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 THE PERVERSE WIDOW Men in Love, to attempt the removing of their Passion by the Methods which serve only

to imprint it deeper. She has certainly the finest Hand of any Woman in the World."

Here followed a profound Silence; and I was not displeased to observe my Friend falling so naturally into a Discourse, which I had ever before taken Notice he industriously avoided. After a very long Pause he entered upon an Account of this great Circumstance in 7


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 THE PERVERSE WIDOW his Life, with an Air which I thought raised my Idea of him above what I had ever had before; and gave me the Picture of that chearful Mind of his, before it received that Stroke which has ever since affected his Words and Actions. But he went on as follows.

"I came to my Estate in my Twenty Second Year, and resolved to follow the Steps of the Most Worthy of my Ancestors who have inhabited this Spot of Earth before me, in all the Methods of Hospitality and good Neighbourhood, for the sake of my Fame; and in Country Sports and Recreations, for the sake of my Health. In my Twenty Third Year I was obliged to serve as Sheriff of the County; and in my Servants, Officers and whole Equipage indulged the Pleasure of a young Man (who did not think ill of his own Person) in taking that publick Occasion of showing my Figure and Behaviour to Advantage. You may easily imagine to yourself what Appearance I made, who am pretty tall, rid well, and was very

8

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Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/10

 PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

 * PROFESSOR MACKINNON

 * MISS E. C. CARMICHAEL

VOLUME III

JULY 1906 TO APRIL 1907

EDINBURGH: NORMAN MACLEOD, 25 GEORGE IV. BRIDGE

LONDON: DAVID NUTT, 57-59 LONG ACRE, W.C.

DUBLIN: HODGES, FIGGIS & CO., LTD., 104 GRAFTON ST.

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 THE WIDOW

the whimsical parade made by Lady Lillycraft on her arrival, she has none of the petty stateliness that I had imagined; but, on the contrary, she has a degree of nature and simple-heartedness, if I may use the phrase, that mingles well with her old-fashioned manners and harmless ostentation. She dresses in rich silks, with long waist; she rouges considerably, and her hair, which is nearly white, is frizzled out, and put 23


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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baldwin of Redvers


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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baldwin, George


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United States Code/Title 42/Chapter 85/Section 7507

§ 7507. New motor vehicle emission standards in nonattainment areas CAA § 177

Notwithstanding section 7543 (a) of this title, any State which has plan provisions approved under this part may adopt and enforce for any model year standards relating to control of emissions from new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines and take such other actions as are referred to in section 7543 (a)  of this title respecting such vehicles if—
 * (1) such standards are identical to the California standards for which a waiver has been granted for such model year, and
 * (2) California and such State adopt such standards at least two years before commencement of such model year (as determined by regulations of the Administrator).

Nothing in this section or in subchapter II of this chapter shall be construed as authorizing any such State to prohibit or limit, directly or indirectly, the manufacture or sale of a new motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine that is certified in California as meeting California standards, or to take any action of any kind to create, or have the effect of creating, a motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine different than a motor vehicle or engine certified in California under California standards (a “third vehicle”) or otherwise create such a “third vehicle”.


text: Category:Suspected Wikisource sockpuppets of TRATTOOO


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ceolnoth


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cernach


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United States Code/Title 42/Chapter 85/Section 7543

§ 7543. Emission standards for new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines CAA § 209

(a) Prohibition
No State or any political subdivision thereof shall adopt or attempt to enforce any standard relating to the control of emissions from new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines subject to this part. No State shall require certification, inspection, or any other approval relating to the control of emissions from any new motor vehicle or new motor vehicle engine as condition precedent to the initial retail sale, titling (if any), or registration of such motor vehicle, motor vehicle engine, or equipment.

(b) Waiver

 * (1) The Administrator shall, after notice and opportunity for public hearing, waive application of this section to any State which has adopted standards (other than crankcase emission standards) for the control of emissions from new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines prior to March 30, 1966, if the State determines that the State standards will be, in the aggregate, at least as protective of public health and welfare as applicable Federal standards. No such waiver shall be granted if the Administrator finds that—
 * (A) the determination of the State is arbitrary and capricious,
 * (B) such State does not need such State standards to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions, or
 * (C) such State standards and accompanying enforcement procedures are not consistent with section 7521 (a) of this title.
 * (2) If each State standard is at least as stringent as the comparable applicable Federal standard, such State standard shall be deemed to be at least as protective of health and welfare as such Federal standards for purposes of paragraph (1).
 * (3) In the case of any new motor vehicle or new motor vehicle engine to which State standards apply pursuant to a waiver granted under paragraph (1), compliance with such State standards shall be treated as compliance with applicable Federal standards for purposes of this subchapter.

(c) Certification of vehicle parts or engine parts
Whenever a regulation with respect to any motor vehicle part or motor vehicle engine part is in effect under section 7541 (a)(2) of this title, no State or political subdivision thereof shall adopt or attempt to enforce any standard or any requirement of certification, inspection, or approval which relates to motor vehicle emissions and is applicable to the same aspect of such part. The preceding sentence shall not apply in the case of a State with respect to which a waiver is in effect under subsection (b) of this section.

(d) Control, regulation, or restrictions on registered or licensed motor vehicles
Nothing in this part shall preclude or deny to any State or political subdivision thereof the right otherwise to control, regulate, or restrict the use, operation, or movement of registered or licensed motor vehicles.

(1) Prohibition on certain State standards

 * No State or any political subdivision thereof shall adopt or attempt to enforce any standard or other requirement relating to the control of emissions from either of the following new nonroad engines or nonroad vehicles subject to regulation under this chapter—
 * (A) New engines which are used in construction equipment or vehicles or used in farm equipment or vehicles and which are smaller than 175 horsepower.
 * (B) New locomotives or new engines used in locomotives.
 * Subsection (b) of this section shall not apply for purposes of this paragraph.

(2) Other nonroad engines or vehicles

 * (A) In the case of any nonroad vehicles or engines other than those referred to in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1), the Administrator shall, after notice and opportunity for public hearing, authorize California to adopt and enforce standards and other requirements relating to the control of emissions from such vehicles or engines if California determines that California standards will be, in the aggregate, at least as protective of public health and welfare as applicable Federal standards. No such authorization shall be granted if the Administrator finds that—
 * (i) the determination of California is arbitrary and capricious,
 * (ii) California does not need such California standards to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions, or
 * (iii) California standards and accompanying enforcement procedures are not consistent with this section.
 * (B) Any State other than California which has plan provisions approved under part D of subchapter I of this chapter may adopt and enforce, after notice to the Administrator, for any period, standards relating to control of emissions from nonroad vehicles or engines (other than those referred to in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1)) and take such other actions as are referred to in subparagraph (A) of this paragraph respecting such vehicles or engines if—
 * (i) such standards and implementation and enforcement are identical, for the period concerned, to the California standards authorized by the Administrator under subparagraph (A), and
 * (ii) California and such State adopt such standards at least 2 years before commencement of the period for which the standards take effect.

The Administrator shall issue regulations to implement this subsection.


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The New International Encyclopædia/Comédie Française

COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE, kṓ'mắ'dḗ '  frä N 'sắz '  (Fr., French comedy). The official name of the Théâtre Français, the national theatre of France, subsidized by the State for the advancement of dramatic art. Its history dates officially from October 21, 1680, when a decree of Louis XIV. amalgamated the two rival companies of the Hôtel de Bourgogne and the Hôtel Guénégaud, the latter being a fusion, after Molière's death in 1673, of the Théâtre du Marais and the Troupe de Molière. It thus maintains a practically unbroken tradition from the time of the great master of comedy, and is still familiarly known as the House of Molière. In 1682 the King granted to his comedians an annual pension of 12,000 livres (about $2400), their first subsidy. In 1689 they established themselves in a new house, in what is now called the ‘Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie,’ and took the name of ‘La Comédie Française;’ under it they played until the Revolution with a succession of such artists as Baron, Adrienne Lecouvreur, Le Kain, and Mademoiselle Clairon. For a time (1770-82) they were housed in the Palace of the Tuileries itself. Later, on the performance of Chénier's anti-monarchical play of Charles IX. in 1789, violent political discussions arose among the performers, and ultimately they split into two sections: the Republican party, under the young tragedian Talma, establishing a new theatre under the name ‘Théâtre de la République,’ on the site of the present building in the Rue de Richelieu: while the Royalist section took the title ‘Théâtre de la Nation.’ In September, 1793, the latter was suddenly closed by order of the Committee of Public Safety, and the players imprisoned, though they were afterwards gradually released. For a few years the rivalry continued; then in 1799, for a short time, there was an absolute interruption in the history of the Théâtre Françcais. In May of that year, however, the Comédie was once more reorganized and settled in the Rue de Richelieu. Napoleon, while at Moscow, October 15, 1812, prescribed the regulations which, modified in 1850 and 1859, still govern the company. There is an administrateur-général appointed by the Government. The sociétaires are members of the company, who, as shareholders, divide the profits according to certain rules. Before being elected as a sociétaire, an artist must have served in the theatre as a pensionnaire, upon a salary. A sociétaire, after twenty years of service, is allowed to retire with a pension of 4000 francs. The annual sum received from the State is 240,000 francs; and the theatre, being removed from the fear of temporary pecuniary failure, is in no sense a mere business speculation, but serves as an educator of public taste and sets a standard of dramatic training. Here many of the greatest artists of the modern French stage have won their triumphs, including Mlles. Mars, Rachel, Brohan, and, for a part of her career, Sarah Bernhardt, and MM. Talma, Got, Mounet-Sully, and Coquelin. Early in 1900 the historic building adjoining the Palais Royal was partly destroyed by a disastrous fire, but was promptly rebuilt in improved fashion within the same lines. Consult: Matthews, The Theatres of Paris (New York, 1880); Lucas, Histoire philosophique et littéraire du Théâtre-Français (Paris, 1862-63); Bonnassies, La Comédie Française, histoire administrative (Paris, 1874); Joannides, La Comédie Française de 1680 à 1900, dictionnaire général des pièces et des auteurs, preface by Jules Claretie (Paris, 1901); Cochrane, The Théâtre Français in the Reign of Louis XV. (London, 1879); and, for a discussion of many of the plays of its recent repertory, Weiss, Autour de la Comédie Française (Paris, 1892).


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226 age. It may be noble, and it is romantic and picturesque, for a scamp to do a deed of self-sacrifice, but there is generally little to lose, even with life, and there is vanity—and there is a character to be regained. It may be generous, even noble, for a drunkard to stick to another through thick and thin, but there is the bond, or the sympathy, of the craving for drink—and there is such a thing as maudlin sentiment. How much greater it is for a sober man to stick to a drunkard! But it is neither picturesque nor romantic. How much greater is it for an honest man to stick to a scamp! But it is not picturesque nor romantic enough for most writers.

One of the beauties of human nature is the fulfilment of its duty to the stranger. "The stranger within thy gates." In all civilized lands, and in many uncivilized ones, the stranger's presence is sacred. "The stranger's hand to the stranger yet" may be all very well, but there is the bond of the sympathy of exile—the sort of roving clannishness about it. Nowhere is the duty to the stranger more willingly and more eagerly performed, nor his presence held more sacred, than in places where the folk have never been fifty miles from their birthplace.

A humorous side of the stranger question appeared in California of half a century ago, when so many were strangers that all were familiar: "Now, look yar, stranger."

Australia is the land of strangers, as were the Western States of America. I met Out Back, once upon a time, a man they called the Strangers' Friend. I met


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Rh him in Bourke last, and his name was, say, Jimmy Noland. He was a stout, nuggety man, in clean white "moles," crimson shirt, and red neck-handkerchief with white spots; and he wore belt and bowyangs. He had a square face of severe expression that might have been cut out of a block of wood. He had something of the appearance of a better-class and serious bricklayer's labourer; or, better still, a man in charge of the coaching stables of earlier days; or, still better, a man who, by sheer force of hard work and dogged honesty, had risen to be manager or foreman of a small station or something Out Back.

He used to come into the pub on the main road, or the township, for his half-yearly spree, and, though he seemed to drink level with everybody, he never got really drunk. He took the spree seriously, as he took everything else far too seriously to enjoy it, you'd think. The spree seemed a religious rite with him, and he, as a shouter, was something sacred to the drunks to whom drinking was religion all the time. First he'd shout (sternly) for all he found on the verandah and in the bar, and the drinks would be taken in solemn silence. Then he'd shout again, rounding-up any stragglers he might have missed (or who might have missed him) and any dead-drunks he could wake and get on their feet. Then he'd demand of the boss, or barman, in a tone that admitted of no nonsense or frivolity—

"Enny wimmin here?"

"Yes."

"Take ennythin'?"


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228 "Yes. The cook, and ther's a washerwoman round at the back."

"Wotter they take?"

Being told, he'd presently go round to the back with a couple of glasses. But he was never known to stay and do any fooling round there. He'd arrange, though, to have an extra pair of moleskins, shirt, neckerchief, handkerchief and pair of socks washed against the end of his spree, and pay well for them. Not that he couldn't or wouldn't wash for himself, but he thought it his duty "to pay the wimmin for doin' what they was made for doin', an' pay 'em well."

Then, after another shout or two all round, he'd look up the stranger.

The stranger's only qualifications need be that he should be fairly decent, a stranger, and hard-up or sick.

"I'm the Strangers' Friend," said Jimmy, severely. "The fellers as knows can battle around for their bloomin' selves, but I'll look after the stranger."

If the stranger was ragged, Jimmy would shout him a new shirt, pair of trousers, and maybe a pair of boots, at the store; and he'd shout him drinks, but see that he didn't take too much. He'd arrange for the stranger's bed and tucker, and find out the stranger's name and where he came from and the places he'd been in, and he'd yarn with the stranger about those places, no matter where they were. And he'd talk to the stranger about the back-country, and its old times, and its future, or its chances—and the stranger's chances, too. And if the stranger got confidential or maudlin on the verandah after sunset, he'd comfort or check the


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Rh stranger with some blunt philosophy which might sound brutal in cities. If he knew of a place where there was a chance of a job, on the back track, he'd fix up a swag, water-bag and tucker for the stranger, and start him on the track with full directions that sounded like a stiff lecture from a magistrate. And if he had a commission to take a new hand back to his station, he'd be happy; happier still if he had a commission to take two, for then he would look up a second likely stranger and fix him up, and take them both back with him at the end of his spree, when he would appear exactly the same as when he started it.

Jimmy's boss was one of the best-hearted squatters west the Darling. He was a small squatter, but he was a squatter, not a bank, syndicate nor manager. Jimmy was said to be the real boss, as far as station work went, by virtue of his long years of service, his capacity for hard work and his obstinate honesty. About sundown he'd come over to the "travellers' ' (strangers') hut, put his head in at the door, and demand, in the tone of a boss who would take no nonsense—

"Enny trav'ler here?"

One or two new chums or green hands might start to their feet, expecting to be ordered off the station; but some one would answer: "Yes."

"Then come up an' git yer tea."

After tea—

"You chaps got enny tobaccer?"

And he'd hand out a stick to be divided amongst them.


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230 It was said that a great part of his wages went on strangers. But they said he was never so happy as when he caught a sick traveller at the hut. Jimmy would cross-examine him at length and with apparent severity—as if it were the stranger's fault—and then he'd get out his patent medicines. In the same tone, with a note of shocked decency, he'd ask a man if that was the only pair of trousers he had to go on the track with; and then he'd proceed to look him up an other pair.

But no one, not even his nearest friend, if he had one in the squatter, could accuse Jimmy of having the faintest streak of sentiment, poetry or romance in his soul. They said that the cult of the stranger was a mania with Jimmy—a curious branch of insanity. The stranger was to him something sacred, and his duty to the stranger was a religious rite, without a suggestion of reward, whether here or in the Hereafter. But, perhaps, long years ago, when women, or a woman, was to Jimmy something more than a being to be paid for doing what she was made for doing, he, a stranger himself, and sick in body, and heart-sick, in a strange land, had been found by another Strangers' Friend who stuck to him. And the memory of it had stuck to Jimmy all his life.

The only explanation he was ever reported to have given was that once—and it must have been in a weak moment when remonstrated with for squandering time and money over a "waster," he said—

"Ah, well, poor beggar, some day, when he's in a better fix, he might go and do something for s' mot her pore chap as he drops across."


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Rh It was in the drought of '91, that broke almost with the new year in '92. Jack Mitchell and I were "carrying swags" west from the Darling in hopes of "stragglers" to shear, and one morning we started from a place that begins with "G," making for a place that ought to begin with "Z," and, after an hour or so, we noticed, by the age of the wheel tracks, that we'd taken the wet weather and much longer track to the next Government tank. We decided to strike across the awful lignum flats, or dry marshes, to the right track, and got lost, of course; and it was late in the day when we struck the track—or rather when we didn't. We stumbled on a private tank in the lignum, where there were still a few buckets of water, and, under the alleged shade of three stunted mulga saplings, we found two green hands, slight young Sydney jackeroos, in the remains of tailor-made suits, with one small water-bag between them, and the smallest of "stage " swags. They had good lace-up boots, I noticed; but it takes a long time for boots to wear out on those soft, dusty tracks. One man was knocked up and very ill, and more sick with the horror of his condition in such a country; and his mate was nearly as bad, what with the scare of his mate's condition and out-back "stage fright." It was boiling hot, with a smoky, smothering drought-sky over the awful, dry lignum swamps.

"Now, this would be a job for Mark Tapley, Harry," said Mitchell. "But neither of us is built for the character, and I don't know what we can do just yet. We can't carry him on to the tank nor back to the


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Rh wretched Sydney gutter-raker would not do more than turn the boots over with a stick if he saw them lying in the rubbish. His trousers legs (they don't call trousers pants in England)—his trousers were stiff as buckram, and by the hang of them may have been suspended from his waist by shreds or bits of string. Heaven only knows what ghastly skeleton in dirt that old frock-coat covered.

"Excuse me, sir!" he said, hurriedly and hoarsely, "is there any place you want to find? I can direct you. I'm—I'm a messenger! I've been thirty-five years here, and I know every hole and corner——"

"No," I said, with the distrust of the stranger in London; "I can find my way." We hear so much about the cleverness of London pickpockets, confidence men, etc., that some of us, for the first week, take precautions which seem childish and silly when we look back at them.

"But—but you've passed the place!" (Observation told him that—his wits were sharpened by the drunkard's thirst.) "Only tell me what place you want to find. I'll show you at once!" (His hands began to tremble—then to shake.) "What—what place is it, sir? I've been here thirty-five years and I——" (every now and again his voice broke into an involuntary whine; the cry that breaks out in the speech of the hopeless drunkard, who is suffering a recovery, and has been too long without a drink). "I can show you, sir. I can show you at once, any place, sir! Only tell me the name of the place!" (He was trembling now from head to foot. I told him where I wanted to go.)


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112 "Come with me, sir ! Come with me. I know it! I'll show you the place!—it's up here! You passed it! You'd never find it!" (His limbs were trembling violently now. God help us all!) "There it is; go right up those steps and in through that big door! Do you want to find any other place, sir? I'll show you any place! Shall I wait, sir? I'm—I'm a messenger—I've been round here forthirty-five years, and——"

"You've been here for thirty-five years?"

"Yes, sir ! thirty-five years——" His whine broke loose again on the "thirty-five."

"You don't seem to have done much good with your time," I said.

The words were scarcely out of my mouth before I felt the foolish brutality of them. It benefited him, though, for I gave him enough to drown his hell for a while. He wanted more ("make it even money, sir!"), but that was human nature.

But London is perhaps the easiest city in the world to find your way about in. It is here that you get the full benefit of the advice, "Ask a policeman." I like the London policeman; he is large, good-natured and seemingly broad-minded. When you speak to him he doesn't turn slowly and, if you are shabby, regard you as if you had shoved up against him on purpose. He doesn't look you up and down and say "Phwhat's that? Oh, the Barrank! You ought to know where that is. What do you want to go there?" Neither does he turn his back on you, jerk his thumb over his shoulder and say, "It's beyant."

He doesn't scratch his head, think lazily, and say,


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Rh "Go round the carrner, turn up the third turrnin' to the rroight. Keep straight down till ye come to the top an a hill. Thin keep straight up till ye see a church forninst ye. And thin arsk."

No. The London policeman attends to you instantly, and his directions are prompt, plain and concise. He is recruited mostly from the provinces, I believe, and there is a certain democratic dignity about him which appeals to me. I like his "Second to the right, sir"; or "Third—no—wait a moment" (with a cheerful smile) "fourth to the left—ask the policeman there."

He knows most things about London. He is supposed to know everything in existence—and many things which do not exist, except in the imaginations of strangers from all possible parts of the world (and from many places which would seem impossible to the un-travelled English mind). He turns from explaining to you where you are, and where you'll have to go to get anywhere else, to attend to a slow old lady who wants to be put in a tram, that doesn't come within half a mile of where she is, in order to reach a place where trams don't run. He has to keep one eye on the traffic and the other on her while she finds her purse and looks out a piece of paper with an illegible address scrawled on it; and he must put her right, somehow. Also amongst hundreds of other things, he has to attend to strangers who want clean good board and lodging cheap. And, mind you, all this time he is probably stationed in the middle of a cross street, managing four streams of traffic, of which the vehicles


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 The country is undulating and covered with fields and hedge-rows, with parks and little woods here and there, and brooks and streams along the bottoms, that run by old brick- ways under little old-fashioned hamlets, and under the corners of decayed buildings, which might have been mills at one time; and in unexpected places in the corners of the hedges are little, very old-fashioned inns, with fixed benches and tables outside, and sanded and saw-dusted floors in the bar and taprooms, and ingle-nooks and window-seats, where customers drink, and think (if they do think), and talk—do anything but dress—pretty much as they did fifty or a hundred years ago.

The village has a big common, but the common is rather a painful place, for it is frequented every day by nursemaids with babies in perambulators, and by serious-looking individuals wheeling invalids in chairs; and when you see the baby in the perambulator beside the broken-up old party in the chair, you are apt to think of the years that go between, and ponder drearily on the futility of human life. Also troops of slum children are brought down here, now and again, for an airing, and somehow it makes me feel sadder to see them on the grass and in the sunshine for one day—and to think it's only for one day—than it would to see them in their native gutters every day for a year.

You can walk out in any direction by the country roads, and round back home; and when you get tired of walking by the narrow roads worn deep between the hedges, and seeing nothing, you can climb out and follow the field-paths. The field-roads are very narrow,


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Rh in the other world his foes' ghosts bragged of the hand that had given them their passports.

But has that hard bed of War, descended for an inheritance to the soft body of Peace? In the peaceful time of full barns, and when the noise of the peaceful flail is abroad, and the hum of peaceful commerce resounds, is the grandson of two Generals a warrior too? Oh, not for naught, in the time of this seeming peace, are warrior grandsires given to Pierre! For Pierre is a warrior too; Life his campaign, and three fierce allies, Woe and Scorn and Want, his foes. The wide world is banded against him; for lo you! he holds up the standard of Right, and swears by the Eternal and True! But ah, Pierre, Pierre, when thou goest to that bed, how humbling the thought, that thy most extended length measures not the proud six feet four of thy grand John of Gaunt sire! The stature of the warrior is cut down to the dwindled glory of the fight. For more glorious in real tented field to strike down your valiant foe, than in the conflicts of a noble soul with a dastardly world to chase a vile enemy who ne'er will show front.

There, then, on the third night, at twilight, by the lofty window of that beggarly room, sat Pierre in the rear building of the Apostles'. He is gazing out from the window now. But except the donjon form of the old gray tower, seemingly there is nothing to see but a wilderness of tiles, slate, shingles, and tin;—the desolate hanging wildernesses of tiles, slate, shingles, and tin, wherewith we modern Babylonians replace the fair hanging-gardens of the fine old Asiatic times when the excellent Nebuchadnezzar was king.

There he sits, a strange exotic, transplanted from the delectable alcoves of the old manorial mansion, to take root in this niggard soil. No more do the sweet purple airs of the hills round about the green fields of Saddle Meadows come revivingly wafted to his cheek. Like a

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378 flower he feels the change; his bloom is gone from his cheek; his cheek is wilted and pale.

From the lofty window of that beggarly room, what is it that Pierre is so intently eyeing? There is no street at his feet; like a profound black gulf the open area of the quadrangle gapes beneath him. But across it, and at the further end of the steep roof of the ancient church, there looms the gray and grand old tower; emblem to Pierre of an unshakable fortitude, which, deep-rooted in the heart of the earth, defied all the howls of the air.

There is a door in Pierre's room opposite the window of Pierre: and now a soft knock is heard in that direction, accompanied by gentle words, asking whether the speaker might enter.

'Yes, always, sweet Isabel,' answered Pierre, rising and approaching the door;—'here: let us drag out the old camp-bed for a sofa; come, sit down now, my sister, and let us fancy ourselves anywhere thou wilt.'

'Then, my brother, let us fancy ourselves in realms of everlasting twilight and peace, where no bright sun shall rise, because the black night is always its follower. Twilight and peace, my brother, twilight and peace!'

'It is twilight now, my sister; and surely, this part of the city at least seems still.'

'Twilight now, but night soon; then a brief sun, and then another long night. Peace now, but sleep and nothingness soon, and then hard work for thee, my brother, till the sweet twilight come again.'

'Let us light a candle, my sister; the evening is deepening.'

'For what light a candle, dear Pierre?—Sit close to me, my brother.'

He moved nearer to her, and stole one arm around her; her sweet head leaned against his breast; each felt the other's throbbing.

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text: The American Journal of Sociology/Volume 11/Number 3/A Contribution to the Sociology of Religion


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 A CONTRIBUTION TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

PROFESSOR GEORG SIMMEL Berlin

The ambiguity which surrounds the origin and nature of religion will never be removed so long as we insist upon approaching the problem as one for which a single word will be the “open sesame.” Thus far, no one has been able to offer a definition which, without vagueness and yet with sufficient comprehensiveness, has told once for all what religion is in its essence, in that which is common alike to the religion of Christians and South Sea islanders, to Buddhism and Mexican idolatry. Thus far it has not been distinguished, on the one hand, from mere metaphysical speculation, nor, on the other, from the credulity which believes in “ghosts.” Its purest and highest manifestations are not yet proof against comparison with these. And the multiplicity of psychological causes to which religion is ascribed corresponds to this indefinite conception as to its nature. It matters not whether fear or love, ancestor-worship or self-deification, the moral instincts or the feeling of dependence, be regarded as the subjective root of religion; a theory is only then entirely erroneous when it assumes to be the sole explanation, and then only correct when it claims to point out merely one of the sources of religion. Hence the solution of the problem will be approached only when all the impulses, ideas, and conditions operating in this domain are inventoried, and that with the express determination that the significance of known particular motives is not to be arbitrarily expanded into general laws. Nor is this the only reservation that must be made in an attempt to determine the religious significance of the phenomena of social life which preceded all religion in the order of time. It must also be emphatically insisted upon that, no matter how mundanely and


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Rh 'Oh, my dear Pierre, why should we always be longing for peace, and then be impatient of peace when it comes? Tell me, my brother! Not two hours ago, thou wert wishing for twilight, and now thou wantest a candle to hurry the twilight's last lingering away.'

But Pierre did not seem to hear her; his arm embraced her tighter; his whole frame was invisibly trembling. Then suddenly in a low tone of wonderful intensity he breathed:

'Isabel! Isabel!'

She caught one arm around him, as his was around herself; the tremor ran from him to her; both sat dumb.

He rose and paced the room.

'Well, Pierre; thou camest in here to arrange thy matters, thou saidst. Now what hast thou done? Come, we will light a candle now.'

The candle was lighted, and their talk went on.

'How about the papers, my brother? Dost thou find everything right? Hast thou decided upon what to publish first, while thou art writing the new thing thou didst hint of?'

'Look at that chest, my sister. Seest thou not that the cords are yet untied?'

'Then thou hast not been into it at all as yet?'

'Not at all, Isabel. In ten days I have lived ten thousand years. Forewarned now of the rubbish in that chest, I cannot summon the heart to open it. Trash! Dross! Dirt!'

'Pierre! Pierre! what change is this? Didst thou not tell me, ere we came hither, that thy chest not only contained some silver and gold, but likewise far more precious things, readily convertible into silver and gold? Ah, Pierre, thou didst swear we had naught to fear!'

'If I have ever wilfully deceived thee, Isabel, may the high gods prove Benedict Arnolds to me, and go over to the devils to reinforce them against me! But to have

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 the origin of ideas about the super-mundane and transcendental is explained, neither the subjective emotional value of these ideas, nor their objective value as matters of fact, is at all in question. Both of these values lie beyond the limits which our merely genetic, psychological inquiry aims to reach.

In attempting to find the beginnings of religion in human relations which are in themselves non-religious, we merely follow a well-known method. It has long been admitted that science is merely a heightening, a refinement, a completion, of those means of knowledge which, in lower and dimmer degree, assist us in forming our judgments and experiences in daily, practical life. We only then arrive at a genetic explanation of art when we have analyzed those aesthetic experiences of life, in speech, in the emotions, in business, in social affairs, which are not in themselves artistic. All high and pure forms existed at first experimentally, as it were, in the germ, in connection with other forms; but in order to comprehend them in their highest and independent forms, we must look for them in their undeveloped states. Their significance, psychologically, will depend upon the determination of their proper places in a series which develops, as if by an organic growth, through a variety of stages, so that the new and differentiated in each appears as the unfolding of a germ contained in that which had preceded it. Thus it may help us to an insight into the origin and nature of religion, if we can discover in all kinds of non-religious conditions and interests certain religious momenta, the beginnings of what later came to be religion, definitely and independently. I do not believe that the religious feelings and impulses manifest themselves in religion only; rather, that they are to be found in many connections, a co-operating element in various situations, whose extreme development and differentiation is religion as an independent content of life. In order, now, to find the points at which, in the shifting conditions of human life, the momenta of religion originated, it will be necessary to digress to what may seem to be entirely foreign phenomena.

It has long been known that custom is the chief form of social control in the lower culture conditions. Those life-conditions


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 which, on the one hand, are subsequently codified as laws and enforced by the police power of the state, and, on the other hand, are remitted to the free consent of the cultivated and trained individual socius, are, in narrower and primitive circles, guaranteed by that peculiar, immediate control of the individual by his environment which we call custom. Custom, law, and the voluntary morality of the individual are different unifying elements of the social structure which can carry the same obligations as their content, and, as a matter of fact, have had them among different peoples at different times. Many of the norms and practices of public life are supported both by the free play of competing forces and by the control of the lower elements by higher ones. Many social interests were at first protected by the family organization, but later, or in other places, were taken under the care of purely voluntary associations or by the state. It can, in general, be asserted that the differentiations which characterize the social structure are always due to definite ends, causes, and interests; and so long as these continue, the social life, and the forms in which it expresses itself, may be exceedingly diverse, just as, on the other hand, this differentiation may itself have the most varied content. It seems to me that among these forms which human relations assume, and which may have the most diverse contents, there is one which cannot be otherwise described than as religious, even though this designation of it, to be sure, anticipates the name of the complete structure for its mere beginning and conditioning. For the coloring, so to speak, which justifies this description must not be a reflection from already existing religion; rather, human contact, in the purely psychological aspect of its interaction, develops that definite tendency which, heightened, and differentiated to independence, is known as religion.

We can safely assume that many human relations harbor a religious element. The relation of a devoted child to its parent, of an enthusiastic patriot to his country, of the fervent cosmopolite toward humanity; the relation of the laboring-man to his struggling fellows, or of the proud feudal lord to his class; the relation of the subject to the ruler under whose control he is, and


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380 ignorantly deceived myself and thee together, Isabel; that is a very different thing. Oh, what a vile juggler and cheat is man! Isabel, in that chest are things which in the hour of composition, I thought the very heavens looked in from the windows in astonishment at their beauty and power. Then, afterward, when days cooled me down, and again I took them up and scanned them, some underlying suspicions intruded; but when in the open air, I recalled the fresh, unwritten images of the bunglingly written things; then I felt buoyant and triumphant again; as if by that act of ideal recalling, I had, forsooth, transferred the perfect ideal to the miserable written attempt at embodying it. This mood remained. So that afterward how I talked to thee about the wonderful things I had done; the gold and the silver mine I had long before sprung for thee and for me, who never were to come to want in body or mind. Yet all this time, there was the latent suspicion of folly; but I would not admit it; I shut my soul's door in its face. Yet now, the ten thousand universal revealings brand me on the forehead with fool! and like protested notes at the Bankers', all those written things of mine, are jaggingly cut through and through with the protesting hammer of Truth!—Oh, I am sick, sick, sick!'

'Let the arms that never were filled but by thee, lure thee back again, Pierre, to the peace of the twilight, even though it be of the dimmest!'

She blew out the light, and made Pierre sit down by her; and their hands were placed in each other's.

'Say, are not thy torments now gone, my brother?'

'But replaced by—by—by—Oh God, Isabel, unhand me!' cried Pierre, starting up. 'Ye heavens, that have hidden yourselves in the black hood of the night, I call to ye! If to follow Virtue to her uttermost vista, where common souls never go; if by that I take hold on hell,

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 of the true soldier to his army—all these relations, with their infinite variety of content, looked at from the psychological side, may have a common tone which can be described only as religious. All religion contains a peculiar admixture of unselfish surrender and fervent desire, of humility and exaltation, of sensual concreteness and spiritual abstraction, which occasion a certain degree of emotional tension, a specific ardor and certainty of the subjective conditions, an inclusion of the subject experiencing them in a higher order—an order which is at the same time felt to be something subjective and personal. This religious quality is contained, it seems to me, in many other relations, and gives them a note which distinguishes them from relations based upon pure egoism, or pure suggestion, or even purely moral forces. As a matter of course, this quality is present with more or less strength, now appearing merely like a light overtone, and again as a quite distinct coloring. In many and important instances the developing period of these relations is thus characterized; that is to say, the same content which previously or at some subsequent period was borne by other forms of human relation, assumes a religious form in other periods. All this is best illustrated by those laws which at certain times or places reveal a theocratic character, are completely under religious sanctions, but which, at other times and places, are guaranteed either by the state or by custom. It would even seem as if the indispensable requirements of society frequently emerged from an entirely undifferentiated form in which moral, religious, and juridical sanctions were still indiscriminately mingled, like the Dharma of the Hindus, the Themis of the Greeks, and the fas of the Latins, and that finally, as historical conditions varied, now one and now the other of these sanctions developed into the “bearer” of such requirements. In the relation of the individual to the group also these changes can be observed; in times when patriotism is aroused, this relation assumes a devotion, a fervor, and a readiness of self-surrender which can be described only as religious; while at other times it is controlled by conventionality or the law of the land. For us the important thing is that it is, in every case, a question of human relations, and that it is merely a change, as it were, in the


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 aggregate condition of these relations when, instead of purely conventional, it becomes religious, and instead of religious, legal, and then, in turn, voluntary, as a matter of fact, many socially injurious immoralities first found a place in the criminal code because of the resentment of the church; or, as illustrated by anti-Semitism, because a social-economic or racial relation between certain groups within a group can be transferred to the religious category, without, however, really becoming anything else than a social relation; or, as some suppose, that religious prostitution was merely a development of sexual life which was earlier or elsewhere controlled by pure convention.

In view of these examples, a previously indicated error must be more definitely guarded against. The theory here set forth is not intended to prove that certain social interests and occurrences were controlled by an already independently existing religious system. That, certainly, occurs often enough, brings about combinations of the greatest historical importance, and is very significant also in the examples cited. But what I mean is precisely the reverse of this, and, it must be admitted, of much less apparent connection, and one more difficult to discover; namely, that in those social relations the quality which we afterward, on account of its analogy with other existing religiosity, call religious, comes into being spontaneously, as a pure socio-psychological constellation, one of the possible relations of man to man. In contrast to this, religion, as an independent phenomenon, is a derivative thing, almost like the state in the Roman and modern sense, as an objective and self-sufficient existence, is secondary in contrast to the original causes, relations, and customs which immediately controlled the social elements, and which only gradually projected upon or abrogated to the state the conservation and execution of their contents. The entire history of social life is permeated by this process: the positively antagonistic motives of individuals, with which their social life begins, grow up into separate and independent organisms. Thus, from the regulations for preserving the group-life there arise, on the one hand, the law which codifies them, and, on the other, the judge whose business it is to apply them. Thus, from socially necessary tasks, first


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 performed with the co-operation of all, and according to the rude empiricism of the times, there develop, on the one hand, a technology, as an ideal system of knowledge and rules, and, on the other hand, the laborer as the differentiated means for accomplishing those tasks. In a similar manner, although in these infinitely complex affairs the analogy constantly breaks down, it may have happened in things religious. The individual in a group is related to others, or to all, in the way above described; that is to say, his relations to them partake of a certain degree of exaltation, devotion, and fervency. From this there develops an ideal content, on the one hand, or gods, who protect those who sustain these relations; who brought the emotions which they experience into being; who, by their very existence, then bring into sharp relief—as an independent entity, so to speak—what had hitherto only existed as a form of human relation, and more or less blended with more actual life-forms. And this complex of ideas or phantasies finds an executive representation in the priesthood, like law in the person of the judge, or learning in a scholarly class. When this identification or substantialization of religion has been accomplished, it, in turn, has its effect upon the direct psychical relations of men among themselves, giving them the now well-known and so-called quality of religiosity. But in so doing it merely gives back what it had originally received. And it may, perhaps, be asserted that the so often wonderful and abstruse religious ideas could never have obtained their influence upon men if they had not been the formulae or embodiments of previously existing relations for which consciousness had not yet found a more appropriate expression.

The intellectual motive underlying this explanation is a very general one, and may be expressed as a comprehensive rule, of which the materialistic conception of history affords a single illustration. When materialism derives the entire content of historic life from economic conditions, and defines custom and law, art and religion, science and social progress accordingly, a part of a very comprehensive process is exaggerated into the whole. The development of the forms and contents of social life, throughout its wide territory and multiplied phenomena, is


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 such that the selfsame content finds expression in many forms, and the same form in many contents. The events of history arrange themselves as if they were controlled by a tendency to make as much as possible of every given sum of movements. This is, apparently, the reason why history does not disintegrate into a collection of aphoristic movements, but binds together intimately, not only the synchronous, but the successive. That any particular form of life—social, literary, religious, personal—should survive its connection with a single content, and also lend itself unchanged to a new one; that the single content should maintain its essential nature through a mass of successive and mutually destructive forms, is precisely what the continuity of history will not permit. On the contrary, it prevents it, so that there should not be at some point an irrational leap, a break in the connection with the past. Since, now, the evolution of the race generally advances from the sensual and objective to the mental and subjective—only, it is true, frequently to reverse this order—there will often occur, in economic life, factors in the form of the abstract and intellectual, the forms which have built up the economic interests will intrude themselves into entirely different life-contents. But that is only one of the instances in which continuity and the law of parsimony are found in history. When, for example, the form of government exhibited in the state is repeated in the family; when the prevailing religion gives direction and inspiration to art; when frequent wars make the individual brutal and offensive even in peace; when political divisions influence non-political affairs and align diverging tendencies of culture according to party principles; then these are all expressions of this emphasized character of all historic life, of which the materialistic theory of history illuminates only a single side. And it is this side precisely which illustrates the development with which we are here concerned; forms of social relations either condense or refine themselves into a system of religious ideas, or add new elements to those which already exist; or, viewed differently, a specific emotional content which arose in the form of individual interaction, transfers itself in this relationship into a transcendent idea; this builds a new category


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 according to which the forms or contents are experienced which have their origin in human relationships. I shall try to demonstrate this general suggestion by applying it to a particular phase of the religious life.

The faith which has come to be regarded as the essential, the substance, of religion, is first a relation between individuals; for it is a question of practical faith, which is by no means merely a lower form or attenuation of theoretical belief. When I say, “I believe in God,” the assertion means something entirely different from the statement, “I believe in the existence of ether waves;” or, “The moon is inhabited;” or, “Human nature is always the same.” It means not only that I accept the existence of God, even though it be not fully demonstrable, but it implies also a certain subjective relation to him, a going out of the affections to him, an attitude of life; in all of which there is a peculiar mixture of faith as a kind of method of knowledge with practical impulses and feelings. And now, as to the analogy of all this in human socialization. We do not base our mutual relations by any means upon what we conclusively know about each other. Rather, our feelings and suggestions express themselves in certain representations which can be described only as matters of faith, and which, in turn, have a reflex effect upon practical conditions. It is a specific psychological fact, hard to define, which we illustrate when we “believe in someone”—the child in its parents, the subordinate in his superior, friend in friend, the individual in the nation, and the subject in his sovereign. The social role of this faith has never been investigated; but this much is certain, that without it society would disintegrate. Obedience, for example, is largely based upon it. In innumerable instances it depends neither upon a definite recognition of law and force, nor upon affection, or suggestion, but upon that psychical intermediate thing which we call faith in a person or a group of persons. It has often been remarked that it is an incomprehensible thing that individuals, and entire classes, allow themselves to be oppressed and exploited, even though they possess ample power to secure immunity. But this is precisely the result of an easy-going, uncritical faith in the power, value, superiority, and goodness of


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 those in authority—a faith which is by no means an uncertain, theoretical assumption, but a unique thing, compounded of knowledge, instinct, and feeling, which is concisely and simply described as faith in them. That, in the face of reasonable proof to the contrary, we still can retain our faith in an individual is one of the strongest of the ties that bind society. This faith, now, is of a most positive religious character. I do not mean that the religion was first, and that the sociological relations borrowed their attribute from it. I believe, rather, that the sociological significance arises without any regard for the religious data at all as a purely inter-individual, psychological relation, which later exhibits itself abstractly in religious faith. In faith in a deity the highest development of faith has become incorporate, so to speak; has been relieved of its connection with its social counterpart. Out of the subjective faith-process there develops, contrariwise, an object for that faith. The faith in human relations which exists as a social necessity now becomes an independent, typical function of humanity which spontaneously authenticates itself from within; just as it is no rare phenomenon for a certain object to produce a certain psychical process in us, and afterward for this process, having become independent, to create a corresponding object for itself. Human intercourse, in its ordinary as well as in its highest content, reveals in so many ways the psychological form of faith as its warrant that the necessity for “believing” develops spontaneously, and in so doing creates objects for its justification, much as the impulses of love or veneration can fasten themselves upon objects which in themselves could by no means evoke such sentiments, but whose qualifications for so doing are reflected upon them from the needs of the subject, or, as looked at from the other side, God as creator has been described as the product of the causal necessity in man. This last assertion by no means denies that this conception also has objective reality; only the motive out of which it grew subjectively into an idea is in question. The assumption is that the infinitely frequent application of the causal idea in the realm of its origin, the empiric-relative, finally made the need for it a dominating one, so that it found satisfaction, which was really denied it in the realm of the


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Rh and the uttermost virtue, after all, prove but a betraying pander to the monstrousest vice,—then close in and crush me, ye stony walls, and into one gulf let all things tumble together!'

'My brother! this is some incomprehensible raving,' pealed Isabel, throwing both arms around him;—'my brother, my brother!'

'Hark thee to thy furthest inland soul,' thrilled Pierre in a steeled and quivering voice. 'Call me brother no more! How knowest thou I am thy brother? Did thy mother tell thee? Did my father say so to me?—I am Pierre, and thou Isabel, wide brother and sister in the common humanity,—no more. For the rest, let the gods look after their own combustibles. If they have put powder-casks in me—let them look to it! let them look to it! Ah! now I catch glimpses, and seem to half see, somehow, that the uttermost ideal of moral perfection in man is wide of the mark. The demigods trample on trash, and Virtue and Vice are trash! Isabel, I will write such things—I will gospelise the world anew, and show them deeper secrets than the Apocalypse!—I will write it, I will write it!'

'Pierre, I am a poor girl, born in the midst of a mystery, bred in mystery, and still surviving to mystery. So mysterious myself, the air and the earth are unutterable to me; no word have I to express them. But these are the circumambient mysteries; thy words, thy thoughts, open other wonder-worlds to me, whither by myself I might fear to go. But trust to me, Pierre. With thee, with thee, I would boldly swim a starless sea, and be buoy to thee, there, when thou the strong swimmer shouldst faint. Thou, Pierre, speakest of Virtue and Vice; life-secluded Isabel knows neither the one nor the other, but by hearsay. What are they, in their real selves, Pierre? Tell me first what is Virtue:—begin!'

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 absolute, in the idea of an Absolute Being as the cause of the world. A similar process may project belief beyond the confines of its social origin, develop it into a similar organic need, and beget for it the idea of deity as an absolute object.

Another side of the social life which develops into a corresponding one within the religious life is found in the concept of unity. That we do not simply accept the disconnected manifoldness of our impressions of things, but look for the connections and relations which bind them into a unity; yes, that we everywhere presuppose the presence of higher unities and centers for the seemingly separate phenomena, in order that we may orient ourselves aright amid the confusion with which they come to us, is assuredly one of the important characteristics of social realities and necessities. Nowhere do we find, so directly and appreciably, a whole made up of separate elements; nowhere is their separation and free movement so energetically controlled by the center, as in the gens, the family, the state, in every purposive organization. When primitive associations are so often found organized in tens, it means, clearly, that the group-relationship is similar to that of the fingers of the hand—relative freedom and independent movement of the individual, and, at the same time, unity of purpose and inseparableness of existence from others. The fact that all social life is a relationship at once defines it as a unity; for what does unity signify but that many are mutually related, and that the fate of each is felt by all? The fact that this unity of society is occasionally attacked, that the freedom of the individual prompts him to break away from it, and that it is not absolutely true of the closest and most naïve relations, like the unity of the constituent parts of an organism—all this is precisely what must have driven it home to human consciousness as a particular form and special value of existence. The unity of things and interests which first impresses us in the social realm finds its highest representation—and one, as it were, separated from all material considerations—in the idea of the divine; most completely, of course, in the monotheistic, but relatively also in the lower, religions. It is the deepest significance of the God-idea that the manifoldness and contradictoriness of things find in it their


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 and unity, it matters not whether it be the absolute unity of the one God, or the partial unities of polytheism. Thus, for example, the social life of the ancient Arabians, with the all-controlling influence of its tribal unity, foreshadowed monotheism; among Semitic peoples, like the Jews, Phoenicians, and Canaanites, the method of their social unification and its transformations was plainly reflected in the character of their gods. So long as family unity was the controlling form, Baal signified only a father, whose children were the people. In proportion as the social aggregate included foreign branches not related by blood, he became a ruler objectively enthroned above. So soon as the social unity loses the character of blood-relationship, the religious unity also loses it, so that the latter appears as the purely derived form of the former. Even the unification which rises superior to the sex-differentiation forms a particular religious type. The psychological obliteration of the sex-contrast, found so conspicuously in the social life of the Syrians, Assyrians, and Lydians, terminated in the conception of divinities which combined the two—the half-masculine Astarte, the man-woman Sandon, the sun-god Melkarth, who exchanges the sex-symbols with the moon-goddess. It is not a question about the trivial proposition that mankind is reflected in its gods—a general truth which needs no proof. The question is, rather, to find those particular human characteristics whose development and extension beyond the human create the gods. And it must also be borne in mind that the gods do not exist as the idealization of individual characteristics, of the power, or moral or immoral characteristics, or the inclinations and needs of individuals; but that it is the inter-individual forms of life which often give their content to religious ideas. In that certain phases and intensities of social functions assume their purest, most abstract, and, at the same time, incorporate forms, they form the objects of religions, so that it can be said that religion, whatever else it may be, consists of forms of social relationships which, separated from their empirical content, become independent and have substances of their own attributed to them.

Two further considerations will illustrate how much the


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 unity of the group belongs to the functions that have developed into religion. The unity of the group is brought about and conserved, especially in primitive times, by the absence of war or competition within the group, in sharp contrast to the relations sustained to all outsiders. Now, there is probably no other single domain in which this non-competitive form of existence, this identity of aim and interest, is so clearly and completely represented as in religion. The peaceful character of the group-life just referred to is only relative. With the majority of the efforts put forth within the group there is also implied an attempt to exclude others from the same goal; to reduce as much as possible the disproportion between desire and satisfaction, even if it be at some cost to others; at least to find a criterion for doing and enjoying in the corresponding activities of others. It is almost solely in religion that the energies of individuals can find fullest development without coming into competition with each other, because, as Jesus so beautifully expresses it, there is room for all in God’s house. Although the goal is common to all, it is possible for all to achieve it, not only without mutual exclusion, but by mutual co-operation. I call attention to the profound way in which the Lord’s Supper expresses the truth that the same goal is for all, and to be reached by the same means; and also to the feasts which objectify the union of those who are moved by the same religious emotions, from the rude feasts of primitive religions, in which the union finally degenerated into sexual orgies, to its purest expression, the pax hominibus, which extended far beyond any single group. That absence of competition which conditions unity as the life-form of the group, but which always reigns only relatively and partially in it, has found absolute and intensest realization in the religious realm. It might actually be said of religion, as of faith, that it represents in substance—yes, to a certain extent consists of the substantialization of—that which, as form and function, regulates the group-life. And this, in turn, assumes a personal form in a priesthood which, despite its historic connection with certain classes, stands, in its fundamental idea, above all classes, and precisely on that account represents the focus and unity of the ideal life-content for all


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. Thus the celibacy of the Catholic priesthood frees them from every special relation to any element or group of elements, and makes possible a uniform relation to each; just as “society” or the “state” stands above individuals as the abstract unity which represents all their relationships in itself. And, to mention a thoroughly concrete instance, throughout the Middle Ages the church afforded every benevolent impulse the great convenience of a central reservoir into which every benefaction could flow unchallenged. He who desired to rid himself of his wealth for the benefit of others did not have to bother about the ways and means, because there existed for this very purpose a universal central organ between the giver and the needy. Thus benevolence, a form of social relation within the group, secured, in the church, an organization and unity above the individual.

In like manner the reverse of this relation, with, however, the same germ, is seen in the attitude toward heretics. That which arrays great masses in hatred and moral condemnation against heretics is certainly not the difference in the dogmatic content of teaching, which, in most instances, is really not at all understood. It is rather the fact of the opposition of the one against the many. The persecution of heretics and dissenters springs from the instinct which recognizes the necessity for group-unity. Now, it is especially significant that in many instances of this kind religious variation could very well exist in conjunction with the unity of the group in all vital matters. But in religion the social instinct for unity has assumed such a pure, abstract, and, at the same time, substantial form that it no longer requires a union with real interests; while non-conformity seems to threaten the unity—that is to say, the very life-form—of the group. Just as an attack upon a palladium or other symbol of group-unity will evoke the most violent reaction, even though it may have no direct connection with it at all, so religion is the purest form of unity in society, raised high above all concrete individualities. This is demonstrated by the energy with which every heresy, no matter how irrelevant, is still combated.

And, finally, those internal relations between the individual and the group which we characterize as moral offer such deep


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 analogies to the individual’s relations to his God that they would seem almost to be nothing more than their condensation and transformation. The whole wonderful fulness of the former is reflected in the many ways in which we “sense” the divine. The compelling and punitive gods, the loving God, the God of Spinoza who cannot return our love, the God who both bestows and deprives us of the inclination and ability to act—these are precisely the tokens by which the ethical relation between the group and its members unfolds its energies and oppositions. I call attention to the feeling of dependence, in which the essence of all religion has been found. The individual feels himself bound to a universal, to something higher, out of which he came, and into which he will return, and from which he also expects assistance and salvation, from which he differs and is yet identical with it. All these emotions, which meet as in a focus in the idea of God, can be traced back to the relation which the individual sustains to his species; on the one hand, to the past generations which have supplied him with the principal forms and contents of his being, on the other, to his contemporaries, who condition the manner and extent of its development. If the theory is correct which asserts that all religion is derived from ancestor-worship, from the worship and conciliation of the immortal soul of a forbear, especially of a hero and leader, it will confirm this connection; for we are, as a matter of fact, dependent upon what has been before us, and which was most directly concentrated in the authority of the fathers over their descendants. The deification of ancestors, especially of the ablest and most successful, is, as it were, the most appropriate expression of the dependence of the individual upon the previous life of the group, even though consciousness may reveal other motives for it. Thus the humility with which the pious person acknowledges that all that he is and has comes from God, and recognizes in him the source of his existence and ability, is properly traced to the relation of the individual to the whole. For man is not absolutely nothing in contrast to God, but only a dust-mote; a weak, but not entirely vain, force; a vessel, but yet adapted to its contents. When a given idea of God is, in essence, the origin and at the same time the unity of all the varieties of


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 being and willing, of all the antitheses and differences especially of our subjective life-interests, we can without more ado put the social totality into its place; for it is from this totality that all those impulses flow which come to us as the results of shifting adaptations, all that multiplicity of relations in which we find ourselves, that development of the organs with which we apprehend the different and almost irreconcilable aspects of the universe. And yet the social group is sufficiently unified to be regarded as the real unifying focus of these divergent radiations. Furthermore, the divine authority of kings is merely an expression for the complete concentration of power in their hands; as soon as the social unification, the objectification of the whole as against a part, has reached a certain point, it is conceived of by the individual as a supra-mundane power. And then, whether he still directly conceives it as social, or whether it is already clothed with divinity, the problem arises how much he, as an individual, can and must do to fulfil his destiny, and how much that supra-mundane principle will assist him. The independence of the individual in relation to that power, from which he received his independence, and which conditions its aims and methods, is as much a question in this case as in the other. Thus Augustine places the individual in a historic development against which he is as impotent as he is against God. And the doctrine of synergism is found throughout the entire history of the church conditioned by her internal politics. Just as, according to the strict religious conception, the individual is merely a vessel of the grace or wrath of god, so, according to the socialistic conception, he is a vessel of the forces emanating from the universal; and both instances reproduce the same fundamental ethical problem about the nature and the rights of the individual, and in both forms the surrender of the one to the other opposite principle frequently offers the only satisfaction still possible when an individuality, thrown wholly upon its own resources, no longer has the power to maintain itself.

This arrangement of religious and ethical-social ideas is supported by the fact that God is conceived as the personification of those virtues which he himself demands from the people. He is


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 goodness, justice, patience, etc., rather than the possessor of these attributes; he is, as it is sometimes expressed, perfection in substance; he is goodness itself, and love itself, etc. Morality, the imperatives that control human conduct, has, so to speak, become immutable in him. As practical belief is a relation between persons which fashions an absolute over and above the form of relation; as unity is a form of relation between a group of persons which raises itself to that personification of the unity of things in which the divine is represented; so morality contains those forms of relation between man and man which the interests of the group has sanctioned, so that the God who exhibits the relative contents in absolute form, on the one hand, represents the claims and benefits of the group, as against the individual, and, on the other, divests those ethical-social duties which the individual must perform of their relativity, and presents them in himself in an absolutely substantial form. The relations of persons to each other, which have grown out of the most manifold interests, have been supported by the most opposite forces, and have been cast into the most diverse forms, also attain a condition in the aggregate whose identification with and relation to a Being above and beyond them we call religion—in that they become both abstract and concrete, a dual development which gives religion the strength with which it again, reflexively, influences those relations. The old idea that God is the Absolute, while that which is human is relative, here assumes a new meaning: it is the relations between men which find their substantial and ideal expression in the idea of the divine.

If investigations like this, touching the fundamentals of being, are usually accompanied by the hope that their significance should be understood sufficiently comprehensively, the reverse must here be the case, and the wish expressed that the arguments here set forth must not be permitted to intrude upon neighboring domains, beyond their own limited boundaries. They are not intended to describe the historical course of the origin of religion, but only to point out one of its many sources, quite irrespective of the fact whether this source, in conjunction with others, also from the domain of the non-religious, gave birth to religion, or whether


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 religion had already come into being when the sources here discussed added their quota to its content—their effectiveness is not dependent upon any particular historical occasion. It must also be borne in mind that religion, as a spiritual experience, is not a finished product, but a vital process which each soul must beget for itself, no matter how stable the traditional content may be; and it is precisely here that the power and depth of religion are found, namely, in its persistent ability to draw a given content of religion into the flow of the emotions, whose movements must constantly renew it, like the perpetually changing drops of water which beget the stable picture of the rainbow. Hence the genetic explanation of religion must not only embrace the historical origin of its tradition, but its present energies also which allow us to acquire what has come down to us from the fathers; so that in this sense there are really “origins” of religion whose appearance and effectiveness lie long after the “origin” of religion.

But, more important even than to deny that we offer here a theory of the historical origin of religion, is it to insist that the objective truth of religion has nothing whatever to do with this investigation. Even if we have succeeded in the attempt to understand religion as a product of the subjective conditions of human life, we have not at all impinged upon the problem whether the objective reality which lies outside of human thought contains the counterpart and confirmation of the psychical reality which we have here discussed. Thus the psychology of cognition seeks to explain how the mind conceives the world to be spatial, and of three dimensions, but is content to have other disciplines undertake to prove whether beyond our mental world there is a world of things in themselves of like forms. It is true, there may be a limit beyond which the explanation of subjective facts from purely subjective conditions may not be sufficient. The chain of causes may have to terminate somewhere in an objective reality. But this possibility or necessity can concern only him who has in view the complete elucidation of the origin and nature of religion, but it does not affect our attempt to trace only a single one of the rays that are focused in religion.

Finally, the most important consideration remains. The


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 value of religion—that is to say, the most subjective reflexive effect of the idea of God—is entirely independent of all assumption about the manner in which the idea originated. We here touch upon the most serious misconception to which the attempt to trace ideal values historically and psychologically is exposed. There are still many who feel that an ideal is deprived of its greatest charm, that the dignity of an emotion is degraded, if its origin can no longer be thought of as an incomprehensible miracle, a creation out of nothing—as if the comprehension of its development affected the value of a thing, as if lowliness of origin could affect the already achieved loftiness of the goal, and as if the simplicity of its several elements could destroy the importance of a product. Such is the foolish and confused notion that the dignity of humanity is profaned by tracing man’s origin to the lower animals, as if that dignity did not depend upon what man really is, no matter what his origin. Persons entertaining such notions will always resist the attempt to understand religion by deriving it from elements not in themselves religious. But precisely such persons, who hope to preserve the dignity of religion by denying its historical-psychological origin, must be reproached with weakness of religious consciousness. Their subjective certainty and emotional depth must assuredly be of little moment, if the knowledge of their origin and development endangers or even touches their validity and worth. For, just as genuine and deepest love for a human being is not disturbed by subsequent evidence concerning its causes—yes, as its triumphant strength is revealed by its survival of the passing of those causes—so the strength of the subjective religious emotion is revealed only by the assurance which it has in itself, and with which it grounds its depth and intensity entirely beyond all the causes to which investigation may trace it.


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382 'If on that point the gods are dumb, shall a pigmy speak? Ask the air!'

'Then Virtue is nothing.'

'Not that!'

'Then Vice?'

'Look: a nothing is the substance, it casts one shadow one way, and another the other way; and these two shadows cast from one nothing; these, seems to me, are Virtue and Vice.'

'Then why torment thyself so, dearest Pierre?'

'It is the law.'

'What?'

'That a nothing should torment a nothing; for I am a nothing. It is all a dream—we dream that we dreamed we dream.'

'Pierre, when thou just hovered on the verge, thou wert a riddle to me; but now, that thou art deep down in the gulf of the soul,—now, when thou wouldst be lunatic to wise men, perhaps—now doth poor ignorant Isabel begin to comprehend thee. Thy feeling hath long been mine, Pierre. Long loneliness and anguish have opened miracles to me. Yes, it is all a dream!'

Swiftly he caught her in his arms:—'From nothing proceeds nothing, Isabel! How can one sin in a dream?'

'First, what is sin, Pierre?'

'Another name for the other name, Isabel.'

'For Virtue, Pierre?'

'No, for Vice.'

'Let us sit down again, my brother.'

'I am Pierre.'

'Let us sit down again, Pierre; sit close; thy arm!'

And so, on the third night, when the twilight was gone, and no lamp was lit, within the lofty window of that beggarly room, sat Pierre and Isabel hushed.

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 BOOK XX

CHARLIE MILLTHORPE

I

had been induced to take chambers at the Apostles', by one of the Apostles themselves, an old acquaintance of his, and a native of Saddle Meadows.

Millthorpe was the son of a very respectable farmer—now dead—of more than common intelligence, and whose bowed shoulders and homely garb had still been surmounted by a head fit for a Greek philosopher, and features so fine and regular that they would have well graced an opulent gentleman. The political and social levellings and confoundings of all manner of human elements in America, produce many striking individual anomalies unknown in other lands. Pierre well remembered old farmer Millthorpe:—the handsome, melancholy, calm-tempered, mute, old man; in whose countenance—refinedly ennobled by nature, and yet coarsely tanned and attenuated by many a prolonged day's work in the harvest—rusticity and classicalness were strangely united. The delicate profile of his face, bespoke the loftiest aristocracy; his knobbed and bony hands resembled a beggar's.

Though for several generations the Millthorpes had lived on the Glendinning lands, they loosely and unostentatiously traced their origin to an emigrating English Knight, who had crossed the sea in the time of the elder Charles. But that indigence which had prompted the knight to forsake his courtly country for the howling 5em

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384 wilderness, was the only remaining hereditament left to his bedwindled descendants in the fourth and fifth remove. At the time that Pierre first recollected this interesting man, he had, a year or two previous, abandoned an ample farm on account of absolute inability to meet the manorial rent, and was become the occupant of a very poor and contracted little place, on which was a small and half-ruinous house. There, he then harboured with his wife,—a very gentle and retiring person,—his three little daughters, and his only son, a lad of Pierre's own age. The hereditary beauty and youthful bloom of this boy; his sweetness of temper, and something of natural refinement as contrasted with the unrelieved rudeness, and oftentimes sordidness, of his neighbours; these things had early attracted the sympathetic, spontaneous friendliness of Pierre. They were often wont to take their boyish rambles together; and even the severely critical Mrs. Glendinning, always fastidiously cautious as to the companions of Pierre, had never objected to his intimacy with so prepossessing and handsome a rustic as Charles.

Boys are often very swiftly acute in forming a judgment on character. The lads had not long companioned, ere Pierre concluded, that however fine his face, and sweet his temper, young Millthorpe was but little vigorous in mind; besides possessing a certain constitutional, sophomorean presumption and egotism; which, however, having nothing to feed on but his father's meal and potatoes, and his own essentially timid and humane disposition, merely presented an amusing and harmless, though incurable, anomalous feature in his character, not at all impairing the good-will and companionableness of Pierre; for even in his boyhood, Pierre possessed a sterling charity, which could cheerfully overlook all minor blemishes in his inferiors, whether in fortune or

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Rh mind; content and glad to embrace the good whenever presented, or with whatever conjoined. So, in youth, do we unconsciously act upon those peculiar principles, which in conscious and verbalised maxims shall systematically regulate our maturer lives;—a fact, which forcibly illustrated the necessitarian dependence of our lives, and their subordination, not to ourselves, but to Fate.

If the grown man of taste, possess not only some eye to detect the picturesque in the natural landscape, so also, has he as keen a perception of what may not unfitly be here styled, the povertiresque in the social landscape. To such an one, not more picturesquely conspicuous is the dismantled thatch in a painted cottage of Gainsborough, than the time-tangled and want-thinned locks of a beggar, povertiresquely diversifying those snug little cabinet-pictures of the world, which, exquisitely varnished and framed, are hung up in the drawing-room minds of humane men of taste, and amiable philosophers of either the 'Compensation,' or 'Optimist' school. They deny that any misery is in the world, except for the purpose of throwing the fine povertiresque element into its general picture. Go to! God hath deposited cash in the Bank subject to our gentlemanly order; he hath bounteously blessed the world with a summer carpet of green. Begone, Heraclitus! The lamentations of the rain are but to make us our rainbows!

Not that in equivocal reference to the povertiresque old farmer Millthorpe, Pierre is here intended to be hinted at. Still, man cannot wholly escape his surroundings. Unconsciously Mrs. Glendinning had always been one of these curious Optimists; and in his boyish life Pierre had not wholly escaped the maternal contagion. Yet often, in calling at the old farmer's for Charles of some early winter mornings, and meeting the painfully embarrassed, thin, feeble features of Mrs. Millthorpe, and

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386 the sadly inquisitive and hopelessly half-envious glances of the three little girls; and standing on the threshold, Pierre would catch low, aged, life-weary groans from a recess out of sight from the door; then would Pierre have some boyish inklings of something else than the pure povertiresque in poverty; some inklings of what it might be, to be old, and poor, and worn, and rheumatic, with shivering death drawing nigh, and present life itself but a dull and a chill! some inklings of what it might be, for him who in youth had vivaciously leaped from his bed, impatient to meet the earliest sun, and lose no sweet drop of his life, now hating the beams he once so dearly loved; turning round in his bed to the wall to avoid them; and still postponing the foot which should bring him back to the dismal day; when the sun is not gold, but copper; and the sky is not blue, but gray; and the blood, like Rhenish wine, too long unquaffed by Death, grows thin and sour in the veins.

Pierre had not forgotten that the augmented penury of the Millthorpes was, at the time we now retrospectively treat of, gravely imputed by the gossiping frequenters of the Black Swan Inn, to certain insinuated moral derelictions of the farmer. 'The old man tipped his elbow too often,' once said in Pierre's hearing an old bottle-necked fellow, performing the identical same act with a half-emptied glass in his hand. But though the form of old Millthorpe was broken, his countenance, however sad and thin, betrayed no slightest sign of the sot, either past or present. He never was publicly known to frequent the inn, and seldom quitted the few acres he cultivated with his son. And though, alas, indigent enough, yet was he most punctually honest in paying his little debts of shillings and pence for his groceries. And though, heaven knows, he had plenty of occasion for all the money he could possibly earn, yet

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Rh Pierre remembered, that when, one autumn, a hog was bought of him for the servants' hall at the mansion, the old man never called for his money till the midwinter following; and then, as with trembling fingers he eagerly clutched the silver, he unsteadily said, 'I have no use for it now; it might just as well have stood over.' It was then, that chancing to overhear this, Mrs. Glendinning had looked at the old man, with a kindly and benignantly interested eye to the povertiresque; and murmured, 'Ah! the old English Knight is not yet out of his blood. Bravo, old man!'

One day, in Pierre's sight, nine silent figures emerged from the door of old Millthorpe; a coffin was put into a neighbour's farm-wagon; and a procession, some thirty feet long, including the elongated pole and box of the wagon, wound along Saddle Meadows to a hill, where, at last, old Millthorpe was laid down in a bed, where the rising sun should affront him no more. Oh, softest and daintiest of Holland linen is the motherly earth! There, beneath the sublime tester of the infinite sky, like emperors and kings, sleep, in grand state, the beggars and paupers of earth! I joy that Death is this Democrat; and hopeless of all other real and permanent democracies, still hug the thought, that though in life some heads are crowned with gold, and some bound round with thorns, yet chisel them how they will, head-stones are all alike.

This somewhat particular account of the father of young Millthorpe, will better set forth the less immature condition and character of the son, on whom had now descended the maintenance of his mother and sisters. But, though the son of a farmer, Charles was peculiarly averse to hard labour. It was not impossible that by resolute hard labour he might eventually have succeeded in placing his family in a far more comfortable situation than he had ever remembered them. But it was not so

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116 a full day for it. I wouldn't be surprised to know that hundreds come from Australia to London, stay some time, and go away without having seen anything to talk about. If you come to make a living in London it doesn't do to lean up against the Post of To-morrow. Rent days fly round and bills fly in. Your landlady, if you board and have apartments, meets you with a smile of anticipation before you know where you are, and they all think that because you came from Australia you must have plenty of money. You can't take a supply of tea, sugar and flour and pitch your camp down the creek, where there's plenty of wood and water, and take a fortnight to think over things. No; you must hustle round. You can live about as cheaply or as expensively as you like in London, but you've got to find those things out before you blue your cheque. You can't borrow a few quid from your mate Jim, or Bill, and take another week or so waiting for something to turn up. A Sydney University boy of my acquaintance came "home" about two years ago to make a living in London with his pen, and he took things easy for a while. Now he answers letters by return post, with perhaps a letter-card following his letter, and containing something which he forgot to say in the letter; and I have known him to dash off a postcard by the same post with something of importance on it which he forgot to mention in the letter-card. When he arrived he wore comfortable clothes and a soft felt hat; now he wears a frock-coat, a top-hat, gloves, a stick, a card-case, a pair of glasses to nip on to his


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388 fated; the benevolent State had in its great wisdom decreed otherwise.

In the village of Saddle Meadows there was an institution, half common-school and half academy, but mainly supported by a general ordinance and financial provision of the government. Here, not only were the rudiments of an English education taught, but likewise some touch of belles-lettres, and composition, and that great American bulwark and bore—elocution. On the high-raised, stage platform of the Saddle Meadows Academy, the sons of the most indigent day-labourers were wont to drawl out the fiery revolutionary rhetoric of Patrick Henry, or gesticulate impetuously through the soft cadences of Drake's 'Culprit Fay.' What wonder, then, that of Saturdays, when there was no elocution and poesy, these boys should grow melancholy and disdainful over the heavy, plodding handles of dung-forks and hoes?

At the age of fifteen, the ambition of Charles Millthorpe was to be either an orator, or a poet; at any rate, a great genius of one sort or other. He recalled the ancestral Knight, and indignantly spurned the plough. Detecting in him the first germ of this inclination, old Millthorpe had very seriously reasoned with his son; warning him against the evils of his vagrant ambition. Ambition of that sort was either for undoubted genius, rich boys, or poor boys, standing entirely alone in the world, with no one relying upon them. Charles had better consider the case; his father was old and infirm; he could not last very long; he had nothing to leave behind him but his plough and his hoe; his mother was sickly; his sisters pale and delicate; and finally, life was a fact, and the winters in that part of the country exceedingly bitter and long. Seven months out of the twelve the pastures bore nothing, and all cattle must be fed in the barns. But Charles was a boy; advice often seems the most

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Rh wantonly wasted of all human breath; man will not take wisdom on trust; maybe it is well; for such wisdom is worthless; we must find the true gem for ourselves; and so we go groping and groping for many and many a day.

Yet was Charles Millthorpe as affectionate and dutiful a boy as ever boasted of his brain, and knew not that he possessed a far more excellent and angelical thing in the possession of a generous heart. His father died; to his family he resolved to be a second father, and a careful provider now. But not by hard toil of his hand; but by gentler practices of his mind. Already he had read many books—history, poetry, romance, essays, and all. The manorial book-shelves had often been honoured by his visits, and Pierre had kindly been his librarian. Not to lengthen the tale, at the age of seventeen, Charles sold the horse, the cow, the pig, the plough, the hoe, and almost every movable thing on the premises; and, converting all into cash, departed with his mother and sisters for the city; chiefly basing his expectations of success on some vague representations of an apothecary relative there resident. How he and his mother and sisters battled it out; how they pined and half-starved for a while; how they took in sewing; and Charles took in copying; and all but scantily sufficed for a livelihood; all this may be easily imagined. But some mysterious latent good-will of Fate toward him, had not only thus far kept Charles from the Poor-House, but had really advanced his fortunes in a degree. At any rate, that certain harmless presumption and innocent egotism which have been previously adverted to as sharing in his general character, these had by no means retarded him; for it is often to be observed of the shallower men, that they are the very last to despond. It is the glory of the bladder that nothing can sink it; it is the reproach of a box of treasure, that once overboard it must drown.

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