Chapter V: A Tribute to E. L. Youmans (6)

Ovations, now to the living king and now to the dead king, while taking saltatory and musical forms, took also verbal forms, originally spontaneous and irregular, but presently studied and measured; whence, first, the unrhythmical speech of the orator, which under higher emotional excitement grew into the rhythmical speech of the priest poet, chanting verses--verses that finally became established hymns of praise. Meanwhile from accompanying rude imitations of the hero's acts, performed now by one and now by several, grew dramatic representations, which, little by little elaborated, fell under the regulation of a chief actor, who prefigured the playwright. And out of these germs, all pertaining to worship, came eventually the various professions of poets, actors, dramatists, and the subdivisions of these.

The great deeds of the hero god, recited, chanted, or sung, and mimetically rendered, naturally came to be supplemented by details, so growing into accounts of his life; and thus the priest poet gave origin to the biographer, whose narratives, being extended to less sacred personages, became secularized. Stories of the apotheosized chief or king, joined with stories of his companions and amplified by narratives of accompanying transactions, formed the first histories. And from these accounts of the doings of particular men and groups of men, partly true but passing by exaggeration into the mythical, came the wholly mythical, or fiction; which then and always preserved the biographico-historical character. Add to which that out of the criticisms and reflections scattered through this personal literature an impersonal literature slowly emerged; the whole group of these products having as their deepest root the eulogies of the priest poet.

Prompted as were the medicine-men of savages and the priests of early civilized peoples to increase their influence, they were ever stimulated to acquire knowledge of natural actions and the properties of things; and, being in alleged communication with supernatural beings, they were supposed to acquire such knowledge from them. Hence, by implication, the priest became the primitive man of science; and led by his special experiences to speculate about the causes of things, thus entered the sphere of philosophy: both his science and his philosophy being pursued in the service of his religion.

Not only his higher culture, but his alleged intercourse with the gods, whose mouthpiece he was, made him the authority in cases of dispute; and being also, as historian, the authority concerning past transactions and traditional usages, or laws, he acquired in both capacities the character of judge. Moreover, when the growth of legal administration brought the advocate, he, tho usually of lay origin, was sometimes clerical.

Distinguished in early stages as the learned man of the tribe or society, and especially distinguished as the possessor of that knowledge which was thought of most value--knowledge of unseen things--the priest of necessity became the first teacher. Transmitting traditional statements concerning ghosts and gods, at first to neophytes of his class only, but afterward to the cultured classes, he presently, beyond instruction in supernatural things, gave instruction in natural things; and, having been the first secular teacher, has retained a large share in secular teaching even down to our own days.

As making a sacrifice was the original priestly act, and as the building of an altar for the sacrifice was by implication a priestly act, it results that the making of a shelter over the altar, which, in its developed form became the temple, was also a priestly act. When the priest, ceasing to be himself the executant, directed the artificers, he continued to be the designer; and when he ceased to be the actual designer, the master builder or architect thereafter continued to fulfil his general directions. And then the temple and the palace in sundry early societies, being at once the residence of the apotheosized ruler and the living ruler (even now a palace usually contains a small temple), and being the first kinds of developed architecture, eventually gave origin to secular architecture.

A rudely carved or modeled image of a man placed on his grave gave origin to the sculptured representation of a god inclosed in his temple. A product of priestly skill at the outset, it continued in some cases to be such among early civilized peoples; and always thereafter, when executed by an artizan, conformed to priestly direction. Extending presently to the representation of other than divine and semidivine personages, it eventually thus passed into its secularized form.

So was it with painting. At first used to complete the carved representation of the severed or worshiped personage, and being otherwise in some tribes used by the priest and his aids for exhibiting the tribal hero's deeds, it long remained subservient to religion, either for the coloring of statues (as it does still in Roman Catholic images of saints, etc.), or for the decoration of temples, or for the portraiture of deceased persons on sarcophagi and stelæ; and when it gained independence it was long employed almost wholly for the rendering of sacred scenes,--its eventual secularization being accompanied by its subdivision into a variety of kinds and of the executant artists into correlative groups.

Thus the process of professional evolution betrays throughout the same traits. In stages like that described by Huc[45] as still existing among the Tibetans, where "the Lama is not merely a priest, he is the painter, poet, sculptor, architect, physician," there are joined in the same individual, or group of individuals, the potentialities out of which gradually arise the specialized groups we know as professions. While out of the one primitive class there come by progressive divergences many classes, each of these classes itself undergoes a kindred change: there are formed in it subdivisions and even sub-subdivisions, which become gradually more marked; so that, throughout, the advance is from an indefinite homogeneity to a definite heterogeneity.

[Footnote 45: Évariste Régis Huc, a French missionary and traveler in China, born in 1813 and died in 1860. He published several books based on his experiences in Asia.]

In presence of the fact that the immense majority of mankind adhere pertinaciously to the creeds, political and religious, in which they are brought up; and in presence of the further fact that on behalf of their creeds, however acquired, there are soon enlisted prejudices which practically shut out adverse evidence, it is not to be expected that the foregoing illustrations, even joined with kindred illustrations previously given, will make them see that society is a growth and not a manufacture, and has its laws of evolution.

From prime ministers down to plowboys there is either ignorance or disregard of the truth that nations acquire their vital structures by natural processes and not by artificial devices. If the belief is not that social arrangements have been divinely ordered thus or thus, then it is that they have been made thus or thus by kings, or if not by kings, then by parliaments. That they have come about by small accumulated changes not contemplated by rulers is an open secret which only of late has been recognized by a few, and is still unperceived by the many,--educated as well as uneducated. Tho the turning of the land into a food-producing surface, cleared, fenced, drained, and covered with farming appliances, has been achieved by men working for individual profit, not by legislative direction--tho villages, towns, cities, have insensibly grown up under the desires of men to satisfy their wants--tho by spontaneous cooperation of citizens have been formed canals, railways, telegraphs, and other means of communication and distribution, the natural forces which have done all this are ignored as of no account in political thinking.

Our immense manufacturing system with its multitudinous inventions, supplying both home and foreign consumers, and the immense mercantile marine by which its products are taken all over the globe and other products brought back, have been naturally and not artificially originated. That transformation by which, in thousands of years, men's occupations have been so specialized that each, aiding to satisfy some small division of his fellow citizen's needs, has his own needs satisfied by the work of hundreds of others, has taken place without design and unobserved. Knowledge developing into science, which has become so vast in mass that no one can grasp a tithe of it, and which now guides productive activities at large, has resulted from the workings of individuals prompted not by the ruling agency, but by their own inclinations. So, too, has been created the still vaster mass distinguished as literature, yielding the gratifications filling so large a space in our lives. Nor is it otherwise with the literature of the hour. That ubiquitous journalism which provides satisfactions for men's more urgent mental wants has resulted from the activities of citizens severally pursuing private benefits. And supplementing these come the innumerable companies, associations, unions, societies, clubs, subserving enterprise, philanthropy, culture, art, amusement; as well as the multitudinous institutions annually receiving millions by endowments and subscriptions: all of them arising from the unforced cooperations of citizens.

II

SELF-DEPENDENCE AND PATERNALISM[46]

The enthusiastic philanthropist urgent for some act of parliament to remedy this evil or secure the other good, thinks it a very trivial and far-fetched objection that the people will be morally injured by doing things for them instead of leaving them to do things themselves. He vividly realizes the benefit he hopes to get achieved, which is a positive and readily imaginable thing: he does not realize the diffused, invisible, and slowly accumulating effect wrought on the popular mind, and so does not believe in it; or, if he admits it, thinks it beneath consideration. Would he but remember, however, that all national character is gradually produced by the daily action of circumstances, of which each day's result seems so insignificant as not to be worth mentioning, he would see that what is trifling when viewed in its increments, may be formidable when viewed in its sum total. Or if he would go into the nursery, and watch how repeated actions--each of them apparently unimportant--create, in the end, a habit which will affect the whole future life; he would be reminded that every influence brought to bear on human nature tells, and if continued, tells seriously. The thoughtless mother who hourly yields to the requests: "Mama, tie my pinafore," "Mama, button my shoe," and the like, can not be persuaded that each of these concessions is detrimental; but the wiser spectator sees that if this policy be long pursued, and be extended to other things, it will end in hopeless dependence. The teacher of the old school who showed his pupil the way out of every difficulty did not perceive that he was generating an attitude of mind greatly militating against success in life. The modern instructor, however, induces his pupil to solve his difficulties himself; believes that in so doing he is preparing him to meet the difficulties which, when he goes into the world, there will be no one to help him through; and finds confirmation for this belief in the fact that a great proportion of the most successful men are self-made.

[Footnote 46: From the "Essays, Moral, Political, and Esthetic." By permission of D. Appleton & Co.]

Well, is it not obvious that this relationship between discipline and success holds good nationally? Are not nations made of men; and are not men subject to the same laws of modification in their adult as in their early years? Is it not true of the drunkard, that each carouse adds a thread to his bonds? of the trader, that each acquisition strengthens the wish for acquisitions? of the pauper, that the more you assist him the more he wants? of the busy man, that the more he has to do the more he can do? And does it not follow that if every individual is subject to this process of adaptation to conditions, a whole nation must be so--that just in proportion as its members are little helped by extraneous power they will become self-helping, and in proportion as they are much helped they will become helpless? What folly is it to ignore these results because they are not direct, and not immediately visible. Tho slowly wrought out, they are inevitable. We can no more elude the laws of human development than we can elude the law of gravitation; and so long as they hold true must these effects occur.

If we are asked in what special directions this alleged helplessness, entailed by much state superintendence, shows itself, we reply that it is seen in a retardation of all social growths requiring self-confidence in the people--in a timidity that fears all difficulties not before encountered--in a thoughtless contentment with things as they are. Let any one, after duly watching the rapid evolution going on in England, where men have been comparatively little helped by governments--or better still, after contemplating the unparalleled progress of the United States, which is peopled by self-made men and the recent descendants of self-made men;--let such a one, we say, go on to the Continent, and consider the relatively slow advance which things are there making; and the still slower advance they would make but for English enterprise.

Let him go to Holland, and see that tho the Dutch early showed themselves good mechanics, and have had abundant practise in hydraulics, Amsterdam has been without any due supply of water until now that works are being established by an English company. Let him go to Berlin, and there be told that, to give that city a water supply such as London has had for generations, the project of an English firm is about to be executed by English capital, under English superintendence. Let him go to Paris, where he will if find a similar lack, and a like remedy now under consideration. Let him go to Vienna, and learn that it, in common with other continental cities, is lighted by an English gas company. Let him go on the Rhone, on the Loire, on the Danube, and discover that Englishmen established steam navigation on those rivers. Let him inquire concerning the railways in Italy, Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark, how many of them are English projects, how many have been largely helped by English capital, how many have been executed by English contractors, how many have had English engineers. Let him discover, too, as he will, that where railways have been government made, as in Russia, the energy, the perseverance, and the practical talent developed in England and the United States have been called in to aid.

And then if these illustrations of the progressiveness of a self-dependent race, and the torpidity of paternally governed ones, do not suffice him, he may read Mr. Laing's[47] successive volumes of European travel, and there study the contrast in detail. What, now, is the cause of this contrast? In the order of nature, a capacity for self-help must in every case have been brought into existence by the practise of self-help; and, other things equal, a lack of this capacity must in every case have arisen from the lack of demand for it. Do not these two antecedents and their two consequents agree with the facts as presented in England and Europe? Were not the inhabitants of the two, some centuries ago, much upon a par in point of enterprise? Were not the English even behind, in their manufactures, in their colonization, and in their commerce? Has not the immense relative change the English have undergone in this respect been coincident with the great relative self-dependence they have been since habituated to? And is not this change proximately ascribable to this habitual self-dependence? Whoever doubts it is asked to assign a more probable cause. Whoever admits it must admit that the enervation of a people by perpetual state aids is not a trifling consideration, but the most weighty consideration. A general arrest of national growth he will see to be an evil greater than any special benefits can compensate for. And, indeed, when, after contemplating this great fact, the overspreading of the earth by the Anglo-Saxons, he remarks the absence of any parallel phenomenon exhibited by a continental race--when he reflects how this difference must depend chiefly on difference of character, and how such difference of character has been mainly produced by difference of discipline; he will perceive that the policy pursued in this matter may have a large share in determining a nation's ultimate fate.

[Footnote 47: Samuel Laing traveled in Norway and Sweden in 1834, and published two books recounting his observations.]

III

THE ORNAMENTAL AND THE USEFUL IN EDUCATION[48]

It has been truly remarked that, in order of time, decoration precedes dress. Among people who submit to great physical suffering that they may have themselves handsomely tattooed, extremes of temperature are borne with but little attempt at mitigation. Humboldt tells us that an Orinoco Indian, tho quite regardless of bodily comfort, will yet labor for a fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith to make himself admired; and that the same woman who would not hesitate to leave her hut without a fragment of clothing on, would not dare to commit such a breach of decorum as to go out unpainted. Voyagers uniformly find that colored beads and trinkets are much more prized by wild tribes than are calicoes or broadcloths. And the anecdotes we have of the ways in which, when shirts and coats are given, they turn them to some ludicrous display, show how completely the idea of ornament predominates over that of use. Nay, there are still more extreme illustrations: witness the fact narrated by Captain Speke[49] of his African attendants, who strutted about in their goatskin mantles when the weather was fine, but when it was wet, took them off, folded them up, and went about naked, shivering in the rain! Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is developed out of decorations. And when we remember that even among ourselves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience--when we see that the function is still in great measure subordinated to the appearance, we have further reason for inferring such an origin.

[Footnote 48: From "Education, Intellectual, Moral and Physical." By permission of D. Appleton & Co.]

[Footnote 49: John H. Speke, who, in company with Sir Richard Burton, visited the lakes of Central Africa in 1850, and crossed the continent, discovering the Victoria Nyanza and the main source of the Nile in 1860-63.]

It is not a little curious that the like relations hold with the mind. Among mental as among bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful. Not only in times past, but almost as much in our own era, that knowledge which conduces to personal well-being has been postponed to that which brings applause. In the Greek schools, music, poetry, rhetoric, and a philosophy which, until Socrates taught, had but little bearing upon action, were the dominant subjects; while knowledge, aiding the arts of life, had a very subordinate place. And in our own universities and schools at the present moment the like antithesis holds. We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say that throughout his after career a boy, in nine cases out of ten, applies his Latin and Greek to no practical purposes. The remark is trite that in his shop, or his office, in managing his estate or his family, in playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is very little aided by this knowledge he took so many years to acquire,--so little, that generally the greater part of it drops out of his memory; and if he occasionally vents a Latin quotation or alludes to some Greek myth, it is less to throw light on the topic in hand than for the sake of effect. If we inquire what is the real motive for giving boys a classical education, we find it to be simply conformity to public opinion. Men dress their children's minds as they do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. As the Orinoco Indian puts on his paint before leaving his hut, not with a view to any direct benefit, but because he would be ashamed to be seen without it, so a boy's drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted on, not because of their intrinsic value, but that he may not be disgraced by being found ignorant of them--that he may have "the education of a gentleman"--the badge marking a certain social position, and bringing a consequent respect.

This parallel is still more clearly displayed in the case of the other sex. In the treatment of both mind and body, the decorative element has continued to predominate in a greater degree among women than among men. Originally personal adornment occupied the attention of both sexes equally. In these latter days of civilization, however, we see that in the dress of men the regard for appearance has, in a considerable degree, yielded to the regard for comfort; while in their education the useful has of late been trenching on the ornamental. In neither direction has this change gone so far with women. The wearing of earrings, finger-rings, bracelets; the elaborate dressings of the hair; the still occasional use of paint; the immense labor bestowed in making habiliments sufficiently attractive; and the great discomfort that will be submitted to for the sake of conformity; show how greatly, in the attiring of women, the desire of approbation overrides the desire for warmth and convenience. And similarly in their education, the immense preponderance of "accomplishments" proves how here, too, use is subordinated to display. Dancing, deportment, the piano, singing, drawing---what a large space do these occupy! If you ask why Italian and German are learned, you will find that, under all the sham reasons given, the real reason is, that a knowledge of those tongues is thought ladylike. It is not that the books written in them may be utilized, which they scarcely ever are, but that Italian and German songs may be sung, and that the extent of attainment may bring whispered admiration. The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like historic trivialities, are committed to memory, not because of any direct benefits that can possibly result from knowing them, but because society considers them parts of a good education--because the absence of such knowledge may bring the contempt of others. When we have named reading, writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, and sewing, we have named about all the things a girl is taught with a view to their direct uses in life; and even some of these have more reference to the good opinion of others than to immediate personal welfare.

Thoroughly to realize the truth that with the mind as with the body the ornamental precedes the useful, it is needful to glance at its rationale. This lies in the fact that, from the far past down even to the present, social needs have subordinated individual needs, and that the chief social need has been the control of individuals. It is not, as we commonly suppose, that there are no governments but those of monarchs, and parliaments, and constituted authorities. These acknowledged governments are supplemented by other unacknowledged ones, that grow up in all circles, in which every man or woman strives to be king or queen or lesser dignitary. To get above some and be reverenced by them, and to propitiate those who are above us, is the universal struggle in which the chief energies of life are expended. By the accumulation of wealth, by style of living, by beauty of dress, by display of knowledge or intellect, each tries to subjugate others, and so aids in weaving that ramified network of restraints by which society is kept in order. It is not the savage chief only who, in formidable war paint, with scalps at his belt, aims to strike awe into his inferiors; it is not only the belle who, by elaborate toilet, polished manners, and numerous accomplishments, strives to "make conquests"; but the scholar, the historian, the philosopher, use their acquirements to the same end. We are none of us content with quietly unfolding our own individualities to the full in all directions, but have a restless craving to impress our individualities upon others, and in some way subordinate them. And this it is which determines the character of our education. Not what knowledge is of most real worth is the consideration, but what will bring most applause, honor, respect--what will most conduce to social position and influence--what will be most imposing. As throughout life not what we are, but what we shall be thought, is the question; so in education the question is not the intrinsic value of knowledge so much as its extrinsic effects on others. And this being our dominant idea, direct utility is scarcely more regarded than by the barbarian when filing his teeth and staining his nails.

IV

REMINISCENCES OF HIS BOYHOOD[50]

Places where I gathered flowers and gazed with interest at the catkins of the hazel, have now become places covered with ironworks, where steam hammers make their perpetual thuds, and through which railway-sidings everywhere ramify. Quiet lanes in which, during early boyhood, I went with a companion trying to catch minnows with a hand-net in a clear little stream running by the hedge, have been transformed into straight roads between land-allotments, with scattered houses built by artizans. And where I picked blackberries, factories now stand.

[Footnote 50: From Part I, Chapter II, of the "Autobiography." Spencer's boyhood was passed in Derby. Copyright, 1904, by D. Appleton & Co., by whose kind permission passages from this work are printed here.]

There was a garden of some size behind the house containing fruit trees, and permitting a certain amount of floriculture; and my father rented an additional piece of land close by as a vegetable-garden. Not infrequently I had to join in gardening--more frequently, indeed, than I liked. Often when I ought to have been busy at some task which my father had set to me, I was otherwise occupied--throwing stones at the birds that settled on the walls and hedges; observing the bees on the kidney-bean flowers, piercing the base of each corolla to reach the honey; or, at a disused pump-trough containing stagnant water, watching the larvæ of the gnats as they came wriggling to the surface, putting out their tails to breathe, and then descending. Most children are instinctively naturalists, and were they encouraged would readily pass from careless observations to careful and deliberate ones. My father was wise in such matters; and I was not simply allowed but encouraged to enter on natural history.

The majority of my activities, however, were those of the ordinary schoolboy, who, on Saturday afternoons and the like occasions of leisure, is commonly given to country rambles and the search for hedge-side treasures. During my early years the neighboring regions of Osmaston and Normanton were explored by me in all their details: every hedge becoming known in the course of expeditions, now in the spring seeking birds' nests, now gathering violets or dog-roses, and later in the year collecting sometimes mushrooms, sometimes blackberries, sometimes hips and haws, crab-apples and other wild products. Beyond the pleasurable exercise and the gratification to my love of adventure, there was gained during these excursions much miscellaneous knowledge of things, and the perceptions were beneficially disciplined. Of all the occupations, however, to which holidays were devoted, I delighted most in fishing. There was the river Derwent, at that time not the black dirty stream it is now, but tolerably clear and containing a fair supply of various fish; and there were the canals, which, on the whole, served better for boys' fishing. Many happy half-days, and, during the midsummer holidays, many whole days, were spent on their banks. Along with such exercise of skill as fishing itself implies, there came the exercise of skill in making fishing-tackle; for I was not so amply furnished with pocket-money that I could buy all the appliances I required. I was, I suspect, led by my father in that case, as in other cases, to use my own powers of manipulation for satisfying my needs. I made my own floats, and also "hair-tackles," as they were locally called--each some six feet of the line next the hook, made of single horse-hair instead of silk-worm gut. I remember I was cautious and systematic enough to use a test before trusting any one of them....

When I was something like nine or ten years old, the love of this sport led very nearly to loss of life. I fell into deep water in the Derwent and was close upon drowning. It is a curious fact that whereas dreams are, while in progress, regarded as real, the reality was in this case taken for a dream. During the first part of my immersion I thought to myself--"Oh, it is all a dream!"; and only after coming to the surface once or twice discovered that I was actually in the water. A youth of some sixteen or seventeen plunged in and rescued me. His name was George Holme. He was at that time a mill-manager. As may be inferred from the fact that he was the one out of a considerable number of spectators who risked himself to save me, he was of superior nature morally; and he turned out in after life to be also a man of much faculty. Gradually rising, he became a wealthy manufacturer; and was led, by the development of his business, to establish trade connections in various parts of the world--one being pushed even into Central Asia. When sixty he became mayor of Derby and magistrate. He had in a high degree that which another friend of mine describes as the business instinct--an instinct which experience tells him is quite special, and may or may not accompany other superiorities....

I may here name the fact that I was in boyhood extremely prone to castle-building--a habit which continued throughout youth and into mature life: finally passing, I suppose, into the dwelling on schemes more or less practicable. In early days the habit was such that on going to bed it was a source of satisfaction to me to think I should be able to lie for a length of time and dwell on the fancies which at the time occupied me; and frequently next morning, on awaking, I was vexed with myself because I had gone to sleep before I had reveled in my imaginations as much as I had intended. Often these dreams, becoming literally day-dreams, quite filled my unconsciousness when walking. Even in the streets my state of abstraction was such that I occasionally talked aloud as I went along: a fact of which I was from time to time made aware by people who turned to look at me.

V

A TRIBUTE TO E. L. YOUMANS[51]

Some years previously I had made the acquaintance of an American whose sympathies were enlisted on my behalf by perusal of some of my books or essays--Mr. E. A. Silsbee, of Salem, Mass. While yet the circular was in its unfinished state, I sent to him a copy, accompanied by the inquiry whether he thought that subscribers might be obtained in America. His reply, dated February 14, held out much encouragement; and a letter of March 6, written after the circular had been sent to New York, contained a sentence the significance of which was shown by subsequent events. The sentence runs--"Mr. Youmans, a very popular and intelligent lecturer on scientific subjects, well known by his works on chemistry, physiology, etc., entered with great enthusiasm into the project." Devoting himself with characteristic vigor to the furtherance of my scheme, this previously unknown friend succeeded in obtaining more than two hundred subscribers.

[Footnote 51: From Part VII of the "Autobiography." Copyright, 1904, by D. Appleton & Co.]

The relation thus initiated was extremely fortunate; for Prof. Edward L. Youmans[52] was of all Americans I have known or heard of, the one most able and most willing to help me. Alike intellectually and morally, he had in the highest degrees the traits conducive to success in diffusing the doctrines he espoused; and from that time to this he has devoted his time mainly in spreading throughout the United States the doctrine of evolution. His love of wide generalizations had been shown years before in lectures on such topics as the correlation of the physical forces; and from those who heard him I have gathered that, aided by his unusual powers of exposition, the enthusiasm which contemplation of the larger truths of science produced in him was in a remarkable degree communicated to his hearers. Such larger truths, I have on many occasions observed, are those which he quickly seizes--ever passing at once through details to lay hold of essentials; and having laid hold of them, he clearly sets them forth afresh in his own way with added illustrations. But it is morally even more than intellectually that he has proved himself a true missionary of advanced ideas. Extremely energetic--so energetic that no one has been able to cheek his over-activity--he has expended all his powers in advancing what he holds to be the truth; and not only his powers but his means. It has proved impossible to prevent him from injuring himself in health by his exertions; and it has proved impossible to make him pay due regard to his personal interests. So that toward the close of life he finds himself wrecked in body and impoverished in estate by thirty years of devotion to high ends. Among worshipers of humanity, who teach that human welfare should be the dominant aim, I have not heard of one whose sacrifices will bear comparison with those of my friend.

[Footnote 52: Spencer's debt to Professor Youmans has been well known in America. He was not only instrumental in securing the publication of his works here, but even more so in popularizing them through the _Popular Science Monthly_, of which he was the editorial founder. He had other distinction as a chemist and published a "Class Book of Chemistry" in 1852, and an "Atlas of Chemistry," in 1854.]

VI

WHY HE NEVER MARRIED[53]

Thus, if I leave out altruistic considerations and include egoistic considerations only, I may still look back from these declining days of life with content. One drawback indeed there has been, and that a great one. All through those years in which work should have had the accompaniment of wife and children, my means were such as to render marriage impossible: I could barely support myself, much less others. And when, at length, there came adequate means the fit time had passed by. Even in this matter, however, it may be that fortune has favored me. Frequently when prospects are promising, dissatisfaction follows marriage rather than satisfaction; and in my own case the prospects would not have been promising. I am not by nature adapted to a relation in which perpetual compromise and great forbearance are needful. That extreme critical tendency which I have above described, joined with a lack of reticence no less pronounced, would, I fear, have caused perpetual domestic differences. After all, my celibate life has probably been the best for me, as well as the best for some unknown other.

[Footnote 53: From Part XII of the "Autobiography." Copyright 1904, by D. Appleton & Co.]

HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE

Born in 1821, died in 1862; his father a wealthy ship owner
in London; published the first volume of his "History of
Civilization" in 1857, second volume appearing in 1861; his
death occurred in Syria, where he was traveling for his
health; his last words "Oh, my book; I shall never finish my
book."

I

THE ISOLATION OF SPAIN[54]

The Spaniards have had everything except knowledge. They have had immense wealth, and fertile and well-peopled territories in all parts of the globe. Their own country, washed by the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and possest of excellent harbors, is admirably situated for the purposes of trade between Europe and America, being so placed as to command the commerce of both hemispheres. They had, at a very early period, ample municipal privileges; they had independent parliaments; they had the right of choosing their own magistrates, and managing their own cities. They have had rich and flourishing towns, abundant manufactures, and skilful artizans, whose choice productions could secure a ready sale in every market in the world. They have cultivated the fine arts with eminent success; their noble and exquisite paintings, and their magnificent churches being justly ranked among the most wonderful efforts of the human hand. They speak a beautiful, sonorous and flexible language, and their literature is not unworthy of their language. Their soil yields treasures of every kind. It overflows with wine and oil, and produces the choicest fruits in an almost tropical exuberance. It contains the most valuable minerals, in a profuse variety, unexampled in any other part of Europe. Nowhere else do we find such rare and costly marbles, so easily accessible, and in such close communication with the sea, where they might safely be shipped, and sent to countries which required them. As to the metals, there is hardly one which Spain does not possess in large quantities. Her mines of silver and quicksilver are well known. She abounds in copper, and her supply of lead is enormous. Iron and coal, the two most useful of all the productions of the inorganic world, are also abundant in that highly favored country. Iron is said to exist in every part of Spain, and to be of the best quality; while the coal mines of Asturias are described as inexhaustible. In short, nature has been so prodigal of her bounty that it has been observed with hardly an hyperbole that the Spanish nation possesses within itself nearly every natural production which can satisfy either the necessity or the curiosity of mankind.

[Footnote 54: From Volume II, Chapter VIII, of the "History of Civilization in England."]

These are splendid gifts; it is for the historian to tell how they have been used. Certainly, the people who possess them have never been deficient in natural endowments. They have had their full share of great statesmen, great kings, great magistrates, and great legislators. They have had many able and vigorous rulers; and their history is ennobled by the frequent appearance of courageous and disinterested patriots, who have sacrificed their all that they might help their country. The bravery of the people has never been disputed; while, as to the upper classes, the punctilious honor of a Spanish gentleman has passed into a byword, and circulated through the world. Of the nation generally, the best observers pronounce them to be high-minded, generous, truthful, full of integrity, warm and zealous friends, affectionate in all private relations of life, frank, charitable, and humane. Their sincerity in religious matters is unquestionable; they are, moreover, eminently temperate and frugal. Yet, all these great qualities have availed them nothing, and will avail them nothing so long as they remain ignorant....

In Spain there never has been a revolution,[55] properly so called; there never has even been one grand national rebellion. The people, tho often lawless, are never free. Among them we find still preserved that peculiar taint of barbarism which makes men prefer occasional disobedience to systematic liberty. Certain feelings there are of our common nature, which even their slavish loyalty can not eradicate, and which, from time to time, urge them to resist injustice. Such instincts are happily the inalienable lot of humanity, which we can not forfeit, if we would, and which are too often the last resource against the extravagances of tyranny. And this is all that Spain now possesses. The Spaniards, however, resist, not because they are Spaniards, but because they are men. Still, even while they resist, they revere. While they will rise up against a vexatious impost, they crouch before a system of which the impost is the smallest evil. They smite the tax-gatherer, but fall prostrate at the feet of the contemptible prince for whom the tax-gatherer plies his craft; they will even revile the troublesome and importunate monk, or sometimes they will scoff at the sleek and arrogant priest, while such is their infatuation that they would risk their lives in defense of that cruel Church which has inflicted on them hideous calamities, but to which they still cling, as it it were the dearest object of their affections.

[Footnote 55: It is here to be borne in mind that Buckle wrote long before the revolutionary successes achieved by Castelar, Prim and Serrano, and the overthrow and exile of Queen Isabella in 1868.]

Connected with these habits of mind, and in sooth forming part of them, we find a reverence for antiquity, and an inordinate tenacity of old opinion, old beliefs, and old habits, which remind us of those tropical civilizations which formerly flourished. Such prejudices were once universal, even in Europe; but they began to die out in the sixteenth century, and are now, comparatively speaking, extinct, except in Spain, where they have always been welcomed. In that country, they retain their original force, and produce their natural results. By encouraging the notion that all the truths most important to know are already known, they repress those aspirations, and dull that generous confidence in the future, without which nothing really great can be achieved. A people who regard the past with too wistful an eye will never bestir themselves to help the onward progress. They will hardly believe that progress is possible. To them antiquity is synonymous with wisdom, and every improvement is a dangerous innovation.

In this state Europe lingered for many centuries; in this state Spain still lingers. Hence the Spaniards are remarkable for an inertness, a want of buoyancy, and an absence of hope, which, in our busy and enterprising age, isolate them from the rest of the civilized world. Believing that little can be done, they are in no hurry to do it. Believing that the knowledge they have inherited is far greater than any they can obtain, they wish to preserve their intellectual possessions whole and unimpaired; inasmuch as the least alteration in them might lessen their value. Content with what has been already bequeathed, they are excluded from that great European movement, which, first clearly perceptible in the sixteenth century, has ever since been steadily advancing, unsettling old opinion, destroying old follies, reforming and improving on every side, influencing even such barbarous countries as Russia and Turkey, but leaving Spain unscathed.

While the human intellect has been making most prodigious and unheard-of strides, while discoveries in every quarter are simultaneously pressing upon us and coming in such rapid and bewildering succession that the strongest sight, dazzled by the glare of their splendor, is unable to contemplate them as a whole; while other discoveries still more important, and still more remote from ordinary experience, are manifestly approaching, and may be seen looming in the distance whence they are now obscurely working on the advanced thinkers who are nearest to them, filling their minds with those ill-defined, restless, and almost uneasy feelings, which are the invariable harbingers of future triumph; while the veil is being rudely torn and nature, violated at all points, is forced to disclose her secrets, and reveal her structure, her economy, and her laws to the indomitable energy of man; while Europe is ringing with the noise of intellectual achievements, with which even despotic governments affect to sympathize, in order that they may divert them from their natural course, and use them as new instruments whereby to oppress yet more the liberties of the people; while, amidst this general din and excitement, the public mind, swayed to and fro, is tossed and agitated--Spain sleeps on, untroubled, unheeding, impassive, receiving no impressions from the rest of the world, and making no impressions upon it. There she lies at the further extremity of the Continent, a huge and torpid mass, the sole representative now remaining of the feelings and the knowledge of the middle ages, and, what is the worst symptom of all, she is satisfied with her own condition. Tho she is the most backward country in Europe, she believes herself to be the foremost. She is proud of everything of which she should be ashamed. She is proud of the antiquity of her opinion; proud of her orthodoxy; proud of the strength of her faith; proud of her immeasurable and childish credulity; proud of her unwillingness to amend either her creed or her customs; proud of her hatred of heretics, and proud of the undying vigilance with which she has baffled their efforts to obtain a full and legal establishment on her soil.

II

GEORGE III AND THE ELDER PITT[56]

To a superficial observer, the accession of George III was one of the most fortunate events that could have occurred. The new king was born in England, spoke English as his mother tongue, and was said to look upon Hanover as a foreign country, whose interests were to be considered of subordinate importance. At the same time, the last hopes of the House of Stuart were now destroyed; the Pretender himself was languishing in Italy, where he shortly after died: and his son, a slave to the vices which seemed hereditary in that family, was consuming his life in an unpitied and ignominious obscurity.

[Footnote 56: From Volume I, Chapter VII, of the "History of Civilization in England."]

And yet these circumstances, which appeared so favorable, did of necessity involve the most disastrous consequences. The fear of a disputed succession being removed, the sovereign was emboldened to a course on which he otherwise would not have ventured. All those monstrous doctrines respecting the rights of kings, which the Revolution was supposed to have destroyed, were suddenly revived. The clergy, abandoning the now hopeless cause of the Pretender, displayed the same zeal for the House of Hanover which they had formerly displayed for the House of Stuart. The pulpits resounded with praises of the new king, of the domestic virtues, of his piety, but, above all, his dutiful attachment to the English Church. The result was the establishment of an alliance between the two parties more intimate than any had been seen in England since the time of Charles I. Under their auspices the old Tory faction rapidly rallied, and were soon able to dispossess their rivals of the management of the government.

This reactionary movement was greatly aided by the personal character of George III, for he, being despotic as well as superstitious, was equally anxious to extend the prerogative and strengthen the church. Every liberal sentiment, everything approaching to reform, nay, even the mere mention of inquiry, was an abomination in the eyes of that narrow and ignorant prince. Without knowledge, without taste, without even a glimpse of one of the sciences, or a feeling for one of the fine arts, education had done nothing to enlarge a mind which nature had more than usually contracted. Totally ignorant of the history and resources of foreign countries, and barely knowing their geographical position, his information was scarcely more extensive respecting the people over whom he was called to rule. In that immense mass of evidence now extant, and which consists of every description of private correspondence, records of private conversation and of public acts, there is not to be found the slightest proof that he knew any one of those numerous things which the governor of a country ought to know; or indeed, that he was acquainted with a single duty of his position, except that mere mechanical routine of ordinary business which might have been effected by the lowest clerk in the meanest office in his kingdom.

The course of proceeding which such a king as this was likely to follow could be easily foreseen. He gathered round his throne that great party, who, clinging to the tradition of the past, have always made it their boast to check the progress of their age. During the sixty years of his reign, he, with the sole exception of Pitt, never willingly admitted to his councils a single man of great ability; not one whose name is associated with any measure of value either in domestic or in foreign policy. Even Pitt only maintained his position in the state by forgetting the lessons of his illustrious father, and abandoning those liberal principles in which he had been educated, and with which he entered public life. Because George III hated the idea of reform, Pitt not only relinquished what he had before declared to be absolutely necessary, but did not hesitate to persecute to the death the party with whom he had once associated in order to obtain it. Because George III looked upon slavery as one of those good old customs which the wisdom of his ancestors had consecrated, Pitt did not dare to use his power for procuring its abolition, but left to his successors the glory of destroying that infamous trade, on the preservation of which his royal master had set his heart. Because George III detested the French of whom he knew as much as he knew of the inhabitants of Kamchatka or of Tibet, Pitt, contrary to his own judgment, engaged in a war with France by which England was seriously imperiled, and the English people burdened with a debt that their remotest posterity will be unable to pay. But, notwithstanding all this, when Pitt, only a few years before his death, showed a determination to concede to the Irish some small share of their undoubted rights, the King dismissed him from office; and the King's friends, as they were called, exprest their indignation at the presumption of a minister who could oppose the wishes of so benign and gracious a master. And when, unhappily for his own fame, this great man determined to return to power, he could only recover office by conceding that very point for which he had relinquished it; thus setting the mischievous example of the minister of a free country sacrificing his own judgment to the personal prejudices of the sovereign.

As it was hardly possible to find other ministers who to equal abilities would add equal subservience, it is not surprizing that the highest offices were constantly filled by men of notorious incapacity. Indeed, the King seemed to have an instinctive antipathy to everything great and noble. During the reign of George II the elder Pitt had won for himself a reputation which covered the world, and had carried to an unprecedented height the glories of the English name. He, however, as the avowed friend of popular rights, strenuously opposed the despotic principles of the court; and for this reason he was hated by George III with a hatred that seemed barely compatible with a sane mind.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Born in 1822, died in 1888; son of "Arnold of Rugby";
educated at Rugby and Oxford; fellow of Oriel; lay inspector
of schools in 1851: professor of poetry at Oxford in 1857;
visited the United States in 1883 and 1886; published
"Empedocles on Etna" in 1853, "Essays in Criticism" in 1865,
"Literature and Dogma" in 1873, "Culture and Anarchy" in
1877.

THE MOTIVE FOR CULTURE[57]

The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance or else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it. No serious man would call this culture, or attach any value to it as culture at all. To find the real ground for the very different estimate which serious people will set upon culture we must find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a motive the word curiosity gives us.

[Footnote 57: From "Culture and Anarchy."]

I have before now pointed out that we English do not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad sense. With us the word is always used in a somewhat disapproving sense. A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things of the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, but with us the word always conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In the _Quarterly Review_, some little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate of it in my judgment it was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in this: that in our English way it left out of sight the double sense really involved in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame, if it was said that he was impelled in his operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either to perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a curiosity--a desire after the things, of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are--which is, in an intelligent being, natural and laudable.