No More Learning

Such is the literature of which M. de la Villemarque has attempted
to unite the most ancient and authentic monuments in his "Breton
Bards of the Sixth Century. " Wales has recognised the service that
our learned compatriot has thus rendered to Celtic studies. We
confess, however, to much preferring to the "Bards" the "Popular
Songs of Brittany. " It is in the latter that M. de la Villemarque
has best served Celtic studies, by revealing to us a delightful
literature, in which, more clearly than anywhere else, are apparent
these features of gentleness, fidelity, resignation, and timid
reserve which form the character of the Breton peoples. [Footnote:
This interesting collection ought not, however, to be accepted
unreservedly; and the absolute confidence with which it has been
quoted is not without its inconveniences. We believe that when M. de
la Villemarque comments on the fragments which, to his eternal
honour, he has been the first to bring to light, his criticism is
far from being proof against all reproach, and that several of the
historical allusions which he considers that he finds in them are
hypotheses more ingenious than solid. The past is too great, and has
come down to us in too fragmentary a manner, for such coincidences
to be probable. Popular celebrities are rarely those of history, and
when the rumours of distant centuries come to us by two channels,
one popular, the other historical, it is a rare thing for these two
forms of tradition to be fully in accord with one another. M. de la
Villemarque is also too ready to suppose that the people repeats for
centuries songs that it only half understands. When a song ceases to
be intelligible, it is nearly always altered by the people, with the
end of approximating it to the sounds farmliar and significant to
their ears. Is it not also to be feared that in this case the
editor, in entire good faith, may lend some slight inflection to the
text, so as to find in it the sense that he desires, or has in his
mind? ]

The theme of the poetry of the bards of the sixth century is simple
and exclusively heroic; it ever deals with the great motives of
patriotism and glory. There is a total absence of all tender
feeling, no trace of love, no well-marked religious idea, but only a
vague and naturalistic mysticism,--a survival of Druidic teaching,--
and a moral philosophy wholly expressed in Triads, similar to that
taught in the half-bardic, half-Christian schools of St. Cadoc and
St. Iltud. The singularly artificial and highly wrought form of the
style suggests the existence of a system of learned instruction
possessing long traditions. A more pronounced shade, and there would
be a danger of falling into a pedantic and mannered rhetoric. The
bardic literature, by its lengthened existence through the whole of
the Middle Ages, did not escape this danger. It ended by being no
more than a somewhat insipid collection of unoriginalities in style,
and conventional metaphors. [Footnote: A Welsh scholar, Mr.
Stephens, in his History of Cymric Literature (Llandovery, 1849),
has demonstrated these successive transformations very well. ]

The opposition between bardism and Christianity reveals itself in
the pieces translated by M. de la Villemarque by many features of
original and pathetic interest. The strife which rent the soul of
the old poets, their antipathy to the grey men of the monastery,
their sad and painful conversion, are to be found in their songs.
The sweetness and tenacity of the Breton character can alone explain
how a heterodoxy so openly avowed as this maintained its position in
face of the dominant Christianity, and how holy men, Kolumkill for
example, took upon themselves the defence of the bards against the
kings who desired to stamp them out. The strife was the longer in
its duration, in that Christianity among the Celtic peoples never
employed force against rival religions, and, at the worst, left to
the vanquished the liberty of ill humour. Belief in prophets,
indestructible among these peoples, created, in despite of faith the
Anti-Christian type of Merlin, and caused his acceptance by the
whole of Europe. Gildas and the orthodox Bretons were ceaseless in
their thunderings against the prophets, and opposed to them Elias
and Samuel, two bards who only foretold good; even in the twelfth
century Giraldus Cambrensis saw a prophet in the town of Caerleon.

Thanks to this toleration bardism lasted into the heart of the
Middle Ages, under the form of a secret doctrine, with a
conventional language, and symbols almost wholly borrowed from the
solar divinity of Arthur. This may be termed Neo-Druidism, a kind of
Druidism subtilised and reformed on the model of Christianity, which
may be seen growing more and more obscure and mysterious, until the
moment of its total disappearance. A curious fragment belonging to
this school, the dialogue between Arthur and Eliwlod, has
transmitted to us the latest sighs of this latest protestation of
expiring naturalism. Under the form of an eagle Eliwlod introduces
the divinity to the sentiment of resignation, of subjection, and of
humility, with which Christianity combated pagan pride. Hero-worship
recoils step by step before the great formula, which Christianity
ceases not to repeat to the Celtic races to sever them from their
memories: There is none greater than God. Arthur allows himself to
be persuaded to abdicate from his divinity, and ends by reciting the
Pater.

I know of no more curious spectacle than this revolt of the manly
sentiments of hero-worship against the feminine feeling which flowed
so largely into the new faith. What, in fact, exasperates the old
representatives of Celtic society are the exclusive triumph of the
pacific spirit and the men, clad in linen and chanting psalms, whose
voice is sad, who preach asceticism, and know the heroes no more.
[Footnote: The antipathy to Christianity attributed by the Armorican
people to the dwarfs and korigans belongs in like measure to
traditions of the opposition encountered by the Gospel in its
beginnings. The korigans in fact are, for the Breton peasant, great
princesses who would not accept Christianity when the apostles came
to Brittany. They hate the clergy and the churches, the bells of
which make them take to flight. The Virgin above all is their great
enemy; she it is who has hounded them forth from their fountains,
and on Saturday, the day consecrated to her, whosoever beholds them
combing their hair or counting their treasures is sure to perish.
(Villemarque, Chants populaires, Introduction. )] We know the use
that Ireland has made of this theme, in the dialogues which she
loves to imagine between the representatives of her profane and
religious life, Ossian and St. Patrick. [Footnote: See Miss Brooke's
Reliques of Irish Poetry, Dublin, 1789, pp. 37 et seq. , PP. 75 et
seq. ] Ossian regrets the adventures, the chase, the blast of the
horn, and the kings of old time. "If they were here," he says to St.
Patrick, "thou should'st not thus be scouring the country with the
psalm-singing flock. " Patrick seeks to calm him by soft words, and
sometimes carries his condescension so far as to listen to his long
histories, which appear to interest the saint but slightly. "Thou
hast heard my story," says the old bard in conclusion; "albeit my
memory groweth weak, and I am devoured with care, yet I desire to
continue still to sing the deeds of yore, and to live upon ancient
glories. Now am I stricken with years, my life is frozen within me,
and all my joys are fleeting away. No more can my hand grasp the
sword, nor mine arm hold the lance in rest. Among priests my last
sad hour lengtheneth out, and psalms take now the place of songs of
victory. " "Let thy songs rest," says Patrick, "and dare not to
compare thy Finn to the King of Kings, whose might knoweth no
bounds: bend thy knees before Him, and know Him for thy Lord. " It
was indeed necessary to surrender, and the legend relates how the
old bard ended his days in the cloister, among the priests whom he
had so often used rudely, in the midst of these chants that he knew
not. Ossian was too good an Irishman for any one to make up his mind
to damn him utterly. Merlin himself had to cede to the new spell. He
was, it is said, converted by St. Columba; and the popular voice in
the ballads repeats to him unceasingly this sweet and touching
appeal: "Merlin, Merlin, be converted; there is no divinity save
that of God. "

VI.

We should form an altogether inadequate idea of the physiognomy of
the Celtic races, were we not to study them under what is perhaps
the most singular aspect of their development--that is to say, their
ecclesiastical antiquities and their saints. Leaving on one side the
temporary repulsion which Christian mildness had to conquer in the
classes of society which saw their influence diminished by the new
order of things, it can be truly said, that the gentleness of
manners and the exquisite sensibility of the Celtic races, in
conjunction with the absence of a formerly existing religion of
strong organisation, predestined them to Christianity. Christianity
in fact, addressing itself by preference to the more humble feelings
in human nature, met here with admirably prepared disciples; no race
has so delicately understood the charm of littleness, none has
placed the simple creature, the innocent, nearer God. The ease with
which the new religion took possession of these peoples is also
remarkable. Brittany and Ireland between them scarce count two or
three martyrs; they are reduced to venerating as such those of their
compatriots who were slain in the Anglo-Saxon and Danish invasions.
Here comes to light the profound difference dividing the Celtic from
the Teutonic race. The Teutons only received Christianity tardily
and in spite of themselves, by scheming or by force, after a
sanguinary resistance, and with terrible throes, Christianity was in
fact on several sides repugnant to their nature; and one understands
the regrets of pure Teutonists who, to this day, reproach the new
faith with having corrupted their sturdy ancestors.

Such was not the case with the Celtic peoples; that gentle little
race was naturally Christian. Far from changing them, and taking
away some of their qualities, Christianity finished and perfected
them. Compare the legends relating to the introduction of
Christianity into the two countries, the Kristni Saga for instance,
and the delightful legends of Lucius and St. Patrick. What a
difference we find! In Iceland the first apostles are pirates,
converted by some chance, now saying mass, now massacring their
enemies, now resuming their former profession of sea-rovers;
everything is done in accord with expediency, and without any
serious faith.

In Ireland and Brittany grace operates through women, by I know not
what charm of purity and sweetness. The revolt of the Teutons was
never effectually stifled; never did they forget the forced
baptisms, and the sword-supported Carlovingian missionaries, until
the day when Teutonism took its revenge, and Luther through seven
centuries gave answer to Witikind. On the other hand, the Celts
were, even in the third century, perfect Christians. To the Teutons
Christianity was for long nothing but a Roman institution, imposed
from without. They entered the Church only to trouble it; and it was
not without very great difficulty that they succeeded in forming a
national clergy. To the Celts, on the contrary, Christianity did not
come from Rome; they had their native clergy, their own peculiar
usages, their faith at first hand. It cannot, in fact, be doubted
that in apostolic times Christianity was preached in Brittany; and
several historians, not without justification, have considered that
it was borne there by Judaistic Christians, or by disciples of the
school of St. John. Everywhere else Christianity found, as a first
substratum, Greek or Roman civilisation. Here it found a virgin soil
of a nature analogous to its own, and naturally prepared to receive
it.

Few forms of Christianity have offered an ideal of Christian
perfection so pure as the Celtic Church of the sixth, seventh, and
eighth centuries. Nowhere, perhaps, has God been better worshipped
in spirit than in those great monastic communities of Hy, or of
Iona, of Bangor, of Clonard, or of Lindisfarne. One of the most
distinguished developments of Christianity--doubtless too
distinguished for the popular and practical mission which the Church
had to undertake--Pelagianism, arose from it. The true and refined
morality, the simplicity, and the wealth of invention which give
distinction to the legends of the Breton and Irish saints are indeed
admirable. No race adopted Christianity with so much originality,
or, while subjecting itself to the common faith, kept its national
characteristics more persistently. In religion, as in all else, the
Bretons sought isolation, and did not willingly fraternise with the
rest of the world. Strong in their moral superiority, persuaded that
they possessed the veritable canon of faith and religion, having
received their Christianity from an apostolic and wholly primitive
preaching, they experienced no need of feeling themselves in
communion with Christian societies less noble than their own. Thence
arose that long struggle of the Breton churches against Roman
pretensions, which is so admirably narrated by M. Augustin Thierry,
[Footnote: In his History of the Conquest. The objections raised by
M. Varin and some other scholars to M. Thierry's narrative only
affect some secondary details, which were rectified in the edition
published after the illustrious historian's death. ] thence those
inflexible characters of Columba and the monks of Iona, defending
their usages and institutions against the whole Church, thence
finally the false position of the Celtic peoples in Catholicism,
when that mighty force, grown more and more aggressive, had drawn
them together from all quarters, and compelled their absorption in
itself. Having no Catholic past, they found themselves unclassed on
their entrance into the great family, and were never able to succeed
in creating for themselves an Archbishopric. All their efforts and
all their innocent deceits to attribute that title to the Churches
of Dol and St. Davids were wrecked on the overwhelming divergence of
their past; their bishops had to resign themselves to being obscure
suffragans of Tours and Canterbury.

It remains to be said that, even in our own days, the powerful
originality of Celtic Christianity is far from being effaced. The
Bretons of France, although they have felt the consequences of the
revolutions undergone by Catholicism on the Continent, are, at the
present hour, one of the populations in which religious feeling has
retained most independence. The new devotions find no favour with
it; the people are faithful to the old beliefs and the old saints;
the psalms of religion have for them an ineffable harmony. In the
same way, Ireland keeps, in her more remote districts, quite unique
forms of worship from those of the rest of the world, to which
nothing in other parts of Christendom can be compared. The influence
of modern Catholicism, elsewhere so destructive of national usages,
has had here a wholly contrary effect, the clergy having found it
incumbent on them to seek a vantage ground against Protestantism, in
attachment to local practices and the customs of the past.

It is the picture of these Christian institutions, quite distinct
from those of the remainder of the West, of this sometimes strange
worship, of these legends of the saints marked with so distinct a
seal of nationality, that lends an interest to the ecclesiastical
antiquities of Ireland, of Wales, and of Armorican Brittany. No
hagiology has remained more exclusively natural than that of the
Celtic peoples; until the twelfth century those peoples admitted
very few alien saints into their martyrology. None, too, includes so
many naturalistic elements. Celtic Paganism offered so little
resistance to the new religion, that the Church did not hold itself
constrained to put in force against it the rigour with which
elsewhere it pursued the slightest traces of mythology. The
conscientious essay by W. Rees on the "Saints of Wales", and that by
the Rev. John Williams, an extremely learned ecclesiastic of the
diocese of St. Asaph, on the "Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the
Cymry", suffice to make one understand the immense value which a
complete and intelligent history of the Celtic Churches, before
their absorption in the Roman Church, would possess. To these might
be added the learned work of Dom Lobineau on the Saints of Brittany,
re-issued in our days by the Abbe Tresvaux, had not the half-
criticism of the Benedictine, much worse than a total absence of
criticism, altered those naive legends and cut away from them, under
the pretext of good sense and religious reverence, that which to us
gives them interest and charm.

Ireland above all would offer a religious physiognomy quite peculiar
to itself, which would appear singularly original, were history in a
position to reveal it in its entirety. When we consider the legions
of Irish saints who in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries
inundated the Continent and arrived from their isle bearing with
them their stubborn spirit, their attachment to their own usages,
their subtle and realistic turn of mind, and see the Scots (such was
the name given to the Irish) doing duty, until the twelfth century,
as instructors in grammar and literature to all the West, we cannot
doubt that Ireland, in the first half of the Middle Ages, was the
scene of a singular religious movement. Studious philologists and
daring philosophers, the Hibernian monks were above all
indefatigable copyists; and it was in part owing to them that the
work of the pen became a holy task. Columba, secretly warned that
his last hour is at hand, finishes the page of the psalter which he
has commenced, writes at the foot that he bequeaths the continuation
to his successor, and then goes into the church to die. Nowhere was
monastic life to find such docile subjects. Credulous as a child,
timid, indolent, inclined to submit and obey, the Irishman alone was
capable of lending himself to that complete self-abdication in the
hands of the abbot, which we find so deeply marked in the historical
and legendary memorials of the Irish Church. One easily recognises
the land where, in our own days, the priest, without provoking the
slightest scandal, can, on a Sunday before quitting the altar, give
the orders for his dinner in a very audible manner, and announce the
farm where he intends to go and dine, and where he will hear his
flock in confession. In the presence of a people which lived by
imagination and the senses alone, the Church did not consider itself
under the necessity of dealing severely with the caprices of
religious fantasy. It permitted the free action of the popular
instinct; and from this freedom emerged what is perhaps of all cults
the most mythological and most analogous to the mysteries of
antiquity, presented in Christian annals, a cult attached to certain
places, and almost exclusively consisting in certain acts held to be
sacramental.

Without contradiction the legend of St. Brandan is the most singular
product of this combination of Celtic naturalism with Christian
spiritualism. The taste of the Hibernian monks for making maritime
pilgrimages through the archipelago of the Scottish and Irish seas,
everywhere dotted with monasteries, [Footnote: The Irish saints
literally covered the Western seas. A very considerable number of
the saints of Brittany, St. Tenenan, St. Renan, etc. , were emigrants
from Ireland. The Breton legends of St. Malo, St. David, and of St.
Pol of Leon are replete with similar stories of voyages to the
distant isles of the West. ] and the memory of yet more distant
voyages in Polar seas, furnished the framework of this curious
composition, so rich in local impressions. From Pliny (IV. xxx. 3)
we learn that, even in his time, the Bretons loved to venture their
lives upon the high seas, in search of unknown isles. M. Letronne
has proved that in 795, sixty-five years consequently before the
Danes, Irish monks landed in Iceland and established themselves on
the coast. In this island the Danes found Irish books and bells; and
the names of certain localities still bear witness to the sojourn of
those monks, who were known by the name of Papae (fathers). In the
Faroe Isles, in the Orkneys, and the Shetlands, indeed in all parts
of the Northern seas, the Scandinavians found themselves preceded by
those Papas, whose habits contrasted so strangely with their own.
[Footnote: On this point see the careful researches of Humboldt in
his History of the Geography of the New Continent, vol. ii. ] Did
they not have a glimpse too of that great land, the vague memory of
which seems to pursue them, and which Columbus was to discover,
following the traces of their dreams? It is only known that the
existence of an island, traversed by a great river and situated to
the west of Ireland, was, on the faith of the Irish, a dogma for
mediaeval geographers.

The story went that, towards the middle of the sixth century, a monk
called Barontus, on his return from voyaging upon the sea, came and
craved hospitality at the monastery of Clonfert. Brandan the abbot
besought him to give pleasure to the brothers by narrating the
marvels of God that he had seen on the high seas. Barontus revealed
to them the existence of an island surrounded by fogs, where he had
left his disciple Mernoc; it is the Land of Promise that God keeps
for his saints. Brandan with seventeen of his monks desired to go in
quest of this mysterious land. They set forth in a leather boat,
bearing with them as their sole provision a utensil of butter,
wherewith to grease the hides of their craft. For seven years they
lived thus in their boat, abandoning to God sail and rudder, and
only stopping on their course to celebrate the feasts of Christmas
and Easter on the back of the king of fishes, Jasconius. Every step
of this monastic Odyssey is a miracle, on every isle is a monastery,
where the wonders of a fantastical universe respond to the
extravagances of a wholly ideal life. Here is the Isle of Sheep,
where these animals govern themselves according to their own laws;
elsewhere the Paradise of Birds, where the winged race lives after
the fashion of monks, singing matins and lauds at the canonical
hours. Brandan and his companions celebrate mass here with the
birds, and remain with them for fifty days, nourishing themselves
with nothing but the singing of their hosts. Elsewhere there is the
Isle of Delight, the ideal of monastic life in the midst of the
seas. Here no material necessity makes itself felt; the lamps light
of themselves for the offices of religion, and never burn out, for
they shine with a spiritual light. An absolute stillness reigns in
the island; every one knows precisely the hour of his death; one
feels neither cold, nor heat, nor sadness, nor sickness of body or
soul. All this has endured since the days of St. Patrick, who so
ordained it. The Land of Promise is more marvellous still; there an
eternal day reigns; all the plants have flowers, all the trees bear
fruits. Some privileged men alone have visited it. On their return a
perfume is perceived to come from them, which their garments keep
for forty days.

In the midst of these dreams there appears with a surprising
fidelity to truth the feeling for the picturesque in Polar voyages,-
-the transparency of the sea, the aspect of bergs and islands of ice
melting in the sun, the volcanic phenomena of Iceland, the sporting
of whales, the characteristic appearance of the Norwegian fiords,
the sudden fogs, the sea calm as milk, the green isles crowned with
grass which grows down to the very verge of the waves. This
fantastical nature created expressly for another humanity, this
strange topography at once glowing with fiction and speaking of
truth, make the poem of St. Brandan one of the most extraordinary
creations of the human mind, and perhaps the completest expression
of the Celtic ideal. All is lovely, pure, and innocent; never has a
gaze so benevolent and so gentle been cast upon the earth; there is
not a single cruel idea, not a trace of frailty or repentance. It is
the world seen through the crystal of a stainless conscience, one
might almost say a human nature, as Pelagius wished it, that has
never sinned. The very animals participate in this universal
mildness. Evil appears under the form of monsters wandering on the
deep, or of Cyclops confined in volcanic islands; but God causes
them to destroy one another, and does not permit them to do hurt to
the good.

We have just seen how, around the legend of a monk the Irish
imagination grouped a whole cycle of physical and maritime myths.
The Purgatory of St. Patrick became the framework of another series
of fables, embodying the Celtic ideas concerning the other life and
its different conditions. [Footnote: See Thomas Wright's excellent
dissertation, Saint Patrick's Purgatory (London, 1844), and
Calderon's The Well of Saint Patrick. ] Perhaps the profoundest
instinct of the Celtic peoples is their desire to penetrate the
unknown. With the sea before them, they wish to know what lies
beyond; they dream of a Promised Land. In the face of the unknown
that lies beyond the tomb, they dream of that great journey which
the pen of Dante has celebrated. The legend tells how, while St.
Patrick was preaching about Paradise and Hell to the Irish, they
confessed that they would feel more assured of the reality of these
places, if he would allow one of them to descend there, and then
come back with information St. Patrick consented. A pit was dug, by
which an Irishman set out upon the subterranean journey. Others
wished to attempt the journey after him. With the consent of the
abbot of the neighbouring monastery, they descended into the shaft,
they passed through the torments of Hell and Purgatory, and then
each told of what he had seen. Some did not emerge again; those who
did laughed no more, and were henceforth unable to join in any
gaiety. Knight Owen made a descent in 1153, and gave a narrative of
his travels which had a prodigious success.

Other legends related that when St. Patrick drove the goblins out of
Ireland, he was greatly tormented in this place for forty days by
legions of black birds. The Irish betook themselves to the spot, and
experienced the same assaults which gave them an immunity from
Purgatory. According to the narrative of Giraldus Cambrensis, the
isle which served as the theatre of this strange superstition was
divided into two parts. One belonged to the monks, the other was
occupied by evil spirits, who celebrated religious rites in their
own manner, with an infernal uproar. Some people, for the expiation
of their sins, voluntarily exposed themselves to the fury of those
demons. There were nine ditches in which they lay for a night,
tormented in a thousand different ways. To make the descent it was
necessary to obtain the permission of the bishop. His duty it was to
dissuade the penitent from attempting the adventure, and to point
out to him how many people had gone in who had never come out again.
If the devotee persisted, he was ceremoniously conducted to the
shaft.
He was lowered down by means of a rope, with a loaf and a
vessel of water to strengthen him in the combat against the fiend
which he proposed to wage. On the following morning the sacristan
offered the rope anew to the sufferer. If he mounted to the surface
again, they brought him back to the church, bearing the cross and
chanting psalms. If he were not to be found, the sacristan closed
the door and departed. In more modern times pilgrims to the sacred
isles spent nine days there. They passed over to them in a boat
hollowed out of the trunk of a tree. Once a day they drank of the
water of the lake; processions and stations were performed in the
beds or cells of the saints. Upon the ninth day the penitents
entered into the shaft. Sermons were preached to them warning them
of the danger they were about to run, and they were told of terrible
examples. They forgave their enemies and took farewell of one
another, as though they were at their last agony. According to
contemporary accounts, the shaft was a low and narrow kiln, into
which nine entered at a time, and in which the penitents passed a
day and a night, huddled and tightly pressed against one another.
Popular belief imagined an abyss underneath, to swallow up the
unworthy and the unbelieving. On emerging from the pit they went and
bathed in the lake, and so their Purgatory was accomplished. It
would appear from the accounts of eye-witnesses that, to this day,
things happen very nearly after the same fashion.

The immense reputation of the Purgatory of St. Patrick filled the
whole of the Middle Ages. Preachers made appeal to the public
notoriety of this great fact, to controvert those who had their
doubts regarding Purgatory. In the year 1358 Edward III. gave to a
Hungarian of noble birth, who had come from Hungary expressly to
visit the sacred well, letters patent attesting that he had
undergone his Purgatory. Narratives of those travels beyond the tomb
became a very fashionable form of literature; and it is important
for us to remark the wholly mythological, and as wholly Celtic,
characteristics dominant in them. It is in fact evident that we are
dealing with a mystery or local cult, anterior to Christianity, and
probably based upon the physical appearance of the country. The idea
of Purgatory, in its final and concrete form, fared specially well
amongst the Bretons and the Irish. Bede is one of the first to speak
of it in a descriptive manner, and the learned Mr. Wright very
justly observes that nearly all the descriptions of Purgatory come
from Irishmen, or from Anglo-Saxons who have resided in Ireland,
such as St. Fursey, Tundale, the Northumbrian Dryhthelm, and Knight
Owen. It is likewise a remarkable thing that only the Irish were
able to behold the marvels of their Purgatory. A canon from Hemstede
in Holland, who descended in 1494, saw nothing at all. Evidently
this idea of travels in the other world and its infernal categories,
as the Middle Ages accepted it, is Celtic. The belief in the three
circles of existence is again to be found in the Triads, [Footnote:
A series of aphorisms under the form of triplets, which give us,
with numerous interpolations, the ancient teaching of the bards, and
that traditional wisdom which, according to the testimony of the
ancients, was transmitted by means of mnemonic verses in the schools
of the Druids. under an aspect which does not permit one to see any
Christian interpolation. ]

The soul's peregrinations after death are also the favourite theme
of the most ancient Armorican poetry. Among the features by which
the Celtic races most impressed the Romans were the precision of
their ideas upon the future life, their inclination to suicide, and
the loans and contracts which they signed with the other world in
view. The more frivolous peoples of the South saw with awe in this
assurance the fact of a mysterious race, having an understanding of
the future and the secret of death. Through the whole of classical
antiquity runs the tradition of an Isle of Shadows, situated on the
confines of Brittany, and of a folk devoted to the passage of souls,
which lives upon the neighbouring coast. In the night they hear dead
men prowling about their cabin, and knocking at the door. Then they
rise up; their craft is laden with invisible beings; on their return
it is lighter. Several of these features reproduced by Plutarch,
Claudian, Procopius, [Footnote: A Byzantine historian of the fifth
and sixth centuries. ] and Tzetzes [Footnote: A Greek poet and
grammarian of the twelfth century. ] would incline one to believe
that the renown of the Irish myths made its way into classical
antiquity about the first or second century. Plutarch, for example,
relates, concerning the Cronian Sea, fables identical with those
which fill the legend of St. Malo. Procopius, describing the sacred
Island of Brittia, which consists of two parts separated by the sea,
one delightful, the other given over to evil spirits, seems to have
read in advance the description of the Purgatory of St. Patrick,
which Giraldus Cambrensis was to give seven centuries later. It
cannot be doubted for a moment, after the able researches of Messrs.
Ozanam, Labitte, and Wright, that to the number of poetical themes
which Europe owes to the genius of the Celts, is to be added the
framework of the Divine Comedy.

One can understand how greatly this invincible attraction to fables
must have discredited the Celtic race in the eyes of nationalities
that believed themselves to be more serious. It is in truth a
strange thing, that the whole of the mediaeval epoch, whilst
submitting to the influence of the Celtic imagination, and borrowing
from Brittany and Ireland at least half of its poetical subjects,
believed itself obliged, for the saving of its own honour, to slight
and satirise the people to which it owed them. Even Chretien de
Troyes, for example, who passed his life in exploiting the Breton
romances for his own purposes, originated the saying--

"Les Gallois sont tous par nature
Plus sots que betes de pature. "

Some English chronicler, I know not who, imagined he was making a
charming play upon words when he described those beautiful
creations, the whole world of which deserved to live, as "the
childish nonsense with which those brutes of Bretons amuse
themselves. " The Bollandists [Footnote: A group of Jesuits who
issued a collection of "Lives of the Saints". The first five volumes
were edited by John Bolland. ] found it incumbent to exclude from
their collection, as apocryphal extravagances, those admirable
religious legends, with which no Church has anything to compare. The
decided leaning of the Celtic race towards the ideal, its sadness,
its fidelity, its good faith, caused it to be regarded by its
neighbours as dull, foolish, and superstitious. They could not
understand its delicacy and refined manner of feeling. They mistook
for awkwardness the embarrassment experienced by sincere and open
natures in the presence of more artificial natures. The contrast
between French frivolity and Breton stubbornness above all led,
after the fourteenth century, to most deplorable conflicts, whence
the Bretons ever emerged with a reputation for wrong-headedness.

It was still worse, when the nation that most prides itself on its
practical good sense found confronting it the people that, to its
own misfortune, is least provided with that gift. Poor Ireland, with
her ancient mythology, with her Purgatory of St. Patrick, and her
fantastic travels of St. Brandan, was not destined to find grace in
the eyes of English puritanism. One ought to observe the disdain of
English critics for these fables, and their superb pity for the
Church which dallies with Paganism, so far as to keep up usages
which are notoriously derived from it. Assuredly we have here a
praiseworthy zeal, arising from natural goodness; and yet, even if
these flights of imagination did no more than render a little more
supportable many sufferings which are said to have no remedy, that
after all would be something. Who shall dare to say where, here on
earth, is the boundary between reason and dreaming? Which is worth
more, the imaginative instinct of man, or the narrow orthodoxy that
pretends to remain rational, when speaking of things divine? For my
own part, I prefer the frank mythology, with all its vagaries, to a
theology so paltry, so vulgar, and so colourless, that it would be
wronging God to believe that, after having made the visible world so
beautiful he should have made the invisible world so prosaically
reasonable.

In presence of the ever-encroaching progress of a civilisation which
is of no country, and can receive no name, other than that of modern
or European, it would be puerile to hope that the Celtic race is in
the future to succeed in obtaining isolated expression of its
originality. And yet we are far from believing that this race has
said its last word. After having put in practice all chivalries,
devout and worldly, gone with Peredur in quest of the Holy Grail and
fair ladies, and dreamed with St. Brandan of mystical Atlantides,
who knows what it would produce in the domain of intellect, if it
hardened itself to an entrance into the world, and subjected its
rich and profound nature to the conditions of modern thought? It
appears to me that there would result from this combination,
productions of high originality, a subtle and discreet manner of
taking life, a singular union of strength and weakness, of rude
simplicity and mildness. Few races have had so complete a poetic
childhood as the Celtic; mythology, lyric poetry, epic, romantic
imagination, religious enthusiasm--none of these failed them; why
should reflection fail them? Germany, which commenced with science
and criticism, has come to poetry; why should not the Celtic races,
which began with poetry, finish with criticism? There is not so
great a distance from one to the other as is supposed; the poetical
races are the philosophic races, and at bottom philosophy is only a
manner of poetry. When one considers how Germany, less than a
century ago, had her genius revealed to her, how a multitude of
national individualities, to all appearance effaced, have suddenly
risen again in our own days, more instinct with life than ever, one
feels persuaded that it is a rash thing to lay down any law on the
intermittence and awakening of nations; and that modern
civilisation, which appeared to be made to absorb them, may perhaps
be nothing more than their united fruition.




THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE

BY

GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSINO


TRANSLATED BY

F. W. ROBERTSON




INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Lessing's life has been sketched in the introduction to his "Minna
von Barnhelm" in the volume of Continental Dramas in The Harvard
Classics.

"The Education of the Human Race" is the culmination of a bitter
theological controversy which began with the publication by Lessing,
in 1774-1778, of a series of fragments of a work on natural religion
by the German deist, Reimarus. This action brought upon Lessing the
wrath of the orthodox German Protestants, led by J. M. Goeze, and in
the battle that followed Lessing did his great work for the
liberalising of religious thought in Germany. The present treatise
is an extraordinarily condensed statement of the author's attitude
towards the fundamental questions of religion, and gives his view of
the signification of the previous religious history of mankind,
along with his faith And hope for the future.

As originally issued, the essay purported to be merely edited by
Lessing; but there is no longer any doubt as to his having been its
author. It is an admirable and characteristic expression of the
serious and elevated spirit in which he dealt with matters that had
then, as often, been degraded by the virulence of controversy.




THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE

1

That which Education is to the Individual, Revelation is to the
Race.

2

Education is Revelation coming to the Individual Man; and Revelation
is Education which has come, and is yet coming, to the Human Race.

3

Whether it can be of any advantage to the science of instruction to
contemplate Education in this point of view, I will not here
inquire; but in Theology it may unquestionably be of great
advantage, and may remove many difficulties, if Revelation be
conceived of as the Educator of Humanity.

4

Education gives to Man nothing which he might not educe out of
himself; it gives him that which he might educe out of himself, only
quicker and more easily. In the same way too, Revelation gives
nothing to the human species, which the human reason left to itself
might not attain; only it has given, and still gives to it, the most
important of these things earlier.

5

And just as in Education, it is not a matter of indifference in what
order the powers of a man are developed, as it cannot impart to a
man all at once; so was God also necessitated to maintain a certain
order, and a certain measure in His Revelation.

6

Even if the first man were furnished at once with a conception of
the One God; yet it was not possible that this conception, imparted,
and not gained by thought, should subsist long in its clearness. As
soon as the Human Reason, left to itself, began to elaborate it, it
broke up the one Immeasurable into many Measurables, and gave a note
or sign of mark to every one of these parts.

7

Hence naturally arose polytheism and idolatry. And who can say how
many millions of years human reason would have been bewildered in
these errors, even though in all places and times there were
individual men who recognized them as errors, had it not pleased God
to afford it a better direction by means of a new Impulse?

8

But when He neither could nor would reveal Himself any more to each
individual man, He selected an individual People for His special
education; and that exactly the most rude and the most unruly, in
order to begin with it from the very commencement.

9

This was the Hebrew People, respecting whom we do not in the least
know what kind of Divine Worship they had in Egypt. For so despised
a race of slaves was not permitted to take part in the worship of
the Egyptians; and the God of their fathers was entirely unknown to
them.

10

It is possible that the Egyptians had expressly prohibited the
Hebrews from having a God or Gods, perhaps they had forced upon them
the belief that their despised race had no God, no Gods, that to
have a God or Gods was the prerogative of the superior Egyptians
only, and this may have been so held in order to have the power of
tyrannising over them with a greater show of fairness. Do Christians
even now do much better with their slaves?

11

To this rude people God caused Himself to be announced first, simply
as "the God of their fathers," in order to make them acquainted and
familiar with the idea of a God belonging to them also, and to begin
with confidence in Him.

12

Through the miracles with which He led them out of Egypt, and
planted them in Canaan, He testified of Himself to them as a God
mightier than any other God.

13

And as He proceeded, demonstrating Himself to be the Mightiest of
all, which only One can be, He gradually accustomed them thus to the
idea of THE ONE.

14

But how far was this conception of The One, below the true
transcendental conception of the One which Reason learnt to derive,
so late with certainty, from the conception of the Infinite One?

15

Although the best of the people were already more or less
approaching the true conception of the One only, the people as a
whole could not for a long time elevate themselves to it. And this
was the sole true reason why they so often abandoned their one God,
and expected to find the One, i. e. , as they meant, the Mightiest,
in some God or other, belonging to another people.

16

But of what kind of moral education was a people so raw, so
incapable of abstract thoughts, and so entirely in their childhood
capable? Of none other but such as is adapted to the age of
children, an education by rewards and punishments addressed to the
senses.

17

Here too Education and Revelation meet together. As yet God could
give to His people no other religion, no other law than one through
obedience to which they might hope to be happy, or through
disobedience to which they must fear to be unhappy. For as yet their
regards went no further than this earth. They knew of no immortality
of the soul; they yearned after no life to come. But now to reveal
these things to one whose reason had as yet so little growth, what
would it have been but the same fault in the Divine Rule as is
committed by the schoolmaster, who chooses to hurry his pupil too
rapidly, and boast of his progress, rather than thoroughly to ground
him?

18

But, it will be asked, to what purpose was this education of so rude
a people, a people with whom God had to begin so entirely from the
beginning? I reply, in order that in the process of time He might
employ particular members of this nation as the Teachers of other
people. He was bringing up in them the future Teachers of the human
race. It was the Jews who became their teachers, none but Jews; only
men out of a people so brought up, could be their teachers.

19

For to proceed. When the Child by dint of blows and caresses had
grown and was now come to years of understanding, the Father sent it
at once into foreign countries: and here it recognised at once the
Good which in its Father's house it had possessed, and had not been
conscious of.

20.

While God guided His chosen people through all the degrees of a
child-like education, the other nations of the earth had gone on by
the light of reason. The most part had remained far behind the
chosen people. Only a few had got before them. And this too, takes
place with children, who are allowed to grow up left to themselves:
many remain quite raw, some educate themselves even to an
astonishing degree.

21

But as these more fortunate few prove nothing against the use and
necessity of Education, so the few heathen nations, who even appear
to have made a start in the knowledge of God before the chosen
people, prove nothing against a Revelation. The Child of Education
begins with slow yet sure footsteps; it is late in overtaking many a
more happily organised child of nature; but it does overtake it; and
thenceforth can never be distanced by it again.

22

Similarly--Putting aside the doctrine of the Unity of God, which in
a way is found, and in a way is not found, in the books of the Old
Testament--that the doctrine of immortality at least is not
discoverable in it, is wholly foreign to it, that all doctrine
connected therewith of reward and punishment in a future life,
proves just as little against the Divine origin of these books.
Notwithstanding the absence of these doctrines, the account of
miracles and prophecies may be perfectly true. For let us suppose
that these doctrines were not only wanting therein, but even that
they were not at all true; let us suppose that for mankind all was
over in this life; would the Being of God be for this reason less
demonstrated? Would God be for this less at liberty, would it less
become Him to take immediate charge of the temporal fortunes of any
people out of this perishable race? The miracles which He performed
for the Jews, the prophecies which He caused to be recorded through
them, were surely not for the few mortal Jews, in whose time they
had happened and been recorded: He had His intentions therein in
reference to the whole Jewish people, to the entire Human Race,
which, perhaps, is destined to remain on earth forever, though every
individual Jew and every individual man die forever.

23

Once more, The absence of those doctrines in the writings of the Old
Testament proves nothing against their Divinity. Moses was sent from
God even though the sanction of his law only extended to this life.
For why should it extend further? He was surely sent only to the
Israelitish people of that time, and his commission was perfectly
adapted to the knowledge, capacities, yearnings of the then existing
Israelitish people, as well as to the destination of that which
belonged to the future. And this is sufficient.

24

So far ought Warburton to have gone, and no further. But that
learned man overdrew his bow. Not content that the absence of these
doctrines was no discredit to the Divine mission of Moses, it must
even be a proof to him of the Divinity of the mission. And if he had
only sought this proof in the adaptation of such a law to such a
people!

But he betook himself to the hypothesis of a miraculous system
continued in an unbroken line from Moses to Christ, according to
which, God had made every individual Jew exactly happy or unhappy,
in the proportion to his obedience or disobedience to the law
deserved. He would have it that this miraculous system had
compensated for the want of those doctrines (of eternal rewards and
punishments, &c. ), without which no state can subsist; and that such
a compensation even proved what that want at first sight appeared to
negative.

25

How well it was that Warburton could by no argument prove or even
make likely this continuous miracle, in which he placed the
existence of Israelitish Theocracy! For could he have done so, in
truth, he could then, and not till then, have made the difficulty
really insuperable, to me at least. For that which was meant to
prove the Divine character of the Mission of Moses, would have
rendered the matter itself doubtful, which God, it is true, did not
intend then to reveal; but which on the other hand, He certainly
would not render unattainable.

26

I explain myself by that which is a picture of Revelation. A Primer
for children may fairly pass over in silence this or that important
piece of knowledge or art which it expounds, respecting which the
Teacher judged, that it is not yet fitted for the capacities of the
children for whom he was writing. But it must contain absolutely
nothing which blocks up the way towards the knowledge which is held
back, or misleads the children from it. Rather far, all the
approaches towards it must be carefully left open; and to lead them
away from even one of these approaches, or to cause them to enter it
later than they need, would alone be enough to change the mere
imperfection of such a Primer into an actual fault.

27

In the same way, in the writings of the Old Testament those primers
for the rude Israelitish people, unpractised in thought, the
doctrines of the immortality of the soul, and future recompenses,
might be fairly left out: but they were bound to contain nothing
which could have even procrastinated the progress of the people, for
whom they were written, in their way to this grand truth. And to say
but a small thing, what could have more procrastinated it than the
promise of such a miraculous recompense in this life? A promise made
by Him who promises nothing that He does not perform.

28

For although unequal distribution of the goods of this life, Virtue
and Vice seem to be taken too little into consideration, although
this unequal distribution docs not exactly afford a strong proof of
the immortality of the soul and of a life to come, in which this
difficulty will be reserved hereafter, it is certain that without
this difficulty the human understanding would not for a long time,
perhaps never, have arrived at better or firmer proofs. For what was
to impel it to seek for these better proofs? Mere curiosity?

29

An Israelite here and there, no doubt, might have extended to every
individual member of the entire commonwealth, those promises and
threatenings which belong to it as a whole, and be firmly persuaded
that whosoever should be pious must also be happy, and that whoever
was unhappy must be bearing the penalty of his wrong-doing, which
penalty would forthwith change itself into blessing, as soon as he
abandoned his sin. Such a one appears to have written Job, for the
plan of it is entirely in this spirit.

30

But daily experience could not possibly be permitted to confirm this
belief, or else it would have been all over, for ever, with people
who had this experience, so far as all recognition and reception was
concerned of the truth as yet unfamiliar to them. For if the pious
were absolutely happy, and it also of course was a necessary part of
his happiness that his satisfaction should be broken by no uneasy
thoughts of death, and that he should die old, and satisfied with
life to the full: how could he yearn after another life? and how
could he reflect upon a thing after which he did not yearn? But if
the pious did not reflect thereupon, who then should reflect? The
transgressor? he who felt the punishments of his misdeeds, and if he
cursed this life, must have so gladly renounced that other
existence?

31

Much less would it signify if an Israelite here and there directly
and expressly denied the immortality of the soul and future
recompense, on account of the law having no reference thereto. The
denial of an individual, had it even been a Solomon, did not arrest
the progress of the general reason, and was even in itself a proof
that the nation had now come a great step nearer the truth For
individuals only deny what the many are bringing into consideration;
and to bring into consideration that, concerning which no one
troubled himself at all before, is half way to knowledge.

32

Let us also acknowledge that it is a heroic obedience to obey the
laws of God simply because they are God's laws, and not because He
has promised to reward the obedience to them here and there; to obey
them even though there be an entire despair of future recompense,
and uncertainty respecting a temporal one.

33

Must not a people educated in this heroic obedience towards God have
been destined, must they not have been capable beyond all others of
executing Divine purpose? of quite a special character? Let the
soldier, who pays blind obedience to his leader, become also
convinced of his leader's wisdom, and then say what that leader may
not undertake to achieve with him.

34

As yet the Jewish people had reverenced in their Jehovah rather the
mightiest than the wisest of all Gods; as yet they had rather feared
Him as a Jealous God than loved Him: a proof this too, that the
conception which they had of their eternal One God was not exactly
the right conception which we should have of God. However, now the
time was come that these conceptions of theirs were to be expanded,
ennobled, rectified, to accomplish which God availed Himself of a
quite natural means, a better and more correct measure, by which it
got the opportunity of appreciating Him.

35

Instead of, as hitherto, appreciating Him in contrast with the
miserable idols of the small neighboring peoples, with whom they
lived in constant rivalry, they began, in captivity under the wise
Persians, to measure Him against the "Being of all Beings" such as a
more disciplined reason recognized and reverenced.

36

Revelation had guided their reason, and now, all at once, reason
gave clearness to their Revelation.

37

This was the first reciprocal influence which these two (Reason and
Revelation) exercised on one another; and so far is the mutual
influence from being unbecoming to the Author of them both, that
without it either of them would have been useless.

38

The child, sent abroad, saw other children who knew more, who lived
more becomingly, and asked itself, in confusion, "Why do I not know
that too? Why do I not live so too? Ought I not to have been taught
and admonished of all this in my father's house? " Thereupon it again
sought out its Primer, which had long been thrown into a corner, in
order to throw off a blame upon the Primer. But behold, it discovers
that the blame does not rest upon the books, that the shame is
solely its own, for not having long ago, known this very thing, and
lived in this very way.

39

Since the Jews, by this time, through the medium of the pure Persian
doctrine, recognized in their Jehovah, not simply the greatest of
all national deities, but GOD; and since they could, the more
readily find Him and indicate Him to others in their sacred
writings, inasmuch as He was really in them; and since they
manifested as great an aversion for sensuous representations, or at
all events, were instructed in these Scriptures, to have an aversion
to them as great as the Persians had always felt; what wonder that
they found favor in the eyes of Cyrus, with a Divine Worship which
he recognized as being, no doubt, far below pure Sabeism, but yet
far above the rude idolatries which in its stead had taken
possession of the forsaken land of the Jews.

40

Thus enlightened respecting the treasures which they had possessed,
without knowing it, they returned, and became quite another people,
whose first care it was to give permanency to this illumination
amongst themselves. Soon an apostacy and idolatry among them was out
of the question. For it is possible to be faithless to a national
deity, but never to God, after He has once been recognised.

The theologians have tried to explain this complete change in the
Jewish people in a different way; and one, who has well demonstrated
the insufficiency of these explanations, at last was for giving us,
as a true account--"the visible fulfilment of the prophecies which
had been spoken and written respecting the Babylonish captivity and
the restoration from it. " But even this reason can be only so far
the true one, as it presupposes the, by this time, exalted ideas of
God. The Jews must by this time have recognised that to do miracles,
and to predict the future, belonged only to God, both of which they
had ascribed formerly to false idols, by which it came to pass that
even miracles and prophecies had hitherto made so weak an impression
upon them.

42

Doubtless, the Jews were made more acquainted with the doctrine of
immortality among the Chaldeans and Persians. They became more
familiar with it too in the schools of the Greek Philosophers in
Egypt.

43

However, as this doctrine was not in the same condition in reference
to their Scriptures that the doctrines of God's Unity and Attributes
were--since the former were entirely overlooked by that sensual
people, while the latter would be sought for:--and since too, for
the former, previous exercising was necessary, and as yet there had
been only hints and allusions, the faith in the immortality of the
soul could naturally never be the faith of the entire people. It was
and continued to be only the creed of a certain section of them.

44

An example of what I mean by "previous exercising" for the doctrine
of immortality, is the Divine threatenings of punishing the misdeeds
of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation. This accustomed the fathers to live in thought with
their remotest posterity, and to feel, as it were, beforehand, the
misfortune which they had brought upon these guiltless ones.

45

By an allusion I mean that which was intended only to excite
curiosity and to occasion questions. As, for instance, the oft-
recurring mode of expression, describing death by "he was gathered
to his fathers. "

By a "hint" I mean that which already contains any germ, out of
which the, as yet, held back truth allows itself to be developed. Of
this character was the inference of Christ from the naming of God
"the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. " This hint appears to me to
be unquestionably capable of being worked out into a strong proof.

47

In such previous exercitations, allusions, hints, consists the
positive perfection of a Primer; just as the above-mentioned
peculiarity of not throwing difficulties or hindrances in the way to
the suppressed truth constitutes the negative perfection of such a
book.

48

Add to all this the clothing and style.