Chapter IV (2)

In the form in which it was first presented, the teaching of Christianity was undoubtedly ambiguous, as, indeed, every doctrine in its first general and abstract form must be. We cannot then call it either social or anti-social, without limitations; it is anti-social and ascetic, because of its negative relations to the previous forms of life and culture; it is social and positive in so far as in its primary doctrine of the unity of the divine and human--of divinity manifested in man and humanity made perfect through suffering--it contains the promise and the necessity of a development by which nature and spirit shall be reconciled. The progressive tendency of Christendom was based on the fact that from the earliest times the followers of Christ were placed in the dilemma, either of denying their primary doctrine of reconciliation between God and man and going back to pure Monotheism, or of advancing to the reconciliation of all those other antagonisms of spirit and nature, the world and the Church, which arose out of the circumstances of its first publication. And modern history is more than anything else the history of the long process whereby this logical necessity manifested itself in fact. The negative spirit of the Middle Age, its asceticism, its dualism, its formalism, its tendency to transform the moral opposition of natural and spiritual into an external opposition between two natural worlds, present and future, and thus to substitute "other-worldliness" for worldliness, instead of substituting unworldliness for both--all these characteristics were the natural results of the fact that the idea of Christianity, in its first abstract form, could not include, and therefore necessarily became opposed to, the forms of social life and organization with which it came into contact. But while the early Christians looked for the realization of the kingdom of Heaven in some immediate earthly future, and the Middle Age postponed it to another life, Christ had already taught the truth, which alone can turn either of these hopes into something more than the expression of an egoistic desire--the truth that "the kingdom of God is within us." The reaction of the social necessities of mediæval society on the doctrine--which Comte quite correctly describes as leading to the gradual elevation of humanity and of human interests--found its main support in the principles of the doctrine itself, so soon as its lessons had been absorbed into the mind of the people. The irresistible force of the movement, whereby the intelligence was emancipated from authority, and the claims of the family and the State were asserted against the Church, lay above all in this, that Christianity itself was felt to involve the consecration of human life in all its interests and relations. Luther's appeal to the New Testament and to the earliest ages of Christianity was in some ways unhistorical, but it expressed a truth. Protestantism was not a return to the Christianity of the first century; it was an assertion of the relation of the individual to God, which was itself made possible only by the long work of Latin Catholicism. But the development of a doctrine, if it has in it any germ of truth which is capable of development, involves a continual recurrence to its first, and therefore its most general, expression. The elements successively developed in the Catholic and the Protestant, the Latin and the Germanic forms of Christianity, were both present in the original germ, and the exaggerated prominence given in the former to the _negative_ side of Christianity could not but lead, in the development of thought, to a similarly exaggerated manifestation of its _positive_ side. But it is nearly as absurd to say, as Comte does, that the true logical outcome of Christianity is to be found in the "life of the hermits of the Thebaid," as it would be to say that its true logical outcome is to be found in those vehement assertions of nature--naked and unashamed--as its own sufficient warrant, which poured almost with the force of inspiration from the lips of Diderot. Both extremes are equally removed from that special moral temper and tone of feeling which we can alone call Christian--the former by its want of sympathy and tenderness, no less than the latter by its want of purity and self-command. Reassertion of nature through its negation, or to put it more simply, the purification of the natural desires by the renunciation of their immediate gratification, is the idea that is more or less definitely present in all phases of the history of Christianity; and, though swaying from one side to the other, the religious life of modern times has never ceased to present both aspects. Even a St. Augustine recoiled from the Manichæism by which nature was regarded, not simply as fallen from its original idea, but as essentially impure. And, on the other hand, even Rousseau's Savoyard vicar, who has got rid of the negative or ascetic element, as completely as is possible for any one still retaining any tincture of Christianity or even of religion, and who insists so strongly on the text that "the natural is the moral," is yet forced to recognize that nature has two voices, and that the _raison commune_ has to overcome and transform the natural inclinations of the individual. In the life of its Founder, the Christian Church has always had before it an individual type of that harmony of the spiritual and natural life, which it is its ideal to realize in all the wider spiritual relations of man; nor, till that ideal is reached, can it be said that the Christian idea is exhausted, or that the place is vacant for a new religion, however great may be the changes of form and expression through which Christianity must pass under the changed conditions of modern life.

That Comte was not able to discern this, arose, as we have seen, from the fact that he held a kind of Manichæism of his own. To him the egoistic and altruistic desires were two kinds of innate tendencies, both of which exist in man from the first, though with a great preponderance on the side of egoism. Moral improvement simply consists in altering the original proportions in favour of altruism, and moral perfection would be the complete extinction of egoism (which with Comte would naturally mean the extinction of all the desires classified as personal). Hence there is a distinctly ascetic tendency in some of the precepts of the _Politique Positive_,--_i.e._, asceticism begins to appear, not simply as a transitionary process through which certain natural desires are to be purified, but as a deliberate attempt to extinguish them. A deeper analysis would have shown that the desires in themselves, as mere natural impulses, are neither egoistic nor altruistic, neither bad nor good; and that while, as they appear in the conscious life, they are necessarily at first poisoned with egoism, yet that the _ego_ is not absolutely opposed to the _alter ego_, but rather implies it. A spiritual or self-conscious being is one who can find himself, nay who can find himself only, in the life of others: and when he does so find himself, there is no natural desire which for itself he needs to renounce as impure; no natural desire which may not become the expression of the better self, which is _ego_ and _alter ego_ in one. But Comte, unable from the limitations of his psychology to see the true relation of the negative and the positive side of ethics, is obliged to treat the ascetic tendency of Christianity as involving a denial of the existence, or the moral value, of the social sympathies; and on the other hand, to regard the efforts of the Christian Church to cultivate those sympathies, as the result of an external accommodation. His view of Christianity, in short, practically coincides with the definition of virtue given by Paley; it is "doing good to man, in obedience to the will of God, with a view to eternal happiness." It is the pursuit of a selfish end by means in themselves unselfish, with the pleasures and pains of another world introduced as the link of connection; and it must therefore leave bare selfishness in its place, so soon as doubt is cast upon these supernatural rewards and punishments. Hence Comte is just neither to Catholicism nor to Protestantism; considering that the former was only _indirectly_ social, and that the latter is merely the first step in a scepticism which, taking away the fears and hopes of another world, must at the same time take away the last limit upon selfishness. And, just because he is unable to understand either the negative tendencies of the former, or the positive tendencies of the latter, phase of modern life, he has an imperfect appreciation of that social ideal to which both are leading, and which must combine in itself the true elements of both. As, however, it is the temptation of writers on social subjects to be least just to the tendencies of the time which preceded their own, and against whose errors they have immediately to contend, so we find that Comte is fairer towards Catholicism than he is towards Protestantism, or towards that individualism which grew out of Protestantism, and which he is pleased to call Metaphysics. The latter he sees solely on their destructive side, as successive stages in the modern movement of revolt, without appreciating the constructive elements involved in them. Hence also he is led, in his attitude towards this great movement, to all but identify himself with Catholic writers like De Maistre; and his own scheme of the future is essentially reactionary. The restoration of the spiritual power to its mediæval position was a natural proposal for one who saw in the Protestant revolt nothing more than an insurrectionary movement, which might clear the way for a new social construction, but which in itself was the negation of all government whatever.

For what was Protestantism? To the Protestant it seemed to be simply a return to the original purity of the Christian faith; to the Catholic, it seemed to be a fatal revolt against the only organization by which Christianity could be realized. Really it partook of both characters. It involved at once a dangerous misconception of the social conditions, under which alone the religious life can be realized and developed, and a deeper and truer apprehension of that religion, which first recognized the latent divinity or universal capacity of every spiritual being as such, and which, therefore, seemed to impose upon every individual man the right or rather the duty of living by the witness of his own spirit. Comte saw only the former of these aspects of it. Hence he regarded the French Revolution as a practical refutation of the individualism which grew out of the Protestant movement, and not, as it was in truth, a critical event, which should force men to distinguish and separate its true and its false elements. And he drew from it the lesson that the individual has no moral or religious life of his own, but that it is only in proportion as he transcends his own individuality and lives the life of humanity, that his own spiritual life can have any depth or riches in it. Like Burke he could say, "We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that the stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages." But because he discerned this, he regarded the effort of Protestantism to throw individuals back upon themselves as merely tending to empty their minds of all valuable contents, and to deliver them over to their own individual caprice. Private judgment and popular government are to him only other forms of expression for intellectual and political anarchy; and his remedy for the moral diseases of modern times is the restoration of that division of the spiritual and temporal authorities, which existed in the Middle Ages. But there is another aspect of the Protestant movement and of these apparently anarchical doctrines, to which Comte pays no attention. Catholicism, as we have seen, had developed one aspect of Christianity, until, by its exclusive prominence, the principle of Christianity itself was on the point of being lost. It had changed the opposition of laity and clergy, world and Church, from a relative into an absolute one; it had presented its doctrine, not as something which the spirit of the individual may ultimately verify for itself, but as something to which it must permanently submit without any verification. It had made the worship into an _opus operatum_ instead of a means through which the feelings of the worshipper could be at once drawn out and expressed. Now, it is as opposed to these tendencies that the Protestant movement had its highest importance. It would, no doubt, be intellectual anarchy, for every individual to claim to judge for himself, on subjects for which he has not the requisite training or discipline; but it is a slavery scarcely less corrupting in its effect than anarchy, when he is made to regard the difference between himself and his teachers as a permanent and absolute one. In the former case, he has no sufficient feeling of his want to make him duly submissive to teaching; in the latter, he has no sufficient consciousness of his capacity to awake a due reaction of his thought upon the matter received from his teachers. Again, the decline of the sovereignty of the people would be the negation of all rule, if it meant that the uninstructed many should govern themselves by their own insight, and that the instructed few should simply be their servants and their instruments. But where the people are not recognized as the ultimate source of power, where their consent is not in any regular way made necessary to the proceedings of their governors, they are by that very fact kept in a perpetual tutelage, and cannot possibly feel that the life of the State is their own life. Now, the most important effect of the Protestant movement was just this, that it awakened in each individual the consciousness of his universal nature, in other words the consciousness that there is no external power or sovereignty, divine or human, to which he has absolutely and permanently to submit, but that every outward claim of authority must ultimately be justified by the inner witness of the spirit. The freedom of man is that his obedience to the State, to the Church, even to God, is the obedience of his natural to his spiritual self. The essential truth of the Reformation lay in its republication of the doctrine that the voice of God speaks within and not only without us, and indeed that "it is only by the God within that we can comprehend the God without." And the nations, which had learned that lesson in religion, soon hastened to apply it to the social and political order of life. It is undoubtedly a dangerous lesson, as may be seen, not only in the tendency of many Protestant sects to put the inner life in opposition to the outer, and so to deprive the former of all wider contents and interests; but also in the ultimate substitution, by Rousseau and others, of the assertion of the natural, for the assertion of the spiritual, man. In such extreme cases we find the mere _capacity_ of man for a higher life treated as if it were the higher life itself; forgetting that the capacity is nothing unless it be realized, and that its realization requires the surrender of individual liberty and private judgment to the guidance and teaching of those, in whom that realization has already taken place. But it is not the less true that the consciousness of the capacity, and the consequent sense of the duty of becoming, not merely a slave or instrument, but an organ, of the intellectual and moral life of mankind, is the essential basis of modern life. "Henceforth, I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends," is a word of Christ which scarcely began to be verified till the Reformation. And while its verification cannot mean the negation of that division of labour upon which society rests,--cannot mean that each one should _know_ and _judge_, any more than that each one should _do_, everything for himself,--it at least means that every power and authority should henceforth be, in the true sense of the word, spiritual, and rest for its main support upon the opinion of those who obey it. It is because he has not appreciated this truth that Comte so decidedly breaks with the democratic spirit of modern times, and seeks to set up an aristocracy in the State and a monarchy in the Church. Yet the spirit of the age is, after all, too strong for him, and while he refuses to the governed any regular and legitimate way of reacting upon the powers that govern them, he recognizes that the _ultima ratio_, the final remedy for misgovernment, lies in their irregular and illegitimate action. As regards the State, he declares that "the right of insurrection is the ultimate resource with which no society should allow itself to dispense."[40] And as regards the Church he says that if "the High Priest of Humanity, supported by the body of the clergy, should go wrong, then the only remedy left would be the refusal of co-operation, a remedy which can never fail, as the priesthood rests solely on conscience and opinion, and succumbs, therefore, to their adverse sentence." The civil government, in fact, can bring the spiritual power to a dead-lock, by "suspending its stipend, for in cases of serious error, popular subscriptions would not replace it, unless on the supposition of a fanaticism scarcely compatible with the Positive faith, where there is enthusiasm for the doctrines, rather than for the teachers."[41] Comte also desiderates among the proletariate a strong reactive influence of public opinion, by which the officers, both of Church and State, are to be kept to their work. But if this is desirable, why should the proletariate have no regular means of making their will felt? An "organic" theory of the constitution of society must surely provide every real force with a legitimate form of expression; if a social theory embodies the idea of revolution in it, it is self-condemned.

Comte's social ideal is in many respects a close reproduction of the mediæval system, with its _régime dispersif_ of feudalism in secular politics, and its concentration of Papal authority in the Church. For him, the growth of national States to their present dimensions, and, on the other hand, the increasing division of labour in the realm of thought, are equally steps in the wrong direction. Still more strongly, if possible, does he reprobate that interference of the State with spiritual matters, such as the education of the people and its religious life, which has been the natural consequence of the failure of the mediæval Church to maintain its old authority. Notwithstanding his worship of humanity, the idea of a "parliament of man, a federation of the world," by which all the powers of mankind should be united for the attainment of the highest material and spiritual good, has no attraction for him. To reduce the State to the dimensions of a commune, and to confine it to the care of purely material interests, is his first political proposal. France, England, and Spain (and we may now add Germany and Italy) are, in his view, "factitious aggregates without solid justification," and they will only become "free and durable States," when they are broken up into fragments, each with a population of two or three millions, and a territory not exceeding that of Belgium or Tuscany. The "West" will thus be divided into seventy republics, and the earth into five hundred, and the main work of the patriciate will be to direct and regulate the industrial life of the community; each member of the banker triumvirate, who are to be at the head of the State, having one of the great industrial departments under his special superintendence. On the other hand the unity of humanity is to be represented solely by the spiritual power, in whose hands is to be left the whole work of extending science, teaching the people, and exercising a moral censorship over all Governments and individuals. And while this spiritual power is, for practical purposes, to be strictly organized on the model of the mediæval Church, it is also, like that Church, to remain, for scientific purposes, inorganic. In other words, it is to admit no scientific division of labour, but every one, like a mediæval doctor, is to profess all science, adding to this the priestly office, which, with Comte, includes both the cure of souls and of bodies.

To criticize the details of this scheme seems to be unnecessary after what has been already said. It is not to be denied that the division of Church and State in the Middle Age was a most important and even necessary condition of progress. Christianity could never have been impressed upon the minds of men, if its concrete application and development had been too rapid. The essential condition of such development was that men should not concern themselves too prematurely with it. For the consequences of a moral and religious principle cannot be reached by direct logical deductions; it is like a living germ, in which, by no analysis or dissection, you can discover the lineaments of the future plant. To know what it really is, or involves, you must plant it in the minds of men, and let it grow. Hence the mediæval Church was strong in its weakness, and it was its very victories over the temporal power that were its greatest danger. It became corrupt and lost its hold upon the minds of men, just when it seemed to have established its right to an absolute supremacy. Comte, following De Maistre, attaches great importance to the position of the Popes as arbiters between the Sovereigns and nations of mediæval Europe. But he forgets that, in claiming and maintaining this position the Popes were distinctly ceasing to be a spiritual power, if it be the function of a spiritual power to inculcate principles rather than to use them to solve present difficulties. A power interfering in this way with the immediate struggle of interests, could not but be invaded by the passions they excite, and it was the more certain to be corrupted by these passions, because it conceived them to be evil, and pretended altogether to renounce them. The mediæval authority of the Church might have its value, as an anticipation of the peaceful federation of the nations under one supreme Government, but it was at the same time the first step towards the erasing of the distinction between the temporal and the spiritual power.

The truth seems to be that the distinction, of secular and spiritual powers, except in the sense already indicated, is essentially irrational, and that the attempt to realise it in practice must involve, as it did involve in the Middle Ages, a continual internecine struggle. To set up two regularly constituted powers face to face with each other, one claiming man's allegiance in the name of his spiritual, and the other in the name of his temporal, interests, is to organize anarchy. So long as man's body and soul are inseparable, it will be impossible to divide the world between Cæsar and God; for in one point of view all is Cæsar's, and in another all is God's. In the Middle Ages the conflict of two despotisms was necessary to the growth of freedom; but, when government ceases to be despotic, the need for such division of power passes away. The relative separation between the speculative and the practical classes--between the scientific and moral teachers of mankind, on the one hand, and the statesmen or administrators who have to discover what immediate changes in the organization of life have become necessary, on the other--is a division of labour which can surely be attained without breaking up the unity of the social body. It is not desirable that the philosopher, or priest, or man of science, should be king--and we may even acknowledge that if he were king he would probably be a very bad one;--on the other hand, it is desirable that he should have his due influence, as the teacher of those general truths out of which all practical improvement must ultimately spring. But the natural difference of the tastes and capacities of men should, in a well-organized State, be sufficient to secure due influence to those who are the natural representatives of man's spiritual interests (whether they be religious, philosophic, or scientific), without tempting them from their proper task of discovering and teaching the truth, to the less appropriate work of determining how much of it comes within "the sphere of practical politics." Comte, indeed, by organizing them as an independent power apart from, and outside of, the State, would make such a perversion extremely probable. A hierarchy of priests, under a despotic Pope, would soon cease to be, in any sense, a spiritual power; and this would be only the more certain if, by the Comtist denunciation of specialism, they were prohibited from any division of labour according to capacity in their own peculiar sphere of scientific research. For by this prohibition their attention would be drawn more and more from the truth of their doctrines to their immediate practical effects, not to mention that, in the case of all but a few comprehensive minds, the natural result would be an omniscient superficiality, which would be the enemy of all real culture. For he who knows one thing well may find the whole in the part; but he who knows the whole superficially, inevitably reduces it to the level of something partial and subjective. Deprived of its natural aim, the Comtist Church of the future would inevitably throw itself, with all its energy, into the task of directly influencing the practical life of men, and there it would find itself in the presence of a number of communal States, none of them large enough to offer any effective resistance. Positivism must indeed alter human nature, if such a priesthood would not seek to make itself despotic, especially if it could wield such a formidable weapon as the Positivist excommunication is supposed to be.[42]

The truth is that Comte commits the same error which misled Montesquieu and his followers, when they supposed that the great security of a free State lay in the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers,--_i.e._, in treating the different organs through which the common life expresses itself as if they were independent organisms. In doing so, they forgot that, if such a balance of power was realised, the effect must either be an equilibrium in which all movement must cease, or a struggle in which the unity of the State would be in danger of being lost. The true security against the dangers involved, on the one hand, in the direct application of theory to practice, and, on the other hand, in the separation of practice from theory, must lie, not in giving them independent positions as spiritual and temporal powers, but in the organic unity of the society--communal, national, or, if it may be, universal--to which the representatives of both belong. And organic unity, though it does not mean any special form of government, means at least two things: in the first place, that each great class or interest should have for itself a definite organ, and should therefore be able to act on the whole body in a regular and constitutional manner, so as to show all its force without revolutionary violence; and, in the second place, that no class or interest should have such an independent position, that there is no legal or constitutional method of bringing it into due subordination. But Comte, losing his balance in his jealousy of the individualistic and democratic movement of modern society, has built up a social ideal, which fails in both these points of view. And he is consequently obliged, against his will, to contemplate revolution and war as necessary resources of the Constitution.

It would not be fair to conclude these articles, which have necessarily been devoted in great part to criticism and controversy, without expressing a sense of the power and insight which are shown in the works of Comte, especially in the _Politique Positive_. Controversy itself, it must be remembered, is a kind of homage; for, as Hegel says, "It is only a great man that condemns us to the task of explaining him." But if we can sometimes look down upon such men, it becomes us to remember that we stand upon their shoulders. Comte seems to me to occupy, as a writer, a position in some degree similar to that of Kant. He stands, or rather moves, between the old world and the new, and is broken into inconsistency by the effort of transition. Like Kant, he is embarrassed to the end by the ideas with which he started, and of which he can never free himself so as to make a new beginning. Comte had only a small portion of that power of speculative analysis which characterized his great predecessor, but he had much of his tenacity of thought, his power of continuous construction; and he had the same conviction of the all-importance of morals, and the same determination to make all his theoretic studies subordinate to the solution of the moral problem. Also, partly because he lived at a later time, and in the midst of a society which was in the throes of a social revolution, and partly because of the keenness and strength of his own social sympathies, he gives us a kind of insight into the diseases and wants of modern society, which we could not expect from Kant, and which throws new light upon the ethical speculations of Kant's idealistic successors. To believe that his system, as a whole, is inconsistent with itself, that his theory of historical progress is insufficient, and that his social ideal is imperfect, need not prevent us from recognizing that there are many valuable elements in his historical and social theories, and that no one who would study such subjects can afford to neglect them. A mind of such power cannot treat any subject without throwing much light upon it, which is independent of his special system of thought, and, above all, without doing much to show what are the really important difficulties in it which need to be solved. And, especially in such subjects, to discover the right question is to be half-way to the answer. Further, as Comte himself somewhere says, it is an immense advantage in studying any complex subject to have before us a distinct and systematic attempt to explain it; for it is only by criticism upon criticism that we can expect to reach the truth, in which all its varied sides and aspects are brought to a unity.

EDWARD CAIRD.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] "Comte and Positivism," p. 140.

[27] "The Unity of Comte's Life and Doctrine," p. 28.

[28] Pol. Pos. iii. p. 419. I quote from the translation.

[29] Pol. Pos. iii. p. 71.

[30] Pol. Pos. iii. p. 218.

[31] Ibid. iii. p. 365.

[32] Pol. Pos. iii. p. 348.

[33] Ibid. iii. p. 383.

[34] Ibid. iii. p. 376.

[35] Ibid. iii. p. 283.

[36] Pol. Pos. iii. p. 78.

[37] Ibid. iii. p. 346.

[38] Pol. Pos. iii. p. 346.

[39] Ibid. i. p. 562.

[40] Pol. Pos. i. p. 106. In my first article (CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for May, p. 211) I inadvertently spoke of the hierarchical arrangement of society as extending to the proletariate. This is inaccurate, for Comte rather dwells on their "homogeneity," and seeks to obliterate all distinctions of rank among them, only allowing to the engineers a kind of "fraternal ascendancy." Pol. Pos. iv. p. 307.

[41] Pol. Pos. iv. p. 294.

[42] Pol. Pos. iv. p. 292.

THE PROBLEM OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.

A few months ago I endeavoured to trace out, in these pages, the probable origin of the week, as a measure of time, by a method which has not hitherto, so far as I know, been followed in such cases. I followed chiefly a line of _à priori_ reasoning, considering how herdsmen and tillers of the soil would be apt at a very early period to use the moon as a means of measuring time, and how in endeavouring so to use her they would almost of necessity be led to employ special methods of subdividing the period during which she passes through her various phases. But while each step of the reasoning was thus based on _à priori_ considerations, its validity was tested by the evidence which has reached us respecting the various methods employed by different nations of antiquity for following the moon's motions. It appears to me that the conclusions to which this method of reasoning led were more satisfactory, because more trustworthy, than those which have been reached respecting the week by the mere study of various traditions which have reached us respecting the early use of this widespread time measure.

I now propose to apply a somewhat similar method to a problem which has always been regarded as at once highly interesting and very difficult, the question of the purpose for which the pyramids of Egypt, and especially the pyramids of Ghizeh, were erected. But I do not here take the full problem under consideration. I have, indeed, elsewhere dealt with it in a general manner, and have been led to a theory respecting the pyramids which will be touched on towards the close of the present paper. Here, however, I intend to deal only with one special part of the problem, that part to which alone the method I propose to employ is applicable--the question of the astronomical purpose which the pyramids were intended to subserve. It will be understood, therefore, why I have spoken of applying a somewhat similar method, and not a precisely similar method; to the problem of the pyramids. For whereas in dealing with the origin of the week, I could from the very beginning of the inquiry apply the _à priori_ method, I cannot do so in the case of the pyramids. I do not know of any line of _à priori_ reasoning by which it could be proved, or even rendered probable, that any race of men, of whatever proclivities or avocations, would naturally be led to construct buildings resembling the pyramids. If it could be, of course that line of reasoning would at the same time indicate what purposes such buildings were intended to subserve. Failing evidence of this kind, we must follow at first the _à posteriori_ method; and this method, while it is clear enough as to the construction of pyramids, for there are the pyramids themselves to speak unmistakably on this point, is not altogether so clear as to any one of the purposes for which the pyramids were built.

Yet I think that if there is one purpose among possibly many which the builders of the pyramids had in their thoughts, which can be unmistakably inferred from the pyramids themselves, independently of all traditions, it is the purpose of constructing edifices which should enable men to observe the heavenly bodies in some way not otherwise obtainable. If the orienting of the faces of the pyramids had been effected in some such way as the orienting of most of our cathedrals and churches--_i.e._, in a manner quite sufficiently exact as tested by ordinary observation, but not capable of bearing astronomical tests,--it might reasonably enough be inferred that having to erect square buildings for any purpose whatever, men were likely enough to set them four-square to the cardinal points, and that, therefore, no stress whatever can be laid on this feature of the pyramids' construction. But when we find that the orienting of the pyramids has been effected with extreme care, that in the case of the great pyramid, which is the typical edifice of this kind, the orienting bears well the closest astronomical scrutiny, we cannot doubt that this feature indicates an astronomical purpose as surely as it indicates the use of astronomical methods.

But while we thus start with what is to some degree an assumption, with what at any rate is not based on _à priori_ considerations, yet manifestly we may expect to find evidence as we proceed which shall either strengthen our opinion on this point, or show it to be unsound. We are going to make this astronomical purpose the starting-point for a series of _à priori_ considerations, each to be tested by whatever direct evidence may be available; and it is practically certain that if we have thus started in an entirely wrong direction, we shall before long find out our mistake. At least we shall do so, if we start with the desire to find out as much of the truth as we can, and not with the determination to see only those facts which point in the direction along which we have set out, overlooking any which seem to point in a different direction. We need not necessarily be in the wrong track because of such seeming indications. If we are on the right track, we shall see things more clearly as we proceed; and it may be that evidence which at first seems to accord ill with the idea that we are progressing towards the truth, may be found among the most satisfactory evidence obtainable. But we must in any case note such evidence, even at the time when it seems to suggest that we are on the wrong track. We may push on, nevertheless, to see how such evidence appears a little later. But we must by no means forget its existence. So only can we hope to reach the truth or a portion of the truth, instead of merely making out a good case for some particular theory.

We start, then, with the assumption that the great pyramid, called the Pyramid of Cheops, was built for this purpose, _inter alia_, to enable men to make certain astronomical observations with great accuracy; and what we propose to do is to inquire what would be done by men having this purpose in view, having, as the pyramid builders had, (1) a fine astronomical site, (2) the command of enormous wealth, (3) practically exhaustless stores of material, and (4) the means of compelling many thousands of men to labour for them.

Watching the celestial bodies hour by hour, day by day, and year by year, the observer recognizes certain regions of the heavens which require special attention, and certain noteworthy directions both with respect to the horizon and to elevation above the horizon.

For instance, the observer perceives that the stars, which are in many respects the most conveniently observable bodies, are carried round, as if they were rigidly attached to a hollow sphere, carried around an axis passing through the station of the observer (as through a centre) and directed towards a certain point in the dome of the heavens. That point, then, is one whose direction must not only be ascertained, but must be in some way or other indicated. Whatever the nature of an astronomer's instruments or observatory, whether he have but a few simple contrivances in a structure of insignificant proportions, or the most perfect instruments in a noble edifice of most exquisite construction and of the utmost attainable stability, he must in every case have the position of the pole of the heavens clearly indicated in some way or other. Now, the pole of the heavens is a point lying due north, at a certain definite elevation above the horizon. Thus the first consideration to be attended to by the builder of any sort of astronomical observatory, is the determination of the direction of the true north (or the laying down of a true north-and-south line), while the second is the determination, and in some way or other the indication of the angle of elevation above the north point, at which the true pole of the heavens may lie.

To get the true north-and-south line, however, the astronomer would be apt at first, perhaps, rather to make mid-day observations than to observe the stars at night. It would have been the observation of these which first called his attention to the existence of a definite point round which all the stars seem to be carried in parallel circles; but he would very quickly notice that the sun and the moon, and also the five planets, are carried round the same polar axis, only differing from the stars in this: that, besides being thus carried round with the celestial sphere, they also move upon that sphere, though with a motion which is very slow compared with that which they derive from the seeming motion of the sphere itself. Now, among these bodies the sun and moon possess a distinct advantage over the stars. A body illuminated by either the sun or the moon throws a shadow, and thus if we place an upright pointed rod in sunlight or moonlight, and note where the shadow of the point lies, we know that a straight line from the point to the shadow of the point is directed exactly towards the sun or the moon, as the case may be. Leaving the moon aside as in other respects unsuitable, for she only shines with suitable lustre in one part of each month, we have in the sun's motions a means of getting the north-and-south line by thus noting the position of the shadow of a pointed upright. For being carried around an inclined axis directed northwards, the sun is, of course, brought to his greatest elevation on any given day when due south. So that if we note when the shadow of an upright is shortest on any day, we know that at that moment the sun is at his highest or due south; and the line joining the centre of the upright's base with the end of the shadow at that instant lies due north-and-south.

But though theoretically this method is sufficient, it is open, in practice, to a serious objection. The sun's elevation, when he is nearly at his highest, changes very slowly; so that it is difficult to determine the precise moment when the shadow is shortest. But the direction of the shadow is steadily changing all the time that we thus remain in doubt whether the sun's elevation has reached its maximum or not. We are apt, then, to make an error as to time, which will result in a noteworthy error as to the direction of the north-and-south line.

For this reason, it would be better for any one employing this shadow method to take two epochs on either side of solar noon, when the sun was at exactly the same elevation, or the shadow of exactly the same length,--determining this by striking out a circle around the foot of the upright, and observing where the shadow's point crossed this circle before noon in drawing nearer to the base, and after noon in passing away from the base. These two intersections with the circle necessarily lie at equal distances from the north-and-south line, which can thus be more exactly determined than by the other method, simply because the end of the shadow crosses the circle traced on the ground at moments which can be more exactly determined than the moment when the shadow is shortest.

Now, we notice in this description of methods which unquestionably were followed by the very earliest astronomers, one circumstance which clearly points to a feature as absolutely essential in every astronomical observing station. (I do not say "observatory," for I am speaking just now of observations so elementary that the word would be out of place.) The observer must have a perfectly flat floor on which to receive the shadow of the upright pointer. And not only must the floor be flat, but it must also be perfectly horizontal. At any rate, it must not slope down either towards the east or towards the west, for then the shadows on either side of the north-and-south line would be unequal. And though a slope towards north or south would not affect the equality of such shadows, and would therefore be admissible, yet it would clearly be altogether undesirable; since the avoidance of a slope towards east or west would be made much more difficult if the surface were tilted, however slightly, towards north or south. Apart from this, several other circumstances make it extremely desirable that the surface from which the astronomers make their observations should be perfectly horizontal. In particular, we shall see presently that the exact determination of elevations above the eastern and western horizons would be very necessary even in the earliest and simplest methods of observation, and for this purpose it would be essential that the observing surface should be as carefully levelled in a north-and-south as in an east-and-west direction.

We should expect to find, then, that when the particular stage of astronomical progress had been reached, at which men not only perceived the necessity of well-devised buildings for astronomical observation, but were able to devote time, labour, and expense to the construction of such buildings, the first point to which they would direct their attention would be the formation of a perfectly level surface, on which eventually they might lay down a north-and-south or true meridional line.

Now, of the extreme care with which this preliminary question of level was considered by the builders of the great pyramid, we have singularly clear and decisive evidence. For all around the base of the pyramid there was a pavement, and we find the builders not only so well acquainted with the position of the true horizontal plane at the level of this pavement, but so careful to follow it (even as respects this pavement, which, be it noticed, was only, in all probability, a subsidiary and quasi-ornamental feature of the building), that the pavement "was varied in thickness at the rate of about an inch in 100 feet to make it absolutely level, which the rock was not."[43]

But now with regard to the true north-and-south direction, although the shadow method, carried out on a truly level surface, would be satisfactory enough for a first rough approximation, or even for what any but astronomers would regard as extreme accuracy, it would be open to serious objections for really exact work. These objections would have become known to observers long before the construction of the pyramid was commenced, and would have been associated with the difficulties which suggested, I think, the idea itself of constructing such an edifice.

Supposing an upright pointed post is set up, and the position of the end of the shadow upon a perfectly level surface is noted; then whatever use we intend to make of this observation, it is essential that we should know the precise position of the centre of the upright's base, and also that the upright should be truly vertical. Otherwise we have only exactly obtained the position of one end of the line we want, and to draw the line properly we ought as exactly to know the position of the other end. If we want _also_ to know the true position of a line joining the point of the upright and the shadow of this point, we require to know the true height of the upright. And even if we have these points determined, we still have not a _material_ line from the point of the upright to the place of its shadow. A cord or chain from one point to the other would be curved, even if tightly stretched, and it would not be tightly stretched, if long, without either breaking or pulling over the upright. A straight bar of the required length could not be readily made or used: if stout enough to lie straight from point to point it would be unwieldy, if not stout enough so that it bent under its own weight it would be useless.

Thus the shadow method, while difficult of application to give a true north-and-south horizontal line, would fail utterly to give material indications of the sun's elevation on particular days, without which it would be impossible to obtain in this manner any material indications of the position of the celestial pole.

A natural resource, under these circumstances--at least a natural resource for astronomers who could afford to adopt the plan--would be to build up masses of masonry, in which there should be tubular holes or tunnellings pointing in certain required directions. In one sense the contrivance would be clumsy, for a tunnelling once constructed, would not admit of any change of position, nor even allow of any save very limited changes in the direction of the line of view through them. In fact, the more effective a tunnelling would be in determining any particular direction, the less scope, of course, would it afford for any change in the direction of a line of sight along it. So that the astronomical architect would have to limit the use of this particular method to those cases in which great accuracy in obtaining a direction line and great rigidity in the material indication of that line's position were essential or at least exceedingly desirable. Again, in some cases presently to be noticed, he would require, not a tubing directed to some special fixed point in the sky, but an opening commanding some special range of view. Yet again it would be manifestly well for him to retain, whenever possible, the power of using the shadow method in observing the sun and moon; for this method in the case of bodies varying their position on the celestial sphere, not merely with respect to the cardinal points, would be of great value. Its value would be enhanced if the shadows could be formed by objects and received on surfaces holding a permanent position.

We begin to see some of the requirements of an astronomical building such as we have supposed the earlier observers to plan.

First, such a building must be large, to give suitable length to the direction lines, whether along edges of the building or along tubular passages or tunnellings within it. Secondly, it must be massive in order that these edges and passages might have the necessary stability and permanence. Thirdly, it must be of a form contributing to such stability, and as height above surrounding objects (even hills lying at considerable distances) would be a desirable feature, it would be proper to have the mass of masonry growing smaller from the base upwards. Fourthly, it must have its sides carefully oriented, so that it must have either a square or oblong base with two sides lying exactly north and south, and the other two lying exactly east and west. Fifthly, it must have the direction of the pole of the heavens either actually indicated by a tunnelling of some sort pointed directly polewards, or else inferable from a tunnelling pointing upon a suitable star close to the true pole of the heavens.