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The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 by Various

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864




In his treatment of modern or post-Roman history, Dr. Draper goes over
new ground in much the same spirit. He seems, indeed, nearer to his
facts, deals more with actual life, is more lively, graphic, engaging,
and has not that air of an intellectual shopman making an inventory.
Considered as a general review of the history of Europe, written chiefly
in the interest of physical science, but also in marked opposition to
Roman Catholicism, it might pass unchallenged and not without praise.
But considered as a final scientific interpretation of the last fifteen
centuries, its shortcomings are simply immeasurable. The history of
Europe, from the fusion of the Christian Impulse with Roman imperialism
to the time of Columbus, Copernicus, and Luther, is the history of a
grand religious idealism _established over men's heads in the form of an
institution_, because too great to be held in solution by their
thoughts. Of such a matter the writer in question could give no other
than a very inadequate account. Wanting that which is highest in the
reason of man, namely, imaginative intellect, he has no natural fitness
for explaining such a fact; while his unconsciousness of any such
deficiency, his persuasion that an _imagination_ and a _delusion_ are
one and the same, and his extreme dogmatic momentum cause him to handle
it with all the confidence of commanding power.

Considered, again, as a polemic to the point that history revolves
forever through five recurring epochs, and that, as our civilization has
been now four centuries in the "age of reason," it must next (and
probably soon) pass into the fifth stage, that of decrepitude, and
thence into infantile credulity and imbecility once more,--as a
demonstration that history is such a Sisyphus, his induction is weak
even to flimsiness.

But on approaching times yet more modern, the dominating predilection of
the writer no longer misleads him; it guides him, on the contrary, to
the truth. For of the last four centuries the grand _affirmative_ fact
is the rise of physical science. Or rather, perhaps, one should say that
it _was_ the grand fact until some fifty years ago. Science is still
making progress; indeed, leaving out of sight one or two great Newtonian
steps, we may say that it is advancing more rapidly than ever. But now
at length its spiritual correlative begins to emerge, and a new epoch
forms itself, as we fully believe, in the history of humanity.

In celebrating this birth and growth of science, in treating it as the
central and commanding fact of modern times, and in suggesting the vast
modification of beliefs and habits of thought which this must effect,
Dr. Draper has a large theme, and he treats it _con amore_. In this
respect, his book has value, and is worth its cost to himself and his
readers. In some branches of science, moreover, as in Physiology, and in
questions of vital organization generally, he is to be named among the
authorities, and we gladly attend when he raises his voice.

Yet even in respect to this feature, his work cannot be praised without
reserve. Though a man of scientific eminence, yet in the pure and open
spirit of science it is impossible for him to write. He is a dogmatist,
a controversialist, a propagandist. No matter of what science he treats,
his exposition ever has an aim beyond itself. It is always a means to an
end; and that end is always a dogma. For example, he has written a work
on Human Physiology; and in the present volume he avows that his "main
object" therein was to "enforce the doctrine" of the "absolute dominion
of physical agents over organic forms as the fundamental principle in
all the sciences of organization." This "main object" is no less dear to
him in the work immediately under consideration. He still teaches that
the primitive cell, with which, it is supposed, all organisms begin, is
in all the same, but, being placed in different situations, is developed
here into a man, and there into a mushroom. "The offspring," he says,
not without oracular twang, "is like its parent, not because it includes
an immortal typical form, but because it is exposed in development to
the same conditions as was its parent." Behold a cheap explanation of
the mystery of life! If one inquire how the vast variety of parental
conditions was obtained, Dr. Draper is ready with his answer:--"A
suitableness of external situation called them forth," quoth he. An
explanation nebulous enough to be sage!

Behold, therefore, a whole universe of life constructed by "Situations"!
"Situations" are the new _Elohim_. They say to each other, "Let us make
man"; and they do it! But they cannot say, "Let us make man in our own
image"; for they have no image. No matter: they succeed all the same in
giving one to man! Wonderful "Situations"! Who will set up an altar to
almighty "Situations"?

We have ourselves a somewhat Benjamite tongue for pronouncing the
popular shibboleths, but, verily, we would sooner try the crookedest of
them all than endeavor to persuade ourselves that in a universe wherein
no creative idea lives and acts "external situations" can "call forth"
life and all its forms. We can understand that a divine, creative idea
may develop itself under fixed conditions, as the reproductive element
in opposite sexes may, under fixed conditions, prove its resources; but
how, in a universe devoid of any productive thought, "external
situations" can produce definite and animate forms, is, to our feeble
minds, incomprehensible. Verily, therefore, we will have nothing to do
with these new gods. The materialistic _savans_ may cry _Pagani_ at us,
if they will; but we shall surely continue to kneel at the old altars,
unless something other than the said "Situations" can be offered us in
exchange.

We complain of Dr. Draper that he does not write in the spirit of
science, but in the spirit of dogmatism. We complain of him, that, when
he ostensibly attempts a piece of pure scientific exposition, his
thought always has a squint, a boomerang obliquity; it is afflicted with
_strabismus_, and never looks where it seems to look. He approaches
history only to subject it to the service of certain pet opinions
_already formed_ before his inspection of history began. He seeks only
to make it an instrument for the propagation of these. He is a
philosophical historian in the same sense that Bossuet was a
philosophical historian. Each of these seeks to subject history to a
dogma. The dogma of Bossuet is Papal Catholicism; that of Dr. Draper is
the creative supremacy of "Situations" and "the insignificance of man in
the universe."

It is quite proper for Dr. Draper to appear as a polemic in science, if
he will. It is not advocacy _per se_ of which we complain; it is
advocacy with a squint, advocacy round a corner. If he wishes to prove
the creative efficacy of "Situations," let him do so; but let him not in
doing so seem to be offering an impartial exposition of Human
Physiology. If he wishes to prove that physical science is the only
rational thing in the world, he may try; but let him not assume to be
writing a history of intellectual development. If he would convince us
that history has epochs corresponding to those of individual life, we
will listen; but we shall listen with impatience, if it appear after all
that he is merely seeking, under cover of this proposition, to further a
low materialistic dogma, and convince us of "man's insignificance in the
universe."

We are open to all reasonings. Any decent man, who has honorably gone
through with his Pythagorean _lustrum_ of silence and thought, shall, by
our voice, have his turn on the world's tribune; and if he be honest, he
shall lose nothing by it. But we hate indirections. We hate the
pretension implied in assuming to be an authoritative expounder, when
one is only an advocate. And, still further, we shall always resist any
man's attempt to make his facts go for a great deal more than they are
worth. Let him call his ten _ten_, and it shall pass for ten; but if he
insist on calling it a thousand, we shall not acquiesce. The science of
Physiology is just out of its babyhood. Of the nervous system in
particular--of its physiology and pathology alike--our knowledge is
extremely immature. We are just beginning, indeed, to know anything
_scientifically_ on that subject. The attempt in behalf of that little
to banish spiritual philosophy out of the world, and to silence forever
the voice of Human Consciousness, is a piece of pretension on behalf of
which we decline to strain our hospitality.

Our notice of this work would, however, be both incomplete and unjust,
did we forbear to say, that, in its avowed idea, the author has got hold
of a genuine analogy. Not that we approve the details of his scheme; the
details, we verily believe, are as nearly all wrong as an able and
studious man could make them. But the general idea of a correspondence
between individual and social life, of an organic existence in
civilizations and a consequent subjection to the law of organisms, is a
rich mine, and one that will sooner or later be worked to profit. And
the definite, emphatic announcement of it in Dr. Draper's work, however
awkwardly done, suffices to make the work one of grave importance.

Every system of civilization is in some degree special. None is
universal; none represents purely the spirit of humanity; none contains
all the possibilities of society. Not being universal, none can be, in
its form, perpetual. The universal asserts its supremacy; all that is
partial must be temporary. The human spirit takes back, as it were, into
its bosom each sally of civilization before pulsing anew. Thus, even on
their ideal side, civilizations have their law of limitation; and to
know what this law of limitation definitely is constitutes now one of
the great _desiderata_ of the world. We believe, that, _ceteris
paribus_, the duration of a civilization is proportioned to its depth
and breadth,--that is, to the degree in which it represents the total
resource and possibility of the human spirit.

Again, every system of civilization has a body, an institution, an
established and outward interpretation of social relationship. In
respect to this it is mortal. In respect to this it has a law of growth
and decay. In respect to this, moreover, it is subject to what we call
accident, the chances of the world. In fine, the bodies of individuals
and of civilizations, the fixed forms, that is, in which they are
instituted, serve the same uses and obey the same law.

Now a work which should deal in a really great and profound way with
this _corpus_ of civilizations,--not spending itself in a mere tedious,
endless demonstration that such _corpus_ exists, and has therefore its
youth and its age, but really explaining its physiology and
pathology,--such a work would be no less than a benefaction to the human
race. And in such a work one of the easiest and most obvious points
would be this,--that the spirit of civilizations has a certain power of
changing the form of its body by successive partial rejections and
remouldings; and the degree in which they prove capable of this
continuous _palingenesia_ is one important measure of their depth and
determinant of their duration.

For writing such a work we do not think Dr. Draper perfectly qualified.
For this we find in him no tokens of an intelligence sufficiently
subtile, penetrating, and profound. He is, moreover, too heady and too
well cased in his materialistic strait-waistcoat. Nevertheless, his book
carries in it a certain large suggestion; it contains many excellent
observations; its tone is unexceptionable; the style is firm and clear,
though heavy and disfigured by such intolerable barbarisms as "commence
to" walk, talk, or the like,--the use of the infinitive instead of the
participle after _commence_. Dr. Draper is an able man, a scholar in
science, a well-informed, studious gentleman in other provinces; but he
tries to be a legislator in thought, and fails.


_De l'Origine du Langage_. Par ERNEST RENAN, Membre de l'Institut.
Quatrieme Edition, augmentee. Paris.

It seems to be the law of French thought, that it shall never be
exhaustive of any profound matter, and also that (Auguste Comte always
excepted) it shall never be exhausting to the reader. German thought may
be both; French is neither; English thought--but the English do not
think, they dogmatize. Magnificent dogmatism it may be, but dogmatism.
Exceptions of course, but these are equally exceptions to the
characteristic spirit of the nation.

M. Renan is thoroughly French. The power of coming after the great
synthetic products of the human spirit and distributing them by analysis
into special categories, eminent in his country, is pre-eminent in him.
The facility at slipping over hard points, and at coming to unity of
representation, partly by the solving force of an interior principle,
and partly by ingenious accommodations, characteristic of French
thought, characterizes his thinking in particular. That supremacy of the
critical spirit in the man which secures to it the loyalty of all the
faculties is alike peculiar to France among nations, and to this writer
among Frenchmen. In Germany the imagination dominates, or at least
contends with, the critical spirit; the French Ariel not only gives
magic service to the critical Prospero, but seeks no emancipation,
desires nothing better. Hence an admirable clearness and shapeliness in
the criticism of France. Hence, also, in its best criticism a high
degree of imaginative subtilty and penetration, without prejudice either
to the dominion of common sense in the thought or to clearness in the
statement.

M. Renan's essay on "The Origin of Language" is typical of his quality.
Treating of an abstruse, though enticing problem,--_almost_ profound,
and that in comparison with the soundest and sincerest thinking of our
time,--it is yet so clear and broad, its details are so perfectly held
in solution by the thought, the thought itself moves with such ease,
grace, and vigor, and in its style there is such crystal perspicuity and
precision, that one must he proof against good thinking and excellent
writing not to feel its charm.

The main propositions of the work--whose force and significance, of
course, cannot be felt in this dry enumeration--are that language issues
from the spontaneity of the human spirit,--"spontaneity, which is both
divine and human"; that its origin is simultaneous with the opening of
consciousness in the human race; that it preserves a constant parallel
with consciousness, that is, with the developed spirit of man, in its
nature and growth; and that, by consequence, its first form is not one
of analytic simplicity, but of a high synthesis and a rich complexity.
The whole mind, he says, acts from the first, only not with the power of
defining, distinguishing, separating, which characterizes the intellect
of civilized man; his objects are groups; he grasps totalities; sees
objects _and_ their relationships as one fact; tends to connect his
whole consciousness with all he sees, making the stone a man or a god:
and language, in virtue of its perpetual parallelism with consciousness,
must be equally synthetic and complex from the start.

He finds himself opposed, therefore, first, to those, "like M. Bonald,"
who attribute language to a purely extraneous, not an interior,
revelation; secondly, to the philosophers of the eighteenth century, who
made it a product of free and reflective reason; thirdly, to the German
school, who trace it back to a few hundred monosyllabic roots, each
expressing with analytic precision some definite material object, from
which roots the whole subsequent must be derived by etymologic
spinning-out, by agglutination, and by figurative heightening of
meaning.

His work, accordingly, should be read by all sincere students of the
question of Language in connection with the statements of Professor
Mueller, as he represents another and a typical aspect of the case. He
denies the existence of a "Turanian" family of tongues, such as Mueller
sought to constitute in Bunsen's "Outlines"; pronouncing with great
decision, and on grounds both philosophical and linguistic, against that
notion of monosyllabic origin which assumes the Chinese as truest of all
tongues to the original form and genius of language, he is even more
decided that not the faintest trace can be found of the derivation of
all existing languages from a single primitive tongue. From general
principles, therefore, and equally from inspection of language, he
infers with confidence that each great family of languages has come
forth independently from the genius of man.

His results in Philology correspond, thus, with those of Mr. Agassiz in
Natural History. They suggest multiplicity of human origins. From this
result M. Renan does not recoil, and he takes care to state with great
precision and vigor the entire independence of the spiritual upon the
physical unity of man,--as Mr. Agassiz also did in that jewel which he
set in the head of Nott and Gliddon's toad.

But here he pauses. His results bear him no farther. The philological
and physiological classifications of mankind, he says, do not
correspond; their lines cross; nothing can be concluded from one to the
other. The question of unity or diversity of physical origins he leaves
to the naturalist; upon that he has no right to raise his voice.
Spiritual unity he asserts firmly; linguistic unity he firmly denies; on
the question of physical unity he remains modestly and candidly silent,
not finding in his peculiar studies data for a rational opinion.

M. Renan is not a Newton in his science. He satisfies, and he
disappoints. The Newtonian depth, centrality, and poise,--well, one may
still be a superior scholar and writer without these. And such he is.
His tendency to central principles is decided, but with this there is a
wavering, an unsteadiness, and you get only agility and good writing, it
may be, where you had begun to look for a final word. Sometimes, too, in
his desire of precision, he gives you precision indeed, but of a cheap
kind, which is worse than any _thoughtful_ vagueness. Thus, he opens his
sixth section by naming _l'onomatopee_, the imitation of natural sounds,
as the law of primitive language. He knew better; for he has hardly
named this "law" before he slips away from it; and his whole work was
pitched upon a much profounder key. Why must he seize upon this
ready-made word? Why could he not have taken upon himself to say
deliberately and truly, that the law of primitive language, and in the
measure of its _life_ of all language, is the symbolization of mental
impression by sounds, just as man's spirit is symbolized in his body,
and absolute spirit in the universe? But this is "vague," and M. Renan
writes in Paris.

And in Paris he has written an able and in many respects admirable
treatise,--_almost_ profound, as we have said, and creditable to him and
to France. It must be reckoned, we think, a foundation-stone in the
literature of the problem of Language.

In five or six pages the theological peculiarities of M. Renan appear.
The reader, however, who is most rigidly indisposed to open question on
such matters will find these six pages which do not please him a feeble
counterbalance to the two hundred and fifty which do.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Published 1770-71.

[B] Johnson enumerates fifteen.

[C] Many of the bibliographers, even, have omitted mention of it.

[D] Of which the first book was published in 1772. This author is to be
distinguished from George Mason, who in 1768 published "An Essay on
Design in Gardening."

[E] Lettre XI Liv. IV. _Nouvelle Heloise._

[F] First published in 1766.

[G] Citing, in confirmation, that passage commencing,--"_Nunc dicam agri
quibus rebus colantur_," etc.

[H] Pp. 177-179, edition of 1802, Edinburgh.

[I] Pp. 166, 167.

[J] See Article of Philip Pussy, M.P., in _Transactions of the Royal
Society_, Vol. XIV.

[K] First published in 1724.

[L] I find him named, in Dodsley's "Annual Register" for 1771, "Keeper
of His Majesty's Private Roads."

[M] Loudon makes an error in giving 1780 as the year of his death.

[N] Presented to William Pitt, 1795.

[O] At that day, horse-hoeing, at regular intervals, was understood to
form part of what was counted drill-culture.

[P] Returns incomplete.

[Q] In the Quarterly Tables of Mr. Hamilton's office, as quoted by
Professor Chace, the maximum yield at Wine Harbor during the month of
September, 1863, reached the almost incredible figure of _sixty-six_
ounces to the ton.

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