text:
Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter II

CHEMULPO, being on the island-studded estuary of the Han, which is navigable for the 56 miles up to Ma-pu, the river port of Seoul, it eventually occurred to some persons more enterprising than their neighbors to establish steam com-munication between the two. Manifold are the disasters which have attended this simple undertaking. Nearly every passen-ger who has entrusted himself to the river has a tale to tell of the boat being deposited on a sandbank, and of futile endeav-ors to get off, of fretting and fuming, usually ending in hail-ing a passing sajnpan and getting up to Ma-pu many hours be-hind time, tired, hungry, and disgusted. For the steam launches are only half powered for their work, the tTdes are strong, the river shallows often, and its sandbanks shift almost from tide to tide. Hence this natural highway is not much patronized by people who respect themselves, and all sorts of arrangements are made for getting up to the capital by "road." There is, properly speaking, no road, but the word serves. Mr. Gardner, the British acting Consul-General in Seoul, kindly arranged to escort me the 25 miles, and I went up in seven hours in a chair with six bearers, jolly fellows, who joked and laughed and raced the Consul's pony. Traffic has worn for itself a track, often indefinite, but usually straggling over and sterilizing a width enough for three or four highways, and often making a new departure to avoid deep mud holes. The mud is nearly bottomless. Bullock-carts owned by Chi-nese attempt the transit of goods, and two or three embedded in the mud till the spring showed with what success. Near Ma-pu all traffic has to cross a small plain of deep sand. Pack bulls, noble animals, and men are the carriers of goods. The redoubtable Korean pony was not to be seen. Foot passen-gers in dress hats and wadded white garments were fairly numerous.

The track lies through rolling country, well cultivated. There are only two or three villages on the road, but there are many, surrounded by fruit trees, in the folds of the adjacent low hills; stunted pines {Finns sinensis) abound, and often indicate places of burial. The hillsides are much taken up with graves. There are wooden sign or distant posts, with grotesque human faces upon them, chiefly that of Chang Sun, a traitor, whose misdemeanors were committed 1,000 years ago. The general aspect of the country is bare and monot-onous. Except for the orchards and the spindly pines, there is no wood. There is no beauty of form, nor any of those signs of exclusiveness, such as gates or walls, which give some-thing of dignity to a landscape. These were my first impres-sions. But I came to see on later journeys that even on that road th^re can be a beauty and fascination in the scenery when glorified and idealized by the unrivalled atmosphere of a Korean winter, which it is a delight even to recall, and that the situation of Seoul for a sort of weird picturesqueness com-pares favorably with that of almost any other capital, but its orientalism, a marked feature of which was its specially self-asserting dirt, is being fast improved off the face of the earth.

From the low pass known as the Gap, there is a view of the hills in the neighborhood of Seoul, and before reaching the Han these, glorified and exaggerated by an effect of atmos-phere, took on something of grandeur. Crossing the Han in a scow to which my chair accommodated itself more readily than Mr. Gardner's pony, and encountering ferry boats full of pack bulls bearing the night soil of the city to the country, we landed on the rough, steep, filthy, miry river bank, and were at once in the foul, narrow, slimy, rough street of Ma-pu, a twisted alley full of mean shops for the sale of native com-modities, of bulls carrying mountains of brushwood which nearly filled up the roadway ; and with a crowd, masculine solely, which swayed and loafed, and did nothing in particu-lar. Some quiet agricultural country, and some fine trees, a resemblance to the land of the Bakhtiari Lurs, in the fact of one man working a spade or shovel, while three others helped him to turn up the soil by an arrangement of ropes, then two chairs with bearers in blue uniforms, carrying Mrs. and Miss Gardner, accompanied by Bishop Corfe, Mr. M'Leavy Brown, the Chief Commissioner of Korean Customs, and Mr. Fox, the Assistant Consul, then the hovels and alleys became thick, and we were in extra-mural Seoul. A lofty wall, pierced by a deep double-roofed gateway, was passed, and ten minutes more of miserable alleys brought us to a breezy hill, crowned by the staring red brick buildings of the English Legation and Consular offices.

The Russian Legation has taken another and a higher, and its loftly tower and fine facade are the most conspicuous objects in the city, while a third is covered with buildings, some Korean and tasteful, but others in a painful style of architec-ture, a combination of the factory with the meeting-house, be-longing to the American Methodist Episcopal Mission, the American Presbyterians occupying a humbler position below. A hill on the other side of the town is dedicated to Japan, and so in every part of the city the foreigner, shut out till 1883, is making his presence felt, and is undermining that which is Korean in the Korean capital by the slow process of contact.

One of the most remarkable indications of the changes which is stealing over the Hermit City is that a nearly finished Roman Catholic Cathedral, of very large size, with a clergy-house and orphanages, occupies one of the most prominent positions in Seoul. The King's father, the Tai-Won-Kun, still actively engaged in politics, is the man who, thirty years ago, persecuted the Roman Christians so cruelly and persist-ently as to raise up for Korea a " noble army of martyrs."

I know Seoul by day and night, its palaces and its slums, its unspeakable meanness and faded splendors, its purposeless crowds, its mediaeval processions, which for barbaric splendor cannot be matched on earth, the filth of its crowded alleys, and its pitiful attempt to retain its manners, customs, and identity as the capital of an ancient monarchy in face of the host of disintegrating influences which are at work, but it is not at first that one "takes it in." I had known it for a year before I appreciated it, or fully realized that it is entitled to be regarded as one of the great capitals of the world, with its supposed population of a quarter of a million, and that few capitals are more beautifully situated.^ One hundred and twenty feet above the sea, in Lat. 37° 34' N. and Long. 127° 6' E., mountain girdled, for the definite peaks and abrupt elevation of its hills give them the grandeur of mountains, though their highest summit, San-kak-San, has only an altitude of 2,627 feet, few cities can boast, as Seoul can, that tigers and leopards are shot within their walls ! Arid and forbid-ding these mountains look at times, their ridges broken up into black crags and pinnacles, ofttimes rising from among dis-torted pines, but there are evenings of purple glory, when every forbidding peak gleams like an amethyst with a pink translucency, and the shadows are cobalt and the sky is green and gold. Fair are the surroundings too in early spring, when a delicate green mist veils the hills, and their sides are flushed with the heliotrope azalea, and flame of plum, and blush of cherry, and tremulousness of peach blossom appear in un-expected quarters.

Looking down on this great city, which has the aspect of a lotus pond in November, or an expanse of overripe mushrooms, the eye naturally follows the course of the wall, which is discerned in most outlandish places, climbing Nam-San in one direction, and going clear over the crest of Puk-han in another, enclosing a piece of forest here, and a vacant plain there, descending into ravines, disappearing and reappearing when least expected. This wall, which contrives to look nearly as solid as the hillsides which it climbs, is from 25 to 40 feet in height, and 14 miles in circumference (according to Mr. Fox of H.B.M.'s Consular Service), battlemented along its entire length, and pierced by eight gateways, solid arches or tunnels of stone, surmounted by lofty gate houses with one, two, or three curved tiled roofs. These are closed from sunset to sunrise by massive wooden gates, heavily bossed and strength-ened with iron, bearing, following Chinese fashion, high-sounding names, such as the " Gate of Bright Amiability," the " Gate of High Ceremony," the " Gate of Elevated Hu-manity."

The wall consists of a bank of earth faced with masonry, or of solid masonry alone, and is on the whole in tolerable repair. It is on the side nearest the river, and onwards in the direction of the Peking Pass, that extra-mural Seoul has ex-panded. One gate is the Gate of the Dead, only a royal corpse being permitted to be carried out by any other. By another gate criminals passed out to be beheaded, and outside another their heads were exposed for some days after execu-tion, hanging from camp-kettle stands. The north gate, high on Puk-han, is kept closed, only to be opened in case the King is compelled to escape to one of the so-called fortresses on that mountain.

Outside the wall is charming country, broken into hills and wooded valleys, with knolls sacrificed to stately royal tombs, with their environment of fine trees, and villages in romantic positions among orchards and garden cultivation. Few Eastern cities have prettier walks and rides in their immediate neighborhood, or greater possibilities of rapid escape into sylvan solitudes, and I must add that no city has environs so safe, and that ladies without a European escort can ride, as I have done, in every direction outside the walls without meet-ing with the slightest annoyance.

I shrink from describing intra-mural Seoul. ^ I thought it the foulest city on earth till I saw Peking, and its smells the most odious, till I encountered those of Shao-shing ! For a great city and a capital its meanness is indescribable. Eti-quette forbids the erection of two-storied houses, consequently an estimated quarter of a million people are living on "the ground," chiefly in labyrinthine alleys, many of them not wide enough for two loaded bulls to pass, indeed barely wide enough for one man to pass a loaded bull, and further narrowed by a series of vile holes or green, slimy ditches, which receive the solid and liquid refuse of the houses, their foul and fetid margins being the favorite resort of half-naked children, be-grimed with dirt, and of big, mangy, blear-eyed dogs, which wallow in the slime or blink in the sun. There too the itin-erant vendor of "small wares," and candies dyed flaring colors with aniline dyes, establishes himself, puts a few planks across the ditch, and his goods, worth perhaps a dollar, thereon. But even Seoul has its " spring cleaning," and I en-countered on the sand plain of the Han, on the ferry, and on the road from Ma-pu to Seoul, innumerable bulls carrying pan-niers laden with the contents of the city ditches.

The houses abutting on these ditches are generally hovels with deep eaves and thatched roofs, presenting nothing to the street but a mud wall, with occasionally a small paper window just under the roof, indicating the men's quarters, and invari-ably, at a height varying from 2 to 3 feet above the ditch, a blackened smoke-hole, the vent for the smoke and heated air, which have done their duty in warming the floor of the house. All day long bulls laden with bruslnvood to a great height are entering the city, and at six o'clock this pine brush, preparing to do the cooking and warming for the population, fills every lane in Seoul with aromatic smoke, which hangs over it with remarkable punctuality. Even the superior houses, which have curved and tiled roofs, present nothing better to the street than this debased appearance.

The shops partake of the general meanness. Shops with a stock-in-trade which may be worth six dollars abound. It is easy to walk in Seoul without molestation, but any one stand-ing to look at anything attracts a great crowd, so that it is as well that there is nothing to look at. The shops have literally not a noteworthy feature. Their one characteristic is that they have none ! The best shops are near the Great Bell, be-side which formerly stood a stone with an inscription calling on all Koreans to put intruding foreigners to death. So small are they that all goods are within reach of the hand. In one of the three broad streets, there are double rows of removable booths, in which now and then a small box of Korean niello work, iron inlaid with silver, may be picked up. In these and others the principal commodities are white cottons, straw shoes, bamboo hats, coarse pottery, candlesticks, with draught screens, combs, glass beads, pipes, tobacco pouches, spittoons, horn-rimmed goggles, much worn by officials, paper of many kinds, wooden pillow-ends, decorated pillowcases, fans, ink-cases, huge wooden saddles with green leather flaps bossed with silver, laundry sticks, dried persimmons, loathsome candies dyed magenta, scarlet, and green, masses of dried seaweed and fungi, and ill-chosen collections of the most trumpery of foreign trash, such as sixpenny kerosene lamps, hand mirrors, tinsel vases, etc., the genius of bad taste presiding over all.

Plain brass dinner sets and other brass articles are made, and some mother-of-pearl inlaying in black lacquer from old designs is occasionally to be purchased, and embroideries in silk and gold thread, but the designs are ugly, and the color-ing atrocious. Foreigners have bestowed the name Cabinet Street on a street near the English Legation, given up to the making of bureaus and marriage chests. These, though not massive, look so, and are really handsome, some being of solid chestnut wood, others veneered with maple or peach, and bossed, strapped, and hinged with brass, besides being orna-mented with great brass hasps and brass padlocks 6 inches long. These, besides being thoroughly Korean, are distinctly decorative. There are few buyers, except in the early morn-ing, and shopping does not seem a pastime, partly because none but the poorest class of women can go out on foot by daylight.

In the booths are to be seen tobacco pipes, pipestems, and bowls, coarse glazed pottery, rice bowls, Japanese lucifer matches, aniline dyes, tobacco pouches, purses, flint and tinder pouches, rolls of oiled paper, tassels, silk cord, nuts of the edible pine, rice, millet, maize, peas, beans, string shoes, old crinoline hats, bamboo and reed hats in endless variety, and coarse native cotton, very narrow.

In this great human hive, the ordinary sightseer finds his vocation gone. The inhabitants constitute the sight" of Seoul. The great bronze bell, said to be the third largest in the world, is one of the few sights " usually seen by stran-gers. It hangs in a bell tower in the centre of the city, and bears the following inscription : —

" Sye Cho the Great, 12*^ year Man cha [year of the cycle] and moon, the 4'^ year of the great Ming Emperor Hsiian-hua [a.d. 1468], the head of the bureau of Royal despatches, Sye Ko chyeng, bearing the title Sa Ka Chyeng, had this pavilion erected and this bell hung."

This bell, whose dull heavy boom is heard in all parts of Seoul, has opened and closed the gates for five centuries.

The grand triple gateway of the Royal Palace with its double roof, the old audience hall in the Mulberry Gardens, and the decorative roofs of the gate towers, are all seen in an hour. There remains the Marble Pagoda, seven centuries old, so com-pletely hidden away in the back yard of a house in one of the foulest and narrowest alleys of the city, that many people never see it at all. As I was intent on photographing some of the reliefs upon it, I visited it five times, and each time with fresh admiration ; but so wedged in is it, that one can only get any kind of view of it by climbing on the top of a wall. Every part is carved, and the flat parts richly so, some of the tablets representing Hindu divinities, while others seem to portray the various stages of the soul's progress towards Nir-vana. The designs are undoubtedly Indian, modified by Chinese artists, and this thing of beauty stands on the site of a Buddhist monastery. It is a thirteen-storied pagoda, but three stories were taken off in the Japanese invasion three centuries ago, and placed on the ground uninjured. So they remained, but on my last visit children had defaced the ex-quisite carving, and were offering portions for sale. Not far off is another relic of antiquity, a decorated and inscribed tablet standing on the back of a granite turtle of prodigious size. Outside the west gate, on a plain near the Peking Pass, was a roofed and highly decorated arch of that form known as the pailow, and close by it a sort of palace hall, in which every new sovereign of Korea waited for the coming of a special envoy from Peking, whom he joined at the pailow, ac-companying him to the palace, where he received from him his investiture as sovereign.

On the slope of Nam San the white wooden buildings, sim-ple and unpretentious, of the Japanese Legation are situated, and below them a Japanese colony of nearly 5,000 persons, equipped with tea-houses, a theatre, and the various arrange-ments essential to Japanese well-being. There, in acute con-trast to everything Korean, are to be seen streets of shops and houses where cleanliness, daintiness, and thrift reign supreme, and unveiled women, and men in girdled dressing-gowns and clogs, move about as freely as in Japan. There also are to be seen minute soldiers or military police, and smart be-sworded officers, who change guard at due intervals ; nor are such pre-cautions needless, for the heredity of hate is strong in Korea, and on two occasions the members of this Legation have had to fight their way down to the sea. The Legation was occu-pied at the time of my first visit by Mr. Otori, an elderly man with pendulous white whiskers, who went much into the little society which Seoul boasts, talked nothings, and gave no promise of the rough vigor which he showed a few months later. There also are the Japanese bank and post office, both admirably managed.

The Chinese colony was in 1894 nearly as large, and dif-fered in no respect from such a colony anywhere else. The foreigners depend for many things on the Chinese shops, and as the Koreans like the Chinese, they do some trade with them also. The imposing element connected with China was the yamen of Yuan, the Minister Resident and representative of Korea's Suzerain, by many people regarded as ** the power behind the throne," who is reported to have gone more than once unbidden into the King's presence, and to have re-proached him with his conduct of affairs. Great courtyards and lofty gates on which are painted the usual guardian gods, and a brick dragon screen, seclude the palace in which Yuan lived with his guards and large retinue ; and the number of big, supercilious men, dressed in rich brocades and satins, who hung about both this Palace and the Consulate, impressed the Koreans with the power and stateliness within. The Americans were very severe on Yuan, but so far as I could learn his chief fault was that he let things alone, and neglected to use his unquestionably great power in favor of reform and common honesty — but he was a Chinese mandarin ! He possessed the power of life and death over Chinamen, and his punishments were often to our thinking barbarous, but the Chinese feared him so much that they treated the Koreans fairly well, which is more than can be said of the Japanese.

One of the <' sights" of Seoul is the stream or drain or watercourse, a wide, walled, open conduit, along which a dark-colored festering stream slowly drags its malodorous length, among manure and refuse heaps which cover up most of what was once its shingly bed. There, tired of crowds masculine solely, one may be refreshed by the sight of women of the poorest class, some ladling into pails the compound which passes for water, and others washing clothes in the fetid pools which pass for a stream. All wear one costume, which is peculiar to the capital, a green silk coat — a man's coat with the *' neck" put over the head and clutched below the eyes, and long wide sleeves falling from the ears. It is as well that the Korean woman is concealed, for she is not a houri. Wash-ing is her manifest destiny so long as her lord wears white. She washes in this foul river, in the pond of the Mulberry Palace, in every wet ditch, and outside the walls in the few streams which exist. Clothes are partially unpicked, boiled with ley three times, rolled into hard bundles, and pounded with heavy sticks on stones. After being dried they are beaten with wooden sticks on cylinders, till they attain a polish resembling dull satin. The women are slaves to the laundry, and the only sound which breaks the stillness of a Seoul night is the regular beat of their laundry sticks.

From the beautiful hill Nam-San, from the Lone Tree Hill, and from a hill above the old Mulberry Palace, Seoul is best seen, with its mountainous surroundings, here and there dark with pines, but mostly naked, falling down upon the city in black arid corrugations. These mountains enclose a valley about 5 miles long by 3 broad, into which 200,000 people are crammed and wedged. The city is a sea of low brown roofs, mostly of thatch, and all but monotonous, no trees and no open spaces. Rising out of this brown sea there are the curved double roofs of the gates, and the gray granite walls of the royal palaces, and within them the sweeping roofs of vari-ous audience halls. Cutting the city across by running from the east to the west gate is one broad street, another striking off from this runs to the south gate, and a third 60 yards wide runs from the great central artery to the palace. This is the only one which is kept clear of encumbrance at all times, the others being occupied by double rows of booths, leaving only a narrow space for traffic on either side. When I first looked down on Seoul early in March, one street along its whole length appeared to be still encumbered with the drift of the previous winter's snow. It was only by the aid of a glass that I discovered that this is the great promenade, and that the snowdrift was just the garments of the Koreans, whitened by ceaseless labor with the laundry sticks. In these three broad streets the moving crowd of men in white robes and black dress hats seldom flags. They seem destitute of any ob-ject. Many of them are of the yang-ban or noble class, to whom a rigid etiquette forbids any but official or tutorial occu-pation, and many of whom exist by hanging on to their more fortunate relatives. Young men of the middle class imitate their nonchalance and swinging gait.

There, too, are to be seen officials, superbly dressed, mounted on very fat but handsome ponies, with profuse manes and tails, the riders sitting uneasily on the tops of saddles with showy caparisonings a foot high, holding on to the saddle bow, two retainers leading the steed, and two more holding the rider in his place ; or officials in palanquins, with bearers at a run, amid large retinues. In the more plebeian streets nothing is to be seen but bulls carrying pine brush, strings of ponies loaded with salt or country produce, water-carriers with pails slung on a yoke, splashing their contents, and coolies carrying burdens on wooden pack saddles.

But in the narrower alleys, of which there are hundreds, further narrowed by the low deep eaves, and the vile ditches outside the houses, only two men can pass each other, and the noble red bull with his load of brushwood is rarely seen. Be-tween these miles of mud walls, deep eaves, green slimy ditches, and blackened smoke holes, few besides the male inhabitants and burden bearers are seen to move. They are the paradise of mangy dogs. Every house has a dog and a square hole through which he can just creep. He yelps furiously at a stranger, and runs away at the shaking of an umbrella. He was the sole scavenger of Seoul, and a very inefficient one. He is neither the friend nor companion of man. He is ignorant of Korean and every other spoken language. His bark at night announces peril from thieves. He is almost wild. When young he is killed and eaten in spring.

I have mentioned the women of the lower classes, who wash clothes and draw water in the daytime. Many of these were domestic slaves, and all are of the lowest class. Korean women are very rigidly secluded, perhaps more absolutely so than the women of any other nation. In the capital a very curious arrangement prevailed. About eight o'clock the great bell tolled a signal for men to retire into their houses, and for women to come out and amuse themselves, and visit their friends. The rule which clears the streets of men occasionally lapses, and then some incident occurs which causes it to be rigorously reenforced. So it was at the time of my arrival, and the pitch dark streets presented the singular spectacle of being tenanted solely by bodies of women with servants carry-ing lanterns. From its operation were exempted blind men, officials, foreigners' servants, and persons carrying prescrip-tions to the druggists'. These were often forged for the purpose of escape from durance vile, and a few people got long staffs and personated blind men. At twelve the bell again boomed, women retired, and men were at liberty to go abroad. A lady of high position told me that she had never seen the streets of Seoul by daylight.

The nocturnal silence is very impressive. There is no human hum, throb, or gurgle. The darkness too is absolute, as there are few if any lighted windows to the streets. Upon a silence which may be felt, the deep, penetrating boom of the great bell breaks with a sound which is almost ominous.

title: Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter II


text:
Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter III

BEFORE leaving England letters from Korea had warned me of the difficulty of travelling in the interior, of getting a trustworthy servant, and above all, a trustworthy interpreter. Weeks passed by, and though Bishop Corfe and others exerted themselves on my behalf, these essential requisites were not forthcoming, for to find a reliable English-speaking Korean is well-nigh impossible. There are English-speaking Koreans who have learned English, some in the Government School, and others in the Methodist Episcopal School, and many of these I interviewed. The English of all was infirm, and they were all limp and timid, a set of poor creatures. Some of them seemed very anxious to go with me, and were partially engaged, and the next day came, looking uneasy, and balanc- ing themselves on the edge of their chairs, told me that their mothers said they must not go because there were tigers, or that three months was too long a journey, or that they could not go so far from their families, etc. At last a young man came who really spoke passable English, but on entering the room with a familiar nod, he threw himself down in an easy- chair, swinging his leg over the arm ! He asked many ques- tions about the journey, said it was very long to be away from Seoul, and that he should require one horse for his baggage and another for himself. I remarked that, in order to get through the difficulties of the journey, it would be necessary to limit the baggage as much as possible. He said he could not go with fewer than nine suits of clothes ! I remarked that a foreigner would only take two, and that I should reduce myself to two. *' Yes," he replied, '* but foreigners are so dirty in their habits.*' This from a Korean ! So once more I had to settle down, and accept the kindly hospitality of my friends, trusting that something would '^ turn up."

By this delay I came in for the Kur-dong^^ one of the most remarkable spectacles I ever saw, and it had the added interest of being seen in its splendor for probably the last time, as circumstances which have since occurred, and the necessity for economy, must put an end to much of the scenic display. The occasion was a visit of the King in state to sacrifice in one of the ancestral temples of his dynasty, members of which have occupied the Korean throne for five centuries. Living secluded in his palace, guarded by i,ooo men, his subjects forbidden to pronounce his name, which indeed is seldom known, in total ignorance of any other aspect of his kingdom and capital than that furnished by the two streets through which he passes to offer sacrifice, the days on which he per- forms this pious act offer to his subjects their sole opportuni- ties of gazing on his august countenance. As the Queen's procession passed by on the day of the Duke of York's mar- riage, I heard a workingman say, *'It's we as pays, and we likes to get the valey for our money." The Korean pays in another and heavier sense, and as in tens of thousands he crowds in reverential silence the route of the Kur-dong, he is probably glad that the one brilliant spectacle of the year should be as splendid as possible.

The monotony of Seoul is something remarkable. Brown mountains "picked out" in black, brown mud walls, brown roofs, brown roadways, whether mud or dust, while humanity is in black and white. Always the same bundled-up women clutching their green coats under their eyes, always the samie surge of yang-bajts and their familiars swinging along South

> If an apology be necessary for the following minute description of this unique ceremonial, I offer it on the ground that it was probably the last of its kind, and that full details of it have not been given before.

The Kur-dong Street, the same strings of squealing ponies spoiling for a fight," the same processions of majestic red bulls under tower- ing loads of brushwood, the same coolies in dirty white, for- ever carrying burdens, the same joyless dirty children getting through life on the gutters' edge, and the same brownish dogs, feebly wrangling over offal. On such monotony and color- lessness, the Kur-dong bursts like the sun. Alas for this mean but fascinating capital, that the most recent steps towards civilization should involve the abolition of its one spectacle !

By six in the morning of the looked-for day we were on our way from the English Legation to a position near the Great Bell, all the male population of the alleys taking the same direction, along with children in colors, and some of the poorer class of women with gay handkerchiefs folded Roman fashion on their hair. For the first time I saw the grand pro- portions of the road called by foreigners South Street. The double rows of booths had been removed the night before, and along the side of the street, at intervals of 20 yards, torches 10 feet high were let into the ground to light the King on his return from sacrificing. It is only by its imposing width that this great street lends itself to such a display, for the houses are low and mean, and on one side at least are only superior hovels. In place of the booths the subjects were massed twelve deep, the regularity of the front row being pre- served by a number of yamen runners, who brought down their wooden paddles with an unmerciful whack on any one breaking the line. The singular monotony of baggy white coats and black crinoline hats was relieved by boy bride- grooms in yellow hats and rose pink coats, by the green silk coats of women, and the green, pink, heliotrope and Turkey red dresses of children. The crowd had a quietly pleased but very limp look. There was no jollity or excitement, no flags or popular demonstrations, and scarcely a hum from a con- course which must have numbered at least 150,000, half the city, together with numbers from the country who had walked three and four days to see the spectacle. Squalid and mean is ordinary Korean life, and the King is a myth for most of the year. No wonder that the people turn out to see as splen- did a spectacle as the world has to show, its splendor centring round their usually secluded sovereign. It is to the glory of a dynasty which has occupied the Korean throne for five cen- turies as well as in honor of the present occupant.

The hour of leaving the palace had been announced as 6 a. M., but though it was 7.30 before the boom of a heavy gun announced that the procession was in motion, the interest never flagged the whole time. Hundreds of coolies sprinkled red earth for the width of a foot along the middle of the streets, for hypothetically the King must not pass over soil which has been trodden by the feet of his subjects. Squad- rons of cavalry, with coolies leading their shabby ponies, took up positions along the route, and in a great mass in front of us. The troopers sat on the ground smoking, till a very dis- trait bugle-call sent them to their saddles. The ponies bit, kicked, and squealed, and the grotesque and often ineffectual attempts of the men to mount them provoked the laughter of the crowd, as one trooper after another, with one foot in the stirrup and the other on the ground, hopped round at the pleasure of his steed. After all, with the help of their coolies, were mounted, whacks secretly administered by men in the crowd nearly unhorsed many of them, but they clung with both hands to their saddle bows and eventually formed into a ragged line.

Among the very curious sights were poles carried at meas- ured distances supporting rectangular frames resembling small umbrella stands, filled with feathered arrows, and messengers dashing along as if they had been shot and were escaping from another shaft, for from the backs of their collars protruded arrows which had apparently entered obliquely. Either on the back or breast or both of the superb dresses of officials were satin squares embroidered in unique designs, representing birds and beasts, storks indicating civil, and tigers military, rank, while the number of birds or animals on the lozenge de- noted the wearer's exact position.

Though there were long stretches of silence, scarcely broken by the hum of a multitude, there were noisy interludes, novel in their nature, produced by men, sometimes fifteen in a row, who carried poles with a number of steel rings loosely strung upon them, which they tossed into the air and allowed to fall against each other with a metallic clink, loud and strident. Likewise the trains of servants in attendance on mandarins emitted peculiar cries, sounding G in unison, then raising their note and singing C three times, afterwards, with a fall- ing cadence, singing G again.

But of the noises which passed for music, the most curi- ous as to method was that made by the drummers, who marched irregularly in open order in lines extending across the broad roadway. These carried bowl-shaped kettledrums slung horizontally, and bass drum sticks mainly hidden by their voluminous sleeves. In time with the marching, the right hand stick rose above the drummer's head, then the left stick in like manner, but both fell again nearly to the drum without emitting a sound! The next act of the performance consisted in lifting both sticks above the head together and again bringing them down silently. Finally the sticks were crossed, and during two marching steps rose feebly, and as feebly fell on the ends of the drum, producing a muffled sound, and this programme was repeated during the duration of the march.

Soldiers in rusty black belted frocks, wide trousers, band- aged into padded socks, and straw shoes, stacked arms in a side street. Closed black and colored chairs went past at a trot. Palace attendants in hundreds in brown glazed cotton sleeved cloaks, blue under robes* tied below the knee with bunches of red ribbon, and stiff black hats, with heavy fan- shaped plumes of peacock's feathers, rode ragged ponies on gay saddles of great height, without bridles, the animals being led by coolies. High officials passed in numbers in chairs or on pony back, each with from twenty to thirty gay attendants running beside him, and a row of bannermen extending across the broad street behind him, each man with a silk banner bearing the cognomen of his lord. These officials were su- perbly dressed, and made a splendid show. They wore black, high-crowned hats, with long crimson tassels behind, and heavy, black ostrich plumes falling over the brim in front, mazarine blue silk robes, split up to the waist behind, with orange silk under robes and most voluminous crimson trousers, loosely tied above the ankles with knots of sky blue ribbon, while streamers of ribbon fell from throats and girdles, and the hats were secured by throat lashes of large amber beads. Each carried over his shoulder a yellow silk banneret with his style in Chinese characters in crimson upon it, and in the same hand his baton of office, with a profusion of streamers of rich ribbons depending from it. The sleeves were orange in the upper part and crimson in the lower, and very full.

The overfed and self-willed ponies, chiefly roan and gray, are very handsome, and showily caparisoned, the heads cov- ered with blue, red, and yellow balls, and surmounted with great crimson silk pompons, the bridles a couple of crimson silk scarves, the saddles a sort of leather-covered padded pack saddle 12 inches above the animal's back, with wide, deep flaps of bright green silver-bossed leather hanging down on either side, the cruppers folded white silk, and the breastplate shields of gold embroidery. The gorgeous rider, lifted by his servants upon this elevation, stands erect in his stirrups with his feet not halfway down his pony's sides, his left hand clutching rather than holding an arch placed for this purpose at the bow of the saddle. These officials made no attempt to hold their own bridles, their ponies were led by servants, re- tainers supported them by the feet on either side, and as their mounts showed their resentment of the pace and circumstances by twistings and struggUngs with their grooms, the faces of the riders expressed " a fearful joy," if "joy" " was.

Waves of color and Korean grandeur rolled by, official pro- cessions, palace attendants, bannerraen, with large silk banners trailing on the stiff breeze, each flagstaff crested with a tuft of pheasant's feathers, the King's chief cook, with an enormous retinue, more palace servants, smoking long pipes, drummers fifers, couriers at a gallop, with arrows stuck into the necks of their coats, holding on to their saddles and rope bridles, mixed up with dishevelled ponies with ragged pack saddles, carrying cushions, lacquer boxes, eatables, cooking utensils and smok- ing apparatus, led caparisoned ponies, bowmen, soldiers strag^ glfng loosely, armed with matchlock guns, till several thousand persons had passed. Yet this was not the procession, though it might well have served for one.

At 7 ^o, while this " march past" was still going on, a gun was fired, and the great bell, which was very close to t.s boomed heavily, and a fanfaronade of trumpets and the shrdl scream of fifes announced that Li Hs. had at l^st left the palace. The cavalry opposite us prepared to receive His Maj- esty by turning tail, a man«uvre not accomplished without much squealing and fighting. There was a general stir among the spectators, men with arrows in their coats galloped frantic- ally, there was an onslaught on the " Derby dog, and an at- tack by men, armed with the long wooden paddles which are used for beating criminals, on inoffensive portions of the crowd. It is said that there were 5,000 servants and officials con- nected with the palace, and there were nominally 6,000 soldiers in Seoul, and the greater part of tliese took part in the many splendid processions which went to form the Royal procession. It would be impossible for a stranger to give in detail the com- ponent parts of such a show, the like of which has no existence elsewhere on earth, passing for more than an hour in the bright sunshine, in detachments, in compact masses, at a stately walk or a rapid run, in the full spendor of a barbaric medievalism, or to say what dignitaries flashed by in the kaleidoscopic blaze of color.

The procession of the King was led by the general of the vanguard," superbly dressed, supported by retainers on his led pony, and followed by crowds of dignitaries, each with his train, soldiers, men carrying aloft frames of arrows, reaching nearly across the road, and huge flags of silk brocade sur- mounted by plumes of pheasant's feathers, servants in rows of a hundred in the most delicate shades of blue, green, or mauve silk gauze over white, halberdiers, grandees, each with a ret- inue of bannermen, rows of royal bannermen carrying yellow and blue silk flags emblazoned, cavalry men in imitation gold helmets and mediaeval armor, and tiger hunters wearing coarse black felt hats with conical crowns and dark blue coats, trail- ing long guns. With scarcely a pause followed the President of the Foreign Office, high above the crowd on a monocycle, a black wheel supporting on two uprights a black platform, carrying a black chair decorated with a leopard skin, the oc- cupant of which was carried by eight men at a height of 8 feet from the ground. More soldiers, bannermen, and drum- mers, and then came the chief of the eunuchs, grandly dressed, with an immense retinue, and a large number of his subordi- nates, most of whom up to that time, by their position in the palace and their capacity for intrigue, had exercised a very baneful influence on Korean affairs.

The procession became more quaint and motley still. Palace attendants appeared in the brilliant garments of the Korean middle ages ; cavalry in antique armor were jumbled up with cavalry in loose cotton frocks and baggy trousers, supposed to be dressed and armed in European fashion, but I failed to de- tect the flattery of imitation. There were cavalry in black Tyrolese hats with pink ribbon round them, black cotton sacks loosely girdled by leather belts with brass clasps never cleaned, white wadded stockings, and hempen shoes. Some had leather saddles, others rode on pack saddles, with the great pad which should go underneath on the top; some held on to their saddles, others to their rope bridles, the ponies of some were led by- coolies in dirty white clothes; the officers were all held on their saddles, many tucked their old-fashioned swords under their arms, lest carrying them in regulation fashion should make their animals kick ; the feet of some nearly touched the ground, and those of others hung only halfway down their ponies' sides; ponies squealed, neighed, reared, and jibbed, but somehow or other these singular horsemen managed to form ragged lines.

Then came foot soldiers with rusty muskets and innumer- able standards, generals, court dignitaries, statesmen, some with crimson hats with heavy black plumes, others with high peaked crinoline hats with projecting wings, others with lofty mitres covered with tinsel gleaming like gold, each with a splendid train. Mediaeval costumes blazing with color flashed past, there were more soldiers, and this time they carried Snider rifles, two Gatling guns were dragged \)y yamen runners, who frantically spanked all and sundry with their paddles, drum- mers beat their drums unmercifully, fifes shrieked, there were more dignitaries with fairylike retinues in blue and green silk gauze, the King's personal attendants in crowds followed in yellow, with bamboo hats trimmed with rosettes, standard- bearers came next, bearing the Royal standard, a winged tiger rampant on a yellow ground, more flags and troops, and then the curious insignia of Korean Royalty, including a monstrous red silk umbrella, and a singular frame of stones. More gran- dees, more soldiers, more musical instruments, and then come the Royal chairs, the first, which was canopied with red silk, being empty, the theory being that this was the more likely to receive an assassin's blow. A huge trident was carried in front of it. After this, borne high aloft by forty bearers clothed in red, in a superb chair of red lacquer, richly tasselled and can- opied, and with wings to keep off the sun, came the King, whose pale, languid face never changed its expression as he passed with all the dignity and splendor of his kingdom through the silent crowd.

More grandees, servants, soldiers, standard-bearers, arrow- men, officials, cavalry, and led horses formed the procession of the Crown Prince, who was also carried in a red palanquin, and looked paler and more impassive than his father. The supply of officials seemed inexhaustible, for behind him came a quarter of a mile of grandees in splendid costumes, with hats decorated with red velvet and peacock's feathers, and throat lashes of great amber beads, with all their splendid trains, foot- men in armor bossed with large nails, drummers, men carry- ing arrow frames and insignia on poles, then the *' general of the rear guard" in a gleaming helmet and a splendid blue, crimson, and gold uniform, propped up by retainers on his handsome pony, more soldiers armed with old matchlock guns, lastly men bearing arrow frames and standards, and with them the barbaric and bizarre splendor of the Kiir-dong was over, and the white crowd once more overflowed the mean street. Quite late in the evening the Royal pageant returned by the light of stationary torches, with lanterns of blue and crimson silk undulating from the heads of pikes and bayonets.

This truly splendid display was estimated to cost $25,000 — a heavy burden on the small resources of the kingdom. It is only thus surrounded that the King ever appears in public, and the splendor accentuates the squalor of the daily life of the masses of the people in the foul alleys which make up most of the city. It must be remembered that the people taking part in the pageant are not men hired and dressed up by a cos- tumier, but that they are actual Court officials and noblemen in the dress of to-day, and that the weapons carried by the sol- diers are those with which they are supposed to repel attack or put down rebellion.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter III


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Rh and ceasing to be productive. Whatever does put a check upon population be sure that it will not be a painful thing: War, Famine, Pestilence and Co. are said to be the natural checks, but these cannot be. For long before the race can attain full growth Altruism must abolish war, cleanliness must make pestilence impossible, and as to famine—well, we have made provision already for several bad harvests of a world-wide extension. The check to the population of a planet is like the check to an individual. On Earth men grow and reach six feet in height, on Mars they reach but four feet, and yet one is not conscious of his bigness nor the other of his littleness, for each is adapted to his surroundings and circumstances, and what is true of the atom, is true of the whole.'

The doctor paused, and seemed for a moment afraid that her zeal had carried her too far. I set her mind at rest on that score by saying, 'Thank you, doctor, for your lucid reasoning of the question; your verbal answer to the croakers is surely superior to the practical one that you kindly placed to my credit. They have not a leg left to stand on. How I wish, that your argument could be conveyed to the Malthusians of earth, for there surely the idea of over-population is absurd.'

'What Dr. Somers says will be written on earth in a few hours' said Grayson. 'You will write it there. All you have to do is to see that your diary does not get lost like mine was.'

'Indeed,' said the doctor; 'Frankston is a diarist then?'

'He is, though strange to say he does not know it on this side of his being. If he should become conscious on both, sides he will convey a vast amount of information to both worlds. I hope to introduce him to the club of the earth born when we get to the metropolis.'

'I, too, shall be pleased to meet him; not at that club, for I have no right to enter that I know of, but in my own home.'

'Be sure that I shall make the most of your invitation,' I answered.

We separated, to spend the latter part of the afternoon each in our own way, Grayson remarking that we would remain the night here and spend the morning in visiting the sights he promised me. He made arrangements for our catching the boat at Port Howard at sixteen in the afternoon of next day.

I climbed Mount Weston on foot, and had a final view of the plain at sunset.

The next morning found Grayson and myself at an early hour flying rapidly towards a distant point on the plain. It was soon reached, and we entered a small building at the source of one of the rivers previously mentioned.

We went down a spiral staircase and entered a little room, one side of which had a wall moving in a circular movement in a close-fitting bed of what appeared to be bronze.

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372 and struggling souls, of whom some complain, sigh and bewail, while others carol, cheer, languish and storm; soon they are united, and in infinite variety express the same thought, then are mute. Again one awakes, rises and dies gently and happily. A band again join and rage and roar, the others hasten past, the dead are aroused, till at last peace settles on all."

"Your explanation is so imaginative," said Spinoza, "that it convinces me more than ever that music is the art of the emotions, and, indeed, moves in the sensations like elements without a definite object. Anger, pain, and joy, hate and love are evinced as elementary sensations without a tangible object. I will not reject such absorptions, but I find it enough to do to understand the sensations which are tangible, and thereby if possible to control them."

"And I tell you," maintained Olympia, "your whole philosophy is a philosophy of music. Oh, if I could only express what I mean properly. You once explained to me that the peace of society depended on each one resigning, for reciprocity's sake, something of the natural rights in accordance with which man may do all that he is able, that self-preservation may become the protection of all. Now that is the law of musical harmony. One note struck alone would be quite different and sharply defined; but if it passes into harmony it must

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Rh sign somewhat of its nature that the notes may flow into harmony with one another, one after another rising and falling."

Spinoza looked at Olympia with sparkling eyes. How she treasured his words, and sought to bring them within her own mental sphere. He had no time to follow out his thought, that this view might be applied to their personal connection. For after a pause Olympia continued with this strange digression:

"I cannot help being annoyed, that while such extraordinary progress has been made in your art that the stars can be brought quite close to our sense of sight, why have not instruments been made to strengthen our hearing? How glorious it would be if we could hear the music of the spheres that Dante describes so divinely."

"If we accepted it as a fact that the stars move with rhythmical sound, it would do but little for our intelligence to hear them."

"Intelligence then is the measure of everything? Is not enjoyment desirable in itself? You must confess that no regular movement exists without rhythmical sound, from which I have drawn a very odd conclusion, which I will tell you, if you will promise not to laugh at me."

"I promise that, for I am curious to hear what conclusion seems so odd to you."

"Half a year ago my father told me that an

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374 English physician, named William Harvey, had discovered the circulation of the blood and its laws. I am convinced that as the movement of the heart makes a sound that we can hear, the movement of the blood in our veins must make a sound too, but one which we can very seldom hear. In times when we are perfectly healthy we are in perfect harmony, in times of sickness we are discordant. I told my father that the ringing we have in our ears must surely be a note that has broken loose from the general harmony. My father considers rather that it was an acoustic illusion when we thought we heard such sounds, but I cannot accept that view. You see there is really a great truth contained in the common saying that we can hear the grass grow. All through nature there is regular movement of moisture, and wherever there is movement there is sound and tone. Among the stars, in the depths of the earth, and on the surface, there is an eternal murmur and swell and clash. Music is the soul of the universe, is our soul. All is in million-voiced harmony, and the articulation given to man is its divinest revelation."

Olympia's expression of countenance grew brighter and brighter, and Spinoza said:

"You see I do not laugh at you. I am glad you evaded so well your father's view of it, which yet you so nearly agreed with. I will not allow myself to judge so hastily of your theory."

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Rh "Why must men's partialities be so different that they can hardly understand one another?" asked Olympia, and Spinoza replied:

"So that we should only try to convince each other on merely intellectual subjects; where this ends persecution for heresy begins. You are certainly right in your own appreciation of music, and in your love of it; but music is an example of how in matters of faith, of imagination in a word, where no fixed definition is afforded by intellectual proof, fanaticism and persecution so readily prevail. Men always become passionate where they are conscious of incapacity, and force an outward observance of what is only an internal law, an internal duty. Do not be led into taking me for a heretic to music, and banishing me from your sanctuary."

Kerkering quickly took advantage of this turn of the conversation to ask Olympia to go to the organ; Spinoza also expressed the same desire, and it was soothing and refreshing to their overwrought minds to listen to the tones that Olympia drew, now swelling, now softly sinking, from the instrument.

It was late in the evening when Spinoza and Kerkering left. The peculiarities of character in the two lovers were plainly expressed in the fact that Olympia, fascinated by the flow of musical sound, gave herself up unrestrainedly to her feelings, and there felt the freedom of unrestrained existence; while the philosopher's task and

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376 natural, ruling inclination was, unmisled by the stormy power of the sensations, not to let these deadening forces influence him, but to recognize their perpetual laws, and meanwhile to preserve amid all disturbances that equanimity which alone meant freedom to him.

A trifling physical peculiarity, but one which evinced a deeper tendency of disposition, might be recognized in the fact that Olympia's eyelids often blinked, while Spinoza's look was as open and steady as a child's.

It has not been yet investigated what relation such physical features have to the whole vitality and movement of the mind. May we found this observation on the case of Spinoza and Olympia: that, while the one, musical by nature, was animated momentarily by harmonious sound, the other had a steadily speculative or, as Oldenburg termed it, a plastic nature?

These diversities in their natures formed their complement and a continually growing fascination. Whether in constant association these differences would always be as easily accommodated or not; or whether it was the duty of one whose mission was independent and all-embracing thought, to live apart from every narrowing association in the region of pure intellect? These questions were for the time suppressed, for Spinoza had to show in other ways how far he already controlled his emotions.

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text: Spinoza: A novel/Chapter 22

title: Spinoza: A novel/Chapter 22


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HE holy Jewish Church could not with indifferent eyes see one who belonged to her by birth and ritual wilfully break loose from her. She knew well enough that, if individuals were permitted to separate and live according to their own inclinations, the original Jewish tabernacle would in the future stand deserted, and no one would be found to take it on his shoulders and bear it from land to land, fixing its pillars in all kingdoms of the earth. Where men are allowed to be merely men, the gigantic edifice of the Church is tottering. The lords of the Christian Church, as well as of the Jewish, who call themselves servants, recognize this. The Jews had no state. What would be left to them if they had no Church, no synagogue?

The synagogue keeper, Elaser Merimon, whom we have before seen in company with the Cabbalist, had already been to Spinoza three times, and commanded him in the name of the Beth-Din to return to the congregation, and in meat and drink, as well as in attendance at the synagogue, to live after the

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378 precepts of the Jewish religion. He had refused to obey these commands, and the lesser excommunication was passed, which banished him for three months from the Jewish Church. Though he had already condemned himself to this penalty, he entered a protest against the sentence, because his manner of life was not radically in opposition to Judaism, and he pledged himself to prove the illegality of the ceremony. His protest, however, was in vain, and he thought no more about it, for he recognized only one ban—that which could banish him from the presence of Olympia. His two brothers-in-law then came, and reminded him that he must return to the bosom of the Church. He put them off with a quiet smile; but they became more and more violent, abused and cursed him, and threatened to tear him in pieces if he did not avert the shame of his manner of life from his relations.

Spinoza's Spanish blood boiled, but even then he suppressed all explosion of wrath. The threats and blustering seemed to him only immaterial opposition which he could have pictured to himself. With measured speech and kinsmanlike behavior, in so far as was consistent with independence, he drew the limits; he taught their violence that external behavior could not bind, and external force not convince. His words must have contained convincing proofs, for the two looked at each other in

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Rh mute astonishment and left him. A few days afterwards, however, on the Sabbath, Spinoza was surprised by another visitor, a woman, carrying a baby hardly a year old in her arms, and leading a little girl by the hand. Spinoza advanced kindly towards her.

"I am glad you have come to me, dear Miriam," he said; "but how you have aged! Are you ill, or in trouble?"

"I am quite well, God be praised!" answered Miriam, sighing, "and could not complain otherwise. Yes, dear brother, 'marrying is marring;' two bad confinements, thirteen weeks in bed, and the household going to ruin all the time; no rest at night with the children, and trouble and care the whole year round—you would not laugh at me now for looking too often in the mirror; often I never look in it from one Sabbath to another."

"I am very sorry that I have seen so little of you, or been able to help, you so little; but leave the cares behind now," said Spinoza, "they will soon be less. You can hardly think what an infinite pleasure it is to have you with me again. Relations are naturally the best friends. Do you remember old Chaje's proverb? 'Bind me hand and foot, and throw me among my people, that will always be true.'"

"Ay! you will be thrown nicely among your people. O God! from the way you go on, we

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380 cannot see you without blushing. Do you know what is happening to-day? To-day you are summoned the second time in the synagogue; perhaps at this very moment in which we are speaking. A week ago I was in the synagogue; my heart is so heavy, it seems as if a hundredweight lay on it. When we had all risen, Rabbi Isaak Aboab (who gives himself great airs since he returned from Brazil) went to the altar; all were still, and looked to see what he would do next. He called on your name; and commanded you to return, if you would not have heaven's lightnings smite you, or the earth swallow you up. Dear brother, I thought my heart would be torn out. I turned icy cold, and then flames seemed to be before my eyes; I thought I should fall down, and grasped the railing; I fainted time after time; I don't know how I found strength to go home; Esther de Leon, who stood near me, went home with me. You know she is a malicious, mocking thing; but she ought to be silent, for she was once Acosta's betrothed, and you are not as bad as he yet, thank God!"

"No, and will never be."

"But it is bad enough now," began Miriam again; "to-day is the second time, and in a week you will be summoned for the third time, and then—I shall never survive the shame of it. My husband will

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Rh order me to forget that you ever were my brother—and how can I do that? It seems you could, for if you can forget your religion, why should you not forget your sister."

Miriam with these words looked at her brother's agitated face; she seemed sorry to have given him so much pain, and continued weeping:

"Day and night you are always in my mind; I forget my duties as mother and wife, and it is all your fault; it is the thought of your disregard of duty that makes me do it. I cannot think what makes you so obstinate, but I know this: if my son should one day cause such trouble to his sisters, I would rather he should die before he learned to speak."

"You must not say so, dear sister; I hope all will come right yet. Does not your husband know you have come to me?"

"He must not know a word of it. Only think, he wanted me to go to the synagogue this morning, but, God forgive me! I would rather go to the gallows; the women would look at me, and whisper and giggle together. I said I should be obliged to stay with the children, and came to you; Rebecca stayed at home too, but she has not dared to come with me; her husband is too stern. I cannot see, though, why you will not return. You know, I do not care about trifles, and do not condemn you like the others; but the life you lead now, you could

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 is or is not of this. Of a different thing indeed there is a different demonstration, unless it should be as a certain part of the whole. I say this because the isosceles has been shown (to have angles equal) to two right, if every triangle has been shown (to have them), for that is a part, but this a whole: these however, that a thing is, and what it is, do not thus subsist in reference to each other, since the one is not a part of the other.

Evidently then there is neither entirely demonstration of what there is definition, nor entirely definition of what there is demonstration; hence in short it is impossible to have both of the same thing, so that it is also evident that definition and demonstration will neither be the same, nor the one contained in the other, otherwise their subjects would subsist similarly.

Chapter 4
then so far these things be matters of doubt, but as to what a thing is whether is there, or is there not, a syllogism and a demonstration of it, as the present discussion supposed? for a syllogism shows something in respect of somewhat through a medium, but the (definition) what a thing is, is both peculiar and is predicated in respect of what it is. Now it is necessary that these should reciprocate: for if A is the property of C, it is evidently also that of B, and that of C, so that all reciprocate with each other. Nevertheless, if A is present with every B in respect of what it is, and universally B is predicated of every C in respect of what it is, it is also necessary that A should be predicated of C in the question what it is. Still if some one should assume without this reduplication, it will not be necessary that A should be predicated of C in the question what a thing is, though A should be predicated of B in the same question, but not of those of which B is predicated in this question. Now both these will signify what a thing (C) is,


text:
Author:Alexander Hugh Hore

Works

 * Eighteen Centuries of the Church in England (1881)

title: Author:Alexander Hugh Hore


text:
Author:Henrietta Dugdale

Works

 * A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age (1883)

title: Author:Henrietta Dugdale


text:
Page:Melbourne and Mars.djvu/66

64 'What is this?' I asked. 'It is the axle of one of Weston's great wheels,' answered Grayson. 'It has never ceased to revolve for two hundred years.'

'Strange that it has not worn out in that time.'

'Had these been common steel and common bronze they would have been, but these metals are so tempered that a diamond will not cut them. There are three of these wheels here, and several more at low places on the plain. They are each one hundred feet in diameter and twelve feet wide. They scoop up the water and pour it into the aqueduct.'

We went through another door into a larger room that contained a model of the three wheels. It was set in motion, by a small electric motor, a reduced model of the one that drives the wheels. The one needs but a thread to drive it; the great one has its power carried by a thick cable. From one end of the model room we can look down into the cistern that catches the water from a score of great drains, and we can see the ascending buckets so slung that the movement of the great wheel does not spill the water back again until the proper place for tilting is reached. Were it not for these wheels much of the great plain would again become swampy. The water thrown up by these wheels is sufficient to make a respectable river to begin with. About a mile down stream the water flows very slowly, and the river is deep and clear. From this point it is used as a waterway for the carriage of produce, manures, etc. Railway lines run under the rivers at many points. 'This great work is one that no syndicate or company could have undertaken. It is one that would heavily tax the resources of a great nation. Such works are only possible to a peaceful federation of nations,' says Grayson, as we came away, 'and on your planet there are several such works waiting for the time when international action is possible. For instance, which nation will attempt to make Sahara into a sea, while its possession might have to be fought for by several European powers?'

Two hours later we were dining at Port Howard, and in another hour our great boat, with some two thousand passengers on board, was swiftly moving across the central ocean.

E who dwell in Mars, a planet that has lost its water surfaces to some extent and increased its land in like proportion, do not travel much by sea. Millions never see the oceans, even though they travel at times a good deal. Still, in so vast a population of happy and healthful people living under a benign and well nigh perfect legislation, there are many who travel for information and pleasure, and many whose occupation necessitates constant movement. Some spend the greater part of their forty-nine days

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text: Melbourne and Mars/Chapter 11

title: Melbourne and Mars/Chapter 11


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text: Author talk:Dudley Oliphant Murray

title: Author talk:Dudley Oliphant Murray


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Steubenville

STEUBENVILLE, stū'bĕn-vil, Ohio, city, county-seat of Jefferson County, on the Ohio River, and on the Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cincinnati and Saint Louis, the Cleveland and Philadelphia division of the Pennsylvania, the Wabash (Wheeling and Lake Erie) railroads, about 68 miles below Pittsburgh, Pa., and 23 miles north of Wheeling. W. Va. In 1786 a fort was built on the site of the present city. In 1798 the place was laid out as a town, and in 1851 it was incorporated as a city. It was one of the first American towns to use steam for manufacturing purposes.

The city is in an agricultural and coal and gas region, and has valuable clay deposits, petroleum wells and large quarries of excellent building stone. The chief manufacturing establishments are iron and steel, soap, tin plate and clay works, potteries, foundries, glass factories, blast furnaces, a paper mill, flour mills, boiler and tube works, machine-shops and nail and electric light furnishings and factories.

The city possesses numerous good churches, a high school opened in 1860 and public and parisn schools, private commercial colleges, a Carnegie public and school libraries. It has four regular banks and two private banks and two building and loan associations. Pop. about 28,000.


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Steunenburg, Frank

STEUNENBURG, Frank, American statesman: b. Keokuk, Iowa, 8 Aug. 1862; d. December 1905. He removed to Caldwell, Idaho, in 1887 and engaged in the newspaper business. In 1889 he was a member of the convention which framed the State constitution, and in 1890 he was elected to the State legislature. He was elected governor of Idaho by the Populist party in 1898, and served in that capacity until 1901. He was assassinated by Harry Orchard (q.v.) in 1905, because of enmity engendered by his handling of the miners' strikes during his administration.


text: Author:Nils Rosén von Rosenstein

title: Author:Nils Rosén von Rosenstein


text: Author:Olof Acrel

title: Author:Olof Acrel


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Stevens, Ebenezer

STEVENS, Ebenezer, American soldier: b. Boston, 1751; d. 1823. He was one of the Massachusetts colonists who look part in the memorable demonstration in Boston harbor in 1773, and was an active revolutionist from 1775 to the close of the war, during which he raised three Massachusetts companies for the siege of Quebec, and served as a commander in the battles of Ticonderoga, and later in the Virginia campaign. In 1778 he became lieutenant-colonel. He was also an officer in the War of 1812, engaged in the defense of the New York frontier. Later he was successful as a merchant in New York.


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Stevens, John Austin (banker)

STEVENS, John Austin, American banker, son of Ebenezer Stevens (q.v.): b. New York, 22 Jan. 1795; d. there, 19 Oct. 1874. He was graduated at Yale University in 1813, and became his father's partner in the mercantile business in 1818. He was president of the New York Bank of Commerce in 1839-66. As chairman of a committee of bankers of New York, Boston and Philadelphia he greatly assisted the United States government in negotiating its loans during the Civil War, and he was frequently called into consultation by the Treasury Department. He was for many years secretary of the New York Chamber of Commerce and was of the organizers of the New York Merchants' Exchange, of which he was the first president.


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Stevens, John Austin (author)

STEVENS, John Austin, American author: b. New York, 21 Jan. 1827; d. 16 June 1910. He was graduated at Harvard in 1848, when he entered commercial life, becoming secretary of the New York Chamber of Commerce (1862-68), and later, librarian of the New York Historical Society. He was founder of the Society of the Sons of the Revolution and the Loyal League, and was the founder and for many years editor of The Magazine of American History (1877-83). He wrote ‘The Expedition of Lafayette against Arnold’; ‘The Burgoyne Campaign’; ‘Progress of New York in a Century’; ‘The French in Rhode Island’ and ‘Life of Albert Gallatin,’ ‘The Valley of

the Rio Grande’; ‘Colonial Records of the New York Chamber of Commerce’; ‘New York City.’


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Rh no metaphysical tendencies: they do not look back into themselves. Hence they are not distressed by their own imperfections: yet it would be absurd to call them self-righteous; for they hardly think of themselves at all. This childlike quality of their nature makes the opening of religion very happy to them: for they no more shrink from God, than a child from an emperor, before whom the parent trembles: in fact, they have no vivid conception of any of the qualities in which the severer Majesty of God consists. He is to them the impersonation of Kindness and Beauty. They read his character, not in the disordered world of man, but in romantic and harmonious nature. Of human sin they know perhaps little in their own hearts and not very much in the world; and human suffering does but melt them to tenderness. Thus, when they approach God, no inward disturbance ensues; and without being as yet spiritual, they have a certain complacency and perhaps romantic sense of excitement in their simple worship."

In the Romish Church such characters find a more congenial soil to grow in than in Protestantism, whose fashions of feeling have been set by minds of a decidedly pessimistic order. But even in Protestantism they have been abundant enough; and in its recent 'liberal' developments of Unitarianism and latitudinarianism generally, minds of this order have played and still are playing leading and constructive parts. Emerson himself is an admirable example. Theodore Parker is another,―here are a couple of characteristic passages from Parker's correspondence.

"Orthodox scholars say: 'In the heathen classics you find no consciousness of sin.' It is very true—God be thanked for it. They were conscious of wrath, of cruelty, avarice, drunkenness, lust, sloth, cowardice, and other actual vices, and struggled and got rid of the deformities, but they were not conscious of


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82 'enmity against God,' and didn't sit down and whine and groan against non-existent evil. I have done wrong things enough in my life, and do them now; I miss the mark, draw bow, and try again. But I am not conscious of hating God, or man, or right, or love, and I know there is much 'health in me'; and in my body, even now, there dwelleth many a good thing, spite of consumption and Saint Paul." In another letter Parker writes: "I have swum in clear sweet waters all my days; and if sometimes they were a little cold, and the stream ran adverse and something rough, it was never too strong to be breasted and swum through. From the days of earliest boyhood, when I went stumbling through the grass, … up to the gray-bearded manhood of this time, there is none but has left me honey in the hive of memory that I now feed on for present delight. When I recall the years … I am filled with a sense of sweetness and wonder that such little things can make a mortal so exceedingly rich. But I must confess that the chiefest of all my delights is still the religious."

Another good expression of the 'once-born' type of consciousness, developing straight and natural, with no element of morbid compunction or crisis, is contained in the answer of Dr. Edward Everett Hale, the eminent Unitarian preacher and writer, to one of Dr. Starbuck's circulars. I quote a part of it:—

"I observe, with profound regret, the religious struggles which come into many biographies, as if almost essential to the formation of the hero. I ought to speak of these, to say that any man has an advantage, not to be estimated, who is born, as I was, into a family where the religion is simple and rational; who is trained in the theory of such a religion, so that he never knows, for an hour, what these religious or irreligious struggles are. I always knew God loved me, and I was always grateful to him for the world he placed me in. I always liked to tell him so, and was always glad to receive his suggestions to me. … I can remember perfectly that when I was coming to manhood, the half-philosophical novels of the time had a deal


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382 lead just as well if you lived like other Jews. If you don't want to go three times to the synagogue, you can go once, and that cannot be much trouble to you. You see, you would still have to live, if, God forbid it! you were shut up in a House of Correction; would it not be much worse? No Sabbath, no holiday, what would you live for? I entreat you to come back; let other people trouble themselves about what belongs to religion, and what not. I believe you are right in many things, and I will listen to you in secret, if you must confide in some one; but what is the use of letting all the world know? I know well enough you men will not put up with things that we women must bear and endure; but you—you are quite different: from childhood you always gave up to others willingly. Be what you used to be again; believe me, you cannot be otherwise, it will break your heart to try any other rule. Control yourself now rather, and come back. O God ! if you were with us again, we should be as happy and as much respected as we ever were. I will read your wishes in your eyes, I will lay my hands under your feet; with lifted hands I entreat you to come back to us."

Spinoza with difficulty mastered his agitation sufficiently to explain to his sister that he was fully determined to defend himself against the Rabbis, that they might not succeed in degrading either himself or his family; he would not merely break

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Rh laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it."

Walt Whitman owes his importance in literature to the systematic expulsion from his writings of all contractile elements. The only sentiments he allowed himself to express were of the expansive order; and he expressed these in the first person, not as your mere monstrously conceited individual might so express them, but vicariously for all men, so that a passionate and mystic ontological emotion suffuses his words, and ends by persuading the reader that men and women, life and death, and all things are divinely good.

Thus it has come about that many persons to-day regard Walt Whitman as the restorer of the eternal natural religion. He has infected them with his own love of comrades, with his own gladness that he and they exist. Societies are actually formed for his cult; a periodical organ exists for its propagation, in which the lines of orthodoxy and heterodoxy are already beginning to be drawn; hymns are written by others in his peculiar prosody; and he is even explicitly compared with the founder of the Christian religion, not altogether to the advantage of the latter.

Whitman is often spoken of as a 'pagan.' The word nowadays means sometimes the mere natural animal man without a sense of sin; sometimes it means a Greek or Roman with his own peculiar religious consciousness. In


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Rh their power in his own case, but in that of others also in which they would have put free thought under a ban.

"I believe it, I believe it!" cried Miriam enthusiastically; "you only want what is right; you are better than all the rest of the world. But believe me too, I have learned to know mankind since this misfortune has come through you. You wish to offer yourself as sacrifice for others? You are too good, you are the crown of mankind; the others are not worthy that a hair of your head should be injured for them."

Spinoza was deeply moved as he looked at his sister, who loved him so well that for his love's sake she rejected all others. Miriam might have known the movement of his heart, for, with a wail of grief, she threw herself on his neck and cried,

"You cannot and you must not for the world's sake offer up yourself and us too. Or is it true that you wish to wed a Christian?"

Spinoza was in a painful dilemma. To lie was as foreign to his nature as night to day; and yet he hesitated how to explain to his sister that his intellect had led him over the boundaries of church dogmas, whither love was his only guide.

An unexpected circumstance freed him from the necessity of further explanation. The two children, seeing their mother crying on their uncle's neck, began to cry and scream also, so

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384 that Miriam forgot her question in pacifying her children.

"Benjamin," she said to the boy, who was first pacified, "Benjamin, entreat your uncle not to leave us. Ah! the child has our late father's name, who would weep and wail too if he saw you; he cannot rest quietly in his grave if he hears what has become of you." Spinoza took the boy in his arms, and embraced and kissed him.

"As little as this child condemns me, as little would my father condemn me in eternity," he said. Little Sarah, too, played with her uncle's hand, and asked him, on her mother's bidding, to go with them. Spinoza repeated his assurance that he could defend himself; and Miriam with a heavy heart took her children away with her.

He had to sustain another conflict on account of his decision that day. Towards evening Rodrigo Casseres came to him.

"You have no father now," he said, "I must take his place. Do you remember the time you saw me first? You too will have a cur's burial like that renegade. Do you remember the evening when I told you of your uncle Geronimo's dreadful death? You too will die like that; only more God-forsaken, more torn by the devil, for you have trodden down the creed of your fathers of your own free-will. Your father, I and all of us, for what have we staked our lives day after day? For

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Rh the holy faith of our fathers. Why have we left our beautiful native land and wandered into far countries? That we might openly serve our faith in peace; and you reject it of your own free-will. I warn you while there is yet time; you are young now, but when you approach your end, your treachery will follow you when you wake, and murder your sleep."

Spinoza had regard to the man's age, and quietly represented to him his firm decision and his innocence.

For a week he was free from attempts at conversion, and during this time he worked out a plan of defence; and while employing for this purpose the authority of the Sacred Scriptures, he formed new conclusions and became more firm and decided in those he had long ago formed. What had been suppressed in the development of silent thought, whether by innate shyness or under cover of stated facts, now shot up with renewed strength in the hot conflict of defence. Spinoza, too, now felt that warlike spirit, that concentrated power, which strengthens ordinary forces and makes them rise above themselves.

For the next exhortation which was addressed to him he did not require this power.

On the Sabbath, as he sat at table enjoying his simple mid-day meal, he heard some one heavily mounting the stairs; the door opened, and old Chaje

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86 neither of these senses does it fitly define this poet. He is more than your mere animal man who has not tasted of the tree of good and evil. He is aware enough of sin for a swagger to be present in his indifference towards it, a conscious pride in his freedom from flexions and contractions, which your genuine pagan in the first sense of the word would never show.

No natural pagan could have written these well-known lines. But on the other hand Whitman is less than a Greek or Roman; for their consciousness, even in Homeric times, was full to the brim of the sad mortality of this sunlit world, and such a consciousness Walt Whitman resolutely refuses to adopt. When, for example, Achilles, about to slay Lycaon, Priam's young son, hears him sue for mercy, he stops to say:—

Then Achilles savagely severs the poor boy's neck with his sword, heaves him by the foot into the Scamander, and calls to the fishes of the river to eat the white fat of Lycaon. Just as here the cruelty and the sympathy each


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386 entered the room. Spinoza drew a chair to the table for her, and asked:

"Have they sent you out too, to bring back the lost sheep to the flock?"

"No, as true as I wish God may let me see joy in him again, I came here of my own wish. I thought my old legs would break before I got up the stairs. I did not believe any of them. I wanted to hear with my own ears if it were true that he would reject our holy religion; he was once a brave, pious Jewish child."

Spinoza remarked in silence the influence that the report spread about him must have had, for old Chaje in her zeal almost forgot his presence, and appeared to talk to herself about him.

"Who knows that?" asked Spinoza.

"Who knows it? A fine secret! The children in the street talk about it. O Lord, how often have I carried him in my arms! Who would have thought then that he could become such a one as this? What is true, is true; the sister of Black Gudul, who was servant at Rabbi Aboab's, said long ago Baruch was a hypocrite; where he will be the Rabbi, the congregation will get baptized. I always thought, if I should close my eyes after living over a hundred years,—I have neither kith nor kin in the world, more's the pity,—I would leave Baruch my little bit of fortune that I have saved up, and that he would have said prayers for my soul;

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Rh that I, too, might have a silver chair in Gan-Eden. Ah! my wishes and hopes have melted away."

Chaje wept bitterly. Spinoza tried to console her.

"He leads me too into sin by making me weep on the Sabbath; it has knocked another nail in my coffin," she wailed. "I would like to know what he can be thinking of. Has the Jewish religion been right for so many thousand years that it should be thrown aside now like a broken pot? He must be possessed, I do believe; why should he have abused the Jews and the Jewish religion? 'Cut off your nose and spite your face,' the proverb says. He will try and please me and be good and pious again, won't he? He will surely thank me on his deathbed, when he follows me. It was only youthful folly, and that is soon forgotten. The grass need only grow over it a year, and then he might choose among the daughters of the richest men in Amsterdam."

Spinoza was nearly powerless against old Chaje's talk; on her no explanation had any effect; she would not go away until he had promised to be pious and good again. At last he had to give her plainly to understand that she must take her departure. Olympia prophesied aright when she said pilgrimages would one day be made to Spinoza, but

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388 the pilgrimage was first made to Maledictus. The day after Spinoza had got rid of old Chaje, the physician Solomon de Silva came to him. He began with professional inquiries, and told Spinoza that his present way of life was undermining his health; but he replied that two of his friends were physicians, that he observed diet, and was always fairly well. Silva then drove his probe deeper.

"I confess," he said, "that Judaism contains many abuses and abnormal developments which ought to be got rid of; when I was your age it used to weigh on my mind too. The impetuosity of youth always wants hastily to cut away what displeases it, but that will not do; men must first win respect and confidence, and not shock people; then later on something may be permitted to you, and you can carry out your plans by degrees."

"The Talmud teaches that you should keep no false measures in your house," answered Spinoza. "Does that not refer here?"

"In any case," persisted the physician, "time and opportunity are to be considered; these everyday conditions have at least their natural rights as much as abstract logical thoughts. The first rule is, that whoever wishes to influence any association and work seasonable and reasonable reforms, must never place himself outside that association. Therefore I counsel you to return; remember there are other people who have seen

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Rh ring true, and do not mix or interfere with one another, so did the Greeks and Romans keep all their sadnesses and gladnesses unmingled and entire. Instinctive good they did not reckon sin; nor had they any such desire to save the credit of the universe as to make them insist, as so many of us insist, that what immediately appears as evil must be 'good in the making,' or something equally ingenious. Good was good, and bad just bad, for the earlier Greeks. They neither denied the ills of nature,—Walt Whitman's verse, 'What is called good is perfect and what is called bad is just as perfect,' would have been mere silliness to them,—nor did they, in order to escape from those ills, invent 'another and a better world' of the imagination, in which, along with the ills, the innocent goods of sense would also find no place. This integrity of the instinctive reactions, this freedom from all moral sophistry and strain, gives a pathetic dignity to ancient pagan feeling. And this quality Whitman's outpourings have not got. His optimism is too voluntary and defiant; his gospel has a touch of bravado and an affected twist, and this diminishes its effect on many readers who yet are well disposed towards optimism, and on the whole quite willing to admit that in important respects Whitman is of the genuine lineage of the prophets.

If, then, we give the name of healthy-mindedness to the tendency which looks on all things and sees that they are good, we find that we must distinguish between a more involuntary and a more voluntary or systematic way of being healthy-minded. In its involuntary variety,


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Rh the light of reason, but who do not care to overthrow the old observances all at once. Much has happened latterly for the suggestion of which any one would have been stoned fifty years ago; and it is ever so with progress. You see, our whole Low-country home is a type of our religion. Dams are built, canals dug, to bind and restrain the wild power of the elements; on these dams life again appears, and the canals become connecting roads which hold men together. The power of centuries lies in these wise precautions. Common men even will keep this land sacred, because they know that the labor of races passed away has wrung it from the sea. If any one should come and find a better, must he pierce the dams, destroy the work of his forefathers, and for a short time annihilate fruitful fields, and populous villages and towns, now built on dry land? It is thus with our religion. Do not tear down the dams. Do not! If you return, there are many clear heads with whom, perhaps indeed at their head, you can help to reform Judaism."

"Who told you I wanted to do so? Perhaps Judaism is nothing more to me than its offshoot, Christianity—a development of mind followed by others. In the first place, I want nothing but to retain my independent life, and in that the power of no Rabbi shall hinder me."

"Have you forgotten," asked Silva, "what you

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390 told me when we came to this room for the first time with your late father? The time may come when you will feel deserted by all who belong to you by bonds of kindred and religion; you will stretch out your hands to them, and grasp naught but empty air. I know too well how far your free thought has carried you; I do not believe you will turn Christian. Trust my experience, if you reach the highest point of free-thought, and have shaken off all prejudice or doctrinal peculiarity, you are, and will always remain, a Jew to them; they will always look upon you as a foreigner. They have imbibed hatred and aversion to the Jews with their mothers' milk; you waste your love on them. What good they may discover in you, they will set down as exceptional; if you strive for wealth and honor, they will say it is Jewish avarice and ambition; if you hold both cheap, they will say he has acquired a little Christian modesty and scorn of worldly wealth. They will think you charming and inimitable if you mock at Jewish folly; but if you attack one of their own prejudices, even if they themselves had long ago made a jest of it, you must not do it, and if you do it, you are a pert, obtrusive Jew. It is the same in this as in other things in life: we confess our faults, and blame ourselves for them; but if another does it, we are annoyed. Sooner will the heavens kiss the earth, or fire and water unite, than a Jew and a Christian

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88 is a way of feeling happy about things immediately. In its systematical variety, it is an abstract way of conceiving things as good. Every abstract way of conceiving things selects some one aspect of them as their essence for the time being, and disregards the other aspects. Systematic healthy-mindedness, conceiving good as the essential and universal aspect of being, deliberately excludes evil from its field of vision; and although, when thus nakedly stated, this might seem a difficult feat to perform for one who is intellectually sincere with himself and honest about facts, a little reflection shows that the situation is too complex to lie open to so simple a criticism.

In the first place, happiness, like every other emotional state, has blindness and insensibility to opposing facts given it as its instinctive weapon for self-protection against disturbance. When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in. He must ignore it; and to the bystander he may then seem perversely to shut his eyes to it and hush it up.

But more than this: the hushing of it up may, in a perfectly candid and honest mind, grow into a deliberate religious policy, or parti pris. Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its sting so often departs and turns into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it cheerfully, that a man is simply bound in honor, with reference to


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Rh embrace in true, tender, all-forgetting love and union. Ay, and if you are baptized, the first defect they discover in you, it is the old Jewish Adam appearing. So return to your own people, who love you truly, and on whose neck rests the same yoke; they will receive you with brotherly love, and forget your backsliding."

"No," said Spinoza, "you have committed a sore sin against God and human nature by your words; it would be too horrible if they were true, but they are not. It is indeed possible for man to belong to man; love and comprehension are more durable than hatred and prejudice. Is the human mind originally Jewish or Christian? Well! I shall see in time whether you speak the truth."

"Do not; why should you be ruined? 'Whoever would purify himself, men will come to his help; but he who would defile himself, men let him alone,' says the Talmud. I will make you a good proposition. The congregation offer you a place in the Beth-Din; you can follow your studies undisturbed, for you have little to do there."

"I will never accept office."

"The congregation will guarantee you a salary of a thousand gulden, on condition that you will promise on your honor never to write a word against Judaism."

"The proverb says, 'If the people wish to silence a man, they must stop his mouth with

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