There is a
translation
by Ada S.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v08 - Dah to Dra
Until
rejoicing come the beautiful eyes which weeping made me come
to thee, thou canst sit down and thou canst go among thein.
Expect no more or word or sign from me. Free, upright, and
sane is thine own free will, and it would be wrong not to act
according to its pleasure; wherefore thee over thyself I crown
and mitre. »
*Leah and Rachel are respectively the types of the virtuous active and
contemplative life.
As they come nearer home.
VIII-274
## p. 4370 (#140) ###########################################
4370
DANTE
CANTOS XXX AND XXXI
THE MEETING WITH HIS LADY IN THE EARTHLY PARADISE
[Beatrice appears. — Departure of Virgil. — Reproof of Dante by Beatrice. -
Confession of Dante. - Passage of Lethe. - Unveiling of Beatrice. ]
WHEN the septentrion of the first heaven,* which never set-
ting knew, nor rising, nor veil of other cloud than sin,—and
which was making every one there acquainted with his duty, as
the lower makes whoever turns the helm to come to port,-
stopped still, the truthful people who had come first between the
griffon and it, turned to the chariot as to their peace, and one of
them, as if sent from heaven, singing, cried thrice, «Veni,
sponsa, de Libano" [Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse],
and all the others after.
As the blessed at the last trump will arise swiftly, each from
his tomb, singing Hallelujah with recovered voice, so upon the
divine chariot, ad vocem tanti senis [at the voice of so great an
elder], rose up a hundred ministers and messengers of life eter-
nal. All were saying, "Benedictus, qui venis" [Blessed thou
that comest], and, scattering flowers above and around, "Mani-
bus o date lilia plenis " [Oh, give lilies with full hands]. t
I have seen ere now at the beginning of the day the eastern
region all rosy, while the rest of the heaven was beautiful with
fair clear sky; and the face of the sun rise shaded, so that
through the tempering of vapors the eye sustained it a long
while. Thus within a cloud of flowers, which from the angelic
hands was ascending, and falling down again within and without,
a lady, with olive wreath above a white veil, appeared to me,
robed with the color of living flame beneath a green mantle. §
And my spirit that now for so long a time had not been bro-
ken down, trembling with amazement at her presence, without
* In the preceding canto a mystic procession, symbolizing the Old and
New Dispensation, has appeared in the Earthly Paradise. At its head were
seven candlesticks, symbols of the sevenfold spirit of the Lord; it was fol-
lowed by personages representing the truthful books of the Old Testament,
and these by the chariot of the Church drawn by a griffon, who in his double
form, half eagle and half lion, represented Christ in his double nature, human
and divine.
The lower septentrion, the seven stars of the Great Bear.
Words from the Eneid (vi. 884), sung by the angels.
§ The olive is the symbol of wisdom and of peace; the three colors are
those of Faith, Charity and Hope.
## p. 4371 (#141) ###########################################
DANTE
4371
having more knowledge by the eyes, through occult virtue that
proceeded from her, felt the great potency of ancient love.
Soon as upon my sight the lofty virtue smote, which already
had transfixed me ere I was out of boyhood, I turned me to the
left with the confidence with which the little child runs to his
mother when he is frightened, or when he is troubled, to say to
Virgil, “Less than a drachm of blood remains in me that doth
not tremble; I recognize the signals of the ancient flame,»* —–
but Virgil had left us deprived of himself; Virgil, sweetest
Father, Virgil, to whom I for my salvation gave me. Nor did
all which the ancient mother lost avail unto my cheeks, cleansed
with dew, that they should not turn dark again with tears.
"Dante, though Virgil be gone away, weep not yet, for it
behoves thee to weep by another sword. "
Like an admiral who, on poop or on prow, comes to see the
people that are serving on the other ships, and encourages them
to do well, upon the left border of the chariot - when I turned
me at the sound of my own name, which of necessity is regis-
tered here - I saw the Lady, who had first appeared to me
veiled beneath the angelic festival, directing her eyes toward
me across the stream; although the veil which descended from
her head, circled by the leaf of Minerva, did not allow her to
appear distinctly. Royally, still haughty in her mien, she went
on, as one who speaks and keeps back his warmest speech:
"Look at me well: I am indeed, I am indeed Beatrice. How
hast thou deigned to approach the mountain? Didst thou know
that man is happy here? " My eyes fell down into the clear
fount; but seeing myself in it I drew them to the grass, such
great shame burdened my brow. As to the son the mother
seems proud, so she seemed to me; for somewhat bitter tasteth
the savor of stern pity.
She was silent, and the angels sang of a sudden, "In te,
Domine, speravi" [In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust]; § but
beyond "pedes meos" [my feet] they did not pass. Even as
the snow, among the living rafters upon the back of Italy, is
congealed, blown, and packed by Slavonian winds, then melting
*Words from the Eneid, iv. 23.
All the joy and beauty of Paradise which Eve lost, and which were now
surrounding Dante.
When he had entered Purgatory.
§ The words are from Psalm xxxi. , verses 1 to 8.
## p. 4372 (#142) ###########################################
4372
DANTE
trickles through itself, if only the land that loses shadow* breathe
so that it seems a fire that melts the candle: so was I without
tears and sighs before the song of those who time their notes
after the notes of the eternal circles. But when I heard in
their sweet accords their compassion for me, more than if they
had said, "Lady, why dost thou so confound him? " the ice that
was bound tight around my heart became breath and water, and
with anguish poured from my breast through my mouth and eyes.
She, still standing motionless on the aforesaid side of the
chariot, then turned her words to those pious + beings thus: -"Ye
watch in the eternal day, so that nor night nor slumber robs
from you one step the world may make along its ways; wherefore
my reply is with greater care, that he who is weeping yonder
may understand me, so that fault and grief may be of one
measure. Not only through the working of the great wheels,
which direct every seed to some end according as the stars are
its companions, but through largess of divine graces, which have
for their rain vapors so lofty that our sight goes not near
thereto, this man was such in his new life, virtually, that every
right habit would have made admirable proof in him. But so
much the more malign and more savage becomes the land ill-
sown and untilled, as it has more of good terrestrial vigor.
Some time did I sustain him with my face; showing my youth-
ful eyes to him, I led him with me turned in right direction.
So soon as I was upon the threshold of my second age, and had
changed life, this one took himself from me, and gave himself
to others. When from flesh to spirit I had ascended, and beauty
and virtue were increased in me, I was less dear and less pleas-
ing to him; and he turned his steps along a way not true,
following false images of good, which pay no promise in full.
Nor did it avail me to win by entreaty § inspirations with which,
both in dream and otherwise, I called him back; so little did he
heed them. So low he fell that all means for his salvation were
already short, save showing him the lost people. For this I
visited the gate of the dead, and to him, who has conducted
him up hither, my prayers were borne with weeping. The high
K
*If the wind blow from Africa.
Both devout and piteous.
Through the influences of the circling heavens.
§ From divine grace.
| In Hell.
## p. 4373 (#143) ###########################################
DANTE
4373
decree of God would be broken, if Lethe should be passed, and
such viands should be tasted without any scot of repentance
which may pour forth tears.
"O thou who art on the further side of the sacred river,"
turning her speech with the point to me, which only by the
edge had seemed to me keen, she began anew, going on with-
out delay, "say, say if this be true: to so great an accusation it
behoves that thine own confession be conjoined. " My power
was so confused that my voice moved, and became extinct be-
fore it could be released by its organs. A little she bore it;
then she said, "What thinkest thou? Reply to me; for the sad
memories in thee are not yet injured by the water. "* Confusion
and fear together mingled forced such a "Yes" from my mouth
that the eyes were needed for the understanding of it.
As a crossbow breaks its cord and its bow when it shoots
with too great tension, and with less force the shaft hits the
mark, so did I burst under that heavy load, pouring forth tears.
and sighs, and the voice slackened along its passage. Where-
upon she to me: "Within those desires of mine that were
leading thee to love the Good beyond which there is nothing
whereto man may aspire, what trenches running traverse, or
what chains didst thou find, for which thou wert obliged thus
to abandon the hope of passing onward? And what entice-
ments, or what advantages on the brow of the others were dis-
played, for which thou wert obliged to court them? " After the
drawing of a bitter sigh, hardly had I the voice that answered,
and the lips with difficulty gave it form. Weeping, I said, "The
present things with their false pleasure turned my steps soon as
your face was hidden. " And she: -"Hadst thou been silent, or
hadst thou denied that which thou dost confess, thy fault would
be not less noted, by such a Judge is it known. But when
the accusation of the sin bursts from one's own cheek, in our
court the wheel turns itself back against the edge.
But yet,
that thou mayst now bear shame for thy error, and that another
time, hearing the Sirens, thou mayst be stronger, lay aside the
seed of weeping and listen; so shalt thou hear how in opposite
direction my buried flesh ought to have moved thee. Never
did nature or art present to thee pleasure such as the fair limbs
―
―――
*Not yet obliterated by the waters of Lethe.
Inspired by me.
Other objects of desire.
## p. 4374 (#144) ###########################################
4374
DANTE
wherein I was inclosed; and they are scattered in earth. And
if the supreme pleasure thus failed thee through my death, what
mortal things ought then to have drawn thee into its desire?
Forsooth thou oughtest, at the first arrow of things deceitful, to
have risen up, following me who was no longer such. Nor
should thy wings have weighed thee downward to await more
blows, either girl or other vanity of so brief a use.
The young
little bird awaits two or three; but before the eyes of the full-
fledged the net is spread in vain, the arrow shot. "
As children, ashamed, dumb, with eyes upon the ground,
stand listening and conscience-stricken and repentant, so was I
standing. And she said, "Since through hearing thou art grieved,
lift up thy beard and thou shalt receive more grief in seeing. "
With less resistance is a sturdy oak uprooted by a native wind,
or by one from the land of Iarbas,* than I raised up my chin at
her command; and when by the beard she asked for my eyes,
truly I recognized the venom of the argument. †
And as my
face stretched upward, my sight perceived that those primal
creatures were resting from their strewing, and my eyes, still
little assured, saw Beatrice turned toward the animal that is only
one person in two natures. Beneath her veil and beyond the
stream she seemed to me more to surpass her ancient self, than
she surpassed the others here when she was here. So pricked
me there the nettle of repentance, that of all other things the
one which most turned me aside unto its love became most
hostile to me. t
Such contrition stung my heart that I fell overcome; and
what I then became she knows who afforded me the cause.
Then, when my heart restored my outward faculties, I saw
above me the lady whom I had found alone,§ and she was saying,
"Hold me, hold me. " She had drawn me into the stream up to
the throat, and dragging me behind was moving upon the water
light as a shuttle. When I was near the blessed shore, "Asper-
ges me" I heard so sweetly that I cannot remember it, far less
* Numidia, of which Iarbas was king.
The beard being the sign of manhood, which should be accompanied by
wisdom.
The one which by its attractions most diverted me from Beatrice.
SA solitary lady whom he had met on first entering the Earthly Paradise,
and who had accompanied him thus far.
The first words of the 7th verse of the 51st Psalm: "Purge me with hyssop,
and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. ”
## p. 4375 (#145) ###########################################
DANTE
4375
can write it. The beautiful lady opened her arms, clasped my
head, and plunged me in where it behoved that I should swallow
the water. Then she took me, and, thus bathed, brought me
within the dance of the four beautiful ones,* and each of them
covered me with her arm. "Here we are nymphs, and in heaven
we are stars; ere Beatrice had descended to the world we were
ordained unto her for her handmaids. We will lead thee to her
eyes; but in the joyous light which is within them, the three
yonder who deeper gaze shall make keen thine own. " Thus
singing they began; and then to the breast of the griffon they
led me with them, where Beatrice was standing turned towa:
us. They said, "See that thou sparest not thy sight: we have
placed thee before the emeralds whence Love of old drew his
arrows upon thee. " A thousand desires hotter than flame bound
my eyes to the relucent eyes which only upon the griffon were
standing fixed. As the sun in a mirror, not otherwise, the two-
fold animal was gleaming therewithin, now with one, now with
another mode. Think, Reader, if I marveled when I saw the
thing stand quiet in itself, while in its image it was transmuting
itself.
While, full of amazement and glad, my soul was tasting that
food which, sating of itself, causes hunger for itself, the other
three, showing themselves in their bearing of loftier order, came
forward dancing to their angelic melody. "Turn, Beatrice, turn
thy holy eyes," was their song, "upon thy faithful one, who to
see thee has taken so many steps. For grace do us the grace
that thou unveil to him thy mouth, so that he may discern the
second beauty which thou concealest. "
O splendor of living light eternal! Who hath become so
pallid under the shadow of Parnassus, or hath so drunk at its
cistern, that he would not seem to have his mind incumbered,
trying to represent thee as thou didst appear there where in
harmony the heaven overshadows thee, when in the open air thou
didst thyself disclose?
*The four cardinal virtues.
The three evangelic virtues.
Now with the divine, now with the human.
## p. 4376 (#146) ###########################################
4376
DANTE
PARADISE
CANTO XXXIII
THE BEATIFIC VISION
[Dante, having been brought by Beatrice to Paradise in the Empyrean, is
left by her in charge of St. Bernard, while she takes her place among the
blessed. Prayer of St. Bernard to the Virgin. - Her intercession. -The vision
of God. -The end of desire. ]
"VIRG
JIRGIN MOTHER, daughter of thine own Son, humble and
exalted more than any creature, fixed term of the eternal
counsel, thou art she who didst so ennoble human nature
that its own Maker disdained not to become His own making.
Within thy womb was rekindled the love through whose warmth
this flower has thus blossomed in the eternal peace. Here thou
art to us the noonday torch of charity, and below, among mor-
tals, thou art the living fount of hope. Lady, thou art so great,
and so availest, that whoso wishes grace, and has not recourse
to thee, wishes his desire to fly without wings. Thy benignity
not only succors him who asks, but oftentimes freely foreruns
the asking. In thee mercy, in thee pity, in thee magnificence,
in thee whatever of goodness is in any creature, are united.
Now doth this man, who, from the lowest abyss of the universe,
far even as here, has seen one by one the lives of spirits, sup-
plicate thee, through grace, for virtue such that he may be able
with his eyes to uplift himself higher toward the Ultimate Salva-
tion. And I, who never for my own vision burned more than I
do for his, proffer to thee all my prayers, and pray that they be
not scant, that with thy prayers thou wouldst dissipate for him.
every cloud of his mortality, so that the Supreme Pleasure may
be displayed to him. Further I pray thee, Queen, who canst
what so thou wilt, that, after so great a vision, thou wouldst
preserve his affections sound. May thy guardianship vanquish
human impulses. Behold Beatrice with all the blessed for my
prayers clasp their hands to thee. "
The eyes beloved and revered by God, fixed on the speaker,
showed to us how pleasing unto her are devout prayers. Then
to the Eternal Light were they directed, on which it is not to be
believed that eye so clear is turned by any creature.
And I, who to the end of all desires was approaching, even
as I ought, ended within myself the ardor of my longings.
## p. 4377 (#147) ###########################################
DANTE
4377
Bernard was beckoning to me, and was smiling, that I should
look upward; but I was already, of my own accord, such as he
wished; for my sight, becoming pure, was entering more and
more through the radiance of the lofty Light which of itself is
true. *
Thenceforward my vision was greater than our speech, which
yields to such a sight, and the memory yields to such excess.
As is he who dreaming sees, and after the dream the passion
remains imprinted, and the rest returns not to the mind, such
am I; for my vision almost wholly fails, while the sweetness
that was born of it yet distills within my heart. Thus the snow
is by the sun unsealed; thus on the wind, in the light leaves,
was lost the saying of the Sibyl.
O Supreme Light, that so high upliftest Thyself from mortal
conceptions, re-lend a little to my mind of what Thou didst
appear, and make my tongue so powerful that it may be able to
leave one single spark of Thy glory for the future people; for
by returning somewhat to my memory and by sounding a little
in these verses, more of Thy victory shall be conceived.
I think that by the keenness of the living ray which I en-
dured, I should have been dazzled if my eyes had been averted
from it. And it comes to my mind that for this reason I was
the more hardy to sustain so much, that I joined my look unto
the Infinite Goodness.
O abundant Grace, whereby I presumed to fix my eyes
through the Eternal Light so far that there I consummated my
vision!
In its depth I saw that whatsoever is dispersed through the
universe is there included, bound with love in one volume; sub-
stance and accidents and their modes, fused together, as it were,
in such wise, that that of which I speak is one simple Light.
The universal form of this knott I believe that I saw, because
in saying this I feel that I more abundantly rejoice. One
instant only is greater oblivion for me than five-and-twenty cen-
turies to the emprise which made Neptune wonder at the shadow
of Argo.
* Light in its essence; all other light is derived from it.
This union of substance and accident.
So overwhelming was the vision that the memory could not retain it
completely even for an instant.
## p. 4378 (#148) ###########################################
4378
DANTE
Thus my mind, wholly rapt, was gazing fixed, motionless,
and intent, and ever with gazing grew enkindled. In that Light
one becomes such that it is impossible he should ever consent to
turn himself from it for other sight; because the Good which is
the object of the will is all collected in it, and outside of it that
is defective which is perfect there.
Now will my speech be shorter even in respect to that which
I remember, than an infant's who still bathes his tongue at the
breast. Not because more than one simple semblance was in the
Living Light wherein I was gazing, which is always such as it
was before; but through my sight, which was growing strong in
me as I looked, one sole appearance, as I myself changed, was
altering itself to me.
Within the profound and clear subsistence of the lofty Light
appeared to me three circles of three colors and of one dimen-
sion; and one appeared reflected by the other, as Iris by Iris,
and the third appeared fire which from the one and from the
other is equally breathed forth.
O how short is the telling, and how feeble toward my con-
ception! and this toward what I saw is such that it suffices not
to call it little.
O Light Eternal, that sole dwellest in Thyself, sole under-
standest Thyself, and, by Thyself understood and understanding,
lovest and smilest on Thyself! That circle, which, thus con-
ceived, appeared in Thee as a reflected light, being somewhile
regarded by my eyes, seemed to me depicted within itself, of its
own very color, by our effigy, wherefore my sight was wholly
set upon it. As is the geometer who wholly applies himself to
measure the circle, and finds not by thinking that principle of
which he is in need, such was I at that new sight. I wished to
see how the image accorded with the circle, and how it has its
place therein; but my own wings were not for this, had it not
been that my mind was smitten by a flash in which its wish
came. *
To my high fantasy here power failed; but now my desire
and my will, like a wheel which evenly is moved, the Love was
turning which moves the Sun and the other stars. †
*The wish to see the mystery of the union of the two natures, the divine
and human in Christ.
That Love which makes sun and stars revolve was giving a concordant
revolution to my desire and my will.
## p. 4379 (#149) ###########################################
4379
JAMES DARMESTETER
(1849-1894)
GOOD example of the latter-day enlightened savant is the
French Jew, James Darmesteter, whose premature death
robbed the modern world of scholarship of one of its most
distinguished figures. Scholars who do noble service in adding to
the sum total of human knowledge often are specialists, the nature
of whose work excludes them from general interest and appreciation.
It was not so with this man,- not alone an Oriental philologist of
more than national repute, but a broadly cultured, original mind, an
enlightened spirit, and a master of literary expression. Darmesteter
calls for recognition as a maker of literature as well as a scientist.
The son of a humble Jewish bookbinder, subjected to the disad-
vantages and hardships of poverty, James Darmesteter was born at
Chateau-Salins in Lorraine in 1849, but got his education in Paris,
early imbibing the Jewish traditions, familiar from youth with the
Bible and the Talmud. At the public school, whence he was gradu-
ated at eighteen, he showed his remarkable intellectual powers and
attracted the attention of scholars like Bréal and Burnouf, who, not-
ing his aptitude for languages, advised devotion to Oriental linguis-
tics. After several years of uncertainty, years spent with books
and in travel, and in the desultory production of poetry and fiction,
philological study was undertaken as his life work, with remarkable
results. For twenty years he labored in this field, and his appoint-
ment in 1882 to succeed Renan as Secretary of the Asiatic Society of
France speaks volumes for the position he won. In 1885 he became
professor of Iranian languages and literature in the College of France.
Other scholastic honors fell to him in due course and good measure.
As a scholar Darmesteter's most important labors were the expo-
sition of Zoroastrianism, the national faith of ancient Persia, which
he made a specialty; and his French translation of and commentary
on the Avesta, the Bible of that religion. As an interpreter of Zoro-
aster he sought to unite synthetically two opposing modern schools:
that which relied solely upon native traditions, and that which, re-
garding these as untrustworthy, drew its conclusions from an exam-
ination of the text, supplemented by the aid of Sanskrit on the side
of language and of the Vedas on the side of religion. Darmesteter's
work was thus boldly comprehensive. He found in the Avesta the
influence of such discordant elements as the Bible, Buddha, and
## p. 4380 (#150) ###########################################
4380
JAMES DARMESTETER
Greek philosophy, and believed that in its present form it was com-
posed at a later time than has been supposed. These technical ques-
tions are still mooted points with the critics. The translation of the
Avesta will perhaps stand as his greatest achievement. A herculean
labor of four years, it was rewarded by the Academy of Inscriptions
and Belles-Lettres with the 20,000-franc prize given but once in a
decade for the work which, in the Academy's opinion, had best
served or brought most honor to the country.
But the technical accomplishments of learning represent but a
fragment of Darmesteter's amazing mental activity. He wrote a
striking book on the Mahdi, the tenacious belief in the Mohammedan
Messiah taking hold on his imagination. He was versed in English
literature, edited Shakespeare, and introduced his countrymen to
Browning. While in Afghanistan on a philological mission he gath-
ered, merely as a side pursuit, a unique collection of Afghan folk-
songs, and the result was a fascinating and valuable paper in a new
field. He helped to found a leading French review. Articles of
travel, critiques on subjects political, religious, literary, and social, fell
fast from his pen. In his general essays on these broader, more vital
aspects of thought and life, he is an artist in literary expression, a
writer with a distinct and great gift for form. Here his vigorous
mind, ample training, his humanistic tastes and humanitarian aspira-
tions, are all finely in evidence.
The English reader who seeks an introduction to Darmesteter is
directed to his 'Selected Essays,' translated by Helen B. Jastrow,
edited with a memoir by Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr. (Houghton,
Mifflin and Company, Boston).
There is a translation by Ada S.
Ballin of his 'The Mahdi' (Harper and Brothers, New York); and in
the Contemporary Review for January, 1895, is a noble appreciation
of Darmesteter by his friend Gaston Paris. In the Sacred Books of
the East' will be found an English rendering of the Avesta by
Darmesteter and Mills.
As a thinker in the philosophical sense Darmesteter was remark-
able. Early breaking away from orthodox Judaism, his philological
and historical researches led him to accept the conclusions of de-
structive criticism with regard to the Bible; and a disciple of Renan,
he became enrolled among those scholars who see in science the one
explanation of the universe. But possessing, along with his keen.
analytic powers, a nature dominantly ethical, he made humanity his
idol. His patriotism for France was intense; and, a Jew always
sympathetic to the wonderful history of his people,-in his later
years by a brilliant, poetical, almost audacious interpretation of the
Old Testament,- he found a solution of the riddle of life in the
Hebrew prophets. What he deemed their essential faith — Judaism
## p. 4381 (#151) ###########################################
JAMES DARMESTETER
4381
stripped of ritual and legend - he declared to be in harmony with
the scientific creed of the present: belief in the unity of moral law,—
the Old Testament Jehovah; and belief in the eventual triumph of
justice upon this earth, the modern substitute for the New Testa-
ment heaven. This doctrine, which in most hands would be cold and
comfortless enough, he makes vital, engaging, through the passionate
presentation of an eloquent lover of his fellow-man. In a word,
Darmesteter was a Positivist, dowered, like that other noble Pos-
itivist George Eliot, with a nature sensitive to spiritual issues.
An idyllic passage in Darmesteter's toilful scholar life was his
tender friendship with the gifted English woman, A. Mary F. Robin-
son. Attracted by her lovely verse, the intellectual companionship
ripened into love, and for his half-dozen final years he enjoyed her
wifely aid and sympathy in what seems to have been an ideal union.
The end, when it came, was quick and painless. Always of a frail
constitution, stunted in body from childhood, he died in harness,
October 19th, 1894, his head falling forward on his desk as he wrote.
The tributes that followed make plain the enthusiastic admiration
James Darmesteter awakened in those who knew him best. The
leading Orientalist of his generation, he added to the permanent
acquisitions of scholarship, and made his impress as one of the
remarkable personalities of France in the late nineteenth century.
In the language of a friend, "a Jew by race, a Greek by culture, a
Frenchman in heart," he furnishes another illustration of that strain
of genius which seems like a compensatory gift to the Jewish folk for
its manifold buffetings at the hand of Fate.
ERNEST RENAN
From 'Selected Essays': copyrighted 1895 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Renan are due to
THE
HE mistaken judgments passed upon M.
the fact that in his work he did not place the emphasis
upon the Good, but upon the True. Men concluded that
for him, therefore, science was the whole of life. The environ-
ment in which he was formed was forgotten,—an environment
in which the moral sense was exquisite and perfect, while the
scientific sense was nil. He did not need to discover the
moral sense, it was the very atmosphere in which he lived.
When the scientific sense awoke in him, and he beheld the
world and history transfigured by it, he was dazzled, and the
influence lasted throughout his life. He dreamed of making
France understand this new revelation; he was the apostle of
-
## p. 4382 (#152) ###########################################
4382
JAMES DARMESTETER
this gospel of truth and science, but in heart and mind he
never attacked what is permanent and divine in the other
gospel. Thus he was a complete man, and deserved the
disdain of dilettantes morally dead, and of mystics scientifically
atonic.
What heritage has M. Renan left to posterity? As a
scholar he created religious criticism in France, and prepared
for universal science that incomparable instrument, the Corpus.
As an author he bequeathed to universal art, pages which will
endure, and to him may be applied what he said of George
Sand:-"He had the divine faculty of giving wings to his sub-
ject, of producing under the form of fine art the idea which in
other hands remained crude and formless. " As a philosopher
he left behind a mass of ideas which he did not care to collect
in doctrinal shape, but which nevertheless constitute a coherent
whole. One thing only in this world is certain,-duty. One
truth is plain in the course of the world as science reveals it:
the world is advancing to a higher, more perfect form of
being. The supreme happiness of man is to draw nearer to
this God to come, contemplating him in science, and preparing,
by action, the advent of a humanity nobler, better endowed,
and more akin to the ideal Being.
JUDAISM
From 'Selected Essays': copyrighted 1895 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Ju
UDAISM has not made the miraculous the basis of its dogma,
nor installed the supernatural as a permanent factor in the
progress of events. Its miracles, from the time of the Mid-
dle Ages, are but a poetic detail, a legendary recital, a picturesque
decoration; and its cosmogony, borrowed in haste from Babylon
by the last compiler of the Bible, with the stories of the apple
and the serpent, over which so many Christian generations have
labored, never greatly disturbed the imagination of the rabbis,
nor weighed very heavily upon the thought of the Jewish phi-
losophers. Its rites were never "an instrument of faith," an
expedient to "lull" rebellious thought into faith; they are merely
cherished customs, a symbol of the family, of transitory value,
and destined to disappear when there shall be but one family in
a world converted to the one truth. Set aside all these miracles,
## p. 4383 (#153) ###########################################
JAMES DARMESTETER
4383
all these rites, and behind them will be found the two great
dogmas which, ever since the prophets, constitute the whole of
Judaism-the Divine unity and Messianism; unity of law through-
out the world, and the terrestrial triumph of justice in humanity.
These are the two dogmas which at the present time illuminate
humanity in its progress, both in the scientific and social order
of things, and which are termed in modern parlance unity of
forces and belief in progress.
For this reason, Judaism is the only religion that has never
entered into conflict, and never can, with either science or social
progress, and that has witnessed, and still witnesses, all their
conquests without a sense of fear. These are not hostile forces
that it accepts or submits to merely from a spirit of toleration
or policy, in order to save the remains of its power by a com-
promise. They are old friendly voices, which it recognizes and
salutes with joy; for it has heard them resound for centuries.
already, in the axioms of free thought and in the cry of the
suffering heart. For this reason the Jews, in all the countries
which have entered upon the new path, have begun to take a
share in all the great works of civilization, in the triple field of
science, of art, and of action; and that share, far from being an
insignificant one, is out of all proportion to the brief time that
has elapsed since their enfranchisement.
Does this mean that Judaism should nurse dreams of ambi-
tion, and think of realizing one day that "invisible church of the
future" invoked by some in prayer? This would be an illusion,
whether on the part of a narrow sectarian, or on that of an
enlightened individual. The truth however remains, that the
Jewish spirit can still be a factor in this world, making for the
highest science, for unending progress; and that the mission of
the Bible is not yet complete. The Bible is not responsible for
the partial miscarriage of Christianity, due to the compromises
made by its organizers, who, in their too great zeal to conquer
and convert Paganism, were themselves converted by it. But
everything in Christianity which comes in a direct line from
Judaism lives, and will live; and it is Judaism which through
Christianity has cast into the old polytheistic world, to ferment
there until the end of time, the sentiment of unity, and an
impatience to bring about charity and justice. The reign of the
Bible, and also of the Evangelists in so far as they were inspired
by the Bible, can become established only in proportion as the
## p. 4384 (#154) ###########################################
4384
JAMES DARMESTETER
positive religions connected with it lose their power. Great reli-
gions outlive their altars and their priests. Hellenism, abolished,
counts less skeptics to-day than in the days of Socrates and
Anaxagoras. The gods of Homer died when Phidias carved
them in marble, and now they are immortally enthroned in the
thought and heart of Europe. The Cross may crumble into
dust, but there were words spoken under its shadow in Galilee,
the echo of which will forever vibrate in the human conscience.
And when the nation who made the Bible shall have disap-
peared, the race and the cult, though leaving no visible
trace of its passage upon earth, its imprint will remain in the
depth of the heart of generations, who will, unconsciously per-
haps, live upon what has thus been implanted in their breasts.
Humanity, as it is fashioned in the dreams of those who desire
to be called freethinkers, may with the lips deny the Bible and
its work; but humanity can never deny it in its heart, without
the sacrifice of the best that it contains, faith in unity and hope
for justice, and without a relapse into the mythology and the
"might makes right" of thirty centuries ago.
-
―――
## p. 4385 (#155) ###########################################
4385
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
(1809-1882)
BY E. RAY LANKESTER
HARLES ROBERT DARWIN, the great naturalist and author of
the "Darwinian theory," was the son of Dr. Robert Waring
Darwin (1766-1848) and grandson of Erasmus Darwin (1731–
1802). He was born at Shrewsbury on February 12th, 1809. W. E.
Gladstone, Alfred Tennyson, and Abraham Lincoln were born in the
same year.
Charles Darwin was the youngest of a family of four, hav-
ing an elder brother and two sisters. He was sent to a day school at
Shrewsbury in the year of his mother's death, 1817. At this age he
tells us that the passion for "collecting" which leads a man to be a
systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in him,
and was clearly innate, as none of his brothers or sisters had this
taste. A year later he was removed to the Shrewsbury grammar
school, where he profited little by the education in the dead lan-
guages administered, and incurred (as even to-day would be the case
in English schools) the rebukes of the head-master Butler for "wast-
ing his time" upon such unprofitable subjects as natural history and
chemistry, which he pursued "out of school. "
When Charles was sixteen his father sent him to Edinburgh to
study medicine, but after two sessions there he was removed and
sent to Cambridge (1828) with the intention that he should become
a clergyman. In 1831 he took his B. A. degree as what is called a
"pass-man. " In those days the injurious system of competitive.
examinations had not laid hold of the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge as it has since, and Darwin quietly took a pass degree
whilst studying a variety of subjects of interest to him, without
a thought of excelling in an examination. He was fond of all field
sports, of dogs and horses, and also spent much time in excursions,
collecting and observing with Henslow the professor of botany, and
Sedgwick the celebrated geologist. An undergraduate friend of those
days has declared that "he was the most genial, warm-hearted, gen-
erous and affectionate of friends; his sympathies were with all that
was good and true; he had a cordial hatred for everything false, or
vile, or cruel, or mean, or dishonorable. He was not only great but
pre-eminently good, and just and lovable. "
Through Henslow and the sound advice of his uncle Josiah Wedg-
wood (the son of the potter of Etruria) he accepted an offer to
VIII-275
## p. 4386 (#156) ###########################################
4386
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
accompany Captain Fitzroy as naturalist on H. M. S. Beagle, which
was to make an extensive surveying expedition. The voyage lasted
from December 27th, 1831, to October 2d, 1836. It was, Darwin
himself says, "by far the most important event in my life, and has
determined my whole career. " He had great opportunities of making
explorations on land whilst the ship was engaged in her surveying
work in various parts of the southern hemisphere, and made exten-
sive collections of plants and animals, fossil as well as living forms,
terrestrial as well as marine. On his return he was busy with the
description of these results, and took up his residence in London.
His 'Journal of Researches' was published in 1839, and is now
familiar to many readers in its third edition, published in 1860
under the title 'A Naturalist's Voyage; Journal of Researches into
the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the
Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle round the World, under the command of
Captain Fitzroy, R. N. '
This was Darwin's first book, and is universally held to be one
of the most delightful records of a naturalist's travels ever produced.
It is to be placed alongside of Humboldt's 'Personal Narrative,' and
is the model followed by the authors of other delightful books of
travel of a later date, such as Wallace's 'Malay Archipelago,' Mose-
ley's 'Naturalist on the Challenger,' and Belt's 'Naturalist in Nica-
ragua. ' We have given in our selections from Darwin's writings the
final pages of 'A Naturalist's Voyage' as an example of the style
which characterizes the book. In it Darwin shows himself an ardent
and profound lover of the luxuriant beauty of nature in the tropics, a
kindly observer of men, whether missionaries or savages; an inces-
sant student of natural things-rocks, plants, and animals; and one
with a mind so keenly set upon explaining these things and assign-
ing them to their causes, that none of his observations are trivial,
but all of value and many of first-rate importance. The book is
addressed, as are all of Darwin's books, to the general reader. It
seemed to be natural to him to try and explain his observations and
reasonings which led to them and followed from them to a wide
circle of his fellow-men. The reader at once feels that Darwin is an
honest and modest man, who desires his sympathy and seeks for his
companionship in the enjoyment of his voyage and the interesting
facts and theories gathered by him in distant lands. The quiet un-
assuming style of the narrative, and the careful explanation of details
in such a way as to appeal to those who have little or no knowledge
of natural history, gives a charm to the Naturalist's Voyage' which
is possessed in no less a degree by his later books. A writer in the
Quarterly Review in 1839 wrote, in reviewing the Naturalist's Voy-
age,' of the "charm arising from the freshness of heart which is thrown
## p. 4387 (#157) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4387
over these pages of a strong intellectual man and an acute and deep
observer. " The places visited in the course of the Beagle's voyage,
concerning each of which Darwin has something to say, were the
Cape Verd Islands, St. Paul's Rocks, Fernando Noronha, parts of
South America, Tierra del Fuego, the Galapagos Islands, the Falk-
land Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Keeling
Island, the Maldives, Mauritius, St. Helena, Ascension. The most
important discoveries recorded in the book-also treated at greater
length in special scientific memoirs-are the explanation of the ring-
like form of coral islands, the geological structure of St. Helena and
other islands, and the relation of the living inhabitants - great tor-
toises, lizards, birds, and various plants-of the various islands of
the Galapagos Archipelago to those of South America.
In 1839 (shortly before the publication of his journal) Darwin mar-
ried his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood
of Maer, and in 1842 they took the country-house and little property
of Down near Orpington in Kent, which remained his home and the
seat of his labors for forty years; that is, until his death on April
19th, 1882. In a letter to his friend Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle,
written in 1846, Darwin says, "My life goes on like clockwork, and I
am fixed on the spot where I shall end it. " Happily, he was pos-
sessed of ample private fortune, and never undertook any teaching
work nor gave any of his strength to the making of money. He
was able to devote himself entirely to the studies in which he took
delight; and though suffering from weak health due to a hereditary
form of dyspepsia, he presented the rare spectacle of a
man of
leisure more fully occupied, more absorbed in constant and exhaust-
ing labors, than many a lawyer, doctor, professor, or man of letters.
His voyage seems to have satisfied once for all his need for travel-
ing, and his absences from Down were but few and brief during the
rest of his life. Here most of his children were born, five sons and
three daughters. One little girl died in childhood; the rest grew up
around him and remained throughout his life in the closest terms
of intimacy and affection with him and their mother. Here he car-
ried on his experiments in greenhouse, garden, and paddock; here he
collected his library and wrote his great books. He became a man
of well-considered habits and method, carefully arranging his day's
occupation so as to give so many hours to noting the results of
experiments, so many to writing and reading, and an hour or two
to exercise in his grounds or a ride, and playing with his children.
Frequently he was stopped for days and even weeks from all intel-
lectual labor by attacks of vomiting and giddiness. Great as were
his sufferings on account of ill health, it is not improbable that the
retirement of life which was thus forced on him, to a very large
## p. 4388 (#158) ###########################################
4388
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
extent determined his wonderful assiduity in study and led to the
production by him of so many great works.
In later years these attacks were liable to ensue upon prolonged
conversation with visitors, if a subject of scientific interest were
discussed. His wife, who throughout their long and happy union
devoted herself to the care of her husband so as to enable him to do
a maximum amount of work with least suffering in health, would
come and fetch him away after half an hour's talk, that he might lie
down alone in a quiet room. Then after an hour or so he would
return with a smile, like a boy released from punishment, and launch
again with a merry laugh into talk. Never was there an invalid who
bore his maladies so cheerfully, or who made so light of a terrible
burden. Although he was frequently seasick during the voyage of
the Beagle, he did not attribute his condition in later life in any
way to that experience, but to inherited weakness. During the hours
passed in his study he found it necessary to rest at intervals, and
adopted regularly the plan of writing for an hour and of then lying
down for half an hour, whilst his wife or daughter read to him a
novel! After half an hour he would again resume his work, and again
after an hour return to the novel. In this way he got through the
greater part of the circulating libraries' contents. He declared that
he had no taste for literature, but liked a story, especially about a
pretty girl; and he would only read those in which all ended well.
Authors of stories ending in death and failure ought, he declared, to
be hung!
He rarely went to London, on account of his health, and conse-
quently kept up a very large correspondence with scientific friends,
especially with Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley. He made it a rule to
preserve every letter he received, and his friends were careful to
preserve his; so that in the 'Life and Letters' published after his
death by his son Frank-who in later years lived with his father and
assisted him in his work—we have a most interesting record of the
progress of his speculations, as well as a delightful revelation of his
beautiful character. His house was large enough to accommodate
several guests at a time; and it was his delight to receive here for a
week's end not only his old friends and companions, but younger
naturalists, and others, the companions of his sons and daughters.
Over six feet in height, with a slight stoop of his high shoulders,
with a brow of unparalleled development overshadowing his merry
blue eyes, and a long gray beard and mustache,―he presented the
ideal picture of a natural philosopher. His bearing was, however,
free from all pose of superior wisdom or authority. The most charm-
ing and unaffected gayety, and an eager innate courtesy and good-
ness of heart, were its dominant notes. His personality was no less
## p. 4389 (#159) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4389
fascinating and rare in quality than are the immortal products of
his intellect.
The history of the great works which Darwin produced, and
especially of his theory of the Origin of Species, is best given in
his own words. The passage which is here referred to is a portion
of an autobiographical sketch written by him in 1876, not for publi-
cation but for the use of his family, and is printed in the 'Life and
Letters. Taken together with the statement as to his views on re-
ligion, it gives a great insight both into the character and mental
quality of the writer. It is especially remarkable as the attempt of
a truly honest and modest man to account for the wonderful height
of celebrity and intellectual eminence to which he was no less
astonished than pleased to find himself raised. But it also furnishes
the reader with an admirable catalogue raisonné of his books, arranged
in chronological order.
A few more notes as to Darwin's character will help the reader
to appreciate his work. His friendships were remarkable, character-
ized on his side by the warmest and most generous feeling. Hens-
low, Fitzroy, Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley stand out as his chief
friends and correspondents. Henslow was professor of botany at
Cambridge, and took Darwin with him when a student there for
walks, collecting plants and insects. His admiration for Henslow's
character, and his tribute to his fine simplicity and warmth of feel-
ing in matters involving the wrongs of a down-trodden class or
cruelty to an individual, are evidence of deep sympathy between
the natures of Darwin and his first teacher. Of Fitzroy, the captain
of H. M. S. Beagle--with whom he quarreled for a day because
Fitzroy defended slavery-Darwin says that he was in many ways
the noblest character he ever knew. His love and admiration for
Lyell were unbounded. Lyell was the man who taught him the
method- the application of the causes at present discoverable in
nature to the past history of the earth-by which he was led to the
solution of the question as to the origin of organic forms on the
earth's surface. He regarded Lyell, who with Mrs. Lyell often
visited him at Down, more than any other man as his master and
teacher. Hooker-still happily surviving from among this noble
group of men-was his "dear old friend"; his most constant and
unwearied correspondent; he from whom Darwin could always extract
the most valuable facts and opinions in the field of botanical sci-
ence, and the one upon whose help he always relied. Huxley was for
Darwin not merely a delightful and charming friend, but a "wonder-
ful man," a most daring, skillful champion, whose feats of literary
swordsmanship made Darwin both tremble and rejoice. Samples of
bis correspondence with these fellow-workers are given below. The
## p. 4390 (#160) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4390
letter to Hooker (September 26th, 1862) is particularly interesting, as
recording one of the most important discoveries of his later years,—
confirmed by the subsequent researches of Gardiner and others,—and
as containing a pretty confession of his jealous desire to exalt the
status of plants. Often he spoke and wrote in his letters of indi-
vidual plants with which he was experimenting as "little rascals. "
Darwin shared with other great men whose natures approach per-
fection, an unusual sympathy with and power over dogs, and a love
for children. The latter trait is most beautifully expressed in a note
which was found amongst his papers, giving an account of his little
girl, who died at the age of ten years.
Written for his own eyes
only, it is a most delicate and tender composition, and should be pon-
dered side by side with his frank and — necessarily to some readers—
almost terrifying statement of his thoughts on religion.
Darwin's only self-indulgence was snuff-taking. In later years he
smoked an occasional cigarette, but his real "little weakness"> was
snuff. It is difficult to suppose that he did not benefit by the habit,
careful as he was to keep it in check. He kept his snuff-box in the
hall of his house, so that he should have to take the trouble of a
walk in order to get a pinch, and not have too easy an access to the
magic powder.
The impression made on him by his own success and the over-
whelming praise and even reverence which he received from all parts
of the world, was characteristic of his charming nature. Darwin did
not receive these proofs of the triumphs of his views with the solem-
nity of an inflated reformer who has laid his law upon the whole
world of thought. Quite otherwise. He was simply delighted. He
chuckled gayly over the spread of his views, almost as a sportsman
and we must remember that in his young days he was a sports-
man-may rejoice in the triumphs of his own favorite "racer," or
even as a schoolboy may be proud and happy in the success of "the
eleven" of which he is captain. He delighted to count up the
sale of his books, not specially for the money value it represented,
though he was too sensible to be indifferent to that, but because it
proved to him that his long and arduous life of thought, experiment,
and literary work was not in vain. To have been or to have posed
as being indifferent to popular success, would have required a man
of less vivid sympathy with his fellow-men; to have been puffed up
and pretentious would have needed one less gifted with a sense of
humor, less conscious of the littleness of one man, however talented,
in the vast procession of life on the earth's surface. His delight in
his work and its success was of the perfect and natural kind, which
he could communicate to his wife and daughters, and might have
been shared by a child.
## p. 4391 (#161) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4391
I, who write of him here, had the great privilege of staying with
him from time to time at Down, and I find it difficult to record
the strangely mixed feeling of reverential admiration and extreme
personal attachment and affection with which I came to regard him.
I have never known or heard of a man who combined with such
exceptional intellectual power so much cheeriness and love of humor,
and such ideal kindness, courtesy, and modesty. Owing to the fact
that my father was a naturalist and man of letters, I as a boy knew
Henslow and Lyell, Darwin's teachers, and have myself enjoyed a
naturalist's walk with the one and the geological discussions of the
other. I first saw Darwin himself in 1853, when he was recommended
to my boyish imagination as "a man who had ridden up a mountain
on the back of a tortoise" (in the Galapagos Islands)! When I began
to work at and write on zoölogy he showed his kindness of heart by
writing to me in praise of my first book: he wrote to me later in
answer to my appeal for guidance, that "physiological experiment on
animals is justifiable for real investigation; but not for mere damna-
ble and detestable curiosity. It is a subject which makes me sick
with horror, so I will not say another word about it, else I shall not
sleep to-night. " When I prosecuted Slade the spiritualistic impostor,
and obtained his conviction at Bow Street as a common rogue, Dar-
win was much interested, and after the affair was over wrote to say
that he was sure that I had been at great expense in effecting
what he considered to be a public benefit, and that he should like to
be allowed to contribute ten pounds to the cost of the prosecution.
He was ever ready in this way to help by timely gifts of money
what he thought to be a good cause, as for instance in the erection
of the Zoological Station of Naples by Dr. Anton Dohrn, to which he
gave a hundred pounds. His most characteristic minor trait which
I remember, was his sitting in his drawing-room at Down in his
high-seated arm-chair, and whilst laughing at some story or joke, slap-
ping his thigh with his right hand and exclaiming, with a quite inno-
cent and French freedom of speech, "O my God! That's very good.
That's capital. " Perhaps one of the most interesting things that I
ever heard him say was when, after describing to me an experiment
in which he had placed under a bell-jar some pollen from a male
flower, together with an unfertilized female flower, in order to see
whether, when kept at a distance but under the same jar, the one
would act in any way on the other, he remarked:-"That's a fool's
experiment. But I love fools' experiments. I am always making
them. " A great deal might be written as comment on that state-
ment. Perhaps the thoughts which it suggests may be summed up by
the proposition that even a wise experiment when made by a fool
generally leads to a false conclusion, but that fools' experiments
## p. 4392 (#162) ###########################################
4392
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
conducted by a genius often prove to be leaps through the dark
into great discoveries.
As examples of Darwin's writings I have chosen, in addition to
those already mentioned, certain passages from his great book on the
'Origin of Species,' in which he explains what he understands by the
terms "Natural Selection" and the " "Struggle for Existence.
rejoicing come the beautiful eyes which weeping made me come
to thee, thou canst sit down and thou canst go among thein.
Expect no more or word or sign from me. Free, upright, and
sane is thine own free will, and it would be wrong not to act
according to its pleasure; wherefore thee over thyself I crown
and mitre. »
*Leah and Rachel are respectively the types of the virtuous active and
contemplative life.
As they come nearer home.
VIII-274
## p. 4370 (#140) ###########################################
4370
DANTE
CANTOS XXX AND XXXI
THE MEETING WITH HIS LADY IN THE EARTHLY PARADISE
[Beatrice appears. — Departure of Virgil. — Reproof of Dante by Beatrice. -
Confession of Dante. - Passage of Lethe. - Unveiling of Beatrice. ]
WHEN the septentrion of the first heaven,* which never set-
ting knew, nor rising, nor veil of other cloud than sin,—and
which was making every one there acquainted with his duty, as
the lower makes whoever turns the helm to come to port,-
stopped still, the truthful people who had come first between the
griffon and it, turned to the chariot as to their peace, and one of
them, as if sent from heaven, singing, cried thrice, «Veni,
sponsa, de Libano" [Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse],
and all the others after.
As the blessed at the last trump will arise swiftly, each from
his tomb, singing Hallelujah with recovered voice, so upon the
divine chariot, ad vocem tanti senis [at the voice of so great an
elder], rose up a hundred ministers and messengers of life eter-
nal. All were saying, "Benedictus, qui venis" [Blessed thou
that comest], and, scattering flowers above and around, "Mani-
bus o date lilia plenis " [Oh, give lilies with full hands]. t
I have seen ere now at the beginning of the day the eastern
region all rosy, while the rest of the heaven was beautiful with
fair clear sky; and the face of the sun rise shaded, so that
through the tempering of vapors the eye sustained it a long
while. Thus within a cloud of flowers, which from the angelic
hands was ascending, and falling down again within and without,
a lady, with olive wreath above a white veil, appeared to me,
robed with the color of living flame beneath a green mantle. §
And my spirit that now for so long a time had not been bro-
ken down, trembling with amazement at her presence, without
* In the preceding canto a mystic procession, symbolizing the Old and
New Dispensation, has appeared in the Earthly Paradise. At its head were
seven candlesticks, symbols of the sevenfold spirit of the Lord; it was fol-
lowed by personages representing the truthful books of the Old Testament,
and these by the chariot of the Church drawn by a griffon, who in his double
form, half eagle and half lion, represented Christ in his double nature, human
and divine.
The lower septentrion, the seven stars of the Great Bear.
Words from the Eneid (vi. 884), sung by the angels.
§ The olive is the symbol of wisdom and of peace; the three colors are
those of Faith, Charity and Hope.
## p. 4371 (#141) ###########################################
DANTE
4371
having more knowledge by the eyes, through occult virtue that
proceeded from her, felt the great potency of ancient love.
Soon as upon my sight the lofty virtue smote, which already
had transfixed me ere I was out of boyhood, I turned me to the
left with the confidence with which the little child runs to his
mother when he is frightened, or when he is troubled, to say to
Virgil, “Less than a drachm of blood remains in me that doth
not tremble; I recognize the signals of the ancient flame,»* —–
but Virgil had left us deprived of himself; Virgil, sweetest
Father, Virgil, to whom I for my salvation gave me. Nor did
all which the ancient mother lost avail unto my cheeks, cleansed
with dew, that they should not turn dark again with tears.
"Dante, though Virgil be gone away, weep not yet, for it
behoves thee to weep by another sword. "
Like an admiral who, on poop or on prow, comes to see the
people that are serving on the other ships, and encourages them
to do well, upon the left border of the chariot - when I turned
me at the sound of my own name, which of necessity is regis-
tered here - I saw the Lady, who had first appeared to me
veiled beneath the angelic festival, directing her eyes toward
me across the stream; although the veil which descended from
her head, circled by the leaf of Minerva, did not allow her to
appear distinctly. Royally, still haughty in her mien, she went
on, as one who speaks and keeps back his warmest speech:
"Look at me well: I am indeed, I am indeed Beatrice. How
hast thou deigned to approach the mountain? Didst thou know
that man is happy here? " My eyes fell down into the clear
fount; but seeing myself in it I drew them to the grass, such
great shame burdened my brow. As to the son the mother
seems proud, so she seemed to me; for somewhat bitter tasteth
the savor of stern pity.
She was silent, and the angels sang of a sudden, "In te,
Domine, speravi" [In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust]; § but
beyond "pedes meos" [my feet] they did not pass. Even as
the snow, among the living rafters upon the back of Italy, is
congealed, blown, and packed by Slavonian winds, then melting
*Words from the Eneid, iv. 23.
All the joy and beauty of Paradise which Eve lost, and which were now
surrounding Dante.
When he had entered Purgatory.
§ The words are from Psalm xxxi. , verses 1 to 8.
## p. 4372 (#142) ###########################################
4372
DANTE
trickles through itself, if only the land that loses shadow* breathe
so that it seems a fire that melts the candle: so was I without
tears and sighs before the song of those who time their notes
after the notes of the eternal circles. But when I heard in
their sweet accords their compassion for me, more than if they
had said, "Lady, why dost thou so confound him? " the ice that
was bound tight around my heart became breath and water, and
with anguish poured from my breast through my mouth and eyes.
She, still standing motionless on the aforesaid side of the
chariot, then turned her words to those pious + beings thus: -"Ye
watch in the eternal day, so that nor night nor slumber robs
from you one step the world may make along its ways; wherefore
my reply is with greater care, that he who is weeping yonder
may understand me, so that fault and grief may be of one
measure. Not only through the working of the great wheels,
which direct every seed to some end according as the stars are
its companions, but through largess of divine graces, which have
for their rain vapors so lofty that our sight goes not near
thereto, this man was such in his new life, virtually, that every
right habit would have made admirable proof in him. But so
much the more malign and more savage becomes the land ill-
sown and untilled, as it has more of good terrestrial vigor.
Some time did I sustain him with my face; showing my youth-
ful eyes to him, I led him with me turned in right direction.
So soon as I was upon the threshold of my second age, and had
changed life, this one took himself from me, and gave himself
to others. When from flesh to spirit I had ascended, and beauty
and virtue were increased in me, I was less dear and less pleas-
ing to him; and he turned his steps along a way not true,
following false images of good, which pay no promise in full.
Nor did it avail me to win by entreaty § inspirations with which,
both in dream and otherwise, I called him back; so little did he
heed them. So low he fell that all means for his salvation were
already short, save showing him the lost people. For this I
visited the gate of the dead, and to him, who has conducted
him up hither, my prayers were borne with weeping. The high
K
*If the wind blow from Africa.
Both devout and piteous.
Through the influences of the circling heavens.
§ From divine grace.
| In Hell.
## p. 4373 (#143) ###########################################
DANTE
4373
decree of God would be broken, if Lethe should be passed, and
such viands should be tasted without any scot of repentance
which may pour forth tears.
"O thou who art on the further side of the sacred river,"
turning her speech with the point to me, which only by the
edge had seemed to me keen, she began anew, going on with-
out delay, "say, say if this be true: to so great an accusation it
behoves that thine own confession be conjoined. " My power
was so confused that my voice moved, and became extinct be-
fore it could be released by its organs. A little she bore it;
then she said, "What thinkest thou? Reply to me; for the sad
memories in thee are not yet injured by the water. "* Confusion
and fear together mingled forced such a "Yes" from my mouth
that the eyes were needed for the understanding of it.
As a crossbow breaks its cord and its bow when it shoots
with too great tension, and with less force the shaft hits the
mark, so did I burst under that heavy load, pouring forth tears.
and sighs, and the voice slackened along its passage. Where-
upon she to me: "Within those desires of mine that were
leading thee to love the Good beyond which there is nothing
whereto man may aspire, what trenches running traverse, or
what chains didst thou find, for which thou wert obliged thus
to abandon the hope of passing onward? And what entice-
ments, or what advantages on the brow of the others were dis-
played, for which thou wert obliged to court them? " After the
drawing of a bitter sigh, hardly had I the voice that answered,
and the lips with difficulty gave it form. Weeping, I said, "The
present things with their false pleasure turned my steps soon as
your face was hidden. " And she: -"Hadst thou been silent, or
hadst thou denied that which thou dost confess, thy fault would
be not less noted, by such a Judge is it known. But when
the accusation of the sin bursts from one's own cheek, in our
court the wheel turns itself back against the edge.
But yet,
that thou mayst now bear shame for thy error, and that another
time, hearing the Sirens, thou mayst be stronger, lay aside the
seed of weeping and listen; so shalt thou hear how in opposite
direction my buried flesh ought to have moved thee. Never
did nature or art present to thee pleasure such as the fair limbs
―
―――
*Not yet obliterated by the waters of Lethe.
Inspired by me.
Other objects of desire.
## p. 4374 (#144) ###########################################
4374
DANTE
wherein I was inclosed; and they are scattered in earth. And
if the supreme pleasure thus failed thee through my death, what
mortal things ought then to have drawn thee into its desire?
Forsooth thou oughtest, at the first arrow of things deceitful, to
have risen up, following me who was no longer such. Nor
should thy wings have weighed thee downward to await more
blows, either girl or other vanity of so brief a use.
The young
little bird awaits two or three; but before the eyes of the full-
fledged the net is spread in vain, the arrow shot. "
As children, ashamed, dumb, with eyes upon the ground,
stand listening and conscience-stricken and repentant, so was I
standing. And she said, "Since through hearing thou art grieved,
lift up thy beard and thou shalt receive more grief in seeing. "
With less resistance is a sturdy oak uprooted by a native wind,
or by one from the land of Iarbas,* than I raised up my chin at
her command; and when by the beard she asked for my eyes,
truly I recognized the venom of the argument. †
And as my
face stretched upward, my sight perceived that those primal
creatures were resting from their strewing, and my eyes, still
little assured, saw Beatrice turned toward the animal that is only
one person in two natures. Beneath her veil and beyond the
stream she seemed to me more to surpass her ancient self, than
she surpassed the others here when she was here. So pricked
me there the nettle of repentance, that of all other things the
one which most turned me aside unto its love became most
hostile to me. t
Such contrition stung my heart that I fell overcome; and
what I then became she knows who afforded me the cause.
Then, when my heart restored my outward faculties, I saw
above me the lady whom I had found alone,§ and she was saying,
"Hold me, hold me. " She had drawn me into the stream up to
the throat, and dragging me behind was moving upon the water
light as a shuttle. When I was near the blessed shore, "Asper-
ges me" I heard so sweetly that I cannot remember it, far less
* Numidia, of which Iarbas was king.
The beard being the sign of manhood, which should be accompanied by
wisdom.
The one which by its attractions most diverted me from Beatrice.
SA solitary lady whom he had met on first entering the Earthly Paradise,
and who had accompanied him thus far.
The first words of the 7th verse of the 51st Psalm: "Purge me with hyssop,
and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. ”
## p. 4375 (#145) ###########################################
DANTE
4375
can write it. The beautiful lady opened her arms, clasped my
head, and plunged me in where it behoved that I should swallow
the water. Then she took me, and, thus bathed, brought me
within the dance of the four beautiful ones,* and each of them
covered me with her arm. "Here we are nymphs, and in heaven
we are stars; ere Beatrice had descended to the world we were
ordained unto her for her handmaids. We will lead thee to her
eyes; but in the joyous light which is within them, the three
yonder who deeper gaze shall make keen thine own. " Thus
singing they began; and then to the breast of the griffon they
led me with them, where Beatrice was standing turned towa:
us. They said, "See that thou sparest not thy sight: we have
placed thee before the emeralds whence Love of old drew his
arrows upon thee. " A thousand desires hotter than flame bound
my eyes to the relucent eyes which only upon the griffon were
standing fixed. As the sun in a mirror, not otherwise, the two-
fold animal was gleaming therewithin, now with one, now with
another mode. Think, Reader, if I marveled when I saw the
thing stand quiet in itself, while in its image it was transmuting
itself.
While, full of amazement and glad, my soul was tasting that
food which, sating of itself, causes hunger for itself, the other
three, showing themselves in their bearing of loftier order, came
forward dancing to their angelic melody. "Turn, Beatrice, turn
thy holy eyes," was their song, "upon thy faithful one, who to
see thee has taken so many steps. For grace do us the grace
that thou unveil to him thy mouth, so that he may discern the
second beauty which thou concealest. "
O splendor of living light eternal! Who hath become so
pallid under the shadow of Parnassus, or hath so drunk at its
cistern, that he would not seem to have his mind incumbered,
trying to represent thee as thou didst appear there where in
harmony the heaven overshadows thee, when in the open air thou
didst thyself disclose?
*The four cardinal virtues.
The three evangelic virtues.
Now with the divine, now with the human.
## p. 4376 (#146) ###########################################
4376
DANTE
PARADISE
CANTO XXXIII
THE BEATIFIC VISION
[Dante, having been brought by Beatrice to Paradise in the Empyrean, is
left by her in charge of St. Bernard, while she takes her place among the
blessed. Prayer of St. Bernard to the Virgin. - Her intercession. -The vision
of God. -The end of desire. ]
"VIRG
JIRGIN MOTHER, daughter of thine own Son, humble and
exalted more than any creature, fixed term of the eternal
counsel, thou art she who didst so ennoble human nature
that its own Maker disdained not to become His own making.
Within thy womb was rekindled the love through whose warmth
this flower has thus blossomed in the eternal peace. Here thou
art to us the noonday torch of charity, and below, among mor-
tals, thou art the living fount of hope. Lady, thou art so great,
and so availest, that whoso wishes grace, and has not recourse
to thee, wishes his desire to fly without wings. Thy benignity
not only succors him who asks, but oftentimes freely foreruns
the asking. In thee mercy, in thee pity, in thee magnificence,
in thee whatever of goodness is in any creature, are united.
Now doth this man, who, from the lowest abyss of the universe,
far even as here, has seen one by one the lives of spirits, sup-
plicate thee, through grace, for virtue such that he may be able
with his eyes to uplift himself higher toward the Ultimate Salva-
tion. And I, who never for my own vision burned more than I
do for his, proffer to thee all my prayers, and pray that they be
not scant, that with thy prayers thou wouldst dissipate for him.
every cloud of his mortality, so that the Supreme Pleasure may
be displayed to him. Further I pray thee, Queen, who canst
what so thou wilt, that, after so great a vision, thou wouldst
preserve his affections sound. May thy guardianship vanquish
human impulses. Behold Beatrice with all the blessed for my
prayers clasp their hands to thee. "
The eyes beloved and revered by God, fixed on the speaker,
showed to us how pleasing unto her are devout prayers. Then
to the Eternal Light were they directed, on which it is not to be
believed that eye so clear is turned by any creature.
And I, who to the end of all desires was approaching, even
as I ought, ended within myself the ardor of my longings.
## p. 4377 (#147) ###########################################
DANTE
4377
Bernard was beckoning to me, and was smiling, that I should
look upward; but I was already, of my own accord, such as he
wished; for my sight, becoming pure, was entering more and
more through the radiance of the lofty Light which of itself is
true. *
Thenceforward my vision was greater than our speech, which
yields to such a sight, and the memory yields to such excess.
As is he who dreaming sees, and after the dream the passion
remains imprinted, and the rest returns not to the mind, such
am I; for my vision almost wholly fails, while the sweetness
that was born of it yet distills within my heart. Thus the snow
is by the sun unsealed; thus on the wind, in the light leaves,
was lost the saying of the Sibyl.
O Supreme Light, that so high upliftest Thyself from mortal
conceptions, re-lend a little to my mind of what Thou didst
appear, and make my tongue so powerful that it may be able to
leave one single spark of Thy glory for the future people; for
by returning somewhat to my memory and by sounding a little
in these verses, more of Thy victory shall be conceived.
I think that by the keenness of the living ray which I en-
dured, I should have been dazzled if my eyes had been averted
from it. And it comes to my mind that for this reason I was
the more hardy to sustain so much, that I joined my look unto
the Infinite Goodness.
O abundant Grace, whereby I presumed to fix my eyes
through the Eternal Light so far that there I consummated my
vision!
In its depth I saw that whatsoever is dispersed through the
universe is there included, bound with love in one volume; sub-
stance and accidents and their modes, fused together, as it were,
in such wise, that that of which I speak is one simple Light.
The universal form of this knott I believe that I saw, because
in saying this I feel that I more abundantly rejoice. One
instant only is greater oblivion for me than five-and-twenty cen-
turies to the emprise which made Neptune wonder at the shadow
of Argo.
* Light in its essence; all other light is derived from it.
This union of substance and accident.
So overwhelming was the vision that the memory could not retain it
completely even for an instant.
## p. 4378 (#148) ###########################################
4378
DANTE
Thus my mind, wholly rapt, was gazing fixed, motionless,
and intent, and ever with gazing grew enkindled. In that Light
one becomes such that it is impossible he should ever consent to
turn himself from it for other sight; because the Good which is
the object of the will is all collected in it, and outside of it that
is defective which is perfect there.
Now will my speech be shorter even in respect to that which
I remember, than an infant's who still bathes his tongue at the
breast. Not because more than one simple semblance was in the
Living Light wherein I was gazing, which is always such as it
was before; but through my sight, which was growing strong in
me as I looked, one sole appearance, as I myself changed, was
altering itself to me.
Within the profound and clear subsistence of the lofty Light
appeared to me three circles of three colors and of one dimen-
sion; and one appeared reflected by the other, as Iris by Iris,
and the third appeared fire which from the one and from the
other is equally breathed forth.
O how short is the telling, and how feeble toward my con-
ception! and this toward what I saw is such that it suffices not
to call it little.
O Light Eternal, that sole dwellest in Thyself, sole under-
standest Thyself, and, by Thyself understood and understanding,
lovest and smilest on Thyself! That circle, which, thus con-
ceived, appeared in Thee as a reflected light, being somewhile
regarded by my eyes, seemed to me depicted within itself, of its
own very color, by our effigy, wherefore my sight was wholly
set upon it. As is the geometer who wholly applies himself to
measure the circle, and finds not by thinking that principle of
which he is in need, such was I at that new sight. I wished to
see how the image accorded with the circle, and how it has its
place therein; but my own wings were not for this, had it not
been that my mind was smitten by a flash in which its wish
came. *
To my high fantasy here power failed; but now my desire
and my will, like a wheel which evenly is moved, the Love was
turning which moves the Sun and the other stars. †
*The wish to see the mystery of the union of the two natures, the divine
and human in Christ.
That Love which makes sun and stars revolve was giving a concordant
revolution to my desire and my will.
## p. 4379 (#149) ###########################################
4379
JAMES DARMESTETER
(1849-1894)
GOOD example of the latter-day enlightened savant is the
French Jew, James Darmesteter, whose premature death
robbed the modern world of scholarship of one of its most
distinguished figures. Scholars who do noble service in adding to
the sum total of human knowledge often are specialists, the nature
of whose work excludes them from general interest and appreciation.
It was not so with this man,- not alone an Oriental philologist of
more than national repute, but a broadly cultured, original mind, an
enlightened spirit, and a master of literary expression. Darmesteter
calls for recognition as a maker of literature as well as a scientist.
The son of a humble Jewish bookbinder, subjected to the disad-
vantages and hardships of poverty, James Darmesteter was born at
Chateau-Salins in Lorraine in 1849, but got his education in Paris,
early imbibing the Jewish traditions, familiar from youth with the
Bible and the Talmud. At the public school, whence he was gradu-
ated at eighteen, he showed his remarkable intellectual powers and
attracted the attention of scholars like Bréal and Burnouf, who, not-
ing his aptitude for languages, advised devotion to Oriental linguis-
tics. After several years of uncertainty, years spent with books
and in travel, and in the desultory production of poetry and fiction,
philological study was undertaken as his life work, with remarkable
results. For twenty years he labored in this field, and his appoint-
ment in 1882 to succeed Renan as Secretary of the Asiatic Society of
France speaks volumes for the position he won. In 1885 he became
professor of Iranian languages and literature in the College of France.
Other scholastic honors fell to him in due course and good measure.
As a scholar Darmesteter's most important labors were the expo-
sition of Zoroastrianism, the national faith of ancient Persia, which
he made a specialty; and his French translation of and commentary
on the Avesta, the Bible of that religion. As an interpreter of Zoro-
aster he sought to unite synthetically two opposing modern schools:
that which relied solely upon native traditions, and that which, re-
garding these as untrustworthy, drew its conclusions from an exam-
ination of the text, supplemented by the aid of Sanskrit on the side
of language and of the Vedas on the side of religion. Darmesteter's
work was thus boldly comprehensive. He found in the Avesta the
influence of such discordant elements as the Bible, Buddha, and
## p. 4380 (#150) ###########################################
4380
JAMES DARMESTETER
Greek philosophy, and believed that in its present form it was com-
posed at a later time than has been supposed. These technical ques-
tions are still mooted points with the critics. The translation of the
Avesta will perhaps stand as his greatest achievement. A herculean
labor of four years, it was rewarded by the Academy of Inscriptions
and Belles-Lettres with the 20,000-franc prize given but once in a
decade for the work which, in the Academy's opinion, had best
served or brought most honor to the country.
But the technical accomplishments of learning represent but a
fragment of Darmesteter's amazing mental activity. He wrote a
striking book on the Mahdi, the tenacious belief in the Mohammedan
Messiah taking hold on his imagination. He was versed in English
literature, edited Shakespeare, and introduced his countrymen to
Browning. While in Afghanistan on a philological mission he gath-
ered, merely as a side pursuit, a unique collection of Afghan folk-
songs, and the result was a fascinating and valuable paper in a new
field. He helped to found a leading French review. Articles of
travel, critiques on subjects political, religious, literary, and social, fell
fast from his pen. In his general essays on these broader, more vital
aspects of thought and life, he is an artist in literary expression, a
writer with a distinct and great gift for form. Here his vigorous
mind, ample training, his humanistic tastes and humanitarian aspira-
tions, are all finely in evidence.
The English reader who seeks an introduction to Darmesteter is
directed to his 'Selected Essays,' translated by Helen B. Jastrow,
edited with a memoir by Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr. (Houghton,
Mifflin and Company, Boston).
There is a translation by Ada S.
Ballin of his 'The Mahdi' (Harper and Brothers, New York); and in
the Contemporary Review for January, 1895, is a noble appreciation
of Darmesteter by his friend Gaston Paris. In the Sacred Books of
the East' will be found an English rendering of the Avesta by
Darmesteter and Mills.
As a thinker in the philosophical sense Darmesteter was remark-
able. Early breaking away from orthodox Judaism, his philological
and historical researches led him to accept the conclusions of de-
structive criticism with regard to the Bible; and a disciple of Renan,
he became enrolled among those scholars who see in science the one
explanation of the universe. But possessing, along with his keen.
analytic powers, a nature dominantly ethical, he made humanity his
idol. His patriotism for France was intense; and, a Jew always
sympathetic to the wonderful history of his people,-in his later
years by a brilliant, poetical, almost audacious interpretation of the
Old Testament,- he found a solution of the riddle of life in the
Hebrew prophets. What he deemed their essential faith — Judaism
## p. 4381 (#151) ###########################################
JAMES DARMESTETER
4381
stripped of ritual and legend - he declared to be in harmony with
the scientific creed of the present: belief in the unity of moral law,—
the Old Testament Jehovah; and belief in the eventual triumph of
justice upon this earth, the modern substitute for the New Testa-
ment heaven. This doctrine, which in most hands would be cold and
comfortless enough, he makes vital, engaging, through the passionate
presentation of an eloquent lover of his fellow-man. In a word,
Darmesteter was a Positivist, dowered, like that other noble Pos-
itivist George Eliot, with a nature sensitive to spiritual issues.
An idyllic passage in Darmesteter's toilful scholar life was his
tender friendship with the gifted English woman, A. Mary F. Robin-
son. Attracted by her lovely verse, the intellectual companionship
ripened into love, and for his half-dozen final years he enjoyed her
wifely aid and sympathy in what seems to have been an ideal union.
The end, when it came, was quick and painless. Always of a frail
constitution, stunted in body from childhood, he died in harness,
October 19th, 1894, his head falling forward on his desk as he wrote.
The tributes that followed make plain the enthusiastic admiration
James Darmesteter awakened in those who knew him best. The
leading Orientalist of his generation, he added to the permanent
acquisitions of scholarship, and made his impress as one of the
remarkable personalities of France in the late nineteenth century.
In the language of a friend, "a Jew by race, a Greek by culture, a
Frenchman in heart," he furnishes another illustration of that strain
of genius which seems like a compensatory gift to the Jewish folk for
its manifold buffetings at the hand of Fate.
ERNEST RENAN
From 'Selected Essays': copyrighted 1895 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Renan are due to
THE
HE mistaken judgments passed upon M.
the fact that in his work he did not place the emphasis
upon the Good, but upon the True. Men concluded that
for him, therefore, science was the whole of life. The environ-
ment in which he was formed was forgotten,—an environment
in which the moral sense was exquisite and perfect, while the
scientific sense was nil. He did not need to discover the
moral sense, it was the very atmosphere in which he lived.
When the scientific sense awoke in him, and he beheld the
world and history transfigured by it, he was dazzled, and the
influence lasted throughout his life. He dreamed of making
France understand this new revelation; he was the apostle of
-
## p. 4382 (#152) ###########################################
4382
JAMES DARMESTETER
this gospel of truth and science, but in heart and mind he
never attacked what is permanent and divine in the other
gospel. Thus he was a complete man, and deserved the
disdain of dilettantes morally dead, and of mystics scientifically
atonic.
What heritage has M. Renan left to posterity? As a
scholar he created religious criticism in France, and prepared
for universal science that incomparable instrument, the Corpus.
As an author he bequeathed to universal art, pages which will
endure, and to him may be applied what he said of George
Sand:-"He had the divine faculty of giving wings to his sub-
ject, of producing under the form of fine art the idea which in
other hands remained crude and formless. " As a philosopher
he left behind a mass of ideas which he did not care to collect
in doctrinal shape, but which nevertheless constitute a coherent
whole. One thing only in this world is certain,-duty. One
truth is plain in the course of the world as science reveals it:
the world is advancing to a higher, more perfect form of
being. The supreme happiness of man is to draw nearer to
this God to come, contemplating him in science, and preparing,
by action, the advent of a humanity nobler, better endowed,
and more akin to the ideal Being.
JUDAISM
From 'Selected Essays': copyrighted 1895 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Ju
UDAISM has not made the miraculous the basis of its dogma,
nor installed the supernatural as a permanent factor in the
progress of events. Its miracles, from the time of the Mid-
dle Ages, are but a poetic detail, a legendary recital, a picturesque
decoration; and its cosmogony, borrowed in haste from Babylon
by the last compiler of the Bible, with the stories of the apple
and the serpent, over which so many Christian generations have
labored, never greatly disturbed the imagination of the rabbis,
nor weighed very heavily upon the thought of the Jewish phi-
losophers. Its rites were never "an instrument of faith," an
expedient to "lull" rebellious thought into faith; they are merely
cherished customs, a symbol of the family, of transitory value,
and destined to disappear when there shall be but one family in
a world converted to the one truth. Set aside all these miracles,
## p. 4383 (#153) ###########################################
JAMES DARMESTETER
4383
all these rites, and behind them will be found the two great
dogmas which, ever since the prophets, constitute the whole of
Judaism-the Divine unity and Messianism; unity of law through-
out the world, and the terrestrial triumph of justice in humanity.
These are the two dogmas which at the present time illuminate
humanity in its progress, both in the scientific and social order
of things, and which are termed in modern parlance unity of
forces and belief in progress.
For this reason, Judaism is the only religion that has never
entered into conflict, and never can, with either science or social
progress, and that has witnessed, and still witnesses, all their
conquests without a sense of fear. These are not hostile forces
that it accepts or submits to merely from a spirit of toleration
or policy, in order to save the remains of its power by a com-
promise. They are old friendly voices, which it recognizes and
salutes with joy; for it has heard them resound for centuries.
already, in the axioms of free thought and in the cry of the
suffering heart. For this reason the Jews, in all the countries
which have entered upon the new path, have begun to take a
share in all the great works of civilization, in the triple field of
science, of art, and of action; and that share, far from being an
insignificant one, is out of all proportion to the brief time that
has elapsed since their enfranchisement.
Does this mean that Judaism should nurse dreams of ambi-
tion, and think of realizing one day that "invisible church of the
future" invoked by some in prayer? This would be an illusion,
whether on the part of a narrow sectarian, or on that of an
enlightened individual. The truth however remains, that the
Jewish spirit can still be a factor in this world, making for the
highest science, for unending progress; and that the mission of
the Bible is not yet complete. The Bible is not responsible for
the partial miscarriage of Christianity, due to the compromises
made by its organizers, who, in their too great zeal to conquer
and convert Paganism, were themselves converted by it. But
everything in Christianity which comes in a direct line from
Judaism lives, and will live; and it is Judaism which through
Christianity has cast into the old polytheistic world, to ferment
there until the end of time, the sentiment of unity, and an
impatience to bring about charity and justice. The reign of the
Bible, and also of the Evangelists in so far as they were inspired
by the Bible, can become established only in proportion as the
## p. 4384 (#154) ###########################################
4384
JAMES DARMESTETER
positive religions connected with it lose their power. Great reli-
gions outlive their altars and their priests. Hellenism, abolished,
counts less skeptics to-day than in the days of Socrates and
Anaxagoras. The gods of Homer died when Phidias carved
them in marble, and now they are immortally enthroned in the
thought and heart of Europe. The Cross may crumble into
dust, but there were words spoken under its shadow in Galilee,
the echo of which will forever vibrate in the human conscience.
And when the nation who made the Bible shall have disap-
peared, the race and the cult, though leaving no visible
trace of its passage upon earth, its imprint will remain in the
depth of the heart of generations, who will, unconsciously per-
haps, live upon what has thus been implanted in their breasts.
Humanity, as it is fashioned in the dreams of those who desire
to be called freethinkers, may with the lips deny the Bible and
its work; but humanity can never deny it in its heart, without
the sacrifice of the best that it contains, faith in unity and hope
for justice, and without a relapse into the mythology and the
"might makes right" of thirty centuries ago.
-
―――
## p. 4385 (#155) ###########################################
4385
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
(1809-1882)
BY E. RAY LANKESTER
HARLES ROBERT DARWIN, the great naturalist and author of
the "Darwinian theory," was the son of Dr. Robert Waring
Darwin (1766-1848) and grandson of Erasmus Darwin (1731–
1802). He was born at Shrewsbury on February 12th, 1809. W. E.
Gladstone, Alfred Tennyson, and Abraham Lincoln were born in the
same year.
Charles Darwin was the youngest of a family of four, hav-
ing an elder brother and two sisters. He was sent to a day school at
Shrewsbury in the year of his mother's death, 1817. At this age he
tells us that the passion for "collecting" which leads a man to be a
systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in him,
and was clearly innate, as none of his brothers or sisters had this
taste. A year later he was removed to the Shrewsbury grammar
school, where he profited little by the education in the dead lan-
guages administered, and incurred (as even to-day would be the case
in English schools) the rebukes of the head-master Butler for "wast-
ing his time" upon such unprofitable subjects as natural history and
chemistry, which he pursued "out of school. "
When Charles was sixteen his father sent him to Edinburgh to
study medicine, but after two sessions there he was removed and
sent to Cambridge (1828) with the intention that he should become
a clergyman. In 1831 he took his B. A. degree as what is called a
"pass-man. " In those days the injurious system of competitive.
examinations had not laid hold of the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge as it has since, and Darwin quietly took a pass degree
whilst studying a variety of subjects of interest to him, without
a thought of excelling in an examination. He was fond of all field
sports, of dogs and horses, and also spent much time in excursions,
collecting and observing with Henslow the professor of botany, and
Sedgwick the celebrated geologist. An undergraduate friend of those
days has declared that "he was the most genial, warm-hearted, gen-
erous and affectionate of friends; his sympathies were with all that
was good and true; he had a cordial hatred for everything false, or
vile, or cruel, or mean, or dishonorable. He was not only great but
pre-eminently good, and just and lovable. "
Through Henslow and the sound advice of his uncle Josiah Wedg-
wood (the son of the potter of Etruria) he accepted an offer to
VIII-275
## p. 4386 (#156) ###########################################
4386
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
accompany Captain Fitzroy as naturalist on H. M. S. Beagle, which
was to make an extensive surveying expedition. The voyage lasted
from December 27th, 1831, to October 2d, 1836. It was, Darwin
himself says, "by far the most important event in my life, and has
determined my whole career. " He had great opportunities of making
explorations on land whilst the ship was engaged in her surveying
work in various parts of the southern hemisphere, and made exten-
sive collections of plants and animals, fossil as well as living forms,
terrestrial as well as marine. On his return he was busy with the
description of these results, and took up his residence in London.
His 'Journal of Researches' was published in 1839, and is now
familiar to many readers in its third edition, published in 1860
under the title 'A Naturalist's Voyage; Journal of Researches into
the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the
Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle round the World, under the command of
Captain Fitzroy, R. N. '
This was Darwin's first book, and is universally held to be one
of the most delightful records of a naturalist's travels ever produced.
It is to be placed alongside of Humboldt's 'Personal Narrative,' and
is the model followed by the authors of other delightful books of
travel of a later date, such as Wallace's 'Malay Archipelago,' Mose-
ley's 'Naturalist on the Challenger,' and Belt's 'Naturalist in Nica-
ragua. ' We have given in our selections from Darwin's writings the
final pages of 'A Naturalist's Voyage' as an example of the style
which characterizes the book. In it Darwin shows himself an ardent
and profound lover of the luxuriant beauty of nature in the tropics, a
kindly observer of men, whether missionaries or savages; an inces-
sant student of natural things-rocks, plants, and animals; and one
with a mind so keenly set upon explaining these things and assign-
ing them to their causes, that none of his observations are trivial,
but all of value and many of first-rate importance. The book is
addressed, as are all of Darwin's books, to the general reader. It
seemed to be natural to him to try and explain his observations and
reasonings which led to them and followed from them to a wide
circle of his fellow-men. The reader at once feels that Darwin is an
honest and modest man, who desires his sympathy and seeks for his
companionship in the enjoyment of his voyage and the interesting
facts and theories gathered by him in distant lands. The quiet un-
assuming style of the narrative, and the careful explanation of details
in such a way as to appeal to those who have little or no knowledge
of natural history, gives a charm to the Naturalist's Voyage' which
is possessed in no less a degree by his later books. A writer in the
Quarterly Review in 1839 wrote, in reviewing the Naturalist's Voy-
age,' of the "charm arising from the freshness of heart which is thrown
## p. 4387 (#157) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4387
over these pages of a strong intellectual man and an acute and deep
observer. " The places visited in the course of the Beagle's voyage,
concerning each of which Darwin has something to say, were the
Cape Verd Islands, St. Paul's Rocks, Fernando Noronha, parts of
South America, Tierra del Fuego, the Galapagos Islands, the Falk-
land Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Keeling
Island, the Maldives, Mauritius, St. Helena, Ascension. The most
important discoveries recorded in the book-also treated at greater
length in special scientific memoirs-are the explanation of the ring-
like form of coral islands, the geological structure of St. Helena and
other islands, and the relation of the living inhabitants - great tor-
toises, lizards, birds, and various plants-of the various islands of
the Galapagos Archipelago to those of South America.
In 1839 (shortly before the publication of his journal) Darwin mar-
ried his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood
of Maer, and in 1842 they took the country-house and little property
of Down near Orpington in Kent, which remained his home and the
seat of his labors for forty years; that is, until his death on April
19th, 1882. In a letter to his friend Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle,
written in 1846, Darwin says, "My life goes on like clockwork, and I
am fixed on the spot where I shall end it. " Happily, he was pos-
sessed of ample private fortune, and never undertook any teaching
work nor gave any of his strength to the making of money. He
was able to devote himself entirely to the studies in which he took
delight; and though suffering from weak health due to a hereditary
form of dyspepsia, he presented the rare spectacle of a
man of
leisure more fully occupied, more absorbed in constant and exhaust-
ing labors, than many a lawyer, doctor, professor, or man of letters.
His voyage seems to have satisfied once for all his need for travel-
ing, and his absences from Down were but few and brief during the
rest of his life. Here most of his children were born, five sons and
three daughters. One little girl died in childhood; the rest grew up
around him and remained throughout his life in the closest terms
of intimacy and affection with him and their mother. Here he car-
ried on his experiments in greenhouse, garden, and paddock; here he
collected his library and wrote his great books. He became a man
of well-considered habits and method, carefully arranging his day's
occupation so as to give so many hours to noting the results of
experiments, so many to writing and reading, and an hour or two
to exercise in his grounds or a ride, and playing with his children.
Frequently he was stopped for days and even weeks from all intel-
lectual labor by attacks of vomiting and giddiness. Great as were
his sufferings on account of ill health, it is not improbable that the
retirement of life which was thus forced on him, to a very large
## p. 4388 (#158) ###########################################
4388
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
extent determined his wonderful assiduity in study and led to the
production by him of so many great works.
In later years these attacks were liable to ensue upon prolonged
conversation with visitors, if a subject of scientific interest were
discussed. His wife, who throughout their long and happy union
devoted herself to the care of her husband so as to enable him to do
a maximum amount of work with least suffering in health, would
come and fetch him away after half an hour's talk, that he might lie
down alone in a quiet room. Then after an hour or so he would
return with a smile, like a boy released from punishment, and launch
again with a merry laugh into talk. Never was there an invalid who
bore his maladies so cheerfully, or who made so light of a terrible
burden. Although he was frequently seasick during the voyage of
the Beagle, he did not attribute his condition in later life in any
way to that experience, but to inherited weakness. During the hours
passed in his study he found it necessary to rest at intervals, and
adopted regularly the plan of writing for an hour and of then lying
down for half an hour, whilst his wife or daughter read to him a
novel! After half an hour he would again resume his work, and again
after an hour return to the novel. In this way he got through the
greater part of the circulating libraries' contents. He declared that
he had no taste for literature, but liked a story, especially about a
pretty girl; and he would only read those in which all ended well.
Authors of stories ending in death and failure ought, he declared, to
be hung!
He rarely went to London, on account of his health, and conse-
quently kept up a very large correspondence with scientific friends,
especially with Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley. He made it a rule to
preserve every letter he received, and his friends were careful to
preserve his; so that in the 'Life and Letters' published after his
death by his son Frank-who in later years lived with his father and
assisted him in his work—we have a most interesting record of the
progress of his speculations, as well as a delightful revelation of his
beautiful character. His house was large enough to accommodate
several guests at a time; and it was his delight to receive here for a
week's end not only his old friends and companions, but younger
naturalists, and others, the companions of his sons and daughters.
Over six feet in height, with a slight stoop of his high shoulders,
with a brow of unparalleled development overshadowing his merry
blue eyes, and a long gray beard and mustache,―he presented the
ideal picture of a natural philosopher. His bearing was, however,
free from all pose of superior wisdom or authority. The most charm-
ing and unaffected gayety, and an eager innate courtesy and good-
ness of heart, were its dominant notes. His personality was no less
## p. 4389 (#159) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4389
fascinating and rare in quality than are the immortal products of
his intellect.
The history of the great works which Darwin produced, and
especially of his theory of the Origin of Species, is best given in
his own words. The passage which is here referred to is a portion
of an autobiographical sketch written by him in 1876, not for publi-
cation but for the use of his family, and is printed in the 'Life and
Letters. Taken together with the statement as to his views on re-
ligion, it gives a great insight both into the character and mental
quality of the writer. It is especially remarkable as the attempt of
a truly honest and modest man to account for the wonderful height
of celebrity and intellectual eminence to which he was no less
astonished than pleased to find himself raised. But it also furnishes
the reader with an admirable catalogue raisonné of his books, arranged
in chronological order.
A few more notes as to Darwin's character will help the reader
to appreciate his work. His friendships were remarkable, character-
ized on his side by the warmest and most generous feeling. Hens-
low, Fitzroy, Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley stand out as his chief
friends and correspondents. Henslow was professor of botany at
Cambridge, and took Darwin with him when a student there for
walks, collecting plants and insects. His admiration for Henslow's
character, and his tribute to his fine simplicity and warmth of feel-
ing in matters involving the wrongs of a down-trodden class or
cruelty to an individual, are evidence of deep sympathy between
the natures of Darwin and his first teacher. Of Fitzroy, the captain
of H. M. S. Beagle--with whom he quarreled for a day because
Fitzroy defended slavery-Darwin says that he was in many ways
the noblest character he ever knew. His love and admiration for
Lyell were unbounded. Lyell was the man who taught him the
method- the application of the causes at present discoverable in
nature to the past history of the earth-by which he was led to the
solution of the question as to the origin of organic forms on the
earth's surface. He regarded Lyell, who with Mrs. Lyell often
visited him at Down, more than any other man as his master and
teacher. Hooker-still happily surviving from among this noble
group of men-was his "dear old friend"; his most constant and
unwearied correspondent; he from whom Darwin could always extract
the most valuable facts and opinions in the field of botanical sci-
ence, and the one upon whose help he always relied. Huxley was for
Darwin not merely a delightful and charming friend, but a "wonder-
ful man," a most daring, skillful champion, whose feats of literary
swordsmanship made Darwin both tremble and rejoice. Samples of
bis correspondence with these fellow-workers are given below. The
## p. 4390 (#160) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4390
letter to Hooker (September 26th, 1862) is particularly interesting, as
recording one of the most important discoveries of his later years,—
confirmed by the subsequent researches of Gardiner and others,—and
as containing a pretty confession of his jealous desire to exalt the
status of plants. Often he spoke and wrote in his letters of indi-
vidual plants with which he was experimenting as "little rascals. "
Darwin shared with other great men whose natures approach per-
fection, an unusual sympathy with and power over dogs, and a love
for children. The latter trait is most beautifully expressed in a note
which was found amongst his papers, giving an account of his little
girl, who died at the age of ten years.
Written for his own eyes
only, it is a most delicate and tender composition, and should be pon-
dered side by side with his frank and — necessarily to some readers—
almost terrifying statement of his thoughts on religion.
Darwin's only self-indulgence was snuff-taking. In later years he
smoked an occasional cigarette, but his real "little weakness"> was
snuff. It is difficult to suppose that he did not benefit by the habit,
careful as he was to keep it in check. He kept his snuff-box in the
hall of his house, so that he should have to take the trouble of a
walk in order to get a pinch, and not have too easy an access to the
magic powder.
The impression made on him by his own success and the over-
whelming praise and even reverence which he received from all parts
of the world, was characteristic of his charming nature. Darwin did
not receive these proofs of the triumphs of his views with the solem-
nity of an inflated reformer who has laid his law upon the whole
world of thought. Quite otherwise. He was simply delighted. He
chuckled gayly over the spread of his views, almost as a sportsman
and we must remember that in his young days he was a sports-
man-may rejoice in the triumphs of his own favorite "racer," or
even as a schoolboy may be proud and happy in the success of "the
eleven" of which he is captain. He delighted to count up the
sale of his books, not specially for the money value it represented,
though he was too sensible to be indifferent to that, but because it
proved to him that his long and arduous life of thought, experiment,
and literary work was not in vain. To have been or to have posed
as being indifferent to popular success, would have required a man
of less vivid sympathy with his fellow-men; to have been puffed up
and pretentious would have needed one less gifted with a sense of
humor, less conscious of the littleness of one man, however talented,
in the vast procession of life on the earth's surface. His delight in
his work and its success was of the perfect and natural kind, which
he could communicate to his wife and daughters, and might have
been shared by a child.
## p. 4391 (#161) ###########################################
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
4391
I, who write of him here, had the great privilege of staying with
him from time to time at Down, and I find it difficult to record
the strangely mixed feeling of reverential admiration and extreme
personal attachment and affection with which I came to regard him.
I have never known or heard of a man who combined with such
exceptional intellectual power so much cheeriness and love of humor,
and such ideal kindness, courtesy, and modesty. Owing to the fact
that my father was a naturalist and man of letters, I as a boy knew
Henslow and Lyell, Darwin's teachers, and have myself enjoyed a
naturalist's walk with the one and the geological discussions of the
other. I first saw Darwin himself in 1853, when he was recommended
to my boyish imagination as "a man who had ridden up a mountain
on the back of a tortoise" (in the Galapagos Islands)! When I began
to work at and write on zoölogy he showed his kindness of heart by
writing to me in praise of my first book: he wrote to me later in
answer to my appeal for guidance, that "physiological experiment on
animals is justifiable for real investigation; but not for mere damna-
ble and detestable curiosity. It is a subject which makes me sick
with horror, so I will not say another word about it, else I shall not
sleep to-night. " When I prosecuted Slade the spiritualistic impostor,
and obtained his conviction at Bow Street as a common rogue, Dar-
win was much interested, and after the affair was over wrote to say
that he was sure that I had been at great expense in effecting
what he considered to be a public benefit, and that he should like to
be allowed to contribute ten pounds to the cost of the prosecution.
He was ever ready in this way to help by timely gifts of money
what he thought to be a good cause, as for instance in the erection
of the Zoological Station of Naples by Dr. Anton Dohrn, to which he
gave a hundred pounds. His most characteristic minor trait which
I remember, was his sitting in his drawing-room at Down in his
high-seated arm-chair, and whilst laughing at some story or joke, slap-
ping his thigh with his right hand and exclaiming, with a quite inno-
cent and French freedom of speech, "O my God! That's very good.
That's capital. " Perhaps one of the most interesting things that I
ever heard him say was when, after describing to me an experiment
in which he had placed under a bell-jar some pollen from a male
flower, together with an unfertilized female flower, in order to see
whether, when kept at a distance but under the same jar, the one
would act in any way on the other, he remarked:-"That's a fool's
experiment. But I love fools' experiments. I am always making
them. " A great deal might be written as comment on that state-
ment. Perhaps the thoughts which it suggests may be summed up by
the proposition that even a wise experiment when made by a fool
generally leads to a false conclusion, but that fools' experiments
## p. 4392 (#162) ###########################################
4392
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
conducted by a genius often prove to be leaps through the dark
into great discoveries.
As examples of Darwin's writings I have chosen, in addition to
those already mentioned, certain passages from his great book on the
'Origin of Species,' in which he explains what he understands by the
terms "Natural Selection" and the " "Struggle for Existence.
