tatingly are able, whenever it is conven- trying in succession every possible comient, to adopt the very opposite conclu- bination of opinions. Those which turn sion. The world, according to them, is out to be fruitless are gradually cast for the most part in the hands of the aside; though the old errors are conknaves and fools who between them form stantly reappearing under a slightly difthe vast majority of the species. A hero ferent dress. At most, therefore, we imappears every now and then who shows prove by a constant series of rough apa deeper insight into the realities; but proximations, each of which involves a be is succeeded by mere windbags and considerable error; though the error incharlatans who speedily forget his teach-volved may tend to become gradually ing. A Cromwell is followed by a Charles less. Nor can it be said that the erroII.; and if he laid sound foundations, it neous part of an opinion is always that must be at least admitted that they have which causes its failure. Some persons been lost under a vast superstructure of maintain that the success of false relig rubbish. Democracy has been succeed- ions is proportional to the amount of ing in the highest degree for some time truth contained in them. Mahommedanpast, and is apparently not unlikely to ad-ism flourished, not because Mahommed vance to further triumphs. Yet democ- was, as our ancestors called him, a clever racy involves a denial of the eternal impostor, but because he announced truths expressed in the doctrine of hero- some great truths the effect of which worship. Our only consolation must be was impeded by the admixture of gross in the maxim that right is might inter- error. But it must be added that the erpreted after the opposite fashion, and ror was probably necessary to make the thus rendered equivalent to the state- truth palatable. A worshipper of Mumment that true principles must get the bo-Jumbo cannot understand a pure reupper hand after an indefinitely pro-ligion until he has been educated into a longed period of chaos and the reign of folly. So that, after all, the assertion seems to come to little more than this that the success of things which we approve shows that our approbation was reasonable, whilst the success of things which we disapprove cannot last indefinitely. capacity for new ideas, or until the truths have been adulterated by combination with the cruder ideas which can find admission to his brain. Doctrines that come pure from the lips of their first teachers take up into a kind of chemical combination the crude superstitions which are popular amongst their hearers, and, were it not for that power, they would be incapable of diffusing themselves. This is a comfortable opinion, but it obviously is of little use as a controversial weapon, for it is equally reconcilable with any view of the facts. A more proIf this is the case with the progress of saic mode of stating the proposition the race in general, why should we exwould seem to be that the truth of an pect to find it otherwise in regard to the opinion or the solidity of a piece of individual? A man may possibly be too work gives it a certain advantage in the good for this world, as it is certainly very struggle for existence. Truth tends to easy to be too bad. Here and there, prevail because it has generally one more though the phenomenon is not so compoint in the game than its adversary; but mon as is sometimes suggested, we may even that statement is not quite accu-find a thinker who has really been far in rate. The philosophers who try to rep-advance of his age, and who has beer. resent the history of thought as the em- entirely everlooked in consequence. He bodiment of a certain logical evolution may be correct in the long run, but their view requires to be modified in application to shorter periods. The process by which the human mind advances is not a gradual discovery of new facts and of new laws, so that every stage of opinion is a mere expansion of the preceding stage. Rather it is a process of making every possible blunder, and discovering by slow experience that it won't work. No opinion is so absurd as not to have been held by some philosopher; for the simple reason that philosophizing means has taught a philosophy which may be intelligible in the distant future, but which is entirely above the capacities of the existing race. When we disinter such a man from the decaying rubbish of his contemporaries, we say naturally that he was the salt of the earth, and that his keener perceptions of the truth, filtered through the grosser intellects of his disciples, were the force which kept thought from extinction. It may be so in some cases; but it is possible to take a very different view. What is the use, we may fairly ask, of a man who was so wise that nobody could understand him in his life, | produced a great effect at the time of and who is only studied by a remote pos- its publication. It was one of the forces terity who honour him for anticipating which helped to upset the old canons of their ideas? He influenced nobody when taste; it excited not only the fools, but he was alive; and though we may admire such great men as Goethe; and, if it is him now that he has been dead for a cen- now dead, it helped to stimulate some of tury or two, we admire him as a singular the most living works of imagination of phenomenon rather than submit to his the time. Gray, on the contrary, compower as a spiritual force. The stupid paratively neglected, is known by heart people, whom we forget because they were on a level with their generation, really did the work; and a man, however great, whose greatness is not recognized by his contemporaries, really produces but a very small influence upon the later generation which has first found out his merits. In "The Last of the Barons," Lord Lytton described a perfectly impossible person who discovered the steamengine during the Wars of the Roses. If he had been an historical character, he would obviously have been a wasted force. The smallest practical invention which would have worked at the time of discovery would have been of infinitely greater use than an anticipation of later inventions. We might admire the man who anticipated Watt, but his discovery would be superfluous for us, as it was thrown away at his time. What is true of a mechanical invention is true to some extent of an idea. If it falls upon ground not yet prepared for its reception, it might as well have never been sown. to all modern pretenders to literary taste. He cannot be said to have originated a school, or much to have affected subsequent developments of thought. If he is regarded as a classic in his way, he is, like other classics, valued in the study, but rarely serves as a model for later work. Why should not the man who gave an impulse but died after it was given be valued as much as the man who gave none, but who retains that kind of suspended vitality which is all that can belong to any but the very greatest a century or So after their death? Why should it be better to have a thousand readers of whom nine hundred are not born till a later period than a thousand contemporary readers? The same principle might of course be applied to statesmanship or to success in practical life. A great minister may be a charlatan; he may have had no eye for the deeper issues of the time, and may have worked with an eye for his own success, but blindfolded as regards the future. Still his In this sense, then, we might possibly power of appealing to the instincts of his say that some admixture even of humbug contemporaries gave him a real force, may be useful as an alloy to convert the which the philosophical historian must solid metal of truth into currency. When take into account though he may cona writer enjoys a contemporary reputa- demn the men who wielded it. The virtion altogether out of proportion to his tuous person who persisted in trying to solid merits, the righteous and the jeal-cut blocks with razors may have been ous delight in comparing him to the thrown away in consequence of his virgreen bay-tree, and wrap themselves in tues. Burke's writings have made him a the belief that he is working for the pres-teacher for future generations; but if his ent whilst they are labouring for posterity. writings had been lost, or if we regard Assuming their hypothesis to be true, is him simply as a statesman, we may be init so clear that they have the advantage? clined to think that he made less impresThe poems of Ossian, one may perhaps sion upon the actual events of the time say, were a humbug. They were desti- than many men whom it would be in tute of any solid merit, whatever their some sense profane to mention in the historical origin, and nobody finds it pos- same sentence. And, in like manner, sible at the present day even to read the though we may respect the lawyer who is bombast which sent our grandfathers too high-principled to get briefs, the docinto fits of enthusiasm. Other contem-tor who can't get patients because he porary poetry, such as Gray's, for example, was not duly appreciated when it was written, and is only now rising to its just level. Would not every right-feeling man rather be a Gray than a MacPherson? To answer fairly, we must look for a moment at the opposite side of the account. Ossian's poetry undoubtedly can't flatter, or the merchant who never makes a fortune because he despises speculation, we may frankly admit that they might have done more work, and even more good work, if they had been a little more on a level with the modes of thought of their time. Nor indeed is the conclusion really im moral. Undoubtedly it might be pressed perhaps, to have reached the nadir of its into the service of the persons who discredit. Its utter refutation by facts is agree with the Yankee who believed "in somewhat singular, considering that the humbug generally," because it was a democratic principle, on the progress of thing which he perceived "to have a solid which its realization was said to depend, vally." But, in truth, it is merely one has undoubtedly progressed. The "year corollary from the very obvious and salu- of revolutions" was but a year, but we tary truth that in this world happiness cannot deny that everything is changed and success are not strictly proportioned in Europe since those eventful days when to virtue. It would be a bad thing, we crowns were tumbling to the ground all know, if the devil had all the good everywhere, like so many apples in a gale music; and it would be equally undesira- of wind. The Constitutions of 1848 did ble that he should have all the fools or not all of them wear very well, it is true; even all the knaves on his side. The but the influence which begot them left majority would be too overpowering. its mark, and that a deepening and widenLuckily there are, if not knaves, at leasting mark, upon European politics. No humbugs on all sides; and though they absolutist government of the present day do not mean it, good may even in this is as despotic as it was before 1848; sense come out of evil. The world would some which were absolutist then are tobe much simpler if the goats and sheep day more or less constitutional in characcould be kept in two separate herds. As ter. In none is it possible to say that the matters are, it is a comfort to reflect that the goats may be pressed into a service to which in the abstract they have an aversion. If it is safe to assume that the world improves on the whole, we may believe that truth will gradually work itself free of error, and the solid work supplant the shams. But it is a complicated and slow process; and there is no test of universal application which will enable us to say, in regard to any given works, this is entirely sound and enduring, and that hopelessly rotten and temporary. From The Pall Mall Gazette. AN UNCONSIDERED VIEW OF THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. people count for as little as they used to do in the government of their country. Yet, in spite of all this, events have tended to concentrate power in fewer hands, until at last it has been possible to say that the fate of Europe rests at the arbitrament of two men, and that of the two the one whose power is less absolute in theory is perhaps the most powerful in fact. But whatever the nature of these two individual forces, whether original or delegated, there can be little doubt of their magnitude even apart from each other, or of the overwhelming force which they could exercise in combination. To say, however, that the fate of Europe depends on a single will, or upon the will of two or three men, is to say that it depends upon one or two or three lives. And it is this reflection which is THERE is one aspect of the present perhaps the most humbling to democratic condition of Europe which subjects the pride in the matter. For if to the lives amiable delusions of thirty years since to of those who concentrate the material perhaps the most dramatic form of ex- power over Europe in their hands be posure which they could have received. added the life of the most powerful spirThe doctrine that "the individual withers itual chief, we cannot but feel how preand the race is more and more," had, a carious are the conditions on which all generation ago, a political as well as a our attempts to forecast the European Social application. There was probably future must be made. Prince Bismarck, no article of the orthodox Liberal creed the czar, the pope - how much depends more firmly held by Liberals than the on the duration of two of these lives; belief that the influence of individual will, how much might be changed by the terthe importance of individual lives, would mination of the third! And is there even steadily diminish with the progress of the average security for the long duration the democratic principle. Just now, when of any of the three? Last week Pius IX. Europe has been in a ferment at the idea entered upon his eighty-fourth year. that one man is bent upon plunging her Prince Bismarck's is neither in point of into war, and has recovered her compos-age nor in point of health a life to which ure on learning that another man is dis-one could confidently add another decade. posed to preserve the peace, the doctrine He is an overworked super-sensitive man to which we have referred may be said, of upwards of sixty, bearing a greater 768 AN UNCONSIDERED VIEW OF THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. load of official anxieties and responsibil- of a successsor whose sympathies and ity than has been borne by any states- likings are believed to incline strongly man of this century. He marches under the other way. And a czar sympathizing it but less erectly and with not sa firm with France would not be the most likely a step, noticeably, as he was wont to do. or the best-qualified moderator of the The czar is not old, but then he is not hatred with which a large portion of his strong. He has been for some time in subjects regard Germany. On the effects that state which is described as "giving of the death of Prince Bismarck himself anxiety to his friends; " and observers of it is unnecessary to speculate, for every his appearance at Berlin report the im- one must feel that the removal of a statesprovement in his health in very guarded man whose policy has been more emterms. The life of no one of these three phatically personal than that of any is such that men of prudence would count statesman perhaps within living memory, upon its long continuance with any de- and whose individuality makes itself felt gree of confidence, and the death of any at every turn of German or even European one of them might, and probably would, | politics, would be far-reaching indeed. alter the whole aspect of European affairs. But the death of the emperor of Germany The struggle between Germany and the himself - another aged man might also Papacy which is distracting that country, seriously affect the future. The strong and ever threatening to embroil her with will and the keen vision of the statesman her neighbours, could not but be affected would yet remain, but they would enereither for good or ill by a demise of the gize under different conditions; the matriple crown. Whoever might be the new terial upon which the Imperial chancelpope, it is certain that the relations be-lor would have to work would be altotween him and Germany would differ in gether changed, and therewith the results one way or another from those maintained of its operation, probably. by the present pope. Whether he were The ease with which we can in practice Liberal or Ultramontane — prepared to put aside and ignore these considerations come to terms with the modern spirit," altogether is a proof that nations, like or as rooted in opposition to it as Pius men, behave as though they believed in IX. himself the situation would be human immortality upon earth. We changed; for if Pius IX. were able to count upon the endurance of lives as we transmit his opinions to his successor he do upon the stability of the order of nacould not transmit his personality; and ture, and seem as little to suspect that we that is not an unimportant element in the are building upon a foundation which present situation. We have, moreover, to may crumble at a touch. We talk of the consider what turmoil, what intrigue," policy of Germany," "the pacific views what persuasion and threatening will of the czar," the "irreconcilable attitude probably arise over the election of the of the Papacy," as though these things new pope; and nobody knows what such strife might not end in. Again, the death of the Emperor Alexander would be fraught with momentous consequences in another way. It would remove the control of the policy of Russia from the hands of a sovereign who is at least on a footing of personal sympathy with the German emperor, to place it in the hands 66 were as eternal as the stars, and subject to as little variation as their motions in the heavens. It is strange how seldom we reflect that these three phrases are but names for the individualities of three mortal men, two of whom show no very marked promise of long life, while the other has already outlived the allotted human span. - TEMPERATURE of the SUN'S SURFACE. M. Faye, in the Comptes Rendus, discusses Mr. Langley's observations on the relative temperature of different parts of the sun's surface, drawing special attention to the result arrived at by Mr. Langley that the equatorial regions of the sun are not sensibly hotter than the polar, and that therefore all analogies founded on terrestrial phenomena such as trade-winds are false, the currents in the sun being, not towards the equator, but parallel to it, as shown by the drift of sunspots. M. Faye hence derives support for his theory of the sun in contradistinction to that of P. Secchi. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY 771 793 803 814 822 770 TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. |