They do excellent service. And with the feeling which impels their authors to defend their favourite dogmas with every available weapon of controversy I for one can heartily sympathize. Their zeal in upholding what they consider the truth is greatly to be respected and admired. But so much cannot always be said for the mode of argumentation they adopt, which too often justifies M. Renan"s description, when he says, "Raisonnements triomphants sur des choses que l"adversaire n"a pas dites, cris de victoire sur des erreurs qu"il n"a pas commises, rien ne parait deloyal a celui qui croft tenir en main les interets de la verite absolue."
August, 1866.
VI. DRAPER ON SCIENCE AND RELIGION. [27]
[27] History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, by John William Draper, M. D., LL. D. Fourth edition. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1875. 12mo, pp. xxii., 373. (International Scientific Series, XII.)
Some twelve years ago, Dr. Draper published a bulky volume ent.i.tled "A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," in which his professed purpose was to show that nations or races pa.s.s through certain definable epochs of development, a.n.a.logous to the periods of infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, and old age in individuals. But while announced with due formality, the carrying out of the argument was left for the most part to the headings and running-t.i.tles of the several chapters, while in the text the author peacefully meandered along down the stream of time, giving us a succession of pleasant though somewhat threadbare anecdotes, as well as a superabundance of detached and fragmentary opinions on divers historical events, having apparently quite forgotten that he had started with a thesis to prove. In the arrangement of his "running heads," some points were sufficiently curious to require a word of explanation, as, for example, when the early ages of Christianity were at one time labelled as an epoch of progress and at another time as an epoch of decrepitude. But the argument and the contents never got so far en rapport with each other as to clear up such points as this. On the contrary, each kept on the even tenour of its way without much regard to the other. From the t.i.tles of the chapters one was led to expect some comprehensive theory of European civilization continuously expounded. But the text merely showed a great quant.i.ty of superficial and second-hand information, serving to ill.u.s.trate the mental idiosyncrasies of the author. Among these idiosyncrasies might be noted a very inadequate understanding of the part played by Rome in the work of civilization, a singular lack of appreciation of the political and philosophical achievements of Greece under Athenian leadership, a strong hostility to the Catholic Church, a curious disposition to overrate semi-barbarous, or abortive civilizations, such as those of the old Asiatic and native American communities, at the expense of Europe, and, above all, an undiscriminating admiration for everything, great or small, that has ever worn the garb of Islam or been a.s.sociated with the career of the Saracens. The discovery that in some respects the Mussulmans of the Middle Ages were more highly cultivated than their Christian contemporaries, has made such an impression on Dr. Draper"s mind that it seems to be as hard for him to get rid of it as it was for Mr. d.i.c.k to keep the execution of Charles I. out of his "Memorial." Even in an essay on the "Civil Policy of America," the turbaned sage figures quite prominently; and it is needless to add that he reappears, as large as life, when the subject of discussion is the att.i.tude of science toward religion.
Speaking briefly with regard to this matter, we may freely admit that the work done by the Arabs, in scientific inquiry as well as in the making of events, was very considerable. It was a work, too, the value of which is not commonly appreciated in the accounts of European history written for the general reader, and we have no disposition to find fault with Dr. Draper for describing it with enthusiasm. The philosophers of Bagdad and Cordova did excellent service in keeping alive the traditions of Greek physical inquiry at a time when Christian thinkers were too exclusively occupied with transcendental speculations in theology and logic. In some departments, as in chemistry and astronomy, they made original discoveries of considerable value; and if we turn from abstract knowledge to the arts of life, it cannot be denied that the mediaeval Mussulmans had reached a higher plane of material comfort than their Christian contemporaries. In short, the work of all kinds done by these people would furnish the judicious advocate of the claims of the Semitic race with materials for a pleasing and instructive picture. Dr. Draper, however, errs, though no doubt unintentionally, by so presenting the case as to leave upon the reader"s mind the impression that all this scientific and practical achievement was the work of Islamism, and that the Mohammedan civilization was of a higher type than the Christian. It is with an apparent feeling of regret that he looks upon the ousting of the Moors from dominion in Spain; but this is a mistaken view. As regards the first point, it is a patent fact that scientific inquiry was conducted at the cost of as much theological obloquy in the Mohammedan as in the Christian world. It is true there was more actual tolerance of heresy on the part of Moslem governments than was customary in Europe in those days; but this is a superficial fact, which does not indicate any superiority in Moslem popular sentiment. The caliphate or emirate was a truly absolute despotism, such as the Papacy has never been, and the conduct of a sceptical emir in encouraging scientific inquiry goes but little way toward proving anything like a general prevalence of tolerance or of free-thinking. And this brings us to the second point,--that Mohammedan civilization was, on the whole, rather a skin-deep affair. It was superficial because of that extreme severance between government and people which has never existed in European nations within historic times, but which has always existed among the princ.i.p.al races that have professed Moslemism. Nowhere in the Mohammedan world has there ever been what we call a national life, and nowhere do we find in its records any trace of such an intellectual impulse, thrilling through every fibre of the people and begetting prodigious achievements in art, poetry, and philosophy, as was awakened in Europe in the thirteenth century and again in the fifteenth. Under the peculiar form of unlimited material and spiritual despotism exemplified in the caliphate, a few men may discover gases or comment on Aristotle, but no general movement toward political progress or philosophical inquiry is possible. Such a society is rigid and inorganic at bottom, whatever scanty signs of flexibility and life it may show at the surface. There is no better ill.u.s.tration of this, when well considered, than the fact that Moorish civilization remained, politically and intellectually, a mere excrescence in Spain, after having been fastened down over half the country for nearly eight centuries.
But we are in danger of forgetting our main theme, as Dr. Draper seems to do, while we linger with him over these interesting wayside topics.
We may perhaps be excused, however, if we have not yet made any very explicit allusion to the "Conflict between Religion and Science,"
because this work seems to be in the main a repet.i.tion en pet.i.t of the "Intellectual Development of Europe," and what we have said will apply as well to one as to the other. In the little book, as in the big one, we hear a great deal about the Arabs, and something about Columbus and Galileo, who made men accept sundry truths in the teeth of clerical opposition; and, as before, we float gently down the current of history without being over well-informed as to the precise didactic purpose of our voyage. Here, indeed, even our headings and running-t.i.tles do not materially help us, for though we are supposed to be witnessing, or mayhap a.s.sisting in, a perennial conflict between "science" and "religion," we are nowhere enlightened as to what the cause or character of this conflict is, nor are we enabled to get a good look at either of the parties to the strife. With regard to it "religion" especially are we left in the dark. What this dreadful thing is towards which "science"
is always playing the part of Herakles towards the Lernaean Hydra, we are left to gather from the course of the narrative. Yet, in a book with any valid claim to clearsightedness, one would think such a point as this ought to receive very explicit preliminary treatment.
The course of the narrative, however, leaves us in little doubt as to what Dr. Draper means by a conflict between science and religion. When he enlarges on the trite story of Galileo, and alludes to the more modern quarrel between the Church and the geologists, and does this in the belief that he is thereby ill.u.s.trating an antagonism between religion and science, it is obvious that he identifies the cause of the anti-geologists and the persecutors of Galileo with the cause of religion. The word "religion" is to him a symbol which stands for unenlightened bigotry or narrow-minded unwillingness to look facts in the face. Such a conception of religion is common enough, and unhappily a great deal has been done to strengthen it by the very persons to whom the interests of religion are presumed to be a professional care. It is nevertheless a very superficial conception, and no book which is vitiated by it can have much philosophic value. It is simply the crude impression which, in minds unaccustomed to a.n.a.lysis, is left by the fact that theologians and other persons interested in religion are usually alarmed at new scientific truths, and resist them with emotions so highly wrought that they are not only incapable of estimating evidence, but often also have their moral sense impaired, and fight with foul means when fair ones fail. If we reflect carefully on this cla.s.s of phenomena, we shall see that something besides mere pride of opinion is involved in the struggle. At the bottom of changing theological beliefs there lies something which men perennially value, and for the sake of which they cling to the beliefs as long as possible. That which they value is not itself a matter of belief, but it is a matter of conduct; it is the searching after goodness,--after a higher life than the mere satisfaction of individual desires. All animals seek for fulness of life; but in civilized man this craving has acquired a moral significance, and has become a spiritual aspiration; and this emotional tendency, more or less strong in the human race, we call religious feeling or religion. Viewed in this light, religion is not only something that mankind is never likely to get rid of, but it is incomparably the most n.o.ble as well as the most useful attribute of humanity.
Now, this emotional prompting toward completeness of life requires, of course, that conduct should be guided, as far as possible, in accordance with a true theory of the relations of man to the world in which he lives. Hence, at any given era the religious feeling will always be found enlisted in behalf of some theory of the universe. At any time, whatever may be their shortcomings in practice, religious men will aim at doing right according to their conceptions of the order of the world. If men"s conceptions of the order of nature remained constant, no apparent conflict between their religious feelings and their knowledge need ever arise. But with the first advance in our knowledge of nature the case is altered. New and strange theories are naturally regarded with fear and dislike by persons who have always been accustomed to find the sanction and justification of their emotional prompting toward righteousness in old familiar theories which the new ones are seeking to supplant. Such persons oppose the new doctrine because their engrained mental habits compel them to believe that its establishment will in some way lower men"s standard of life, and make them less careful of their spiritual welfare. This is the case, at all events, when theologians oppose scientific conclusions on religious grounds, and not simply from mental dulness or rigidity. And, in so far as it is religious feeling which thus prompts resistance to scientific innovation, it may be said, with some appearance of truth, that there is a conflict between religion and science.
But there must always be two parties to a quarrel, and our statement has to be modified as soon as we consider what the scientific innovator impugns. It is not the emotional prompting toward righteousness, it is not the yearning to live im Guten, Ganzen, Wahren, that he seeks to weaken; quite likely he has all this as much at heart as the theologian who vituperates him. Nor is it true that his discoveries, in spite of him, tend to destroy this all-important mental att.i.tude. It would be ridiculous to say that the fate of religious feeling is really involved in the fate of grotesque cosmogonies and theosophies framed in the infancy of men"s knowledge of nature; for history shows us quite the contrary. Religious feeling has survived the heliocentric theory and the discoveries of geologists; and it will be none the worse for the establishment of Darwinism. It is the merest truism to say that religion strikes its roots deeper down into human nature than speculative opinion, and is accordingly independent of any particular set of beliefs. Since, then, the scientific innovator does not, either voluntarily or involuntarily, attack religion, it follows that there can be no such "conflict" as that of which Dr. Draper has undertaken to write the history. The real contest is between one phase of science and another; between the more-crude knowledge of yesterday and the less-crude knowledge of to-day. The contest, indeed, as presented in history, is simply the measure of the difficulty which men find in exchanging old views for new ones. All along, the practical question has been, whether we should pa.s.sively acquiesce in the crude generalizations of our ancestors or venture actively to revise them. But as for the religious sentiment, the perennial struggle in which it has been engaged has not been with scientific inquiry, but with the selfish propensities whose tendency is to make men lead the lives of brutes.
The time is at hand when the interests of religion can no longer be supposed to be subserved by obstinate adherence to crude speculations bequeathed to us from pre-scientific antiquity. One good result of the doctrine of evolution, which is now gaining sway in all departments of thought, is the lesson that all our opinions must be held subject to continual revision, and that with none of them can our religious interests be regarded as irretrievably implicated. To any one who has once learned this lesson, a book like Dr. Draper"s can be neither interesting nor useful. He who has not learned it can derive little benefit from a work which in its very t.i.tle keeps open an old and baneful source of error and confusion.
November. 1875.
VII. NATHAN THE WISE. [28]
[28] Nathan the Wise: A Dramatic Poem, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Translated by Ellen Frothingham. Preceded by a brief account of the poet and his works, and followed by an essay on the poem by Kuno Fischer. Second edition. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1868.
Le Christianisme Moderne, etude sur Lessing. Par Ernest Fontanes. Paris: Bailliere. 1867.
The fame of Lessing is steadily growing. Year by year he is valued more highly, and valued by a greater number of people. And he is destined, like his master and forerunner Spinoza, to receive a yet larger share of men"s reverence and grat.i.tude when the philosophic spirit which he lived to ill.u.s.trate shall have become in some measure the general possession of the civilized part of mankind. In his own day, Lessing, though widely known and greatly admired, was little understood or appreciated. He was known to be a learned antiquarian, a terrible controversialist, and an incomparable writer. He was regarded as a brilliant ornament to Germany; and a paltry Duke of Brunswick thought a few hundred thalers well spent in securing the glory of having such a man to reside at his provincial court. But the majority of Lessing"s contemporaries understood him as little perhaps as did the Duke of Brunswick. If anything were needed to prove this, it would be the uproar which was made over the publication of the "Wolfenb.u.t.tel Fragments," and the curious exegesis which was applied to the poem of "Nathan" on its first appearance. In order to understand the true character of this great poem, and of Lessing"s religious opinions as embodied in it, it will be necessary first to consider the memorable theological controversy which preceded it.
During Lessing"s residence at Hamburg, he had come into possession of a most important ma.n.u.script, written by Hermann Samuel Reimarus, a professor of Oriental languages, and bearing the t.i.tle of an "Apology for the Rational Worshippers of G.o.d." Struck with the rigorous logic displayed in its arguments, and with the quiet dignity of its style, while yet unable to accept its most general conclusions, Lessing resolved to publish the ma.n.u.script, accompanying it with his own comments and strictures. Accordingly in 1774, availing himself of the freedom from censorship enjoyed by publications drawn from ma.n.u.scripts deposited in the Ducal Library at Wolfenb.u.t.tel, of which he was librarian, Lessing published the first portion of this work, under the t.i.tle of "Fragments drawn from the Papers of an Anonymous Writer."
This first Fragment, on the "Toleration of Deists," awakened but little opposition; for the eighteenth century, though intolerant enough, did not parade its bigotry, but rather saw fit to disclaim it. A hundred years before, Rutherford, in his "Free Disputation," had declared "toleration of alle religions to bee not farre removed from blasphemie."
Intolerance was then a thing to be proud of, but in Lessing"s time some progress had been achieved, and men began to think it a good thing to seem tolerant. The succeeding Fragments were to test this liberality and reveal the flimsiness of the stuff of which it was made. When the unknown disputant began to declare "the impossibility of a revelation upon which all men can rest a solid faith," and when he began to criticize the evidences of Christ"s resurrection, such a storm burst out in the theological world of Germany as had not been witnessed since the time of Luther. The recent Colenso controversy in England was but a gentle breeze compared to it. Press and pulpit swarmed with "refutations," in which weakness of argument and scantiness of erudition were compensated by strength of acrimony and unscrupulousness of slander. Pamphlets and sermons, says M. Fontanes, "were multiplied, to denounce the impious blasphemer, who, dest.i.tute alike of shame and of courage, had sheltered himself behind a paltry fiction, in order to let loose upon society an evil spirit of unbelief." But Lessing"s artifice had been intended to screen the memory of Reimarus, rather than his own reputation. He was not the man to quail before any amount of human opposition; and it was when the tempest of invective was just at its height that he published the last and boldest Fragment of all,--on "the Designs of Jesus and his Disciples."
The publication of these Fragments led to a mighty controversy. The most eminent, both for uncompromising zeal and for worldly position, of those who had attacked Lessing, was Melchior Goetze, "pastor primarius" at the Hamburg Cathedral. Though his name is now remembered only because of his connection with Lessing, Goetze was not dest.i.tute of learning and ability. He was a collector of rare books, an amateur in numismatics, and an antiquarian of the narrow-minded sort. Lessing had known him while at Hamburg, and had visited him so constantly as to draw forth from his friends malicious insinuations as to the excellence of the pastor"s white wine. Doubtless Lessing, as a wise man, was not insensible to the attractions of good Moselle; but that which he chiefly liked in this theologian was his logical and rigorously consistent turn of mind. "He always," says M. Fontanes, "cherished a holy horror of loose, inconsequent thinkers; and the man of the past, the inexorable guardian of tradition, appeared to him far more worthy of respect than the heterodox innovator who stops in mid-course, and is faithful neither to reason nor to faith."
But when Lessing published these unhallowed Fragments, the hour of conflict had sounded, and Goetze cast himself into the arena with a boldness and impetuosity which Lessing, in his artistic capacity, could not fail to admire. He spared no possible means of reducing his enemy to submission. He aroused against him all the const.i.tuted authorities, the consistories, and even the Aulic Council of the Empire, and he even succeeded in drawing along with him the chief of contemporary rationalists, Semler, who so far forgot himself as to declare that Lessing, for what he had done, deserved to be sent to the madhouse. But with all Goetze"s orthodox valour, he was no match for the antagonist whom he had excited to activity. The great critic replied with pamphlet after pamphlet, invincible in logic and erudition, sparkling with wit, and irritating in their utter coolness. Such pamphlets had not been seen since Pascal published the "Provincial Letters." Goetze found that he had taken up arms against a master in the arts of controversy, and before long he became well aware that he was worsted. Having brought the case before the Aulic Council, which consisted in great part of Catholics, the stout pastor, forgetting that judgment had not yet been rendered, allowed himself to proclaim that all who do not recognize the Bible as the only source of Christianity are not fit to be called Christians at all. Lessing was not slow to profit by this unlucky declaration. Questioned, with all manner of ferocious vituperation, by Goetze, as to what sort of Christianity might have existed prior to and independently of the New Testament canon, Lessing imperturbably answered: "By the Christian religion I mean all the confessions of faith contained in the collection of creeds of the first four centuries of the Christian Church, including, if you wish it, the so-called creed of the apostles, as well as the creed of Athanasius. The content of these confessions is called by the earlier Fathers the regula fidei, or rule of faith. This rule of faith is not drawn from the writings of the New Testament. It existed before any of the books in the New Testament were written. It sufficed not only for the first Christians of the age of the apostles, but for their descendants during four centuries. And it is, therefore, the veritable foundation upon which the Church of Christ is built; a foundation not based upon Scripture." Thus, by a master-stroke, Lessing secured the adherence of the Catholics const.i.tuting a majority of the Aulic Council of the Empire. Like Paul before him, he divided the Sanhedrim. So that Goetze, foiled in his attempts at using violence, and disconcerted by the patristic learning of one whom he had taken to be a mere connoisseur in art and writer of plays for the theatre, concluded that discretion was the surest kind of valour, and desisted from further attacks.
Lessing"s triumph came opportunely; for already the ministry of Brunswick had not only confiscated the Fragments, but had prohibited him from publishing anything more on the subject without first obtaining express authority to do so. His last replies to Goetze were published at Hamburg; and as he held himself in readiness to depart from Wolfenb.u.t.tel, he wrote to several friends that he had conceived the design of a drama, with which he would tear the theologians in pieces more than with a dozen Fragments. "I will try and see," said he, "if they will let me preach in peace from my old pulpit, the theatre." In this way originated "Nathan the Wise." But it in no way answered to the expectations either of Lessing"s friends or of his enemies. Both the one and the other expected to see the controversy with Goetze carried on, developed, and generalized in the poem. They looked for a satirical comedy, in which orthodoxy should be held up for scathing ridicule, or at least for a direful tragedy, the moral of which, like that of the great poem of Lucretius, should be
"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."
Had Lessing produced such a poem, he would doubtless have gratified his free-thinking friends and wreaked due literary vengeance upon his theological persecutors. He would, perhaps, have given articulate expression to the radicalism of his own time, and, like Voltaire, might have const.i.tuted himself the leader of the age, the incarnation of its most conspicuous tendencies. But Lessing did nothing of the kind; and the expectations formed of him by friends and enemies alike show how little he was understood by either. "Nathan the Wise" was, as we shall see, in the eighteenth century an entirely new phenomenon; and its author was the pioneer of a quite new religious philosophy.
Reimarus, the able author of the Fragments, in his attack upon the evidences of revealed religion, had taken the same ground as Voltaire and the old English deists. And when we have said this, we have sufficiently defined his position, for the tenets of the deists are at the present day pretty well known, and are, moreover, of very little vital importance, having long since been supplanted by a more just and comprehensive philosophy. Reimarus accepted neither miracles nor revelation; but in accordance with the rudimentary state of criticism in his time, he admitted the historical character of the earliest Christian records, and was thus driven to the conclusion that those writings must have been fraudulently composed. How such a set of impostors as the apostles must on this hypothesis have been, should have succeeded in inspiring large numbers of their contemporaries with higher and grander religious notions than had ever before been conceived; how they should have laid the foundations of a theological system destined to hold together the most enlightened and progressive portion of human society for seventeen or eighteen centuries,--does not seem to have entered his mind. Against such attacks as this, orthodoxy was comparatively safe; for whatever doubt might be thrown upon some of its leading dogmas, the system as a whole was more consistent and rational than any of the theories which were endeavouring to supplant it. And the fact that nearly all the great thinkers of the eighteenth century adopted this deistic hypothesis, shows, more than anything else, the crudeness of their psychological knowledge, and their utter lack of what is called "the historical sense."
Lessing at once saw the weak point in Reimarus"s argument, but his method of disposing of it differed signally from that adopted by his orthodox contemporaries. The more advanced German theologians of that day, while accepting the New Testament records as literally historical, were disposed to rationalize the accounts of miracles contained in them, in such a way as to get rid of any presumed infractions of the laws of nature. This method of exegesis, which reached its perfection in Paulus, is too well known to need describing. Its unsatisfactory character was clearly shown, thirty years ago, by Strauss, and it is now generally abandoned, though some traces of it may still be seen in the recent works of Renan. Lessing steadily avoided this method of interpretation.
He had studied Spinoza to some purpose, and the outlines of Biblical criticism laid down by that remarkable thinker Lessing developed into a system wonderfully like that now adopted by the Tubingen school. The cardinal results which Baur has reached within the past generation were nearly all hinted at by Lessing, in his commentaries on the Fragments.
The distinction between the first three, or synoptic gospels, and the fourth, the later age of the fourth, and the method of composition of the first three, from earlier doc.u.ments and from oral tradition, are all clearly laid down by him. The distinct points of view from which the four accounts were composed, are also indicated,--the Judaizing disposition of "Matthew," the Pauline sympathies of "Luke," the compromising or Petrine tendencies of "Mark," and the advanced h.e.l.lenic character of "John." Those best acquainted with the results of modern criticism in Germany will perhaps be most surprised at finding such speculations in a book written many years before either Strauss or Baur were born.
But such results, as might have been expected, did not satisfy the pastor Goetze or the public which sympathized with him. The valiant pastor unhesitatingly declared that he read the objections which Lessing opposed to the Fragmentist with more horror and disgust than the Fragments themselves; and in the teeth of the printed comments he declared that the editor was craftily upholding his author in his deistical a.s.sault upon Christian theology. The accusation was unjust, because untrue. There could be no genuine cooperation between a mere iconoclast like Reimarus, and a constructive critic like Lessing. But the confusion was not an unnatural one on Goetze"s part, and I cannot agree with M. Fontanes in taking it as convincing proof of the pastor"s wrong-headed perversity. It appears to me that Goetze interpreted Lessing"s position quite as accurately as M. Fontanes. The latter writer thinks that Lessing was a Christian of the liberal school since represented by Theodore Parker in this country and by M. Reville in France; that his real object was to defend and strengthen the Christian religion by relieving it of those peculiar doctrines which to the freethinkers of his time were a stumbling-block and an offence. And, in spite of Lessing"s own declarations, he endeavours to show that he was an ordinary theist,--a follower of Leibnitz rather than of Spinoza. But I do not think he has made out his case. Lessing"s own confession to Jacobi is unequivocal enough, and cannot well be argued away. In that remarkable conversation, held toward the close of his life, he indicates clearly enough that his faith was neither that of the ordinary theist, the atheist, nor the pantheist, but that his religious theory of the universe was identical with that suggested by Spinoza, adopted by Goethe, and recently elaborated in the first part of the "First Principles" of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Moreover, while Lessing cannot be considered an antagonist of Christianity, neither did he a.s.sume the att.i.tude of a defender. He remained outside the theological arena; looking at theological questions from the point of view of a layman, or rather, as M. Cherbuliez has happily expressed it, of a Pagan. His mind was of decidedly antique structure. He had the virtues of paganism: its sanity, its calmness, and its probity; but of the tenderness of Christianity, and its quenchless aspirations after an indefinable ideal, of that feeling which has incarnated itself in Gothic cathedrals, ma.s.ses and oratorios, he exhibited but scanty traces. His intellect was above all things self-consistent and incorruptible. He had that imperial good-sense which might have formed the ideal alike of Horace and of Epictetus. No clandestine preference for certain conclusions could make his reason swerve from the straight paths of logic. And he examined and rejected the conclusions of Reimarus in the same imperturbable spirit with which he examined and rejected the current theories of the French cla.s.sic drama.
Such a man can have had but little in common with a preacher like Theodore Parker, or with a writer like M. Fontanes, whose whole book is a n.o.ble specimen of lofty Christian eloquence. His attribute was light, not warmth. He scrutinized, but did not attack or defend. He recognized the transcendent merits of the Christian faith, but made no attempt to reinstate it where it had seemed to suffer shock. It was therefore with the surest of instincts, with that same instinct of self-preservation which had once led the Church to anathematize Galileo, that Goetze.
proclaimed Lessing a more dangerous foe to orthodoxy than the deists who had preceded him. Controversy, he doubtless thought, may be kept up indefinitely, and blows given and returned forever; but before the steady gaze of that scrutinizing eye which one of us shall find himself able to stand erect? It has become fashionable to heap blame and ridicule upon those who violently defend an antiquated order of things; and Goetze has received at the hands of posterity his full share of abuse. His wrath contrasted unfavourably with Lessing"s calmness; and it was his misfortune to have taken up arms against an opponent who always knew how to keep the laugh upon his own side. For my own part I am constrained to admire the militant pastor, as Lessing himself admired him. From an artistic point of view he is not an uninteresting figure to contemplate. And although his attempts to awaken persecution were reprehensible, yet his ardour in defending what he believed to be vital truth is none the less to be respected. He had the acuteness to see that Lessing"s refutation of deism did not make him a Christian, while the new views proposed as a subst.i.tute for those of Reimarus were such as Goetze and his age could in no wise comprehend.
Lessing"s own views of dogmatic religion are to be found in his work ent.i.tled, "The Education of the Human Race." These views have since so far become the veriest commonplaces of criticism, that one can hardly realize that, only ninety years ago, they should have been regarded as dangerous paradoxes. They may be summed up in the statement that all great religions are good in their time and place; that, "as there is a soul of goodness in things evil, so also there is a soul of truth in things erroneous." According to Lessing, the successive phases of religious belief const.i.tute epochs in the mental evolution of the human race. So that the crudest forms of theology, even fetishism, now to all appearance so utterly revolting, and polytheism, so completely inadequate, have once been the best, the natural and inevitable results of man"s reasoning powers and appliances for attaining truth. The mere fact that a system of religious thought has received the willing allegiance of large ma.s.ses of men shows that it must have supplied some consciously felt want, some moral or intellectual craving. And the mere fact that knowledge and morality are progressive implies that each successive system may in due course of time be essentially modified or finally supplanted. The absence of any reference to a future state of retribution, in the Pentateuch and generally in the sacred writings of the Jews, and the continual appeal to hopes and fears of a worldly character, have been p.r.o.nounced by deists an irremediable defect in the Jewish religion. It is precisely this, however, says Lessing, which const.i.tutes one of its signal excellences. "That thy days may be long in the land which Jehovah thy G.o.d giveth thee," was an appeal which the uncivilized Jew could understand, and which could arouse him to action; while the need of a future world, to rectify the injustices of this, not yet being felt, the doctrine would have been of but little service.
But in later Hebrew literature, many magnificent pa.s.sages revealed the despair felt by prophet and thinker over the insoluble problem presented by the evil fate of the good and the triumphant success of the wicked; and a solution was sought in the doctrine of a Messianic kingdom, until Christianity with its proclamation of a future life set the question entirely aside. By its appeal to what has been aptly termed "other-worldliness," Christianity immeasurably intensified human responsibility, besides rendering clearer its nature and limits. But according to Lessing, yet another step remains to be taken; and here we come upon the gulf which separates him from men of the stamp of Theodore Parker. For, says Lessing, the appeal to unearthly rewards and punishments is after all an appeal to our lower feelings; other-worldliness is but a refined selfishness; and we are to cherish virtue for its own sake not because it will lead us to heaven. Here is the grand principle of Stoicism. Lessing believed, with Mr. Mill, that the less we think about getting rewarded either on earth or in heaven the better. He was cast in the same heroic mould as Muhamad Efendi, who when led to the stake exclaimed: "Though I have no hope of recompense hereafter, yet the love of truth constraineth me to die in its defence!"
With the truth or completeness of these views of Lessing we are not here concerned; our business being not to expound our own opinions, but to indicate as clearly as possible Lessing"s position. Those who are familiar with the general philosophical spirit of the present age, as represented by writers otherwise so different as Littre and Sainte-Beuve, will best appreciate the power and originality of these speculations. Coming in the last century, amid the crudities of deism, they made a well-defined epoch. They inaugurated the historical method of criticism, and they robbed the spirit of intolerance of its only philosophical excuse for existing. Hitherto the orthodox had been intolerant toward the philosophers because they considered them heretics; and the philosophers had been intolerant toward the orthodox because they considered them fools. To Voltaire it naturally seemed that a man who could believe in the reality of miracles must be what in French is expressively termed a sot. But henceforth, to the disciple of Lessing, men of all shade of opinion were but the representatives and exponents of different phases in the general evolution of human intelligence, not necessarily to be disliked or despised if they did not happen to represent the maturest phase.
Religion, therefore, from this point of view, becomes clearly demarcated from theology. It consists no longer in the mental a.s.sent to certain prescribed formulas, but in the moral obedience to the great rule of life; the great commandment laid down and ill.u.s.trated by the Founder of the Christian religion, and concerning which the profoundest modern philosophy informs us that the extent to which a society has learned to conform to it is the test and gauge of the progress in civilization which that society has achieved. The command "to love one another," to check the barbarous impulses inherited from the pre-social state, while giving free play to the beneficent impulses needful for the ultimate attainment of social equilibrium,--or as Tennyson phrases it, to "move upward, working out the beast, and letting the ape and tiger die,"--was, in Lessing"s view, the task set before us by religion. The true religious feeling was thus, in his opinion, what the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o" has finely termed "the enthusiasm of humanity." And we shall find no better language than that of the writer just mentioned, in which to describe Lessing"s conception of faith:--
"He who, when goodness is impressively put before him, exhibits an instinctive loyalty to it, starts forward to take its side, trusts himself to it, such a man has faith, and the root of the matter is in such a man. He may have habits of vice, but the loyal and faithful instinct in him will place him above many that practice virtue. He may be rude in thought and character, but he will unconsciously gravitate toward what is right. Other virtues can scarcely thrive without a fine natural organization and a happy training. But the most neglected and ungifted of men may make a beginning with faith. Other virtues want civilization, a certain amount of knowledge, a few books; but in half-brutal countenances faith will light up a glimmer of n.o.bleness.
The savage, who can do little else, can wonder and worship and enthusiastically obey. He who cannot know what is right can know that some one else knows; he who has no law may still have a master; he who is incapable of justice may be capable of fidelity; he who understands little may have his sins forgiven because he loves much."
Such was Lessing"s religion, so far as it can be ascertained from the fragmentary writings which he has left on the subject. Undoubtedly it lacked completeness. The opinions which we have here set down, though const.i.tuting something more than a mere theory of morality, certainly do not const.i.tute a complete theory of religion. Our valiant knight has examined but one side of the shield,--the bright side, turned toward us, whose marvellous inscriptions the human reason can by dint of unwearied effort decipher. But the dark side, looking out upon infinity, and covered with hieroglyphics the meaning of which we can never know, he has quite forgotten to consider. Yet it is this side which genuine religious feeling ever seeks to contemplate. It is the consciousness that there is about us an omnipresent Power, in which we live and move and have our being, eternally manifesting itself throughout the whole range of natural phenomena, which has ever disposed men to be religious, and lured them on in the vain effort to construct adequate theological systems. We may, getting rid of the last traces of fetishism, eliminate arbitrary volition as much as we will or can. But there still remains the consciousness of a divine Life in the universe, of a Power which is beyond and above our comprehension, whose goings out and comings in no man can follow. The more we know, the more we reach out for that which we cannot know. And who can realize this so vividly as the scientific philosopher? For our knowledge being, according to the familiar comparison, like a brilliant sphere, the more we increase it the greater becomes the number of peripheral points at which we are confronted by the impenetrable darkness beyond. I believe that this restless yearning,--vague enough in the description, yet recognizable by all who, communing with themselves or with nature, have felt it,--this constant seeking for what cannot be found, this persistent knocking at gates which, when opened, but reveal others yet to be pa.s.sed, const.i.tutes an element which no adequate theory of religion can overlook. But of this we find nothing in Lessing. With him all is sunny, serene, and pagan.
Not the dim aisle of a vast cathedral, but the symmetrical portico of an antique temple, is the worshipping-place into which he would lead us.
But if Lessing"s theology must be considered imperfect, it is none the less admirable as far as it goes. With its peculiar doctrines of love and faith, it teaches a morality far higher than any that Puritanism ever dreamed of. And with its theory of development it cuts away every possible logical basis for intolerance. It is this theology to which Lessing has given concrete expression in his immortal poem of "Nathan."
The central idea of "Nathan" was suggested to Lessing by Boccaccio"s story of "The Three Rings," which is supposed to have had a Jewish origin. Saladin, pretending to be inspired by a sudden, imperious whim, such as is "not unbecoming in a Sultan," demands that Nathan shall answer him on the spur of the moment which of the three great religions then known--Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity--is adjudged by reason to be the true one. For a moment the philosopher is in a quandary. If he does not p.r.o.nounce in favour of his own religion, Judaism, he stultifies himself; but if he does not award the precedence to Mohammedanism, he will apparently insult his sovereign. With true Oriental tact he escapes from the dilemma by means of a parable. There was once a man, says Nathan, who possessed a ring of inestimable value. Not only was the stone which it contained incomparably fine, but it possessed the marvellous property of rendering its owner agreeable both to G.o.d and to men. The old man bequeathed this ring to that one of his sons whom he loved the most; and the son, in turn, made a similar disposition of it. So that, pa.s.sing from hand to hand, the ring finally came into the possession of a father who loved his three sons equally well. Unto which one should he leave it? To get rid of the perplexity, he had two other rings made by a jeweller, exactly like the original, and to each of his three sons he bequeathed one. Each then thinking that he had obtained the true talisman, they began violently to quarrel, and after long contention agreed to carry their dispute before the judge. But the judge said: "Quarrelsome fellows! You are all three of you cheated cheats.
Your three rings are alike counterfeit. For the genuine ring is lost, and to conceal the loss, your father had made these three subst.i.tutes."
At this unexpected denouement the Sultan breaks out in exclamations of delight; and it is interesting to learn that when the play was brought upon the stage at Constantinople a few years ago, the Turkish audience was similarly affected. There is in the story that quiet, stealthy humour which is characteristic of many mediaeval apologues, and in which Lessing himself loved to deal. It is humour of the kind which hits the mark, and reveals the truth. In a note upon this pa.s.sage, Lessing himself said: "The opinion of Nathan upon all positive religions has for a long time been my own." Let him who has the genuine ring show it by making himself loved of G.o.d and man. This is the central idea of the poem. It is wholly unlike the iconoclasm of the deists, and, coming in the eighteenth century, it was like a veritable evangel.
"Nathan" was not brought out until three years after Lessing"s death, and it kept possession of the stage for but a short time. In a dramatic point of view, it has hardly any merits. Whatever plot there is in it is weak and improbable. The decisive incidents seem to be brought in like the deus ex machina of the later Greek drama. There is no movement, no action, no development. The characters are poetically but not dramatically conceived. Considered as a tragedy, "Nathan" would be weak; considered as a comedy, it would be heavy. With full knowledge of these circ.u.mstances, Lessing called it not a drama, but a dramatic poem; and he might have called it still more accurately a didactic poem, for the only feature which it has in common with the drama is that the personages use the oratio directa.
"Nathan" is a didactic poem: it is not a mere philosophic treatise written in verse, like the fragments of Xenophanes. Its lessons are conveyed concretely and not abstractly; and its characters are not mere lay figures, but living poetical conceptions. Considered as a poem among cla.s.sic German poems, it must rank next to, though immeasurably below, Goethe"s "Faust."
There are two contrasted kinds of genius, the poetical and the philosophical; or, to speak yet more generally, the artistic and the critical. The former is distinguished by a concrete, the latter by an abstract, imagination. The former sees things synthetically, in all their natural complexity; the latter pulls things to pieces a.n.a.lytically, and scrutinizes their relations. The former sees a tree in all its glory, where the latter sees an exogen with a pair of cotyledons. The former sees wholes, where the latter sees aggregates.
Corresponding with these two kinds of genius there are two cla.s.ses of artistic productions. When the critical genius writes a poem or a novel, he constructs his plot and his characters in conformity to some prearranged theory, or with a view to ill.u.s.trate some favourite doctrine. When he paints a picture, he first thinks how certain persons would look under certain given circ.u.mstances, and paints them accordingly. When he writes a piece of music, he first decides that this phrase expresses joy, and that phrase disappointment, and the other phrase disgust, and he composes accordingly. We therefore say ordinarily that he does not create, but only constructs and combines. It is far different with the artistic genius, who, without stopping to think, sees the picture and hears the symphony with the eyes and ears of imagination, and paints and plays merely what he has seen and heard.
When Dante, in imagination, arrived at the lowest circle of h.e.l.l, where traitors like Judas and Brutus are punished, he came upon a terrible frozen lake, which, he says,--
"Ever makes me shudder at the sight of frozen pools."
I have always considered this line a marvellous instance of the intensity of Dante"s imagination. It shows, too, how Dante composed his poem. He did not take counsel of himself and say: "Go to, let us describe the traitors frozen up to their necks in a dismal lake, for that will be most terrible." But the picture of the lake, in all its iciness, with the haggard faces staring out from its gla.s.sy crust, came unbidden before his mind with such intense reality that, for the rest of his life, he could not look at a frozen pool without a shudder of horror. He described it exactly as he saw it; and his description makes us shudder who read it after all the centuries that have intervened.
So Michael Angelo, a kindred genius, did not keep cutting and chipping away, thinking how Moses ought to look, and what sort of a nose he ought to have, and in what position his head might best rest upon his shoulders. But, he looked at the rectangular block of Carrara marble, and beholding Moses grand and lifelike within it, knocked away the environing stone, that others also might see the mighty figure. And so Beethoven, an artist of the same colossal order, wrote out for us those mysterious harmonies which his ear had for the first time heard; and which, in his mournful old age, it heard none the less plainly because of its complete physical deafness. And in this way Shakespeare wrote his "Oth.e.l.lo"; spinning out no abstract thoughts about jealousy and its fearful effects upon a proud and ardent nature, but revealing to us the living concrete man, as his imperial imagination had spontaneously fashioned him.