrast with, 4. the article in the "Edinburgh Review" for May, attributed--although against a large amount of internal presumptive evidence--to the most distinguished British comparative anatomist; 5. an article in the "North British Review" for May; 6. finally, Professor Agassiz has afforded an early opportunity to peruse the criticisms he makes in the forthcoming third volume of his great work by a publication of them in advance in the "American Journal of Science" for July.

In our survey of the lively discussion which has been raised, it matters little how our own particular opinions may incline. But we may confess to an impression, thus far, that the doctrine of the permanent and complete immutability of species has not been established, and may fairly be doubted. We believe that species vary, and that "Natural Selection" works; but we suspect that its operation, like every analogous natural operation, may be limited by something else. Just as every species by its natural rate of reproduction would soon fill any country it could live in, but does not, being checked by some other species or some other condition,--so it may be surmised that Variation and Natural Selection have their Struggle and consequent Check, or are limited by something inherent in the constitution of organic beings. We are disposed to rank the derivative hypothesis in its fulness with the nebular hypothesis, and to regard both as allowable, as not unlikely to prove tenable in spite of some strong objections, but as not therefore demonstrably true. Those, if any there be, who regard the derivative hypothesis as satisfactorily proved must have loose notions as to what proof is. Those who imagine it can be easily refuted and cast aside must, we think, have imperfect or very prejudiced conceptions of the facts concerned and of the questions at issue.

We are not disposed nor prepared to take sides for or against the new hypothesis, and so, perhaps, occupy a good position from which to watch the discussion, and criticize those objections which are seemingly inconclusive. On surveying the arguments urged by those who have undertaken to demolish the theory, we have been most impressed with a sense of their great inequality. Some strike us as excellent and perhaps unanswerable; some, as incongruous with other views of the same writers; others, when carried out, as incompatible with general experience or general beliefs, and therefore as proving too much; still others, as proving nothing at all: so that, on the whole, the effect is rather confusing and disappointing. We certainly expected a stronger adverse case than any which the thorough-going opposers of Darwin appear to have made out. Wherefore, if it be found that the new hypothesis has grown upon our favor as we proceeded, this must be attributed not so much to the force of the arguments of the book itself as to the want of force of several of those by which it has been assailed. Darwin's arguments we might resist or adjourn; but some of the refutations of it give us more concern than the book itself did.

These remarks apply mainly to the philosophical and theological objections which have been elaborately urged, almost exclusively by the American reviewers. The "North British" reviewer, indeed, roundly denounces the book as atheistical, but evidently deems the case too clear for argument. The Edinburgh reviewer, on the contrary, scouts all such objections,--as well he may, since he records his belief in "a continuous creative operation," "a constantly operating secondary creational law," through which species are successively produced; and he emits faint, but not indistinct, glimmerings of a transmutation theory of his own;[1] so that he is equally exposed to all the philosophical objections advanced by Agassiz, and to most of those urged by the other American critics, against Darwin himself.

Proposing now to criticize the critics, so far as to see what their most general and comprehensive objections amount to, we must needs begin with the American reviewers, and with their arguments adduced to prove that a derivative hypothesis _ought not to be true_, or is not possible, philosophical, or theistic.

It must not be forgotten that on former occasions very confident judgments have been pronounced by very competent persons, which have not been finally ratified. Of the two great minds of the seventeenth century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory that it was subversive of natural religion. The nebular hypothesis--a natural consequence of the theory of gravitation and of the subsequent progress of physical and astronomical discovery--has been denounced as atheistical even down to our own day. But it is now largely adopted by the most theistical natural philosophers as a tenable and perhaps sufficient hypothesis, and where not accepted is no longer objected to, so far as we know, on philosophical or religious grounds.

The gist of the philosophical objections urged by the two Boston reviewers against an hypothesis of the derivation of species--or at least against Darwin's particular hypothesis--is, that it is incompatible with the idea of any manifestation of design in the universe, that it denies final causes. A serious objection this, and one that demands very serious attention.

The proposition, that things and events in Nature were not designed to be so, if logically carried out, is doubtless tantamount to atheism. Yet most people believe that some were designed and others were not, although they fall into a hopeless maze whenever they undertake to define their position. So we should not like to stigmatize as atheistically disposed a person who regards certain things and events as being what they are through designed laws, (whatever that expression means,) but as not themselves specially ordained, or who, in another connection, believes in general, but not in particular Providence. We could sadly puzzle him with questions; but in return he might equally puzzle us. Then, to deny that anything was specially designed to be what it is is one proposition; while to deny that the Designer supernaturally or immediately made it so is another: though the reviewers appear not to recognize the distinction.

Also, "scornfully to repudiate" or to "sneer at the idea of any manifestation of design in the material universe"[2] is one thing; while to consider, and perhaps to exaggerate, the difficulties which attend the practical application of the doctrine of final causes to certain instances is quite another thing: yet the Boston reviewers, we regret to say, have not been duly regardful of the difference. Whatever be thought of Darwin's doctrine, we are surprised that he should be charged with scorning or sneering at the opinions of others, upon such a subject. Perhaps Darwin's view is incompatible with final causes;--we will consider that question presently;--but as to the "Examiner's" charge, that he "sneers at the idea of any manifestation of design in the material universe," though we are confident that no misrepresentation was intended, we are equally confident that it is not at all warranted by the two passages cited in support of it. Here are the passages:--

"If green woodpeckers alone had existed, or we did not know that there were many black and pied kinds, I dare say that we should have thought that the green color was a beautiful adaptation to hide this tree-frequenting bird from its enemies."

"If our reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in Nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing out its viscera?"

If the sneer here escapes ordinary vision in the detached extracts, (one of them wanting the end of the sentence,) it is, if possible, more imperceptible when read with the context. Moreover, this perusal inclines us to think that the "Examiner" has misapprehended the particular argument or object, as well as the spirit, of the author in these passages. The whole reads more naturally as a caution against the inconsiderate use of final causes in science, and an illustration of some of the manifold errors and absurdities which their hasty assumption is apt to involve,--considerations probably analogous to those which induced Lord Bacon rather disrespectfully to style final causes "sterile virgins." So, if any one, it is here Bacon that "sitteth in the seat of the scornful." As to Darwin, in the section from which the extracts were made, he is considering a subsidiary question, and trying to obviate a particular difficulty, but, we suppose, wholly unconscious of denying "any manifestation of design in the material universe." He concludes the first sentence:--

----"and consequently that it was a character of importance, and
might have been acquired through natural selection; as it is, I
have no doubt that the color is due to some quite distinct cause,
probably to sexual selection."

After an illustration from the vegetable creation, Darwin adds:--

"The naked skin on the head of a vulture is generally looked at as a
_direct_ adaptation for wallowing in putridity; _and so it may be_,
or it may possibly be due to the direct action of putrid matter; but
we should be very cautious in drawing any such inference, when we
see that the skin on the head of the clean-feeding male turkey is
likewise naked. The sutures in the skulls of young mammals have been
advanced as a beautiful adaptation for aiding parturition, and no
doubt they facilitate or may be indispensable for this act; but as
sutures occur in the skulls of young birds and reptiles, which have
only to escape from a broken egg, we may infer that this structure
has arisen from the laws of growth, and has been taken advantage
of in the parturition of the higher animals."

All this, simply taken, is beyond cavil, unless the attempt to explain scientifically how any designed result is accomplished savors of impropriety.

In the other place, Darwin is contemplating the patent fact, that "perfection here below" is relative, not absolute,--and illustrating this by the circumstance, that European animals, and especially plants, are now proving to be better adapted for New Zealand than many of the indigenous ones,--that "the correction for the aberration of light is said, on high authority, not to be quite perfect even in that most perfect organ, the eye." And then follows the second extract of the reviewer. But what is the position of the reviewer upon his own interpretation of these passages? If he insists that green woodpeckers were specifically created so in order that they might be less liable to capture, must he not equally hold that the black and pied ones were specifically made of these colors in order that they might be more liable to be caught? And would an explanation of the mode in which those woodpeckers came to be green, however complete, convince him that the color was undesigned?

As to the other illustration, is the reviewer so complete an optimist as to insist that the arrangement and the weapon are wholly perfect (_quoad_ the insect) the normal use of which often causes the animal fatally to injure or to disembowel itself? Either way it seems to us that the argument here, as well as the insect, performs _hari-kari_.

The "Examiner" adds:--"We should in like manner object to the word _favorable_, as implying that some species are placed by the Creator under _unfavorable_ circumstances, at least under such as might be advantageously modified." But are not many individuals and some races of men placed by the Creator "under unfavorable circumstances, at least under such as might be advantageously modified"? Surely these reviewers must be living in an ideal world, surrounded by "the faultless monsters which _our_ world ne'er saw," in some elysium where imperfection and distress were never heard of! Such arguments resemble some which we often hear against the Bible, holding that book responsible as if it originated certain facts on the shady side of human nature or the apparently darker lines of Providential dealing, though the facts are facts of common observation and have to be confronted upon any theory.

The "North American" reviewer also has a world of his own,--just such a one as an idealizing philosopher would be apt to devise,--that is, full of sharp and absolute distinctions: such, for instance, as the "absolute invariableness of instinct"; an absolute want of intelligence in any brute animal; and a complete monopoly of instinct by the brute animals, so that this "instinct is a great matter" for them only, since it sharply and perfectly distinguishes this portion of organic Nature from the vegetable kingdom on the one hand and from man on the other: most convenient views for argumentative purposes, but we suppose not borne out in fact.

In their scientific objections the two reviewers take somewhat different lines; but their philosophical and theological arguments strikingly coincide. They agree in emphatically asserting that Darwin's hypothesis of the origination of species through variation and natural selection "repudiates the whole doctrine of final causes," and "all indication of design or purpose in the organic world,"--"is neither more nor less than a formal denial of any agency beyond that of a blind chance in the developing or perfecting of the organs or instincts of created beings." "It is in vain that the apologists of this hypothesis might say that it merely attributes a different mode and time to the Divine agency,--that all the qualities subsequently appearing in their descendants must have been implanted, and remained latent in the original pair." Such a view, the Examiner declares, "is nowhere stated in this book, and would be, we are sure, disclaimed by the author." We should like to be informed of the grounds of this sureness. The marked rejection of spontaneous generation,--the statement of a belief that all animals have descended from four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number, or, perhaps, if constrained to it by analogy, "from some one primordial form into which life was first breathed."--coupled with the expression, "To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes," than "that each species has been independently created,"--those and similar expressions lead us to suppose that the author probably does accept the kind of view which the "Examiner" is sure he would disclaim. At least, we see nothing in his scientific theory to hinder his adoption of Lord Bacon's Confession of Faith in this regard,--"that, notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from creating, [in the sense of supernatural origination,] yet, nevertheless, He doth accomplish and fulfil His divine will in all things, great and small, singular and general, as fully and exactly by providence as He could by miracle and new creation, though His working be not immediate and direct, but by compass; not violating Nature, which is His own law upon the creature."