582 ________________________________________________________________ from: Evenings with the Skeptics, or Free
Discussion on Free Thinkers, by John Owen [1833 – 1896], Rector of East Anstey, Devon, 'Believe it, my good
friend, to love Truth for Truth's sake is the principal part of human
perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues'—Locke,
Vol. I [of 2 volumes], Pre-Christian Skepticism. London, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1881. "PREFACE." ["v"] "Genuine Skepticism may be
regarded from two standpoints. 1. In relation to dogma, it is the antithetical habit which
suggests investigation—the instinct that spontaneously distrusts both finality
and infallibility as ordinary attributes of truth. It inculcates caution and wariness as against the confidence,
presumption, self-complacent assurance of Dogmatists. Thus interpreted, it is needless to point
out the importance of its functions. A
history of doubters and free-thinkers is in fact the history of human
enlightenment. Every advance in
thought or knowledge has owed its inception and impulse to inquiring
doubt. Hence it would be idle to deny
or attempt to minimize the historical importance of Skepticism, or the
perennial antagonism between doubt and dogma—the dynamic and static
principles of all human knowledge. 2. Considered in itself Skepticism implies (1) Continuous
search, (2) Suspense, or so much of it as is needful as an incentive to search.
This is the literal meaning of the word as well as its general signification in
Greek philosophy. We thus
perceive that the Skeptic is not the denier or dogmatic Negationist he
is commonly held to be. Positive denial
is as much opposed to the true Skeptical standpoint as determinate
affirmation. One as well as the other
implies fixity and finality. Each, when
extreme and unconditional, makes a claim to omniscience. Now it is in order to wean back, if
possible, a much-abused philosophical term to its primitive use, as well as to
conform to the increasing and true taste of spelling foreign words in their own
manner, that the author has adopted in this work the orthography of Skeptic
and Skepticism. Whatever
meaning, therefore, his readers may have been accustomed to attach to the more
common Sceptic [sic], &c., he [the author] begs
them to understand that a Skeptic in these volumes is above all things an
inquirer. He [the Skeptic]
is the indomitable, never-tiring searcher after truth...." [vi-vii]. 583 ________________________________________________________________ "A passing reflection is hereby suggested as to
the utility of Skepticism, both suspensive and inquiring, in meeting
some dogmatic tendencies of our Nor is it only theologians that are
thus unduly dogmatic. Our
science teachers, with some few exceptions, seem just as liable to assume a
tone of infallibility in respect of theories inherently incapable of
demonstration; while the Agnostic, who proclaims all truth to be impossible,
and thereby seeks to justify intellectual apathy, is in reality equally guilty
of arrogating [appropriating] omniscience. It is doubtful to which of these three types of dogmatists a due
infusion of the cautious, self-distrustful, persistently energizing spirit of Skepticism
would be most beneficial." [ix]. "Dr.
Trevor [a person of the book's dialogue (retired "consulting
physician")] had never been married.
A philosopher, he maintained with Petrarca [Petrarch 1304
– 1374], did not need a wife, or if he did his philosophy was worthless. His housekeeper and sole female companion
was an only sister, somewhat more advanced in years than himself, who
superintended his household and cared for his wants with a thoughtfulness and
assiduity almost maternal."
[4]. "'To tell you the truth,'
answered Mr. Arundel, 'I perceived the self-contradictory nature of the Pyrrhonism
of which he [Sextos Empeirikos (Sextus Empericus)] is the great apostle too
distinctly, to wish to become his disciple.
Unlike yourself, Trevor, I don't much care for intellectual
gymnastics in and for itself, without any definite aim or object. I don't care, e.g. to go a
long day's shooting, climbing hills and wading streams for the mere sake of the
exercise or the excitement of the chase.
I want to make a bag of some kind:
I don't mind it being what it mostly is, a small bag, but some amount of
actual game I must take home, if I want to look back with pleasure to my day's
work.' 584 ________________________________________________________________ 'And thereby,' said Dr. Trevor, 'you evince
your utter deficiency in a true sportsman's instinct, to whom his bag is or
ought to be of subordinate consideration.
Remember Horace's [65 – 8 B.C.E.] "venator." Leporem
venator ut alta In nive sectetur, positum sic tangere
nolit. I
have never been much of a sportsman myself, but I should suppose, in harmony
with the opinion I have frequently heard from enthusiasts in field-sports, that
its greatest charm consists in the healthy exercise, the free-play of the
limbs, the exhilaration of mind, the variety of scenery and the general
excitement of he sport, rather than in the bag, as it is called. I, at all events, am quite content
to pursue my intellectual researches—to join in the pursuit of truth—without
any selfish regard to the contents of my possible bag of results. Thereby I enjoy my day's exercise, the
free-play of my reasoning faculties, the picturesque diversity of views and arguments
(spiritual scenery, so to speak) of the greatest thinkers of all time, without
a greedy calculation of what I am likely to gain by my efforts; indeed, without
the faintest wish to incommode myself with a burden which I might perchance
lack strength to carry home. Besides,'
added he, somewhat mournfully, 'is it not the usual fate of philosophers in
search of positive truth to return empty-handed—"to go out for wool and
come back shorn," as the old proverb has it. You, for instance, with all your eagerness to make a bag, must
have often wended your way homewards after a long and hard day's work with
nothing at all to show for it, and a similar fate must have often befallen you
in your intellectual researches: so far
as positive truth is concerned, you have returned bag-less. Sometimes, too, you must have fired at what
appeared in the fog to be a desirable quarry, but which a nearer approach
discovers to be perhaps some useless inanimate object. What have you then for your bag?' 'The result, to be sure,' replied Arundel;
'I include negative as well as positive results in my definition of
intellectual game—the detection of error as well as the discovery of
truth. Perhaps the false appearance by
which I was misled may have deceived hundreds of brother sportsmen before
me. By discovering and exposing such a
falsehood, I shall have effected a positive service to the cause of truth: I shall have hunted down an idôlum
[meaning: error?], as your
friend Bacon would term it.' 'For that matter,' rejoined Dr.
Trevor, 'I can match your hunting there:
I can make a bag of idôla—detected errors, or negative
truths. Why, here (putting his hand on
the folio lying open on the table) you have the largest bag of that sort of
game that was every put together, but, like Sextos, I am unable to bag
anything better.' 585 ________________________________________________________________ 'Well, take my advice, Doctor [Trevor],'
answered his friend, 'don't be too scrupulous in your hunting and in your
estimate of game. If you can't find a
blackcock or a pheasant, be content with a rabbit. Truthseekers, like some sportsmen I have known, lose a great
number of useful ordinary certainties 'Thanks; I shall be delighted to
come, and so I am sure will Louisa [apparently "Miss Trevor",
only (older) sister of Dr. Trevor],' answered Dr. Trevor. 'I have, as you know, long been wanting to
make the acquaintance of your friend Harrington as a kindred sportsman
in the broad plains of philosophy. We
may compare bags, you know,' added the doctor with a smile...." [7-9]. "1. We commence our philosophical voyage with
Greece for more than one reason. Not that it is the earliest labourer in the field of free
thought—for it is certain that Hindoo Skepticism is of a date long anterior
to Thales, the father of Greek philosophy—but it is undoubtedly the most
remarkable. With other nations and
races pure Skepticism is an incidental and occasional phenomenon. With Greece it is the normal condition of
all her most eminent thought. To
recur to our former simile, while the wild animal is in most cases completely
tamed and domiciled, at least only occasionally breaking out into wild gambols
and eccentricities—the reminiscences of its natural condition—in the case of
Greece it is always untamable; the indomitable spirit, the inborn love of
absolute freedom, is a quality never quite suppressed. Hence ordinary historians of Greek
philosophy appear to me to labour under an enormous misapprehension when,
following their usual à priori conceptions of growth and evolution, they
try to show that Greek thought is essentially dogmatic, that its progress
consists in a gradual formation and coherence of systematic tenets and beliefs,
and hence that Skepticism is a passing phenomenon in its earlier growth,
and serves to mark later on the senile weakness and decrepitude 586 ________________________________________________________________ of
its old age. Whereas the very
opposite is the truth. For Hellenic
speculation not only ends in Skepticism, but begins in Skepticism. The unlimited freedom of thought of which Skepticism
is a necessary expression proves not the acute but the chronic and
constitutional disease, if you will have it "I. Hebrew Skepticism. Skepticism being a method or,
as some would call it, a degree or stage of speculation, it is obvious that it
must be limited by the horizon of the ideas and mental characteristics of those
who pursue it. Now the general
idiosyncrasy or genius of the Hebrews, in common with the other branches of the
Semitic race, is (as we have seen) religious, devout, and uninquiring.1
[see footnote, below] We might
therefore determine the nature of their Skepticism beforehand, and
predict its limitation to theology.
Accordingly we find that the unbelief of the Hebrews is only
partial or occasional; that it is entirely unconnected with general knowledge,
with philosophy, or science in the ordinary meaning of the words, and is
applied exclusively to theological and kindred subjects. We with our Aryan tendencies find it
difficult to conceive the mental condition which generally characterizes the Hebrews
in the earlier stages of their development.
The careless passivity which accepts theories and dogmas without an
attempt to ascertain their value appears to savour of mental indolence. The serene incuriosity which takes little
heed of secular knowledge as a subject of independent investigation seems akin
to intellectual vacuity. The Greek
loved to explore the wondrous material world in which he was placed, to
evolve existing phenomena from physical or partially physical antecedents. The Hebrew, with a childlike sense of
impotence and dependence, was content to ascribe to Jahve or Elohim the
whole sum and order of the universe, and to ask no further...." [378]. [footnote] "1 Comp.
on this point Renan's Langues Sémitiques, 2nd ed. p. 3, and passim." [378]. 587 ________________________________________________________________ "There can be little doubt, in my opinion,
that the thoughts and reasonings of Koheleth [Book of Ecclesiastes] are
derived to a considerable extent from Gentile sources, though the exact
amount of such obligations cannot easily be ascertained. Oftentimes the foreign elements consist
rather of a peculiar colouring or tendency that of direct propositions, though
of the latter also there is no lack.
There are traces, e.g. of Stoic and Epikourean
philosophy in 588 ________________________________________________________________ "Our survey, necessarily brief, of Hebrew
Skepticism has brought before us enough of its salient qualities to enable
us to place it among the Skepticisms of history. Until we come to those later developments
which Jewish thought received at the hands of such teachers as Maimonides [1135
or 1138 – 1204], until, in other words, it had ceased to be distinctively Jewish,
there is no pretence for accusing it of any great excess of philosophic
freedom, nothing, in short, which approximates to the Pyrrhonism of the
Greeks or the Nihilism of the Hindus.
As represented by the Old and New Testaments and other Nor for Christians who are so
largely dieted on Hebrew history and theology are the manifestations of Free-thought contained in Job and
Koheleth [Ecclesiastes] useless.
They represent a vigorous and wholesome reaction against beliefs which,
whatever their religious merits, inhibited the teachings of experience and
falsified the true method and order of the universe. 589 ________________________________________________________________ They
[JOB AND KOHELETH] evince an
inclination to make the reason the supreme arbiter of all truth, and thereby to
assert the mental independence of humanity. They
proclaim, therefore, a warfare against sacerdotalism and all other repressive
and dogmatic systems. In any age and
under any circumstances _____
_____ _____ 590 ________________________________________________________________ from: The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance,
by John Owen, Kennikat, 1970
(1908) (1893). "It
need not therefore surprise us to discover so much of the Italian Skepticism of
the thirteenth century attributed to Averroistic influences, nor that Leo X. with all his liberal
culture, his profound respect for Aristotle, his secret
sympathy with Free-thought, should have thought it necessary to
issue a Bull against the Averroists." [71]. "[speaker of the dialogue]
MRS. HARRINGTON. Was there no
free section of French Protestants to which Vanini might have joined
himself when he found his religious convictions gradually separating him from
the Church of Rome and that of England? HARRINGTON. Unluckily not. Religious liberty and toleration were almost more alien to the
feelings and prejudices of the Huguenot than to those of the Romanist;
and Vanini might have fared just as badly in Geneva as he did in
Toulouse. In fact, extreme dogmatism,
as we too well know, is independent both of creed and ecclesiastical
organization; and Luther, Calvin, Beza, and, as Vanini
discovered, Archbishop Abbot, were as autocratic and intolerant as a
Roman pontiff.1 [see footnote, 592]
Moreover, even if there had been Protestants to whom Vanini's
free-thinking tendencies would have been congenial, it is by no means probable
that he would have availed himself of the opportunity of joining them. Malenfant tells us that he [Vanini]
entertained feelings of bitter hostility towards the Reformers; and that
these sentiments were returned with interest by the objects of them. There may be so much truth in the report
that Vanini [1585 – 1619], like Montaigne [1533 – 1592]
and Bruno [1548 – 1600], found cause to dislike the narrowness and
bigotry which generally characterized the Protestants, and was really much more
at home with cultured and liberal Romanists. Vanini's
misfortune, as well as Bruno's, was having been born a century too soon, or
half a century too late. Had they flourished in the earlier half of the sixteenth century, they might have
indulged their passion for Nature and for liberty without much danger. Their lot was unhappily cast at a period
when Romish intolerance, excited by the rapid growth of Protestantism, and stimulated by
the zeal of the new-born sons of Loyola, attained an intensity and
malignity by which it had rarely been characterized before. 591 ________________________________________________________________ TREVOR. In estimating the Reformation teachers,
we must not forget the influence of the milder spirits among them. Erasmus
and Melanchthon must be paired off against Calvin and Luther. The former were as gentle, moderate, and
semi-sceptical, as the latter were stern, haughty, and fiercely dogmatic. Nor in fairness must we overlook 'the rock
whence they were hewn.' In one sense Protestantism [CHRISTIANISM] is the
offspring of Romanism [cHRISTIANISM]; and it would have been
curious if she had not manifested some of the lineaments of her parent. To all religious parties alike, the
toleration of an adverse mode of thought appeared, at that time, a wanton
sacrifice of truth; and therefore criminal.
Of course, as Protestantism grew, it was able in some measure to
assert more fully the principle which presided at its birth—the right of
private judgment." [416-417]. [footnote] "1 'Intolerant
as the Italian Inquisition,' says Cousin (Hist. Gen.,
p. 233) Mr. Harrington's comparison is not quite so severe. It seems unnecessary at this time of day to
adduce proofs of the truth of this statement.
The English reader may be referred to Disraeli's chapter on
literary controversy in his well-known work, Curiosities of Literature
[a classic! (see 558)]." [417]. _____ _____ _____ 592 ________________________________________________________________ from: The Skeptics of the French Renaissance, by John Owen, Rector of East Anstey, Devon, Author
of "Evenings with the Skeptics"; "Verse Musings on
Nature, Faith and Freedom"; Editor of Glanvil's "Scepsis
Scientifica", London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., New York: Macmillan & Co., 1893. [pagination continues from: The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance (see
591)]. "Introduction." [vii] "With
the death of Vanini [1585 – 1619] the history of skeptical free-thought
in Italy seems to come to an end. The 'Catholic Reaction,' as the movement has, with doubtful
appropriateness, been described, had already set in. Popes and Church Councils on the one hand, the courts of princes,
the recently awakened splendour of the nobility of France and Italy on the
other; the aesthetic culture of academies and learned societies throughout
Europe,—all these were causes which drew after them divers effects in harmony
with the divine environments in which they operated. While in Italy they combined partly to dwindle, partly to confine
to a narrower grove the outspoken skepticism of e.g. such
thinkers as Pomponazzi and Vanini, in France their operation
partook of a broader, more expansive, more heterogeneous character. Thus
Italy, which had been the foremost to occupy the field of the European Renaissance
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, resigns in the latter half of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries its supremacy to France."
[viii]. CONTENTS.
593 ________________________________________________________________ "Montaigne." [1533 – 1592] [423] "TREVOR. I agree with Harrington [another
speaker of the dialogue], in attributing Montaigne's Ataraxia
["peace of mind"] to his philosophy; and I think you are doing him
great injustice. The constitutional insouciance
you mention is a half-brutish stolidity which comes from want of
thought. Now, whatever else Montaigne
may have been or not been, he was indubitably a thinker, and that of a very
profound and logical type. Nor was he
by any means destitute of feeling.
Indeed, he was endued with sensibility of a very high order. He tells us that he was so acutely
sympathetic, that he could never hear any one cough without feeling a desire to
imitate him. No doubt he succeeded in
maintaining a stoical composure towards the ills and vicissitudes of life; but
this was attained in the way you commend, by self-discipline, by persistent
thought, and reflection, just as in point of fact, his skeptical Ataraxia was
the fruit of his antithetical habit, and his endeavour to attain on all
subjects a just mean, equally removed from every extravagance and extreme. I [Trevor] will now begin my paper:— Passing from the Renaissance in Italy, with its
many-sided aspects, its wide-spread results, its sudden creation of a national
literature and language, and its galaxy of illustrious names, to the chief
representatives of the same movement in France, we become conscious both of
resemblances and contrasts. On the one
hand some of the general causes we have considered, as contributing to the
progress of Freethought in Italy, co-operated also in the growth of Enlightenment
in France. The chief coefficient in
the former was also a primary agent in the latter, viz. the study of the
classics. They agreed, moreover, in an
antipathy to Scholasticism and dogma, and in a direct appeal to Nature and
simplicity. Both adopted skepticism as
a necessary mode of deliverance from intellectual thralldom. But what first strikes us as in instituting
a comparison between them is, the preponderance of contrasts over similarities. Montaigne's Essais, the first
product of the French Renaissance, was published in 1580; and therefore
more than a century after the appearance of the classics of the Italian
Renaissance. Indeed the wave of the
Italian Enlightenment had lost nearly the whole of its original impetus,
and was reduced to a few insignificant eddies when, in reduced volume and
energy it began to break on the coasts of France. But this disparity is not what the general history and prospects
of the Renaissance during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries would
have led us to expect. At the
commencement of the thirteenth century the country which of all others
possessed the fairest outlook, in respect of approaching enlightenment and
Free-thought, was Southern France. It was
one of the chief homes of the Troubadours. Placed midway between Spain and Italy, it received at the same
time the declining rays of the now setting sun of 594 ________________________________________________________________ Arab
civilization and culture, and the earlier beams of the rising sun of Italian
But this promise of an early spring-tide of Free-thought
for France was nipped in the bud by the infamous crusade of Innocent III. The general bearing of that event, for
Italian Free-thought, I have already glanced at, but it possesses also a
distinctive meaning in the history of the French Renaissance. It serves to explain those peculiarities in
the progress of the people and the language by which the history of France,
from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, is so markedly distinguished
from that of Italy. It arrested
completely those growing forces which would else have culminated in a Renaissance
earlier even that that of Italy. It
postponed for two centuries the growth of French Enlightenment. What, left to itself, the many-sided culture
of Southern France might have attained, we have no means of knowing, any more
than we can predict the definitive results of any other mischievous
interference with the advance of human culture and civilization. It has been said that the Troubadours produced
no distinguished name, or epoch-making work.
They did not combine to create a Homer, as did the Ionian rhapsodists of
Greece, nor a Dante and Petrarca, like the popular ministrelsy of
South Italy. But such a reproach is
both ungenerous and unjust. Their
capacities and possibilities, confessedly brilliant, were cruelly thwarted by
Innocent's crusade. It is idle to
speculate on the maturity of a life of which we only possess the data of a
youth of extraordinary promise; but the forecast would be nothing less than
anomalous that did not augur a ripe development just as brilliant and wonderful. But this violent suppression of the nascent Free-thought
of South France had also the effect of destroying for many years her commercial energy. The close connexion of a varied commerce
with free culture we have already noticed, both in the cases of ancient Greece
and modern Italy. Before the thirteenth
century the greatest commercial rival of Italy was Southern France. All its chief towns, Marseilles, Avignon,
Arles, Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, were thriving centres of a commercial
enterprise which extended its ramifications beyond Italy and Greece to
Byzantium and the East; while the trade and other relations between 595 ________________________________________________________________ Southern France and the
North of Spain were of so intimate a character that the two districts were
often regarded and described as portions of one integral country.1 I need not point out the resemblance in
these conditions, so favourable to Free-thought, between South-France
and Italy. Indeed the Provençal poetry
often manifests an intermixture of foreign ideas and expressions which proves
that the exchange of commodities with foreign nations was not limited to their
material products or manufactures.2
But as I have remarked, this commercial activity was almost totally
extinguished by the Pope's crusade.
In some of the provinces wasted by De Montfort and his
lieutenants, there were hardly inhabitants enough let to carry on the most
indispensable of all native industries—the cultivation of the soil.3 Orthodoxy had done its work, and for the
time had achieved its aims. Heresy
was extirpated according to the formula which the satirist applied to the Roman
armies—'They make a solitude and call it peace.' …."
[433-435]. [footnotes] "1 Comp. Aubertin Hist de la langue et de la litterateur
Françaises au Moyen Age, vol. 1. p. 279. 2 M. Aubertin, op. cit. i. 280. 3 See on the whole subject, Martin, Histoire
de France, vol. iv. chap. xxiii."
[435]. "….Not that Montaigne ever avowed in so many
words his skepticism. Nowhere does he
say, 'I am a professed skeptic,' still less 'I am a disbeliever.' Anything like a distinct declaration of a
conviction, even of a negative kind, involved far too great an effort for the
easy cynical indifference which he cultivated.
While he had learnt too well the proper role of a skeptic to commit
himself to express negation, he knew that a definite denial was just as
dogmatic, just as open to the charge of presumption or omniscience, as a
positive affirmation. Indeed, of the
two, he distrusted the negative more than its opposite. In either case, he disliked the coarse
robustness of thought and action which is the accompaniment of intense and
overmastering conviction. His
experience of himself showed him the easy conditions on which a placid
semi-affirmative might be maintained; and the civil wars of his day
demonstrated, as it seemed to him, the excesses which follow in the train of
purely negative principles, whether in politics or religion. Hence, Luther, with his crude unqualified
denial of some dogmas, and his obtrusive positiveness with respect to others,
was immeasurably more repugnant to Montaigne's temperament than the easy
elastic faith of the cultured and refined Romanist. Erasmus, and not the monk [Luther] of Wittenberg,
would have been his ideal Reformation leader, i.e.
supposing him to have admitted the need of Reformation. 596 ________________________________________________________________ Montaigne's position was
therefore the genuinely skeptical one of suspense. He took as his motto, not the absolute assertion of negative
skepticism, 'knowledge is impossible,' but the interrogative one of 'Que
scais je?'1 This,
moreover, is not only his own motto, engraved on his seal, etc., it is
inscribed in a variety of forms and characters on the roof-timber of his
library. We find it in the forefront of
his Essays, as the human excellence which of all others is most
commendable. It is evidently the
cherished persuasion of his [footnotes (see above)] "1 It is
an interesting example of Montaigne's indifference, and the cynical contemptuous manner in which he
announces his most cherished opinions, that this preference of the question
rather than the negation, is made immediately after subjecting it, when
considered as the final refuge of Pyrrhonism, to ridicule. Cf. Hazlitt Trans., p. 244. 2 Hazlitt Trans., p. 187." [459]. "No account of Montaigne's skepticism would
be complete that took no cognizance of the unique position occupied by his Essais
[1580] in the history of French Literature and Free-thought. All works of skepticism have, as we know, a
peculiarly awakening force; for the reason that all enquiry, as Abelard
remarked, starts from doubt. Hence,
in the whole of French literature the two works that attained the most ready
and lasting celebrity were Montaigne's Essais and Descartes' Discourse
on Method; and of these the former has had by far the greatest
influence. No work written in the
language has so much right to the appellation of 'classic,' none has permeated
so fully not only the thought and literature, but also the style and language
of the most spirituelle nation in Europe. Nor is this to be wondered at.
It is the outcome of all that is most distinctive in French literature
from its very earliest commencement. It
represents the verve and bonhomie, the witty insolence and
audacious candour that characterized the French Fabliaux of the middle ages;
and which was subsequently reproduced by such prominent writers as La
Fontaine and Voltaire. As
the chief product of the French Renaissance it introduced to the French
people and their tongue the many-sided wisdom of old Greece and Rome. In contributing to this popular knowledge of
the humanities, the Essais effected more than any work in French
literature. Montaigne's
perpetual quotations from classical writers and his pithy comments on them,
though 597 ________________________________________________________________ sneered
at by Malebranche and others, had the effect of a collection of 'elegant
extracts' from all the greatest writers of antiquity, at a time when classical
knowledge, as a part of popular education, was in its infancy. The French seigneur in his chateau, the
merchant in his office, the mechanic in his shop, might catch a flavour of them
from this 'Breviary of good fellows,' as Cardinal Duperron styled the Essais. Nor was this all. To the professional student of classical lore, the lawyer or the
cleric, Montaigne's Essais taught discrimination of its
rudiments, in ancient learning; for, as Villemain has pointed out, Montaigne
is in France the father of classical criticism—'the great critic of
the sixteenth century.' In his
well-known chapter on Books (ii. chap. x.), he gives under the form of his
own literary preferences a discriminative judgment of the writers of antiquity
which, for the most part subsequent criticism has confirmed. But especially was Montaigne the
purveyor to his countrymen of the skeptical thought of the ancients; for we
must by no means measure the extent of his obligations, particularly as to
skepticism, by his actual quotations.
Indeed, on all subjects Montaigne was better at borrowing than
repaying. Hence the student who comes
to the study of the Essais after a wide course of classical
reading, is surprised, not at the number of Montaigne's quotations, but
at their fewness. As you remember, he
apologizes in one place for his dislike to quotations. Some might suppose such an apology unneeded
or ironical, but in point of fact it is well grounded. The unacknowledged plagiarisms in the Essais
are far in excess of their admitted borrowing. This is especially the case where the writer has a doubtful
reputation. To take one instance; he
often cites Sextos Empeirikos, though generally without naming him. Indeed, I regard Montaigne as having
first introduced the great legislator of Greek skepticism into the French
language; just as, according to Bayle, Gassendi introduced him in
Latin to the learned. It may easily
have been, however, that Montaigne was indebted for his own knowledge of
Sextos to Henry Stephens' translation of the Hypotyposes, which
was published in 1562. At any rate all
the more important of Sextos's arguments may be found in the Essais,
and not unfrequently whole portions of the Hypotyposes are discovered to
have been transferred bodily into its pages;1 and these plagiarisms,
though inserted in Montaigne's usual irregular manner, are yet selected
with so much skill that they would of themselves enable any diligent reader to
gain a fair knowledge of the distinctive qualities of Greek skepticism. Nor is it only the ancient skeptics whom Montaigne
thus lays under contribution. He is
equally prodigal of excerpts and reasonings from those nearer his own
time. Thus Cornelius Agrippa's De
Vanitate appears to have supplied him with occasional arguments, though
Montaigne never mentions him.1 As thus summarizing the reasonings of most free-thinkers on the
subject, and presenting them in a popular form, Montaigne must be regarded
as the father of French skepticism.
All subsequent free-thinkers of his own nation have borrowed from
him more or less, though in fair requital of his own plagiarisms, not always
acknowledging their obligations. A
natural result of this position is that the 598 ________________________________________________________________ Essais may be
regarded as a kind of barometer of French skepticism. It has gone up or come down in popular
estimation just as free-thought has been in the ascendant or the
contrary—both 'rise' and 'fall,' being also denoted by the number of its
published editions. Immediately on
their first publication, contemporaneous as it was with the full tide of the Renaissance
free-thought, they achieved a considerable popularity, which continued till
about the middle of the following century.
Then, by the united opposition of Catholics, Port-Royalists, Pietists
and Philosophers of the Malebranche school, the Essais
receded to 'zero.' But in the
eighteenth century, under the reign of the Encyclopaedists, they again
rose rapidly, until they stood at a higher point of prosperity than they had
yet attained. With the fall of the Revolution
and the rise of the first Empire, there was another declension in the value of
the Essais; while a final upward movement set in with the
general awakening of interest in her older writers which commenced in France
during the third decade of the present century, and which still continues. At present Montaigne and his immortal
work [Essais] stand higher, both in popular and literary
estimation, than at any former period, as is amply testified by the recent
literature which has grown up around them." [474-476]. [footnotes] "1 This is especially
true of portions of the Apology chapter. 2 E.g. in his account of the
diversities of opinion as to the seat of the soul, Book ii. chap. xii. he seems
to have copied Agrippa, De Vanitate, etc., chap. lii." [475]. "But after all, for us as students of French
skepticism, Montaigne's importance lies in his own epoch. Himself and his Essais form
the high-water mark of the free-thought of the French Renaissance. They promulgate its classical enthusiasm,
its reverence for Nature, its rationalism and anti-sacerdotalism. Considered from this standpoint, it is not
easy to exaggerate the services Montaigne and his work rendered to the
cause of freedom and humanity, not only in France but in Europe. Amidst the terrible religious bigotry, the
cruel civil wars, the persecutions, tortures, treacheries and crimes of the
sixteenth century, it was at least some credit, and required no small courage,
to rear up a small temple dedicated to philosophy, toleration and mental
freedom, which none of these discordant influences were able to penetrate,1
and though the high priest of that temple was not a model of religious sanctity
or of moral purity, and though its rites were apt to degenerate into licence,
still these excesses were in part only the inevitable extravagances which
oftentimes accompany a new faith and new hopes—the natural reaction against a
long period of dogmatic tyranny and mental oppression, for which, therefore,
these evil agencies are primarily responsible.
The first outburst of liberty, among a 599 ________________________________________________________________ race degenerated by long
slavery, is not generally marked by [footnote] "1 On this relation of Montaigne
to the social disturbances and civil wars of the sixteenth century, see some
eloquent remarks in Sant René Taillandier's essay, 'Montaigne in Relation to
the Literature of the Sixteenth Century,' Revue de Deux Mondes, vol. xx.
p. 510." [479]. * * *
* * ARUNDEL. On the
whole, Doctor, I agree with your paper.
Montaigne does seem to me precisely that Protean combination of
skepticism, cynicism, credulity and immorality, you have delineated. Of all modern thinkers he is facile
princeps in the attributes of instability, and dread of every sort of
restraint. In the latter respect he
reminds one of Bacon's 'humorous minds,' which are so sensible of every
restriction as they will go neere, to think their girdles and garters to be
bonds and shackles…. You
cannot be sure of his sincerity even when he seems most unreserved and
explicit. It might be fairly open to
argument whether his genuine convictions should not be interpreted in the
inverse ratio of his ostensible professions. TREVOR. So his
skepticism would become the ironical expression of secret but firm conviction;
as in the popular estimate of Sokrates.
You would in such a case have no difficulty in proving Montaigne
a dogmatist and an orthodox believer.
The process of course is both artificial and misleading. Tying
a weather vane in the direction you wish does not tell you which way the wind
blows. In this respect Montaigne
is like Sokrates, a conspicuous instance of the power of irony,
Nescience ["ignorance", etc.], and intellectual many-sidedness in
enabling men to cherish in reserve and seclusion their favourite sentiments and
convictions far from the prying gaze of their fellow men. MISS LEYCESTER.
Admit irony in this sense, and we might have a pendant of Rochefoucauld's
maxim: As language was given to men to
conceal their thoughts, so creeds were devised by men to hide their
beliefs. But frankly, Dr. Trevor,
I think it is you who have been tying the weather vane in order to
predicate a definite direction of a wind blowing from every quarter. We are all agreed, I think, that Montaigne
truly describes himself as 'divers et ondoyant'; 600 ________________________________________________________________ but the fact seems to me at
least partially to disprove his skepticism.
If he was really
so inconstant, why should we lay more stress on his skepticism than on HARRINGTON. Then
instead of calling Montaigne a skeptic, you would, I presume, say that
he was a cypher—a mere sign, of which nothing definitive could be asserted; or
like the scholastic 'substance,' an imaginary entity in which qualities inhere. MISS LEYCESTER.
Not so; Montaigne represents the mutability of every man who has
sufficient introspective insight to discern, and sufficient candour to
acknowledge it. Pascal said of
the Essais that he never opened them but he discovered himself, i.e.
the image of his own mutations and inconsistencies. Introspection, you remember, led Sokrates to doubt his own
identity; and to profess himself uncertain whether he were not a multiform
serpent of Typhon; and Hamlet describes the result of his own
self-analysis almost in the very words of Montaigne:—'I am myself
indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better
my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have
thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in.' TREVOR. In some cases, no doubt, the different qualities in a composite
character may be so evenly blended that not one is prominent above the rest;
but Montaigne, in my judgment, is not one of them. That he had some settled convictions I have
never denied. He was fully convinced, e.g.
of the benefits of toleration, of the superiority of his favourite mode of
education, of the necessity of religious and moral restraints for ordinary
folk, etc., etc.; but I still maintain that the ground principle of his
intellectual character was skepticism; and that this is evidenced by his
religion, his philosophy, his political conduct and his morality. Hence accepting your simile, I think that
skeptical suspense, with its allied qualities of moderation, equanimity, etc.,
constitutes the preponderating flavour in his mental dish…. Besides, our investigation of skepticism
considers it in relation to dogma. But
the latter implies fixity, permanence, steadfastness; and a mind antagonistic
to those qualities, i.e., wavering, doubtful, suspensive, not in
action perhaps so much as in speculation, must needs be skeptical. Montaigne himself was at least
clear-sighted enough to perceive that his waywardness and 601 ________________________________________________________________ vacillation
must needs bear a skeptical construction.
You remember the HARRINGTON. The
point in Montaigne's character that most impresses me is what has been
rightly called his Paganism.
Setting aside a few casual remarks on Christian dogmas, enunciated with
a coldness very unlike the ardour of his commendations of Pyrrhonism, there is
nothing in the whole of his Essays but what a cultured heathen might have
written. They might stand for scraps of
Plutarch, Lucian or Theophrastus, or for fragments of letters by Pliny
or Seneca. I have read the Essais [1580] pretty thoroughly,
and I have been unable to find any allusion to the Founder of Christianity,
or to its primary records. TREVOR. Paganism was, of course, the atmosphere, if not the very
life-blood of the Renaissance. When
Roman pontiffs were themselves heathen—a combination of Bunyan's giants
Pope and Pagan in a single Janus-like personality—it was not likely that minor
personages would be uninfluenced by the prevailing passion for pagan
culture. As to the other
characteristic, it is common to all the literature of the period, theological
as well as lay. The beginnings of Christianity, the personal
character of the Founder, etc., had in fact long since passed, if not out of
human knowledge, at least out of human consciousness, buried under the
continual accretion of ecclesiastical and dogmatic developments. Even
Luther, and Calvin, notwithstanding their undoubted services to
the cause of Christian freedom, contributed very little to direct men's
attention to this the first and most essential aspect of Christianity. They too
must needs systematize. From this point
of view there is but little difference between Calvin's Institutes and
the Summa of Aquinas. ARUNDEL. Is there not a considerable parallelism, I do not mean altogether
as to genius, although Montaigne was undoubtedly a poet, but as to
character, temperament, etc., between Montaigne and Goethe? Both cold, unimpassioned intellects; both
hiding a considerable amount of vanity under a semblance of indifference to
human opinion; both loving freedom after a manner, 602 ________________________________________________________________ but
with a careless Epicuraeanism which refused to hazard anything in her 'Da
fühl ich die Freuden der wechselnden Lust.' Allowing for differences in race and
circumstances, the two men seem cast in nearly the same mould. TREVOR. No doubt there are points of similarity, but Goethe had
too much innate reserve to imitate Montaigne's outspoken and outrageous
frankness. Compare for instance the
reticence of the Autobiography with the excessive candour of the Essais. Goethe's general demeanour is that of
a king on state occasions, conscious of being the observed of all
observers. Montaigne, on the
other hand, is like a performing clown or street-tumbler displaying his
quaintest antics and postures to public gaze, and delighted when a more uncouth
gambol than usual obtains its meed of public recognition and applause. HARRINGTON. Montaigne's highest claim to complete
skepticism appears to me to rest on his avowal that, like Lessing and
others, he would rather always inquire than discover—start on a kind of Columbus-voyage,
neither hoping nor expecting to see land—not that I think he felt much interest
in any enterprise of the kind."
[479-483]. "Charron." [559] "TREVOR. I however concur with Harrington. Charron's conception of Nature as a
moral agency does not seem to have had much influence. His own power, as that of Montaigne's,
must be sought in another direction.
Both are leading names in an unbroken succession of free-thinkers. Montaigne we may take as the
legislator, while Charron—as became his office—was the high priest of
early French Skepticism, or if you will allow the doggerel we might say,
'As Moses to Aaron so was Montaigne to Charron.' To these two thinkers succeed Le Vayer,
and other names of less note. What
these early free-thinkers effected for French philosophy was in
preparing the way for Descartes.
The consequence being that when Descartes issued his proclamation
of skepticism, in the Discourse of Method, he was only propounding that
principle of individual autonomy in all matters of belief which was the
root-thought both of Montaigne's Essais and Charron's Sagesse. These two writers, with their successors,
also occupy in the history of French thought a somewhat similar position to Luther
in 603 ________________________________________________________________ Germany. They represent that phase of freedom and
anti-sacerdotalism that learning,
their freedom from prejudice, their genuine love of liberty, to aid the
movement to an extent not easy to overstate; not however that I myself share on
this point the enthusiasm of a friend who once remarked to me, 'I believe that Montaigne's [1533 – 1592] Essais [1580]
has done more for European free-thought than any work of Luther's [1483 – 1546].'" [612-613]
[end of Chapter III., Charron]. l l l l l 604 ________________________________________________________________ from: Doubt's Boundless Sea, Skepticism and
Faith in the Renaissance, by Don Cameron Allen [1903 – 1972], Johns Hopkins Press, 1964. [Must see!
Erudition, humor (reminds me of Erasmus), rare perspectives, etc.]. [See:
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dcallencoll.html]. [from: dust jacket] 'DOUBT'S
BOUNDLESS SEA Skepticism and Faith in the Renaissance By Don Cameron Allen This dialogue among atheists and
theists during the Renaissance in England, France, and Italy reveals the
beliefs of unbelievers. In the Renaissance an atheist was
one who could not accept some religious principles shared by Christian creeds. At times,
the definition became so narrow that, to many Protestants, the Pope was the
chief of the Roman Catholic atheists; to many a Roman Catholic, Canterbury
was the head of the Anglican atheists. To quote the author, "The dike
of faith was going down as the sea of rationalism burst through." For many, the sea that roared outside the
wall roared more violently in their minds.
Believers realized that they must fight the atheism within
themselves. "Renaissance
atheism was really a rational questioning of Christian or sectarian principles." In effect Professor Allen's theme
is the trepidation of the orthodox; he portrays profiles of men unsure of
themselves and the world in a period of revolutionary change. The subjects of these literary
portraits were not selected for their uniqueness of opinion; each was chosen
because his unpopularity with orthodox believers was enormous. Professor Allen allows his subjects
to speak for themselves. Borrowing a
seventeenth-century expression, the author says, "I am the tuba
through which their voices come. I have
not consciously employed my stops; their measures breathe forth according to
their interpretation of the score."
The result is a clever and frequently witty account of an erudite topic. 605 ________________________________________________________________ Six chapters discuss atheism and atheists in the
Renaissance; three Italian
atheists: Pomponazzi, Cardano, Vanini;
three French atheists: Montaigne,
Charron, Bodin; rational theology
against atheism; reason and immortality; and the atheist redeemed as
seen through a portrait of the Earl of Rochester who renounced his
doubts on his deathbed. DON
CAMERON ALLEN is the Sir William Osler [see 1899] Professor of English Literature at the Johns Hopkins
University. He edited The Moment
of Poetry and a volume of lectures from the first Hopkins Poetry Festival, Four
Poets on Poetry. He is the author
of Image and Meaning, The Harmonious Vision, and numerous other books
and articles.' [dust jacket]. "Preface" [v] "In the present volume I
hope to display the profiles of some of these atheists and record the beliefs
of unbelievers. For the
Renaissance, in general, an atheist was one who could not accept any religious
principle shared by all Christian creeds.
A Jew, a Mohammedan, a deist was an atheist, and the definition could
be narrower: to many Protestants,
the Pope was the chief of Roman Catholic atheists; to many a Roman Catholic,
Canterbury was head of the Anglican atheists. None of the men in my present study called himself an atheist,
none denied the existence of God. With
very few exceptions, this statement holds true for all the atheists indicted by
the orthodox opposition. I have not had
the space or patience to write about all of them; but here, as a preliminary
illustration, I should like to bring forward the views of that Royalist, Episcopal
atheist, Thomas Hobbes [1588 – 1679], who was detested and attacked
both at home and abroad for his irreligion." [vi]. "The Pope, Hobbes writes,
takes his title from the pagan, Roman Pontifex Maximus (III, 660-61), and
derives his "fulmen excommunicationis" from Jupiter (III, 509). The Roman Madonnas and Bambini are only the
pagan Venuses and Putti (III, 660). In
the same fashion, one may equate holy water with heathen "aqua
lustralis," wakes at funerals with bacchanalia, maypole dancing with the
rites of Priapus, and the Papacy itself with the ghost of the deceased Roman
Empire (III, 663)." [viii]. "The utterances of Hobbes,
the gentile Spinoza of England, while not utterly Anglican are hardly
atheistic. With Herbert of
Cherbury and John Toland, he [Hobbes] furnished for the godly
the trinity of atheism; yet any one of 606 ________________________________________________________________ these
men could occupy a modern seminary chair, although he might not be liberal
enough for some of his colleagues. What
can be said for and against these atheists can be repeated about the others
whose theologies I have surveyed in the following pages. None of them has been selected for the Although I have centered my
attention on nine men, I have occasionally quoted others—Bruno, Telesio,
Campanella, Cuperus—for illustration rather than emphasis. Twelve years ago when I began to read all of
this literature, I imagined a wider canvas; the passage of time showed me the
absurdity of this plan. Some of my
reading has gone into the waste of footnotes; most of it has gone into the
waste. With it went essays on
other atheists who have, in my opinion, been well treated elsewhere. I have done similar destruction to many of
the apologists; but I have carefully divided my book between both sides. I hope that I have allowed the orthodox
opponents of atheism enough space to make their attitudes clear. Actually, it is the orthodox
thinkers who trouble me most. How can
their spiritual panic be explained? Why must the existence of God and human
immortality be expounded every thirty days for almost two centuries? Religious men let the heathen rage and never
raged back at them. The answer to my
questions may in some instances be the natural lation[meaning?] of professional
vanity, but the real reason, I expect, was otherwise. The dike of faith was going down as the sea of rationalism burst
through. Christians realized that when
it had overwhelmed the steeples and drowned the cocks, it would sweep all men
into a materialistic skepticism or, at best, into a rational theism. For many of them the prospect was
undoubtedly frightening, because the sea that roared without the wall roared
more violently in their minds. They had
to fight the atheist within them! Some
of them dug in their heels and shouted for the dike-members; others would
gladly have gone with the tide, but they had never learned to swim. My sympathies go out to these spiritual
ambivalents [?]. They might give Bruno
and Vanini a hot hour at the stake, but they, in their turn, must burn
for a lifetime [?]. The trepidation of the orthodox is, I suppose, the
theme of my book, but I also intend
to provide a background for students of literature, who may find passages that
elucidate the poetry and prose of the Renaissance." [ix-x]. 607 ________________________________________________________________ "Chapter One Atheism and Atheists In the Renaissance" [1] 'John Calvin [1509 – 1564],
who burned the "speculative atheist" Gruet and beheaded
the "practical atheist" Monet,16 wrote
on the disease of disbelief in Des Scandales and Contre la Secte des
Libertins.17' [7]. 'The first modern history of
atheism was written by an English clergyman, Jenkins [Jenkin]
Thomas Philipps [died 1755], tutor to the children of George II. Philipps' Dissertatio
Historico-Philosophico de Atheismo sive Historia Atheismi was published at
London in 1716 and is the fruit of its author's extensive readings, not
only in the books of well-established atheists, but also in those of British
philosophers of the empirical school and those of empiricists who were also
theologians…. "I [Philipps] must
first define an atheist because Julian [Emperor 361 – 363 (331 – 363)],
Erasmus [1466 – 1536], Grotius, and other men are lumped carelessly
together under this title." An
atheist has either never heard of God or has convinced himself God does not
exist. Philipps knows it is also
customary to call a man an atheist who does not believe in Providence,
immortality, or the resurrection of the body.38 He sees atheism as a product or urban
life. Cain, the first city dweller, was
an atheist; his example was followed by a long procession of Athenian
infidels. Of these, Thales,
Anaximander, and Anaximenes were not true atheists, but Anaxagoras [c. 500
– c. 428 B.C.E.] surely was. The
irreligious Democritus and Leucippus were merely
materialists. Epicurus [c. 341 –
271 B.C.E.] may have been an atheist, but it is also true that many things
he never said are credited to his discredit. His poet laureate, Lucretius [c. 99 – c. 55 B.C.E.],
was certainly an atheist.39 When the ruling religion of
antiquity, Epicureanism, was disestablished by Christianity, atheism
[publicly] disappeared for a time from the world. The cult of fine letters vanished at the
same time; but when humanists rediscovered the old literature, the old
frivolities, scorned by Christians, gleefully returned. Italy is, of course, once again at fault. In that unfortunate land men swallow the
idea of immortality with a grain of salt and are more easily convinced of a
hereafter by Homer or Virgil than they are by the Bible. Philipps knows and repeats the tired
anecdotes associated with the Italian atheists Bembo, Poliziano, Ficino,
Pomponazzi, Simone Porzio, Caesalpino, Beauregard, Cardano, and Vanini.40 608 ________________________________________________________________ He is
probably the first theologian to proclaim Machiavelli, "whose
commentary on Livy is filled with piety," as blameless of the
charge of atheism;41 and though he was one of the few historians to
read Bodin's Heptaplomeres, he tags the Frenchman as nothing
worse than a convert to Judaism. He
writes Hobbes down as an atheist but spares Herbert of Cherbury. He concludes his book happily with a stirring
account of the sinful life and deathbed conversion of the eminent atheist and
libertine, the Earl of Rochester.'
[14-16]. "Chapter Two Three Italian Atheists: Pomponazzi, Cardano, Vanini" [28] 'It must, however, be admitted that
in spite of his learning and his often able ideas—he [Girolamo Cardano
[1501 – 1576] ("physician"; "polymath")] was, for example,
one of the first to argue that not everything was made for man and that flies
could have been made for themselves83—he was often confused and
contradictory. This is, of course,
one of the penalties paid by the voluminous philosopher [this reminds me
(LS) of Erasmus], but Cardano was one of the earliest of
autobiographers. He wrote two books
about himself, the De Vita Propria and the De Consolatione, in
which he revealed his habits, thoughts, and experiences with a frankness that
may have charmed some readers but armed the hunters of atheists. The contents of these books almost justify J.C.
Scaliger's observation that Cardano was "a learned man with a
child's mind"; but Scaliger, who set down a thousand other
objections to Cardano in his pettifogging Exotericarum Exercitationum
Liber XV de Subtilitate, did this learned child no favor when he devoted a
large section of this work to Cardano's views on immortality.84 Scaliger's readers would probably not
remember the multitude of defects he found in Cardano's book, but his
accusation of atheism had wings and nested in men's minds; and though Cardano
printed a mild and kindly reply, Actio in Calumniatorem (1560), Scaliger's
implications were of the sort that denial only verified.' [46-47]. 'The books of Cardano are
filled with pious utterance and religious veneration, but his real feelings are
hard to ascertain. In the De
Sapientia, he discusses theological matters on both pagan and Christian
levels, but he slips from one plane to another so quickly that one is pressed
to know whether he is now a Christian or a pagan. Religion, he states with a coolness of prose that would make
Machiavelli shiver, is of the highest importance to those who govern; in
fact, there has been no successful state without one. A false religion, consequently, is better than none.107 In the same volume, he advises kings 609 ________________________________________________________________ against
allowing too much power to the church because, religion having great authority
among the plebeians, an unbridled priesthood can be politically dangerous.108 The doctrine of immortality also has
for him a political utility. No
sensible person, he states, will take the risk of saying whether there is an
afterlife or not, but it is his impression that people who believe in
immortality are happier than those who do not.109 If civil contentment and a theory of
postmortem existence are concomitants, then there should be a government bureau
for the propagation of the theory. On
all these ticklish questions [reminds me of Erasmus], he advises, the
wise man keeps his true opinions to himself and approves openly what the public
believes. "Sed tamen omnes
sapientes, etiam si id non credant, vulgo plaudant."110' [51-52]. 'Maybe,
as he [Cardano] says later in the De Sapientia, it is
prudent to express a belief in immortality. "Ergo animum affirmare immortalem, non solum pium et prudens
est, sed irreprehensibile, ac multorum honorum causa."138 It is, after all, in a good cause. But how about Cardano? In the last pages of the De Subtilitate,
where he is making one of his careful excursions into the nature of God and
good and evil, he observes that hatred
of death makes men love to beget children [the "push" by
"nature". Why the planet has
been overpopulated with Homo-sapiens—for centuries]. "They are from us; they preserve our countenances; they
restore us."139' [58]. 'No one can fail to see what a pious
and orthodox age found objectionable in the writings of this Italian
triumvirate [Pomponazzi, Cardano, Vanini]. Pomponazzi's unreadiness to accept philosophical
responsibility for the Christian doctrines of Providence, immortality and free
will is hardly excused by his rhetorical genuflections to Christian
revelation [Christian tradition!
Christian mumbo jumbo! Christian
hocus-pocus!]; and this is especially so when he suggests, even though he is
certain of its Platonic reoccurrence, that the faith begotten by this
revelation diminishes as its stars fade.
Cardano, more prolix than Pomponazzi and a man of
apparently wider interests and certainly of more tangled emotions, does no
better than his fellow countryman when he also stares at the human soul and the
doctrines men invent for its permanent perpetuation. The doubts and restrictions of both men are put into agreeable
prose by Vanini and salted with wit.
Erasmus could be witty about Christianity, but he could
hide his jests in a corner. In his Colloquy
of the Shipwreck, one of the sailors regrets that Stella Maris, no
sailor herself, had replaced as the seaman's saint the Lady Aphrodite
[Latin: Star of the Sea. A title of the Virgin Mary], sea-born
herself. "Ah, yes,"
says a fretful companion, "in place of the mother who was not a
virgin, one has supplied a Virgin who was a mother." 610 ________________________________________________________________ No
one complained about this, but even theologians could understand Vanini's
humor.' [74]. "Chapter Three Three French Atheists: Montaigne, Charron, Bodin" [75] 'Charron
[1541 – 1603] now gets Calvin in his gun sights, and this change of
quarry permits him to discharge his doubts against the value of the human
mind. There is, he insists, no
religious reality outside the Gothic walls of the Roman Church; moreover, this
"inner light," so highly regarded by the Protestants as a bright form
of illumination, is really a private and very eccentric lamp, not likely to
help in the dark. It is clear to
Charron that Protestants, by stepping away from authoritative tradition, have
really moved into the shadows of religious skepticism [absolutely!].' [90-91]. "Chapter Five Reason and Immortality For
the opponents of atheism, the proof of God's existence was inseparably bound
with the proof of the soul's immortality. Each hypothesis supported the other and required the other's
support. The concept of a life after death was, of course, a pre-Christian
belief; and the earliest Christians, aided by revelation, improved,
though not without intramural quarrel, the cruder speculations of pagan
philosophers.1 St.
Augustine's [354 – 430] stubborn conviction that immortality was a truth
beyond question satisfied most early theologians;2 nonetheless,
they were all happy to recount the guarantees that the simple, central,
spiritual substance lived consciously after the material body
disintegrated. To sustain this
assurance, Albertus Magnus recited proofs of the soul's existence,3
insubstantiality,4 immediate creation,5 and
incorruptibility6 and though his clever pupil, Thomas Aquinas [c.
1225 – 1274], nowhere presents a formal demonstration, it is clear he held
immortality a Christian essential.
The soul is for him the first and eternal principle of life, the act of
the body;7 and his successors accept immortality as an essential
Christian premise in the same way that the Euclidians must admit the dogma
of the first theorem." [150-151]. 611 ________________________________________________________________ "The question of the soul's origin was variously
answered throughout the seventeenth century; but while theologians took
sides, they always presented a solid front against atheists who doubted the
soul's existence and immortality."
[162]. 'The name of Hobbes [Thomas
Hobbes 1588 – 1679] appears for the first time in any of More's writings
in The Immortality of the Soul.
The Leviathan, which inclined so many men to include Hobbes
in the sour society of non-saints, brought no protest from More [(Sir)
Thomas More 1478 – 1535], who actually respected Hobbes and with whom he
had much in common. Both were
Anglicans, anti-Romans, haters of religious enthusiasm, and monarchists. When More criticizes Hobbes'
ideas in the first and second books of The Immortality of the Soul,
he paused to call him "a grave philosopher" and to agree with Hobbes'
self-estimate "that his peculiar eminency lies in Politics."128 Later, Richard Ward wrote that Hobbes
in his turn preferred, if his own system were untrue, "the philosophy of
Mr. More of Cambridge."129 More vigorously attacks Hobbes' theories of spirit,
matter, free will, the location of the common sensorium, and second notions,
describing his comments on the last concept as a "witty invention to
befool his followers";130 but never once does he [More]
insinuate that the sage of Malmesbury [Hobbes] is
an atheist. Until this moment, More's
adversaries were the Greek and Roman atomists and the religious enthusiasts of
his own day; now he saw in Hobbes' materialistic philosophy a dangerous
doctrine that might not be intentionally atheistic but could lead to
disbelief.' [179]. "Chapter Six The Atheist Redeemed: Blount, Oldham, Rochester" [186] 'Most
of the foes of atheism held that no man ever died an atheist and, then,
emphasized this observation with lists of men dead in atheism and accounts of
the violent conclusions of atheist lives.
Mauduit, for example, compares the deaths of an atheist and a
Christian centenarian. The atheist leaves
pleasure to begin pain; the Christian dies happily because he is through with
pain.4 The misery of the
atheist's death is described by Jean Cousin: "Having lived as an animal, he dies as an animal."5 The death throes of these men are approved
by Martin Fotherby, who describes the dreadful atheist deaths of Pharaoh,
Socrates, Epicurus, and Bion. All
of them, with the exception of the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius, died
horribly, and, as for "this last; whose damnation yet 612 ________________________________________________________________ slept
not; being, though respited, yet not removed [?]."6 The same sad story is told by Bonhome
of some seventeenth-century atheists known to him but never introduced by name
to us. One wrote a dialogue against
religion, but soon "grew Frantick" and died insane. Two others argued with Bonhome about
the existence of God; the first "fought a duel and died upon the
place"; whereas the second "in as short time he died (fearfully mad)
with the Plague." He knows many
other atheists besides these, but they all either "died very
strangely" or "suffered
violent Deaths."7
Snatched away in sin, none of these faceless atheists is given, as Eugenes
is, a chance at Christian rehabilitation. The foes of atheism seem to have had
no better results with named atheists.
Of course, these godless men often died violently on the block, at the
stake, or with a rope round the neck.
This final misery might be providential planning, but it is difficult at
this distance to say. Vanini
went out to a violent death saying, "Come let us die like a
philosopher." But this was not to
be the case. "He died," said
one reporter, who may have read Cousin, "like an animal, bellowing
like an ox when his tongue was cut out."
Other atheists, less sensational than Vanini, died, contrary to Mauduit's
belief, "safely in their nests."
On his deathbed, Prince Maurice of Orange rejected the comforts
of a religion in which he saw nothing of "mathematical certainty."8 The Mercure Français relates the
final blasphemies of the well-known atheist Ruggieri,9 but
there is no hint of misery or violence.
Estienne, a man of orthodox beliefs, sets down the agnostic
remarks of Marechal Strozzi, who died well enough. [Estienne,
on Strozzi] He often admitted that he would like to believe in God, as
others did, but could not, and in spite of this desire, it was his delight to
utter such blasphemies against God that those of Julian [Emperor 361 –
363 (331 – 363)] the Apostate seem in comparison to be nothing…He was not
ashamed to say that God was unjust when he condemned mankind for a piece of
apple and that he had learned nothing in the New Testament except that
Joseph, being so old, and she, being so young, was a fool not to be jealous of
his wife.10 The English casebooks reporting
God's judgments against sinners can be compared with anthologies of pious
deaths like the Abel Redivivus, but, even then, the facts are
embarrassing. True enough, atheist
Marlowe died with a knife in the eye, and atheist Raleigh with an ax in the
neck, but St. Thomas More [beheaded] died no better. The records of conversion are so sadly
limited in number that the atheist hunters found in the happy-miserable end of John
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester [1647 – 1680], the perfect example they
wanted.' [189-191]. 613 ________________________________________________________________ 'In
Lucretius [c. 99 – c. 55 B.C.E.], Rochester found some lines, as he did
in Seneca [Lucius Annaeus Seneca c 4 B.C.E. – 65 C.E.], that suited his
personal convictions and were, consequently, worth translation. The Gods by right of Nature,
must possess An everlasting Age of perfect Peace: Far off removed from us and our
Affairs; Neither approached by Dangers,
or by Cares; Rich in themselves, to whom we cannot
add: Not pleased by Good Deeds; nor provoked by Bad.34' [201]. 'Appendix De Tribus Impostoribus Few imaginary books, even those in
the collection of Jean Nepomucene Pichauld, comte de Fortsas, have been
sought with such diligence or discussed with such pious fascination as the De
Tribus Impostoribus. This
famous, but invisible, polemic against the three major religions of Europe was
assumed by men of the Renaissance and the early eighteenth century to be
the charter of the atheists' confederation, a truly horrid protocol awaiting
the signatures of the godless of all nations.
It was a book to be talked about whenever two or three nervous citizens
of the Christian community were gathered together, and witnesses could be found
of "an agreeable veracity" who had seen the book in some obscure
library or in the possession of someone of dubious orthodoxy. In spite of this visual testimony to the
book's existence, it was a long time before a responsible person admitted any
knowledge of its contents. After more
than a century of pious clamor, the book, which by then had been attributed to
many pens, finally got written in several forms. Thus, unlike other mortal things, it put off immortality
to put on corruption and became more confusing in its incarnation than it had
been in its essence. Its genesis
began in the thirteenth century. Pope Gregory IX, who had
excommunicated his obdurate temporal opponent, Frederick II [Holy
Roman Emperor 1194 – 1250 (as a falconry enthusiast in the 1950s and 1960s, I
remember (saw) the classic, by Frederick II:
The Art of Falconry (De Arte Venandi cum Avibus))], in 1229,
only to be immediately humiliated by the Emperor's divinely sent victory
over the Turks and miraculous recovery of the Holy Lands, decided in 1239 once
again to cut his mighty opposite's spiritual throat. This time he denied him the sacraments on the ground that he had
incited the rebellious Romans to rebellion.
The Papal pretext was so thin that it was generally regarded as the sort
of pious hoax only an 614 ________________________________________________________________ Italian
could invent; hence, Frederick, speaking with the angelic tongue of his
chancellor, Pier della Vigna, had no trouble clearing himself before the
Parliament of Padua. The
rhetorical coup was so brilliant that Gregory lost all restraint and
issued an encyclic: "A beast rose
from the sea filled with the [proto-Erasmus].1 It
is not improbable that Frederick, who was one of those men who find the
orthodoxies of their age outmoded and irrational, said in private exactly
what the Pope reported. [compare: attributed
to Leo X: '"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us! " [see
13-18]] But
even if he did, there is no evidence he ever wrote an unorthodox book; on the other hand, it is obvious that when the
notion of a De Tribus Impostoribus was invented, he [Frederick
II] was an excellent candidate for authorship.2 The Papal charge against Frederick
was such a fine example of political mud-slinging that it was not only recorded
by ecclesiastical chroniclers but applied in turn to other possible victims,
such as Averroes, Simon de Tournai, Thomas Scotus, Zanino da Solcia, and
Diego Gomez, who were, then, held up for the abhorrence of religious men. Most of these tarnished names were also to
be credited in due course with the writing of the wicked manifesto of the atheists. Considering the eventual title of the book,
it is surprising that none of these villains were alleged in the initial
indictments to have used the term impostors. With great care, they all seem to have avoided the word and
described Christ, Moses, and Mohammed as "worthless fellows" 615 ________________________________________________________________ Once,
however, news of the book's existence was noised about, almost anyone—and Pomponazzi
is a good example—who mentioned the three religious leaders in one breath was
accused of calling all of them impostores. The teasing question, which can only
be satisfied by whispered conjecture, is who started the rumor that a book
about the Three Impostors existed. This question is, however, no more troublesome than those about
the authorship of the texts that now exist.
Brunet, who edited the Latin De Tribus Impostoribus
in the middle of the last century, thought that the existence of the book was
first mentioned in 1611 by Geronimo de la Madre.3 This is a strange If we follow De Raemond's
lead, we can come to a preface written in 1581 by Gilbert Genebrard for François
Jordan's critical commentary on Lambertus Danaeus' theories about
the Trinity. In this preface, Genebrard
defends Guillaume Postel, who had been charged with heresy, and observes
that his doctrinal errors, unlike those of Calvin, did not convert some
men to Islam and others to atheism. It
is Calvin, he thinks, who is responsible for the fact that some
"unknown author" wrote a "little book, the De Tribus Impostoribus,
about the Lord Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed."5 This preface is dated 1581; and La
Monnoye, who wrote the earliest bibliographical essay on the De
Tribus Impostoribus6 thinks he has found a mention of the
book in 1543. I am inclined
to be a little more cautious and to date the first sound reference to this book
in the second half of the sixteenth century. It is quite possible a rumor about the existence of such a book
[in manuscript form] might run about for several decades [centuries?] before it
got fixed in print [printing flowered in the 16th century]; but,
even then, I cannot assume a book existed unless I have the ocular testimony of
a reliable authority….' [224-228]. l l l l l 616 ________________________________________________________________ from: A Short History of Christian Theophagy ["ingestion of divinity"; "eating the
body of a god"; etc.], by Preserved Smith, Open Court, 1922. 'I.
PRAEPARATIO EVANGELICA Those
who have attended the celebration of a mass have witnessed the most ancient
survival from a hoary antiquity.
There, in the often beautiful church, in gorgeous vestments, with
incense and chanted liturgy, the priest sacrifices a God to himself and
distributes his flesh to be eaten by his worshippers. The Divine Son is offered to the Father as "a pure victim, a
spotless victim, a holy victim,"1 and his holy body and
blood become the food of the faithful.
The teaching of the church is explicit on this point. The body eaten is the same as that once born
of a virgin and now seated at the right hand of the Father
["spookdom"!]; the sacrifice of the mass is one and the same as that
of the cross, and is so grateful and acceptable to God that it is a suitable
return for all his benefits, will expiate sin, and turn the wrath of the
offended Deity "from the severity of a just vengeance to the exercise of
benignant clemency."2'
["23"]. [footnote] "1The
Missal: Canon of the
Mass." ["23"]. 'As men became softer and more
fastidious, substitutes were found for the raw flesh and blood which were
originally elements of their communion.
Thus the sacred Ivy, regarded as an impersonation of Dionysus was
substituted for his flesh,87 and wine for his blood.88 The connection of wine and blood was
as familiar to antiquity as it is to us through the eucharist. It was often an offering to the gods and a
means of communion with them.89
The blood was the life; who imbibed it absorbed the spirit. A Greek word for soul,…[Greek word],
is etymologically fumus, the hot "steam" from blood.90 The Romans sealed their oaths by drinking
a mixture of wine and blood called asseratum.91 Among the Hebrews, too, wine was
called the "blood of the grape."92 Offerings of bread and wine were made to Asklepios,
the god of healing.93 It must be remembered that this
tradition of the eaten god was kept up by the mysteries among the lower strata
of society only. In the world of
art and letters best known to us there prevailed an enlightened
skepticism. Not many wise, not many
noble, were called to salvation by the blood of Bacchus or of Attis. The expressed opinion of a Roman philosopher
[Cicero] as to the Real Presence is very much what the expressed
opinion of a modern scientist is now: 617 ________________________________________________________________ "When
we call corn Ceres and wine Bacchus," says Cicero,94
"we use a common figure of speech; but do you imagine that anybody is
so insane as to believe that the thing he feeds on is god?" The answer then, as now, was in the
affirmative.' [end of Chapter I.]
[41-42]. "II.
PAUL AND HIS SYMMYSTAE [colleagues in the priesthood (A Latin Dict.)]" ["43"] 'What is Paul's understanding
of the words "This is my body?" It is certain that he took them literally. The "hoc est corpus meum"
[Latin: "this is my body"]
which has been decisive for the Catholic church, and which, Luther declared,
was "too strong" for him, meant exactly what it said. The reason why many Protestants have
maintained the contrary is simply that they believed it impossible
themselves. Of course it is
impossible—but that does not mean that Paul did not believe it. Kirsopp Lake [1872 – 1946] puts the
point aptly: "Much of the
controversy between Catholic and Protestant theologians has found its center in
the doctrine of the eucharist, and the latter have appealed to primitive
Christianity to support their views.
From their point of view the appeal fails; the Catholic doctrine is
much more nearly primitive than the Protestant. But the Catholic advocate in winning his case has proved
still more: the doctrine which he
defends is not only primitive but pre-Christian."62 And again:
"It is necessary to insist that the Catholic is much nearer to
early Christianity than the Protestant."63' [53]. 'In
classical antiquity symbol and reality were not separated as we separate them.73 To
Greek philosophy words were things, and that was its greatest weakness. So the personification of bread, wine, war
and love as Ceres, Bacchus, Mars and Venus seems to us mere figure of speech,
but to the ancients implied a good deal more.
Even so a child will now say of her doll "This is my
baby," and if you insist that it is not her baby, but only the
symbol of one, will not be convinced, and will even begin to cry [and
Christians "cry"] if you press the point. So to the primitive Christian the breed
[bread] and wine simply were the body and blood of his Savior; words
could not make it plainer to him than that.
They just were.' [55-56]. 'Clement of Rome [Catholic
tradition: fourth pope] in the first
century calls the communion an offering and a sacrifice.127 By making it the "liturgy" par
excellence of the church, he puts it in the place of the highest form of
divine worship which it has ever since held in the Roman church. 618 ________________________________________________________________ Ignatius [c.
35 – c. 107 [?]] also thinks of it as a sacrifice, and as charged with a
magical quality for keeping both body and soul deathless. "The bread," says he, "is
the medicine of immortality, the antidote preserving us that we should not die,
but live forever in Jesus Christ."128 This is but a literal interpretation of
John's teaching by a younger contemporary.
Ignatius also states plainly that the body is the same as that
which suffered on the cross.129'
[71]. "III.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION"
["78"] 'Ambrose was the father of
transubstantiation in the West….the doctrine of conversion, in exactly the
style later prevalent. The change,
according to him, is caused by the words "this is my body."11 But in that very age there were
great Fathers of the church who endeavored to give a more spiritual and
therefore a more symbolic meaning to the mode of the real presence. In this as in so many other things Jerome
and Augustine were the precursors of the Reformation. Their language dimly, and not without
ambiguity, sowed the seeds which ripened more than a millennium later. Jerome speaks of the bread as
"showing forth the body of the Saviour," and as "a memorial of
redemption."12 Augustine
[354 – 430] went deeper, to the very foundations of religion. Like Luther [1483 – 1546] he believed
that faith was the all-important element in salvation, and thus he necessarily
relegated ceremonies to a somewhat subordinate position. "Crede et manducasti "13
is his justly famous application of this principle to the Lord's Supper
["Lord's Supper. A Title
for the Holy Communion, now used esp. among Protestants. It is taken from I Cor. 11: 20" [? I Cor. 11:20: "When you come together, it is not really to eat the
Lord's supper." (New Ox.
Annotated Bible, c2001, page "284 New Testament")]. Faith, therefore, is essential; not the
actual eating of the bread and wine, for these are but "signs of the body
and blood," and the whole rite but "a sacrament of commemoration of
Christ's sacrifice."14
This is all implied in his definition of sacrament, later universally
adopted, as the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. And yet he was not always consistent in his
language. Like Luther later he [Augustine]
at times felt the necessity of maintaining a double, and really
self-contradictory, thesis, that both faith and the bread were necessary;
that Christ was "offered up once for all in his own person, and yet
was offered up daily in the sacrament among the congregations."15' [80, 81-82]. 619 ________________________________________________________________ "It
is remarkable that Aquinas has so little to say about the sacrifice, and, on
the whole, conceives it so differently from Chrysostom. The reason is to be found in the change of
emphasis in religion between the fourth and the thirteenth century." [84]. "A brief résumé of official
Catholic dogma gives but a faint picture of the importance of the mass
throughout the Middle Ages.35 It was the focus of religion and of life. It was a main factor in determining the
constitution of the church. Control of
the sacraments as the necessary means of salvation made possible the interdict
and the crusades, the humiliation of Henry IV at Canossa and the sway of
Innocent III. Penance and
excommunication were realities; the priest could open the gates of heaven
and consign to hell." [87]. 'As a magic talisman the
eucharist became a favorite means of detecting crime.62 Rudolph Glaber, for example, tells of
a criminal in clerical dress who swallowed the eucharist, but who, when
it immediately emerged from his navel, confessed. Pope Gregory VII cleared himself of the charge of simony
in 1707 by taking the eucharist.68 But with all its machinery of
heaven and hell, with all its apparatus of myth, magic and miracle, the church
was not able to produce reverence for the most awful of her mysteries. Swearing by the mass and thus "tearing
the holy body of God omnipotent" was common in the age of faith.64 Such proverbial phrases as "sacrificing
the tail of the host," meaning to complete a job, surely show little
respect.65 Nay, the holy drug of immortality [sacramental wine] became a favorite vehicle for shortening the
life of enemies by poison. Thus, among many examples, the Emperor Henry VII is said to
have been murdered in 1313.66 On the art and literature of the
later Middle Ages the doctrine of the eucharist had a powerful influence. The Gothic cathedrals were consciously built
around the Lord's Table. The missals
bloomed with many a rare flower of illuminated letter and headpiece. One of the greatest paintings of the
Renaissance, Raphael's Debate on the Sacrament, represents the supreme
mystery of the Catholic faith, the Triune God hovering above the sacred
bread.67 And the
paintings of the Last Supper ["Last Supper. The final meal of Christ with His Apostles
on the night before the Crucifixion.
The institution of the *Eucharist is seen in the symbolic acts
which He performed with the bread and wine at this meal." (Ox. Dict. C.C.,
1997, 953)] are countless. 620 ________________________________________________________________ The popular literature of
the later Middle Ages is full of stories of Jesus appearing in the host….' [91-92]. 'IV.
CONSUBSTANTIATION But though the church might, and
did, delay the progress of enlightenment, she was fortunately unable to stop it
altogether. As in other dogmas,
so in this of the God made bread, there were always doubters. Skepticism in Italy went so far that even
the priests who celebrated mass would say, instead of "this is my
body," "bread thou art and bread thou shalt remain [this
makes me (LS) laugh! Also, concerns
about defecation of the host]."1 ["95"]. [footnote] "1Luther
says he heard this at Rome in 1510; Sermon of April 19, 1538, Buchwald,
338." ["95"]. "V.
LUTHER"
["99"] 'It
has often been recognized that the Reformation was in point of dogma a
singularly conservative movement.6 Even Harnack admits that the one trenchant reform Luther
did make in ecclesiastical doctrine, that of the sacramental system, was not
due to his special enlightenment, but to "his inner experience that where
grace does not endow the soul with God, the sacraments are an illusion."7 But when a doctrine, for which no
unmistakable proof could be found in Scripture, appeared to him not only
illogical, but absolutely incomprehensible, and immoral as well, he naturally
rejected it. Thus his early opposition
to the sacrifice of the mass was not due to any philosophical speculation about
its intrinsic impossibility, but to the fact that conditions had changed so
much since the doctrine grew up that it became almost incomprehensible to
him. The Catholic church,
indeed, was so deeply committed to the dogma that it kept on repeating the
words asserting it, long after their original import had been totally
forgotten. The change from the time of Paul,
whose language and thought were moulded by the Mysteries, or of Chrysostom
with his "priest reddened with the blood of the immolated Christ," to
that of Aquinas and Luther, was immense.' [100-102]. 621 ________________________________________________________________ 'Luther's
doctrine of the real presence. This,
like most of his dogmas, was deeply rooted in his own [and common to
mankind] subjective need. 'The preface to this work, and
letters of the same period, show that Luther was pleased with the steps
taken at Wittenberg, in their earlier stages, both to abolish private
masses54 and to institute a simple communion service.55 When, however, in a manner presently to be
described, Luther saw that the reforms at Wittenberg went
considerably beyond his own views, he was both alarmed at the outbreak of
independent and subjective religion and nettled that others seemed to be
wresting the leadership from him.
Returning, therefore, from the Wartburg in March, 1522, he [Luther]
abolished the communion service started by Carlstadt and Melanchthon, and
reintroduced the mass with almost all the old forms. As Carlstadt had objected to the word
"mass," Luther said he would use it for that very reason. Forgetting the anathemas he had
launched against those who added to Scripture by calling the host a sacrifice,
he says that now, "to spite the mob-spirits," he will "dub the
sacrament anew a sacrifice, not that I hold it for a sacrifice, but that the
devil, who is the god of this mob-spirit, may beware of me." In like manner he reinstated the elevation
of the host, remarking that both the command to elevate, by the pope, and the
prohibition to do so, by Carlstadt, were infringements of Christian
liberty.56 He was in a sad
dilemma, for he wished to give it up to "go against the papists," and
to retain it "to go against and annoy the devil." He finally decided that the latter was the
more important duty, for, says he, "I would not then, nor will I now, allow
the devil to teach me anything in my church." He even says that if necessary he will have the host elevated
three, seven or ten times.57
He also defended the use of Latin in the service by a questionable
reference to I Cor. xiv. 26 ff.58'
"On the other side Luther
came out with a treatise on Private Masses and Parsons' Ordination.84 It is couched in the form of a dialogue with
the devil, a method chosen, as he explains to a friend, in order to bring home
to the papists the full horror of their position, when, at the moment of death,
they will 622 ________________________________________________________________ themselves
[be?] unable to answer the accusations of the Adversary.85 The realism of the picture is, however,
extraordinary; Luther describes how, on the "VI.
CARLSTADT"
["122"] 'Against
Carlstadt's claim that I Cor. x. 16 did not refer to communion at all, Luther
calls it "a very thunderbolt on the head of Dr. Carlstadt and all
his horde, and a lively medicine for the heart tempted about the
sacrament." He advances the
theory, borrowed from Scotus, of the ubiquity of Christ's body. The tone of the pamphlet is of the
rudest. Carlstadt is called
"a murderer of souls and a spirit of sin." Other phrases are:
"the devil rides him;" "the ass's head will master
Greek;" "he tattles and tittles, cackles and cuckles;" he has
"a lying, evil spirit," "a deceitful, clandestine devil, who
crawls into corners to do damage and spread poison."' [131]. "IX.
BUCER"
["167"] "Sensitive as Luther was to
the slightest shade of difference from his own opinion, the utter
obsequiousness of the South German clergy, who prostrated their private
judgment before his infallible decisions, finally convinced him that it would
be safe to sign an agreement with them.
A conference was therefore arranged at Wittenberg, and took place
at the Black Cloister, during the days May 21-29, 1536. The discussion was largely on the question
of whether the unworthy received the Lord's body and blood, for this was
considered the final test of the real presence. Luther maintained that as the body was truly there, it made no
difference who ate it; Judas might partake as well as Peter. The Zwinglian doctrine had been that, as
the participation was an act of faith, only believers might enjoy true
communion with their Saviour. Bucer,
at this conference, made one of those fine distinctions in which he was an
adept. Those, said he, with a glance at
the Catholics, who perverted the institution of Christ, did not partake of the body
and blood, but those in a lesser degree of unworthiness might receive it.35" [174-175]. 623 ________________________________________________________________ "XI.
CALVIN"
["190"] 'It was Farel, the first
evangelist of French Switzerland, who secured the abolition of the mass at
Aigle, Ollon and Bex in 1528.28
In 1530 he tore the host from the priest's hands at Valangin, and
said to the people, "This is not the God whom you must worship; he is
above in heaven, in the majesty of the Father."29 Not many years after this the Reformation
began to make headway in France. On
the night of October 17-18, 1534, Antony de Marcourt posted throughout Paris a
number of placards attacking the mass.
He proclaimed that Christ's sacrifice could not be repeated and that the
wretched mass had plunged the world into idolatry. The papists, said he, were not afraid to say that rats,
spiders and vermin partook of the Lord's body if they ate a bit of the bread,
as is written in their missals in the twenty-second rubric. Though he admitted the real presence
he denied transubstantiation.30' [197]. 'All approaches of the Lutherans
were rebuffed. In June, 1550, Calvin
was so exasperated that he called the Lutherans "ministers of Satan"
and "professed enemies of God," seeking to bring in
adulterine rights and vitiate the pure worship of God.39 Bullinger also wrote Calvin
that the "Lutherans were an obstinate and pernicious race of men, without
judgment or humanity, persecuting us more violently than the papists
themselves."40 Blaurer
informed Bullinger that the Saxons said they would rather fight with the
Calvinists than with the Turks.41
In the matter of the sacrament said Schenck, the error of the
papists is rather to be borne than that of the Saxons.42 It was a moot question whether a
Calvanist [Calvinist] could receive the sacrament at all from a
Lutheran.43' [199]. 'When the Calvinists came to
power in Hesse in 1600 they abolished the wafers used in communion because the people believed them ["THE WAFERS"] the body of Christ and substituted
for them heavy, hard round crackers, baked from the coarsest flour, to convince
the people that they had "bread, bread, and nothing but bread." "The cursed wafers," said they,
"are a birth of the Roman Antichrist," and one of them derived the
word host from the Latin os porci, pig's mouth.45 What was the result of this long,
long battle of words, of all these discussions and arguments, of all this
hatred and bigotry centering around the Lord's table? The answer must be that it did not,
directly, advance the cause of truth one whit.
Sturm and Lazarus in 1600 were no nearer squaring the circle 624 ________________________________________________________________ than
were Luther and Carlstadt in 1524.
The more rational spirits, Carlstadt, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius, had
been crushed and were anathematized by Lutherans and Calvanists [Calvinists]
alike. As in the Roman Church,
so in the Protestant, purely internal forces consistently made for reaction,
ecclesiasticism, intolerance, and superstition. Protestantism became,
as Dr. McGiffert46 has
repeated after Harnack, "as
blighting to intellectual growth as Roman Catholicism at its worst." The internecine wars of the
Protestants weakened them as the Thirty Years war weakened Germany. The benefit accrued partly to Catholicism,
partly to skepticism. The former
foe was the only one they envisaged.
Thus as early as 1530, Queen Margaret of Navarre wrote to the
Strassburg clergy that the schism caused great scandal in France.47 Twelve years later the Protestants of
Italy wrote Luther: "There is
a second thing which threatens the daily destruction of our churches. It is that question about the Lord's
Supper, which first arose in Germany and was thence carried to us. Alas, how many commotions it has
excited! How many discussions it has
caused! How much offense it has given
to the weak! What damage it has done to
the Church of God! What an impediment
is it to the spreading abroad of Christ's glory[nightmare!]."48' [200-201] [end of Chapter XI.]. "XIII.
THE LAST PHASE"
["212"] 'The Socinians,
in the Racovian Catechism of 1609, expressly rejected the Catholic,
Lutheran, and Calvinistic doctrines of the eucharist, and called the
rite merely symbolic and memorial. The Quakers,
in order to put the whole emphasis on faith, abolished the rite
altogether. When Ralph Waldo Emerson
proposed to do the same, on the ground that the material act was now a
positive hindrance to piety, he found the Unitarians unable to follow
him, and therefore gave up the ministry.12 But though they still celebrate the Supper, the Unitarians demand
no article of faith on this or any other subject from their adherents, and
other churches, such as the Baptists and Congregationalists,13
seem to be completely silent on the question of the real presence, which is
doubtless answered in the negative by nearly all of their members.14 The Christian Scientists, under the
influence of the New England transcendalists [transcendentalists], use no bread
and wine in their communion, but teach:
"Our bread is truth. Our
cup is the cross."14a In churches of the Anglican
communion there is a large body of evangelical members who interpret the eucharist
symbolically….' [216]. 625 ________________________________________________________________ "….The
sacraments, it is said, express the great truths of the inner life in
outward form. The
error in this view, as Professor [Kirsopp] Lake [1872 –
1946] pointed out, lies in the limitation of such values [sacraments?] to a few
things; any experience in life might have such a value. More and more, the rationalist would add, men
are finding the needs of their inner life supplied, and their value-judgments
given, in poetry, in art, and in science, and less and less in the
repetition of outworn survivals from a primeval state." [end of Chapter XIII] [218] [end of text]. l l l l l 626 ________________________________________________________________ from: Encyclopedia of World Biography, Second Edition, [Volume] 13, Gale, c1998. 'George Santayana George
Santayana (1863 – 1952), Spanish and
American philosopher, developed a personal form of critical realism that was
skeptical, materialistic, and humanistic. George Santayana was unique among
American and European philosophers during his long lifetime. While others strove to make philosophy
"scientific" and to apply philosophy and science to society, Santayana
proclaimed, "My philosophy neither is nor wishes to be
scientific." He rejected the
inherited genteel tradition in American thought as well as his contemporaries'
pragmatism, idealism, and positivism.
He openly disliked the liberal and democratic drift of Western
civilization. In his philosophy he
strove to combine philosophical materialism and a deep concern for spiritual values. A prolific writer with a graceful style, he
also published several volumes of poetry, and his most popular book was a
novel, The Last Puritan (1936).
He [Santayana] is singular among American philosophers for the
special flavor of his thought and for his treatment of religion and art.' [475-476]. 'His
Philosophy Santayana's true life was
intellectual. "My career
was not my life," he wrote.
"Mine has been a life of reflection." His philosophy reflected the diversity of
his own experience. Spanish Catholic
by cultural inheritance and personal inclination, Protestant American by
education and environment, disengaged by circumstances and temperament, he
regarded his philosophy as a synthesis of these traditions. It is not surprising that his philosophy is
full of ironies and ambiguities. At the
same time, he was consistent in his concerns, if not in his opinions, and in
the mood and tone of his philosophy.
His primary orientation was spiritual, although not in the conventional
sense, and his primary interest was moral, in the broadest sense. The philosophy of Santayana is
characterized by its skepticism, materialism, and humanism. His skepticism is evident throughout his
writings: "My matured conclusion
has been that no system is to be trusted, not even that of science in any
literal or pictorial sense; but all systems may be used and, up to a certain
point, trusted as symbols." His
materialism or naturalism was "the foundation for all further serious
opinions." Unlike that of so many 627 ________________________________________________________________ contemporaries,
Santayana's materialism depended not on science but on his own
experiences and observations, for which he found philosophical confirmation in
the works of Democritus, Lucretius, and Spinoza. In addition, in Greek ethics he found a
vindication of order and beauty in human institutions and ideas. His systematic reading and thought
culminated in the writing of his masterwork, The Life of Reason (5
vols., 1905-1906), which he intended as a critical history of the human
imagination. He developed his
philosophy further in Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923), which served
as an introduction to his philosophical consummation, Realms of Being (4
vols., 1927-1940).' [476]. '….Santayana was not a practicing Catholic
and did not believe in the existence of God. He [SANTAYANA]
considered religion a work of the
imagination [WHICH—OF
COURSE—IT IS!]: "Religion
is valid poetry infused into common life." The truth of religion was irrelevant, for all religions were
imaginative, poetic interpretations of experience and ideals, not descriptions
of existing things. The value of
religion was moral, as was the value of art. Beauty, to Santayana, was a
moral good. He valued the arts
precisely because they are illusory.
Like religion, he explained, genuine art expresses ideals that are
relevant to human conditions. "Of
all reason's embodiments," Santayana exulted, "art is…the most
splendid and complete." "This
is all my message," he wrote by way of summary, "that
morality and religion are expressions of human nature; that human nature is a
biological growth; and finally that spirit, fascinated and tortured, is
involved in the process, and asks to be saved."' [477]. _____ _____ _____ 628 ________________________________________________________________ from: The Idea of Christ in the Gospels, Or God
In Man, A Critical Essay by George Santayana, Scribner's Sons, 1946. "INSPIRATION" [3] 'Why have we not laughed from the
beginning at any rationalist or rationalizing "Life of Jesus"? Because neither the author nor the public
were really emancipated from the magic of Christian faith. They were Protestants or free-thinking
Catholics, and they retained unwittingly, if not avowedly, a substantial
residue of trust in inspiration, either in the literal and verbal infallibility
of the Bible, or in the amiable figure of Jesus, conversing with his
disciples or with Mary Magdalene or laying his hands on little
children's heads. Sensibility, which
would have been a virtue in them as literary critics, became the cause of an
enormous blunder of theirs as historians.
For a sympathetic humanist and unprejudiced man of letters, there is
no more reason for swearing by the letter of the Gospels than by that of Homer
or the Upanishads or the Koran. We
may prefer the spirit of one or another, but the moral beauty in them all is
equally natural, equally human; and nothing but custom or a mystical conversion
can lead us to regard the inspiration in one case only as miraculous, and a
revealed mirror of the exact truth.'
[5]. "The Resurrection and
Ascension of Christ, as related in the New Testament, thus leave us still full
of expectation. Far from being the
end, they announce fresh trials and make new promises. They
["RESURRECTION AND
ASCENSION OF CHRIST"] do not open paradise to us, but, on the contrary,
establish the Church militant: on the
whole not a pleasing prospect.
The interval was at first expected to be short, and the spirit of that
expectation survives in the individual Christian, in as much as however long
the troubles of this world may last for mankind, for each man and woman they
are soon over. Partly for that
reason, and partly by a cheerful anticipation of that glorious liberty of soul
which the Passion of Christ has made possible for us in heaven, Easter
and the spirit of Easter seem, in some parts of Christendom, the
crown of the ecclesiastical year. It is
indeed, not by accident, the season of rejuvenation; and people who meet in the
street cry to one another, Christ is arisen; to which the
response is, Alleluia. 629 ________________________________________________________________ By
a genial fiction people imagine that the new year will be freer and happier
than the last; that life henceforth will be mystically clear and beautiful. The Kingdom
of Heaven, they say to themselves anew, is at hand. The Easter sunshine and the peal
of bells thus come to promise to the Christian the satisfaction of a sentiment perennial in the human mind: nostalgia for paradise…."
[166-167]. _____
_____ _____ 630 ________________________________________________________________ from: George Santayana [1863 – 1952], a biography, John McCormick,
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1987. 'INTRODUCTION The
book in hand is the result of four decades of acquaintance with Santayana's
writing, and of bewilderment that so
moving and powerful a figure, justifiably famous in his own day, should have
been so unjustifiably neglected in ours.
That neglect strangely accompanies a growing consensus that Santayana
was indeed a great man, yet only a few recent scholars have bothered to
read his philosophical work. His verse
is known only in a half-dozen anthologized sonnets; The Last Puritan,
his extraordinary novel, is unavailable as of 1985 and has been so for years;
his literary criticism, his political and sociological works, like his general
essays, which are among the finest in English, are ignored. Once known for his charming, if veiled,
memoirs, now his name is attached only to an epigram bout history become
a journalists' cliché ['"Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it." Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense,
Scribner's, 1905, page 284' (from:
www:iupui.edu/~santedit)]. Over the course of his
eighty-nine years, Santayana had three distinguishable and distinguished
careers. His first, as Professor
of Philosophy at Harvard, ended with his resignation and move to Europe at
age forty-nine. His second
career ran from 1912 to World War II, when his voluminous publication of those
years came to a forced halt because of his residence in Italy. His third career began with his
rediscovery in Rome in 1944-45 by numerous Allied soldiers and journalists,
together with the simultaneous appearance of his memoirs, Persons and Places. Continental readers recognized in
Santayana a more or less familiar spirit.
Jacques Duron, for example, called him one of the most important and
best writers of his epoch, comparing him in philosophy to Montaigne and
Alain (Émile Chartier), and in the novel to André Maurois. If only for his hostility to empiricism,
however, American and British academic philosophers were never at ease with Santayana's
thought. It was skeptical, original,
comprehensive, and so beautifully written as to seem mere virtuoso work. He refused to argue, and argument is the
staff of the life of academic philosophy.
For his part, Santayana found most conventional philosophy
circular and tautological, "proving" only what it set out to prove
and having little to do with anything that mattered. The academy itself became odious to him and he left it. By the 1930s, when the world both in and
beyond the academy had become politically engaged, Santayana remained
detached. To followers of the dominant
movements of his 631 ________________________________________________________________ lifetime,
whether romantic metaphysicians, pragmatists, positivists, phenomenologists,
Marxists, or symbolic logicians, the reach of Santayana's mind seemed
threatening, and his detachment either frivolous or proof of sympathy to
fascism. For a generation, roughly from
1950 to 1980, there seemed to be a conspiracy to forget Santayana. At one level, the Dictionary of
Biographical Quotations (1978) contained wisdom ranging from such as
Edmund Burke, to Clark Gable, Charles Ives, Marilyn Monroe, Hannah More, and Al
Capone, but not a word of Santayana's, the master of epigram. At another level, that period saw the
appearance of numerous compendiums and commentaries on history, social thought,
and philosophy from the minds of some intensely minor masters (as well as from
some genuine authorities), but neither breed made any reference to Santayana,
who may well come to be seen for what he was, the master of them all. Between 1959 and 1966, Professor Sidney
Hook edited the proceedings of six symposia in which continental, British,
and U.S. scholars presented 175 papers, most of which were on topics that Santayana
had treated at one time or another. No
reference was made to him [Santayana] or to his works.1 Such neglect is a scandal, but one for which
Santayana was himself partly responsible, thanks to his lifelong refusal
to leap into the philosophical pachanga ["lively party";
"binge" (Collins Dict., 2002)]. I have not written simply to
correct a wrong or to place Santayana historically. My first and enduring motives were delight
in his character and in his eloquence, agreement with his naturalistic
philosophy, and joy at the prospect of a man of his stature who refused to puff
himself and forbade others to pound the Santayana drum. Some philosophers can bring a smile, William
James and Ludwig Wittgenstein among them. Some, like Nietzsche, terrify, although not for the
reasons he thought he was terrifying.
Only Santayana can make us laugh aloud. Insofar as a biographer can determine, he was a happy man, and
his happiness was contagious. Is
skepticism nevertheless made him seem chilling to the fervent, and his range of
mind and of subject caused him to seem to others superficial, elusive, or
merely iconoclastic. He was not elusive
but fastidious, one whose distinctions were subtle but wonderfully available,
and not only to specialists. Santayana cannot be summarized
briefly, and those who have made the attempt have come to grief. In a word unfairly tinged with ideology, Santayana
was "authentic," remarkably whole in a time of bits,
pieces, and particles, utterly honest and serene. As philosophy returns to such matters as ethics (which Bertrand
Russell said does not really belong to the province of philosophy), and as
a new generation looks to comparative religion, to all manner of terrestrial
and extraterrestrial experience for its own sources of authenticity, 632 ________________________________________________________________ Santayana's writing may come to be seen in its proper
perspective. It is not a relic of the
recent past, but a system without mysticism, based in nature, and capable of
accounting for the human and animal spirit.
In brief, we need Santayana, badly. I do not apologize for extensive
quotation. To paraphrase Santayana
is to butcher him. He wrote for a wide
public, clearly, logically, without behaving like a learned clown, but in his
own key, ironic, serious, amusing. If
my book leads the reader to Santayana's writing, I shall have
succeeded. I shall have failed if, as Santayana
put it to a correspondent, quoting Spinoza: "Peter's idea of Paul expresses the nature of Paul less than
it expresses the nature of Peter."2 Princeton, New Jersey July 1985' [xiii-xv]. "27 IN THE COURSE OF NATURE" [386] "After a month at the Danieli
in Venice, he [Santayana] moved to the Grande Albergo in Rome for a
year, and on October 14, 1941, he went to the Clinica della Piccola Compagna di
Maria, known familiarly as the Blue Nuns, for their habit, in whose care
he would remain until his death."
[395]. "33 DOMINATIONS, POWERS, AND UNOFFICIAL PUPILS" [483] 'Santayana
mentioned the "demented" letters he had received from Ezra Pound,
and he [Santayana] spoke of death, saying, "My life is my only immortality."34' [492]. "34 ALL TO THE FURROW, NOTHING TO THE GRAVE" [497] 'By Cory's account, two days
before Santayana's death, when asked if he were suffering, he answered, "Yes,
my friend, But my anguish is entirely physical; there are no moral difficulties
whatsoever.'"28 On
Friday, September 26, Santayana's suffering had exceeded by far Dr.
Sabatucci's prescribed anodyne. 633 ________________________________________________________________ The
dying man had neither eaten food nor taken liquid for days. Whether by intention or oversight, Sabatucci
prescribed a heavier than usual dose of morphia, so potent that the young
nursing sister on duty did not want to give Santayana the
injection. Cory said to the sister,
"'You put the needle in; I'll pull the trigger.'" The deed was done, and without drama
Santayana died between ten and eleven o'clock in the night.29 There had been no Extreme Unction and no
deathbed conversion. Cory's
act was not only compassionate, but also, given the times and the place, brave. In his will, Santayana had not
specified where he wished to be buried.
When Cory raised the matter with him in 1951, he was firm about not
wanting his remains to be sent to the United States, irrespective of
anything the Sturgis family might expect. Cory suggested the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, but Santayana
demurred, saying, "That would be unfair to all my Catholic friends, and
while I have always loved Shelley and Keats, I have no desire to
be permanently next to them."30 Since he was a Spanish subject, the consulate at Rome sequestered
his personal effects and relieved Cory of the difficult task of finding
"neutral" burial ground for the remains of an adamant atheist. On Tuesday, September 30, in intermittent
rain and in the presence of Daniel and Margaret Cory, two Spanish officials,
and three casual friends, Santayana's body was placed in the tomb
reserved for the Spanish in the huge Campo Verano Cemetery, and there
his body remains, in the "Panteon de la Obra Pia [Obra Pia: (complex) ecclesiastical institution in
Rome] Espanola." No
religious ceremony took place.31 Cory read stanzas from "The Poet's Testament," a
poem which Santayana had written as a final affirmation of naturalism, of his
ultimate return to the earth. The
first (and best) stanza is: I give back to the earth what
the earth gave, All to the furrow, nothing to the
grave The candle's out, the spirit's vigil
spent; Sight may not follow where the
vision went.32 Poetic
tributes came from several hands, some distinguished: Jorge Guillén [1893 – 1984] republished his fine
translation of Sonnet Fifty, "Though utter death should swallow up
my hope," inscribing it "A la memoria de don Jorge Ruiz
de Santayana." He [Jorge
Guillén] also wrote "Huésped de Hotel,"
("Hotel Guest"), all the more a tribute for its Spanish toughness,
its acceptance of the phenomenon of Santayana: 634 ________________________________________________________________ I Among strangers who do not know him, An old bachelor almost always alone Lives—unconvivial—among foreigners, With as little company as possible. If fortunate financially, the
perfect artist. II In his anonymity a master of
monologue, Precise thought, frustrated love, Independent in method, seriously
skeptical, Guest of a star pointed toward
nothingness. III He looks to matter for his faith, And Spanish by birth, English by
language, In the solitude of his eminence Untrammeled, he is aware of the lay
world Without gods. Truth gives him serenity.33'
[504-505]. _____
_____ _____ 635 ________________________________________________________________ from: Persons and Places, Fragments of
Autobiography, George Santayana, edited by William G. Holzberger and Herman J.
Saatkamp, Jr., with an Introduction by Richard C. Lyon, Critical Edition, c1986. "XXV A Change of Heart" ["417"] [[margin]
"My attachment to Catholicism always poetical."] "I
had never practiced my religion [Catholicism], or thought of it as a
means of getting to heaven or avoiding hell, things that never caused me the
least flutter. All that happened
was that I became accustomed to a different Weltanschauung, to another
system having the same rational function as religion: that of keeping me attentive to the lessons of life. Each religion, by the help of
more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method
of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its
destiny. A philosopher may
perfectly well cultivate more than one Weltanschauung ["world
view", etc.], if he has a vital philosophy of his own to qualify his
adoption of each, so as to render them complementary and not
contradictory. I had, and have, such a
vital philosophy; and the movement of my mind among various systems of belief
has tended merely to discover how far my vital philosophy could be expressed in
each of them. My variations therefore never
involved rejecting any old affection, but only correcting such absoluteness or
innocence as there may have been about it, and reducing it to its legitimate
function. So in 1990 I published
the result of the gradual transformation of my religious sentiments. Religion was poetry intervening in
life." [419-420]. [[margin]
"My gradual retirement from the world."] "That nevertheless, as a
sentiment, my eventual metanoia ["fundamental change of character"; "spiritual conversion or
awakening" (dictionary.com)] was sincere, may be seen in the slow
change that appeared in my way of living.
Old age contributed to it; on the other hand, I had larger means and
easier access to the great world, had I been in love with it. But I have ultimately become a sort of
hermit, not from fear or horror of mankind, but by sheer preference for peace
and obscurity. 636 ________________________________________________________________ Fortune
has become indifferent to me, except as fortune might allow me to despise
fortune and to live simply in some beautiful place. I have cut off all artificial society, reducing it to the limits
of sincere friendship or intellectual sympathy. Instead of collecting pictures and books, as I had a tendency to
do in the early 1890's, I have distributed my few possessions, eschewed
chattels of every kind, a fixed residence, servants, carriages, or anything
that would pin me down materially or engulf me in engagements. I have indulged rather freely at certain
times in good food and good drink; but I think the glamour of those pleasures
was due almost entirely to conviviality, that is to say, to a momentary
imitation of friendship. In themselves,
when I was alone, food and drink were never important to me. I was almost happier when I could be frugal,
as at my father's in Avila, in the Duval restaurants in Paris, in the teashops
in London, or now, where I write these words, under the drastic
restrictions of war, in the clinic of the Blue Sisters [also, Blue
Nuns] upon the Caelius. I am happy
in solitude and confinement, and the furious factions into which the world
is divided inspire hatred for none of them in my heart. [[margin]
"Sobering experiences in the year 1893: The end of youth."] It should be normal, at least
according to the ancients, for a philosopher to reach this moral settlement in
old age; but why did the idea and the need of it come upon me powerfully at the
age of thirty? There were various
reasons. For a poet and a lover of
youth the age of thirty is itself a ground for metanoia. Being a teacher had been forced upon me by
the necessity of somehow earning my living; but being a student was my
vocation, and I had been living among students, interesting myself in their
sports and their pleasures, and loving their quick and unprejudiced minds. Still this second vicarious adolescence
had a rift in it: my sympathy with
the young and theirs with me had limits that were growing narrower and
sharper. My young friends seemed to me
every year younger and younger, more and more standardized and generic. They could no longer be my friends, but only
boys at the school where I happened to be one of the masters. That chapter then had come to an
end: yet youth, in the world and in the
poet's eyes, is perpetual. The
platonic transition was therefore at once spontaneous and inevitable, from the
many to the one, from the existent but transitory to the ideal and eternal. [[margin]
"The death of Warwick Potter."] This transition may be called philosophic metanoia. Like the tragic catharsis, it turns disaster
into a kind of rapture, without those false comforts and delusions by which religious metanoia is often
cheapened. This philosophic insight
was now brought home to me by the unexpected death of Warwick Potter. Though seven years younger than I, he 637 ________________________________________________________________ had
been a real friend, and as I now felt, my last real friend. I have already mentioned that I was surprised
by the effect that the news of his death had upon me. Why did it move me so much?
Though he was a general favourite and a long procession of us walked
behind the bier at his funeral, there was after all nothing extraordinary about
him. The cause of my emotion
was in myself. I was brimming over
with the sense of parting, of being divided by fortune where at heart there was
no division. I found myself,
unwillingly and irreparably, separated from Spain, from England,
from Europe, from my youth and from my religion. It was not good simple Warwick alone
that inspired my verses about him. It
was the thought of everything that was escaping me: the Good in all the modes of it that I might have caught a
glimpse of and lost." [422-423]. "XXVII Travels" ["447"] [[margin]
"I renounce travel except in thought."] "I left Greece disappointed,
not with Greece but with myself. I
should have been young and adventurous, knowing the language well, both ancient
and modern, and traveling alone, with indefinite time before me…. [[margin]
"Impressions of St. Sophia."] I
took ship from the Piraeus for Constantinople. Galata, where the hotels are, was nothing; but I could walk
across the bridge, guided the first time, afterwards alone, to St. Sophia,
the other mosques, and the stray sights of the old city…. 638 ________________________________________________________________ [[margin]
"All roads lead to Rome."] After this, at once surfeited and
disappointed, I wanted to see nothing more, suppressed my love of new places,
and stopped only to rest at Buda-Pesth and Vienna. I meant to leave Vienna, at least,
for another occasion, when I might make a long stay, and see the Catholic, gay,
and courtly aspects of Germany, so utterly ignored in the view of Germany
obtainable from America: but I
have never been in Vienna again.
In fact, I have never again travelled for the sake of travelling. My orbit has become narrower and narrower,
dropping one loop-line after another:
somewhat as the ball at the gaming-table runs round in smaller and smaller
circles, more and more slowly, hesitates at the edge of this socket and that,
and finally flops down and settles comfortably into the predestined
["predestined", but, not singular] resting-place. And the predestined socket in my case was Rome: omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum,
says the _____
_____ _____ 639 ________________________________________________________________ from: Santayana: The Later Years A Portrait with Letters, by Daniel Cory [close friend of Santayana], George Braziller, New
York, c1963. 'Sixteen:
1951–52 [Santayana]
I prefer to be frankly poetical and say I am content to rest in the bosom of
Abraham.' [306] 'One afternoon, about a week before
he [Santayana] died, I found him awake and for a moment free from
pain. I urged him not to talk if it
would tire him, but he said there were a few things he would like to remind me
of while there was still time.3 …. He was speaking very slowly and
seemed to weigh each sentence. "Always bear in mind," Santayana
continued, "that my naturalism does not exclude religion; on the contrary
it allows for it. I mean that religion
is the inevitable reaction of the imagination when confronted by the
difficulties of a truculent world. It
is normally local and always mythical, and it is morally true. People really believe in their native myths."' [322-323]. "Epilogue" [328] 'Since his [Santayana] death
I [Daniel Cory] have returned to Rome nearly every year for a few
months. The "Eternal City" is
now as cosmopolitan as Paris, with English and American newspapers on sale the
day of their publication. Some of the
cafés and restaurants we used to frequent have disappeared, and it seems rather
affected to ride in a carrozza nowadays. But the opera we enjoyed on Sunday afternoons together is still
extremely popular, and the lofty cypresses that encircle the Piazza Siena are
unperturbed by the puffs of excitement from Hollywood. Out in the quiet Cimitero Monumentale
al Verano, the work on the "Tomb of the Spaniards" has
now been completed.1 ["1The
former Panteon de la Obra Pia Espanola in the same cemetery had
been damaged during the war."
[329]] My old friend [Santayana]
has been honored with a large separate stone on which is engraved quite
simply: 640 ________________________________________________________________ JORGE RUIZ DE SANTAYANA 16 – 12 – 1863 26 – 9 – 1952 Close by is an upright slab with a
design in bas-relief of wings and hands aspiring upward, and inscribed below
is a quotation in Spanish from one of his books: Cristo ha hecho possible para
nosotros La gloriosa libertad del alma en el
cielo. [my (LS) literal translation: Christ has made possible for us The glorious liberty of the soul
in heaven] It is rumored that some visitors
to the tomb have objected that this passage has been extracted from its context
and conveys a misleading impression of Santayana's official tenets. I realize that it is embedded in an
impartial exposition of the Christian concept of the Resurrection. But would Santayana have been shocked
[my
guess: Santayana would not have
approved. It is a Christian message,
taken out of Santayana's context, and reflecting (the Christian?) Daniel Cory] if
some pious Spanish widow, bent on laying a few flowers above the vault where
her husband was also interred, had been "misled" ["'misled"'
how? Because Santayana was an
"atheist"? Here, I find
Daniel Cory, annoying (what else?)] in
reading on a nearby memorial slab of "that glorious liberty of soul
which the Passion of Christ has made possible for us in Heaven"?2 ["2
The Idea of Christ in the Gospels, Part First, Chapter II,
"The Resurrection," p. 167."
[330]] 641 ________________________________________________________________ The
initiated know that "heaven"
for Santayana was only an imaginary extension of the natural world, and
that Christ, in overcoming the embarrassments of a human career, had
demonstrated—like other masters of the "inner life"—how we may also
achieve a "glorious liberty of soul" here and now and apart from
whatever may be in store for us afterward.
If Santayana was right in believing that all sense experience and
language are symbolic, there is no necessity in this instance to wrangle
over levels of interpretation of an isolated sentence. In our more systematic efforts to describe a
primordial reality, he did not demur if sometimes we spoke of Nature _____
_____ _____ 642 ________________________________________________________________ from: George Santayana's America, Essays on
Literature and Culture, Collected and with an Introduction by James Ballowe, University of Illinois Press, 1967. '[Santayana]
wrote that religion expresses "destiny in moral dimensions, in
obviously mythical and poetical images…. Religions are the great fairy-tales of the
conscience."' [10]. _____ _____ _____ from: Selected Critical Writings of George
Santayana, Volume I [of two
volumes], edited by Norman Henfrey, Assistant Professor of English,
Laval University, Cambridge at the University Press, 1968. "INTRODUCTION" [1] "'Santayana',
said a friend, 'believes God does not exist, and that Mary is His Mother'"
[laughing! I see no problem with this. Consistent with the Christian genre of the
trinity, etc.] [elsewhere, reported to be apocryphal (more!, of the same theme
(bullshit!))] [23]. _____
_____ _____ 643 ________________________________________________________________ from: The
Wisdom of George Santayana, selected and edited by Ira D. Cardiff. The Citadel Press, c1964. "Introduction" [xiii]. '"In attempting to capture
the spirit of antiquity, he (Santayana) does not discuss the truth or falsehood
of any religious dogma; indeed he takes it for granted that none is literally
true. Religion, to him, is essentially
myth, which may be useful or harmful, noble or ignoble, beautiful or ugly, but
which is somewhat Philistine to regard as true or false."*' [xiv-xv]. [footnote]
"*Bertrand Russell"
[xv]. "Sources of Quotations (Following
each quotation will be found a letter and a number. The letter refers to the volume from which the quotation was
taken, as shown by the list below; the number refers to the page in that volume
where the passage quoted may be found.
There is no significance to the order of arrangement.)
["xx"]. 644 ________________________________________________________________ "Superstition There is nothing people will not
maintain when they are slaves to superstition; and candour and a sense of
justice are, in such a case, the first things lost.—A-56" [11]. "Spiritual tyrannies World's conventions Common men accept these spiritual
tyrannies, weak men repine at them, and great men break them down. But to defy the world is a serious business, and requires the greatest courage, even if the
defiance touch in the first place only the world's ideals. Most men's conscience, habits, and
opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continual comforting
assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them. To reverse this process, to consult one's
own experience and elicit one's own judgment, challenging those in vogue, seems
too often audacious and futile; but there are impetuous minds born to disregard
the chances against them, even to the extent of denying that they are
taking chances at all.—B-194"
[37]. "Creation of gods. Fear That fear first created the gods is
perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.—C-28"
[42]. "Israel Israel, like every other nation,
thought its traditions divine.—C-74" [47]. "Jews, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Illusions
of religion No civilized people [Jews] had ever had such pretensions before. They all recognized one another's religions,
if not as literally true (for some familiarity is needed to foster that
illusion), certainly as more or less sacred and significant. Had the Jews not rendered themselves
odious to mankind by this arrogance, and taught Christians and Moslems the same
fanaticism, the nature of religion would not have been falsified among us
and we would not now have so much to apologize for and to
retract.—C-77" [48]. 645 ________________________________________________________________ "Paganism in Catholicism Another phase of the same natural
religion is seen in frequent festivals, in the consecration of
buildings, ships, fields, labours, and seasons; in intercessions by the greater
dead for the living and by the living for the lesser dead—a perfect survival of
heroes and penates on the one hand and of pagan funeral rites and
commemorations on the other. Add Lent
with its carnival, ember-days, all saints' and all souls, Christmas with its
magi or its Saint Nicholas, Saint Agnes's and Saint Valentine's days with
their profane associations, a saint for finding lost objects and another for
prospering amourettes, since all great and tragic loves have their inevitable
patrons in Christ and the Virgin, in Mary Magdalene, and
in the mystics innumerable.
This, with what more could easily be rehearsed, makes a complete paganism within Christian tradition
[see christianism.com,
Links: Caricature by Max Beerbohm],
a paganism for which little basis can be found in the gospel, the mass, the
breviary, or the theologians.—C-102-103" [50]. "Protestantism, character of It is a part of Protestantism to be
austere, energetic, unwearied in some laborious task.—C-124 Negative phase of Protestantism Hence, in spite of a theoretic
optimism, disapproval and proscription play a large part in Protestant
sentiment.—C-124" [52]. "St. Augustine's effect upon Luther and
Calvin It was Saint Augustine, as we know,
who, in spite of his fervid Catholicism, was the favourite master of both
Luther and Calvin. They emphasized, however, his more fanatical
side, and this very predestinarian and absolutist doctrine which he had
prevailed on himself to accept.—C-171"
[54]. "Population
control The
passion for a large and permanent population in the universe is not obviously
rational.—E-93-94" [77]. 646 ________________________________________________________________ "Buddhism compared with Christianity Christianity
persecuted, tortured, and burned.
Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds
and ambitions. It sanctified, quite
like Mohammedanism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it
had looked only to peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it
should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding
God. These were rival baits to those
which the world fishes with, and were snapped at, when seen, with no less
avidity. Man, far from being freed from
his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and
more disappointing. Buddhism had
tried to quiet a sick world with anaesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it
with fire.—E-286" [87]. '"Ages of Faith". Thirteenth century The ages of faith, the age of
Christian unity, were such only superficially.
When all men are Christians only a small element can be Christian in
the average man. The thirteenth
century, for instance, is supposed to be the golden age of Catholicism; but
what seems to have filled it, if we may judge by the witness of Dante? Little but bitter conflicts, racial and
religious; faithless rebellions, both in states and in individuals, against the
Christian regimen; worldliness in the church, barbarism in the people, and a
dawning of all sorts of scientific and aesthetic passions, in themselves quite
pagan and contrary to the spirit of the gospel. Christendom at that time was by no means a kingdom of God on
earth; it was a conglomeration of incorrigible rascals, intellectually more or
less Christian.—G-36' [104]. "Italian Renaissance. Catholic tradition Similarly in Italy, during the
Renaissance, the Catholic tradition could not be banished from the intellect,
since there was nothing articulate [of custom] to take its place;
yet its hold on the heart was singularly relaxed. The consequence was that humorists could regale themselves with
the foibles of monks and of cardinals, with the credulity of fools, and the
bogus miracles of the saints; not intending to deny the theory of the church,
but caring for it so little at heart that they could find it infinitely amusing
that it should be contradicted in men's lives and that no harm should come of
it.—G-202" [121-122]. 647 ________________________________________________________________ "Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche Kant was a puritan; he revered the rule of right as
something immutable and holy, perhaps never obeyed in the world. Fichte was somewhat freer in his
Calvinism; the rule of right was the moving power in all of life and nature,
though it might have been betrayed by a doomed and self-seeking
generation. Hegel was a very
free and superior Lutheran; he saw that the divine will was necessarily and
continuously realised in this world, though we might not recognise the fact in
our petty moral judgments. Schopenhauer,
speaking again for this human judgment, revolted against the cruel optimism,
and was an indignant atheist; and finally, in Nietzsche, this atheism
became exultant; he thought it the part of a man to abet the movement of
things, however calamitous, in order to appropriate its wild force and be for a
moment the very crest of its wave.—H-25"
[126]. "Rational animal. Greeks Hardly anybody, except possibly the
Greeks at their best, has realised the sweetness and glory of being a rational
animal.—J-18" [144]. "Slavery in America America is all one prairie, swept by
a universal tornado. Although it has
always thought itself in an eminent sense the land of freedom, even when it was
covered with slaves, there is no country in which people live under more
overpowering compulsions.—J-209"
[148]. "Puritanism vs. purity It's a popular error to suppose that
Puritanism has anything to do with purity.
The old Puritans were legally strict, they were righteous, but they were
not particularly chaste.—K-8"
[149]. "Ministers People wouldn't become ministers
unless they had rather second-hand minds.—K-19" [149]. [See:
christianism.com, 64 ("Holy Clerks")]. 648 ________________________________________________________________ "Romanism, Protestantism and Anglican traditions compared Originally,
Christianity was partly poetry and partly delusion. The Roman Church clings to both parts
equally; Protestantism has kept the delusion and destroyed the poetry;
and only the Anglican tradition is capable of preserving the poetry, while
sweeping the delusion away.—K-475"
[156]. "War compared with football Moronic psychology When a private at first in the
ranks, and soon in various more responsible posts, he realized how exactly war
was like football. He remembered all the false reasons which
his mother and other high-minded people used to give us to justify that
game: that it was good for the health,
or for young men's morals, or for testing and strengthening character; whereas
he knew by experience that after the playing season every blackguard was as
much, or twice as much, a blackguard as before, every sneak a sneak and every
rake a rake. So now the same outsiders
apologized for this war, saying that poor Serbia had been outraged, or poor
Belgium invaded, or the Lusitania sunk; all of which might be grounds
for resentment. Yet the soldier feels
no resentment—except perhaps against his own officers—and has suffered no
wrong. He simply hears the bugle, as it
were for the chase; endures discipline, when once he is caught in the mesh,
because he can't help it; and fights keenly on occasion, because war is the
greatest excitement, the greatest adventure in human life. Just so, in little, football had been an
outlet for instinct, and a mock war. The
howling crowds were stirred vicariously by the same craving for rush and
rivalry, and were exactly like the public in time of war, cheering each its own
side. Oliver, in his secret mind,
perfectly perceived all those pathetic but normal necessities; and he could
acquiesce in them with a smile, because the physical man in him was engaged
healthily, and seemed to move in unison with the world. It was a comfort to run in harness, and
to wear blinkers, fatigue shutting out the irrelevant prospect on one side, and
public opinion shutting it off on the other.—K-541" [156-157]. "Soldier vs. hangman I am glad that our son has no
inclination to be a soldier. No career
displeases me more, and if I were a man it would repel me less to be a hangman
than a soldier, because the one is
obliged to put to death only 649 ________________________________________________________________ criminals
sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in
innocent blood at the bidding of some superior. Barbarous customs that I hope will disappear when there are no
Kings and no desire for conquest and when man has the world for his country and
all his fellow-beings for brothers. You
will say that I am dreaming. It may be
so. Adieu.—L-22" [159]. "Religion and philosophy Now I was aware, at first
instinctively and soon quite clearly on historical and psychological grounds,
that religion and all philosophy of that kind was invented.—L-85" [161].
[excepting "soon", describes my (LS) history]. "Catholicism Catholicism is the most human of
religions, if taken humanly: it is
paganism spiritually transformed and made [other] meta-physical.—L-91" [162]. "School time waste In
the best schools, almost all school time is wasted. Now and then something is learned that
sticks fast; for the rest the boys are merely given time to grow and are kept
from too much mischief.—L-154"
[164]. "German characteristics This joy in simplicity, this
nostalgia for childishness, in highly educated, rich and terribly virtuous
people surely is thoroughly German.—M-15"
[172]. "Catholicism. Whiskey Perhaps, too, being Irish was closer
to his inner man, and certainly more congruous with Catholicism and with
whiskey.—M-55" [172]. 650 ________________________________________________________________ "Laughter Now laughter, as I have come to
see in my old age, is the innocent youthful side of repentance, of disillusion,
of understanding.—M-109" "Absence of religion in Shakespeare If, therefore, we were
asked to select one moment of human civilisation that should survive to some
future age, or be transported to another planet to bear witness to the
inhabitants there of what we have been upon earth, we should probably choose
the works of Shakespeare. In
them we recognize the truest portrait and best memorial of man. Yet the archeologists of that future age, or
the cosmographers of that part of the heavens, after conscientious study of our
Shakesperian autobiography, would misconceive our life in one important
respect. They would hardly understand
that man had had a religion. There are, indeed, numerous
exclamations and invocations in Shakespeare, which we, who have other
means of information, know to be evidences of current religious ideas. Shakespeare adopts these, as he
adopts the rest of his vocabulary, from the society about him. But he [Shakespeare] seldom or
never gives them ["exclamations and invocations"] their
original value.—P-681. Oaths Oaths are the fossils of
piety.—P-682 Shakespeare's choice In all this depth of experience,
however, there is still wanting any religious image. The Sonnets are spiritual, but, with the doubtful exception of
the one quoted above, they are not Christian. And, of course, a poet
of Shakespeare's time could not have found any other mould than Christianity
for his religion. In our
day, with our wide and conscientious historical sympathies, it may be possible
for us to find in other rites and doctrines than those of our ancestors an
expression of some ultimate truth. But for
Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and
nothing. He [SHAKESPEARE] chose nothing; he chose 651 ________________________________________________________________ to
leave his heroes and himself in the presence of life and of death with no other
philosophy than that which the profane world can suggest and understand.— "Lucretius compared with St. Augustine My enthusiasm was largely dramatic; I
recited my Lucretius with as much gusto as my Saint Augustine; and gradually
Lucretius sank deeper and became more satisfying.—Q-24" [193]. "Immortality I
believe there is nothing immortal.—R-271" [203]. "Catholic church, its origin The whole body of Catholic doctrine
may have been contained in the oral teaching of Christ; or, on the other hand, a historical Jesus may not have existed at all, or
may have been one among many obscure Jewish revolutionists, the one who, by
accident, came afterward to be regarded as the initiator of a movement to which
all sorts of forces contributed, and with which he had really had nothing to
do. In either case the fact remains
which alone interests us here; that after three or four centuries of confused struggles,
an institution emerged which called itself the Catholic Church.—V-81-82" [230-231]. "Christ—a
product of the imagination Let not the reader fancy that in
Christianity everything was settled by records and traditions. The idea of Christ himself had to be constructed by
the imagination 652 ________________________________________________________________ in
response to moral demands, tradition giving only the barest external points
of attachment.—V-92" [232]. "Fourth century compared with the sixteenth
century What the Fathers did for the
Church in the fourth century, the Reformers did for themselves in the sixteenth,
and have continued to do on the occasion of their various appearances.—V-112" [234-235]. 'Character of the Gospels Many
a "Life of Jesus" has been composed in the effort to recast the
narratives of the four Gospels into one consecutive and credible history. For a
believer, if he were greatly inspired, such an understanding might be
legitimate; yet it would be hardly required, since the narratives, though
independent, fall together of themselves, in the pious mind, into a total and
impressive picture. The history of Christian
faith and of Christian art sufficiently proves it. But this presupposes an innocent state of mind that accepts
every detail, no matter how miraculous, with unhesitating joy, and is ready
sympathetically to piece out the blanks in the story, and to imagine ever
more vividly how everything must have happened. So ever orthodox preacher does in his glowing sermons, and every
devout soul in his meditations. If, however, the would-be
biographer of Jesus is a cool critic, with no religious assumptions, his
labours will be entirely wasted, because he has mistaken the character of his
texts. The Gospels are not historical works, but products of
inspiration. They
are summonses and prophecies, announcing the end of this world, or at least of
the present era, and prescribing the means by which individual souls may escape
destruction, and enter into a Kingdom of Heaven which is at hand. Essentially, then, the Gospels are
prophetic; they bring "glad tidings"; yet they are not written by the
prophets themselves, but gathered together a generation or two later from oral
tradition or from the inspirations of the Apostles and of anonymous believers
through whom the spirit had not ceased to speak: nor is it excluded that the Evangelists themselves should have had
original inspirations. In the Gospels,
the unction, the freshness, the life-like details in many 653 ________________________________________________________________ places
are so many proofs of their poetic source. The writer is telling of
something now standing before his eyes, of which his heart is full. He is not collecting reports, he is not
remembering events that he himself has ever witnessed. If he overhears those discourses, it is by
telepathy; if he sees those scenes, it is in a vision; if he knows those
truths, it is by faith.—W-3-4. Are the Gospels inspired? Gospels, Homer, Upanishads and Koran compared For a sympathetic humanist and
unprejudiced man of letters, there is no more reason for swearing by the letter
of the Gospels than by that of Homer or the Upanishads or the Koran. We may prefer the spirit of one or another,
but the moral beauty in them all is equally natural, equally human; and nothing
but custom or a mystical conversion can lead us to regard the inspiration in
one case only as miraculous, and a revealed mirror of the exact truth.—W-5 Inspiration What is inspiration? We see in
the Gospels that madmen were conceived to be possessed by devils; and
antiquity in general regarded originality or genius in mankind as something
infused by a magic spell, by the Muses, or by the spirit of some God; … Nevertheless, everybody knows…that the
wilder inspiration produced by opiates and toxic gases, as well as that of
spiritualist mediums, shows a strange mixture of dreamlike incoherence with
bits of supernatural perception and prophecy.—W-7' [238-239]. "Gospels and the church The Gospels that we possess
were…composed in the Church, by the Church, and for the Church.—W-14" [240]. "Evolution
of the Christ idea Preachers, prophets and
evangelists would conspire to put into the mouth of Christ whatever words their
inspiration thought to be worthy of him:
the more memorable and impressive of these words would be retained and
repeated; and the idea of Christ would grow and solidify in the minds of the
faithful under the control of the very faith that evoked it. —W-21 654 ________________________________________________________________ "Christ and Christianity The
idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.—W-42" [241]. "Origin
of myths and gods Expectation, memory, and dialogue
transcend themselves in still another manner.
The actual datum is a
fictitious object like a person in a novel; but it is taken for
evidence of a fact: and the credulous
intellect is launched upon a sea of conversations with its past, its future,
and an entire imagined society of gods and men.—W-241" [242]. "Unfit.
Proletariat There have always been beggars and
paupers in the world, because there is bound to be a margin of the unfit—too
bad or too good—to keep in step with any well-organized society; but that
the great body of mankind should sink into a proletariat has been an unhappy
effect of the monstrous growth of cities, made possible by the concentration of
trade and the multiplication of industries, mechanized and swelling into
monopolies.—Atlantic, Jan., 1949. (Is it possible there could be
too many people?—Ed.) Education A child educated only at school is
an uneducated child.—in "Why I Am Not a Marxist", Modern Monthly
9:77. Mis. 10" [259]. "God The Jews, says Spinoza, whenever
they think something, say God told them.—MH-3" [262]. 655 ________________________________________________________________ "Peace with Destiny Each religion, by the help of
more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some
method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with
its destiny.—MH-4" [262]. "Ever the Learner On, no: I had never wished to teach. I had nothing to teach. I wished only to learn, to be always the student, never the
professor. And with being eternally
a student went the idea of being free to move, to pass from one town and one
country to another, at least while enough youth and energy remained for me to
love exploration and to profit by it.—MH-98" [267]. "Christianity Christianity is a revealed and militant religion. It would die out at once if it were not
expressly inculcated. —DP-288" [279]. "Religion All the doctrines that have
flourished in the world about immortality
have hardly affected men's natural sentiment in the face of death, a
sentiment which those doctrines, if taken seriously, ought wholly to
reverse.—LE-50" [288]. "In spite of the
theologians, we know by instinct that in speaking of gods we are dealing in
myths and symbols.—LE-55"
[289]. "Materialism and Morals" [292] "So men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it
insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.—LE 278" [296]. l l l l l 656 ________________________________________________________________ from: De Tribus Impostoribus, A.D. 1230 [entirely backdated?]. The Three Impostors, Translated (with
Notes and Comments), From a French Manuscript of the Work Written in the Year 1716,
With a Dissertation on the Original Treatise, and A Bibliography of the Various
Editions, by Alcofribas Nasier, The Later.
Privately Printed for the Subscribers.
1904. [See: online].
[See: 666]. [Note:
this work is an amalgam, with contradictory opinions, etc.]. "TREATISE OF THE THREE IMPOSTORS.* CHAPTER I OF GOD I. I. However important it may be for all
men to know the Truth, very few, nevertheless, are acquainted with it, because
the majority are incapable of searching it themselves, or perhaps, do not wish
the trouble. Thus we must not be astonished
if the world is filled with vain and ridiculous opinions, and nothing is more
capable of making them current than ignorance, which is the sole source of the
false ideas that exist regarding the Divinity, the soul, and the spirit, and
all the errors depending thereon. The custom of being satisfied with
born prejudice has prevailed, and by following this custom, mankind agrees in
all things with persons interested in supporting stubbornly the opinions thus
received, and who would speak otherwise did they not fear to destroy
themselves. II. What renders the evil without
remedy, is, that after having established these silly ideas of God, they teach
the people to receive them without examination. They take great care to impress them with aversion for philosophers,
fearing that the Truth which they teach will alienate them. The errors in which the partisans of these
absurdities have been plunged, have thrived so well that it is dangerous to
combat them. It is too important for
these impostors that the people remain in this gross and culpable ignorance
than to allow them to be disabused.
Thus they are constrained to disguise the truth, or to be sacrificed to
the rage of false prophets and selfish souls. 657 ________________________________________________________________ III. If the people could comprehend the
abyss in which this ignorance casts them, they would doubtless throw off the
yoke of these venal minds, since it is impossible for Reason to act without
immediately discovering the Truth. It
is to prevent the good effects that would certainly follow, that they depict it
as a monster incapable of inspiring any good sentiment, and however we may
censure in general those who are not reasonable, we must nevertheless be
persuaded that Truth is quite perverted.
These enemies of Truth fall also into such perpetual contradictions that
it is difficult to perceive what their real pretensions are. In the meanwhile it is true that Common
Sense is the only rule that men should follow, and the world should not be
prevented from making use of it."
["38"-39]. "CHAPTER II. REASONS WHICH HAVE CAUSED MANKIND TO CREATE FOR THEMSELVES AN INVISIBLE BEING WHICH HAS BEEN COMMONLY CALLED GOD. I. Those who ignore physical causes
have a natural fear born of doubt.
Where there exists a power which to them is dark or unseen, from thence
comes a desire to pretend the existence of invisible Beings, that is to say
their own phantoms which they invoke in adversity, whom they praise in
prosperity, and of whom in the end they make Gods. And as the visions of men go to extremes, must we be astonished
if there are created an innumerable quantity of Divinities? It is the same perceptible fear of invisible
powers which has been the origin of Religions, that each forms to his
fashion. Many individuals to whom it
was important that mankind should possess such fancies, have not scrupled to
encourage mankind in such beliefs, and they have made it their law until they
have prevailed upon the people to blindly obey them by the fear of the future. II. The
Gods having thus been invented…." ["44"]. 658 ________________________________________________________________ "all final causes are but human fictions." [47]. "CHAPTER IV. WHAT THE WORD RELIGION SIGNIFIES, AND HOW AND WHY SUCH A GREAT NUMBER HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED IN THE WORLD. I. Before the word Religion was
introduced in the world mankind was only obliged to follow natural laws and to
conform to common sense. This
instinct alone was the tie by which men were united, and so very simple was
this bond of unity, that nothing among them was more rare than
dissensions. But when fear created a
suspicion that there were Gods, and invisible powers, they raised altars to
these imaginary beings, so that in putting off the yoke of Nature and Reason,
which are the sources of true life, they subjected themselves by vain
ceremonies and superstitious worship to frivolous phantoms of the imagination,
and that is whence arose this word Religion which makes so much noise in the
world…." ["56"]. "V. These causes of Religion, that is, Hope and Fear,
leaving out the passions, judgments and various resolutions of mankind, have
produced the great number of extravagant beliefs which have caused so much
evil, and the many revolutions which have convulsed the nations." [59]. "CHAPTER VIII. OF THE POLICY OF JESUS CHRIST."
["75"] "….there being no reputable scholar who would
offend by saying that the A [see footnote, 660] history of Jesus Christ is a fable, 659 ________________________________________________________________ and that his law is but a tissue of idle fancies that
ignorance has put in vogue and that interest preserves. VI. Nevertheless it is pretended that a
Religion which rests on such frail foundations is quite divine and
supernatural, as if we did not know that there were never persons more
convenient to give currency to the most absurd opinions than women and idiots. It is not strange, then, that
Jesus did not choose Philosophers and Scholars for his Apostles. He knew that his law and good sense were
diametrically opposed.A [see footnote, 661] That is the reason why he declaims in so
many places against the wise, and excludes them from his kingdom, where were to
be admitted the poor in spirit, the silly and the crazy." [78-79]. [footnote (see 659)] 'A.Vide
Boniface VIII. (1294) and Leo X. (1513)
Boniface said that men had the same souls as beasts, and that these human
and bestial souls lived no longer than each other. The Gospel also says that all other laws
teach several virtues and several lies; for example, a Trinity which is
false, the child-birth of a Virgin which is impossible, and the incarnation
and transubstantiation which are ridiculous. I do not believe, continued he, other than that the Virgin
was a she-ass, and her son the issue of a she-ass. Leo X. went one day to a
room where his treasures were kept, and exclaimed "we must admit that this fable of Jesus Christ
has been quite profitable to us.["] 660 ________________________________________________________________ [footnote (see 660)] A The
belief in the Christian doctrine is strange and wild to reason and human
judgment. It is contrary to all
Philosophy and discourse of Truth, as may be seen in all the articles of faith
which can neither be comprehended nor understood by human intellect, for they
appear impossible and quite strange.
Mankind, in order to believe and receive them, must control and subject
his reason, submitting his understanding to the obedience of the faith. St. Paul says that if man considers
and hears philosophy and measures things by the compass of Truth, he will
forsake all, and ridicule it as folly. That is the avowal made by Charron in a book
entitled "The Three Truths," page 180. Edition of Bordeaux, 1593.† † This
inserted note is written on the back of a portion of a letter addressed to
"Prince graaft by de Sepigel straat. A Amsterdam,"
postmarked "Ce 4e. Aout. 1746."' [78-79]. l l l l l 661 ________________________________________________________________ from: The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in
France 1769–1789, Robert Darnton,
Norton, c1995. 'Introduction The following list provides a guide to the literature that circulated
outside the law in France from 1769 to 1789. Although it does not cover
every book sold "under the cloak" (sous le manteau)
during those years, it offers a fairly complete view of the entire corpus of illegal
literature, 720 works in all; and it indicates the relative importance of
the demand for most of those books, the 457 ordered on a large scale by
booksellers who drew their stock from the Société typographique de Neuchâtel,
(STN). In order to complete the picture that can be sketched
from the archives of the STN and to correct for any bias inherent in those
documents, information has been culled from three other sources: publishers' catalogues of their illegal
stock (1772–80); inventories of books seized in police raids on
bookshops (1773–83); and registers of books confiscated in the Paris
Customs (1771–89). Each of
these sources has peculiar strengths and weaknesses, and none is exhaustive in
itself. When taken together,
however, they provide an overview of the whole range of forbidden books in
pre-Revolutionary France....' [3]. "720
Forbidden Books" [11] "689. Traité des trois imposteurs. [Jan Vroesen? [d. 1725]] Yverdon, 1768. Originally printed from an [a] MS treatise with
revisions by Jean Aymon and Jean Rousset in La Vie et l' esprit de M.
Benoît Spinoza [1632 – 1677], 1719. At least 5 editions between 1768 and
1780...." [180]. 662 ________________________________________________________________ "General
Pattern of Demand by Genres
663 ________________________________________________________________ Most Frequently Ordered Titles in Each Category and Subcategory
664 ________________________________________________________________
l l l l l 665 ________________________________________________________________ from: The Treatise of the
Three Impostors and the Problem of Enlightenment, A New Translation of the Traité des trois
Inposteurs [Imposteurs] (1777
Edition), With Three Essays in Commentary, Abraham Anderson,
Rowman & Littlefield, 1997 (1719) (dates of sources (to
1230?)?). "CHAPTER I. Of God." ["3"] "CHAPTER II. Of the Reasons Which Have Led Men to Imagine an Invisible Being Which is Commonly Called God. § I. Those who are ignorant of physical
causes have a natural fear (*) which proceeds from uneasiness & from the
doubt they are in, if there exists | [the vertical line represents a
page change, in the original] a Being or a power which has the capacity to harm
them or to preserve them. Thence the
penchant which they have to feign invisible causes, which are only the Phantoms
of their imagination, which they invoke in adversity & which they praise in
prosperity. They make themselves
Gods out of these in the end, & this chimerical fear of invisible powers is
the source of the Religions which each forms after his own fashion. Those to whom it mattered11 that
the people be contained & arrested by such dreamings have fostered this
seed of religion, have made a law of it, & have finally reduced the peoples
by the terrors of the future, to obeying blindly." [7]. "....They
consult the Bible as if God & nature were explained there in some
particular fashion; although this book is only a tissue of fragments stitched
together at different times, collected by | different persons, & published
on the authority of the Rabbis who decided according to their fancy what
should be approved or rejected, as they found it in conformity or opposed to
the Law of Moses. (a) Such is the malice & the stupidity of
men. They pass their lives in
quibbling & persist in respecting a book in which there is no more order
than in the Alcoran [Koran] of Mahomet; a book [the Bible],
I say, which no one understands, it is so obscure & ill conceived; a book
which serves only to foment divisions.
The Jews & Christians prefer consulting this book of spells to
listening to the natural Law which God, that is to say Nature, insofar as it is
the 666 ________________________________________________________________ principle
of all things, has written in the heart of men. All other laws are but | human fictions, & pure illusions
given birth, not by Demons or evil Spirits, which never existed but in idea,
but by the politics of Princes & of Priests. The first wanted thereby to give more weight to their authority,
& the latter have wanted to enrich themselves by the retailing of an
infinity of chimeras [illusions] which they sell dear to the ignorant. All the other laws which have
succeeded to that of Moses, I mean the laws of the Christians, are supported by
nothing but that Bible the original of which is nowhere to be found,
which contains supernatural & impossible things, which speaks of rewards
& punishments for good or bad actions, but which are only for the other
life, for fear that the trick be discovered, none ever having returned from
there. Thus the people always
floating between hope & fear is retained in its duty by the opinion it has
that God has made men only in order to render them eternally happy or
unhappy. This is what has given rise
to an infinity of Religions."
[12-13]. "§ XII. OF JESUS-CHRIST." [23] "Being born of a Virgin by
the operation of the Holy Spirit then, is no more extraordinary nor more
miraculous than what the Tartars tell of their Gengiskan, of whom a Virgin
was also the mother, the Chinese say that the God Foë27 owed
his birth to a Virgin made fecund by the rays of the sun. This prodigy happened at a time
when the Jews tired of their God, as they had been of | their Judges (a)
wanted to have a visible one like the other nations. As the number of fools is infinite, Jesus
Christ found Subjects everywhere; but since his extreme poverty was an
invincible obstacle (b) to his elevation, the Pharisees, sometimes his
admirers, sometimes jealous of his audacity, lowered him or raised him up
according to the inconstant humor of the Populace. There was rumor of his Divinity; but stripped of forces as he
was, it was impossible that his design succeed: Some sick persons whom he cured, some pretended dead people whom
he resuscitated brought him into fashion; but having neither money nor army,
he [Jesus] could not fail to perish: if he had had these two instruments, he would have succeeded no
less than Moses or Mahomet, or than all those who have had the
ambition to raise themselves above others." [23-24]. 667 ________________________________________________________________ "....there
not being any truly learned men who believe they injure the truth in saying
that | the story of Jesus Christ is a (a) [see
footnote, below] contemptible fable & that his law is nothing but a tissue of
dreamings which ignorance brought into fashion, which interest maintains, &
which tyranny protects. § XVI. It is nonetheless pretended that a
Religion established on foundations so feeble, is divine & supernatural, as if it were not well known that there are no
people more proper for giving currency to the most absurd opinions than women
& fools; it is therefore no marvel that Jesus Christ had no Learned
men among his followers, he knew well that his Law could not be made to agree
with good sense; this, no doubt, is why he declaimed so often | against the
wise whom he excluded from his Kingdom, where he admits none but the poor in
spirit, the simple & the imbeciles:
Reasonable minds should console themselves that they have no business
with madmen." [26]. [footnote]
'(a)
That is the judgment which Pope Leo X pronounced on it, as appears from his
remark so well known and so bold in a century in which the philosophical spirit
had still made so little progress. "It has been known from time immemorial," he [LEO X] said
to Cardinal Bembo, "how much this fable of Jesus Christ has
been profitable to us." Quantum nobis nostrisque ea de Christo fabula
prosuerit, satis est omnis seculis notum.' [26]. l l l l l 668  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||