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Demos and Aristos
Published in the Agnostic Journal London, England 2 March 1907 (pages 129-130) 9 March 1907 (pages 147-148) 16 March 1907 (pages 162-163) 23 March 1907 (pages 178-179) 30 March 1907 (pages 197-198)
[2 March 1907]
Looking back, beholding the actualities of life, we find a curiously symmetrical undulation on the sea of human events, a gradually-increasing swell, rising from the hollow of one wave to the summit of another, on the social flood. At times a silent calm stills the face of the waters; at others they are lashed with fury as the gale shrieks through their foaming crests; but, generally, a gentle swell rolls on, and as each wave, from birth to death, is part of the great ocean of the world, so is each ideal an event in the great ocean of human thoughts. As they rise so do we, as they sink so do we; and as they cannot be separated from the waters of their formation, neither can we from the inheritances of our birth.
Life, more life, is the universal cry of the living, and yet Nature, in her supreme wisdom, has so fashioned her creation that no ultimate goal is attainable, no halt can possibly be made on our journey towards the night of our days, without peril and danger. The mountain is rugged, the road is arduous, and yet, here and there, as we toil on beyond our brothers, yearning for the ever-receding summit of our desires, are we not often lured into some enchanted grove of ease, or lulled to sleep by the sweet melody of satisfaction, the siren song of success, of rank, and of wealth? Do we not often halt and pitch our tents never to strike them again? Do we not ever, have we not ever, and shall we not ever, halt and halt again, losing, in the warm leisure of our rest, the grail that we so ardently sought, or finding grasp, to spill in our ease the nectar we caught from the lips of the past? How often is the cup dry? Till some Titan re-fill it with tears of despair, the groans of want, and the shrieks of massacre. And this very toil, this master-lash which whistles for ever around us, is at once the saviour and tormentor of our existence.
Build up heroic lives, and all Be like a sheathen sabre, Ready to flash out at God's call, O Chivalry of Labour! Triumph and Toil are twins; and aye Joy suns the cloud of Sorrow; And 'tis the martyrdom To-day Brings victory To-morrow.—Gerald Massey.
The law of Nature is "toil"; the hope of man is "ease" and these two are as twin sisters, inseparable, urging man on to higher aspirations, acting and reacting the one on the other. "By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou live," and "by the ease of thy toil shalt thou die." From the waters of affliction man quaffs the falnian of emperors, the nectar of Olympians, the soma of the gods, but never the amrita of eternity. Nothing remains, all changes, all grows, all decays—there is an eternal flux. And without this lash of Circumstance, directed by the unknown hand of Perfection, we could not be; we should stagnate, dry up and fall to dust; otherwise, perfection would be our lot, yet perfection is of the absolute, and the absolute is as the sphinx, cryptic and without tongue.
Here might be mentioned that the infinite depends on the finite, life upon death, the present on the past; lower love upon hate, joy upon sorrows, wealth upon poverty. Each depends on the other; each nowhere existent as an absolute without the other, each, with the other, forming an eternal monism, composed of an irritating dualism, inseparable, yet diverse, thriving when in conflict, degenerating when in contact, and dying when in union. Perfection cannot exist without imperfection, neither can the soul of an individual or a nation without the dust of the body or the race.
Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside, And naked on the Air of Heaven ride, Were't not a shame—were't not a Shame for him, In this clay carcase, crippled to abide?
So sang the tent-maker of Naishàpùr, and never were truer words uttered. Why? why, indeed? Because the "why" carries with it the impossible division of a perfect unit, without destroying its identity and value.
The inseparableness in the sphere of thought is graphically demonstrated in "The Mental Traveller," by the masterhand of Blake. The idea conceived in pain, is born amid enthusiasm, falls under the ban of society; yet develops, grows, and moulds the old society into a new one; but again, in its time, grows old and effete, rotting inwardly, becoming a corruption to the society it formed, till, like a phœnix, it rises once again from the ashes of its formation. So in the realm of action, the idea urges man on through action towards the ideal, the ideal ever, fatuus-like, dancing before him on the path of life, never attainable, yet ever visible: a column of smoke by day, and a flaming pillar of fire by night, guiding him on. Let him once halt, let him once loose in the splendour of the sun, or in the obscurity of night, the ideal of his heart, and his decay is as certain as that of a tree which remains unwatered in an arid desert.
This attempt to realize the ideal becomes plainly visible as we turn from page to page in the world's history. In the lower forms of life the ideals—or, rather, the needs—were essentially physical and material, and as all impress of character tends to become inheritable and instinctive; so through the law of natural selection the fittest—in other words, those who more closely realized their needs best—survived. But this material need of the lower world, which is realized through the natural law of "toil," stimulated by fear, is very different from the ideal which developed through the higher mammals culminating for the present in man; for, not only does it instinctively carry out the natural law of "toil," stimulated by fear, but it reasoningly carries out the human law of "ease," stimulated by "belief." The reaction of the latter on the former humanizes the brutal, drawing the talons from the claws of nature, it thereby stimulates—through the utilitarian hope of happiness—the mind towards that great ideal—a state of mental perfection.
Now, if we turn to history what do we find? Firstly, in ancient times that the ideal was as a flaming pillar of fire again and again discovered, again and again lost in the darkness of the primeval night. Horde swept away horde, yet amidst all the horror of bloodshed a greater ease arose. The first ape who hurled a stone or brained his foe with a broken branch, broke the fetters of toil and cleared the way for the road of ease. Sticks and stones grew into weapons of war, weapons into agricultural implements, and from these again sprang all the arts, and crafts, and sciences, of ancient and modern times; and as there is not much resemblance between a monera and a full-grown European, neither is there much similarity between a stone and machine-gun, or a stick and a stem-hammer; yet such things are, and a direct chain of cause and effect is as traceable in the one as it is in the other.
When savagery gave way to civilization, we might expect to find a minimising of bloodshed; but this is not so, tribal raids gave way to national conflicts; and the father of the family, the chief of the tribe, became the lord of the manor, and the king of the country. For when the road of ease was for a time cleared of the briars of toil; the minority no longer lost the pillar of fire in the depths of the night, but the majority lost the pillar of smoke in the splendour of the historic day; unorganized brute force lay on its sick-bed, and mental exclusiveness reigned supreme.
From this point we enter the sphere of historic evidence. Centuries and millenniums swept away palæolithic and then neolithic man; the ages of copper, of bronze, and of iron arose; the jabber of the ape had long given way to uttered language and writing; history became certain, the great struggle began; tradition became more sure, engendering pride, and pride in its turn grew into national esteem—in other words patriotism was born. Great nations came into existence, nomadic tribes which had wandered over the fertile plains grazing their flocks, and pillaging if their strength so permitted, now settled; priest-craft and priesthood grew; tribes united under certain beliefs; leaders were appointed, leaders grew into kings, kings into emperors, emperors into gods.
We now enter a new phase in the world's history. Barbarism was not dead, but was changing, eliminating, little by little, the proper personal freedom of the individual (anarchic), and substituting in its place the liberty of the nation (legislative). Then a greater conflict than ever was waged by man against man—the conflict of man against the State; freedom against liberty, toil against ease.
II. [9 March 1907] The argument of this article is now fairly started, the great conflict of the people against the State, of democracy against aristocracy, the gradual growth through toil of the masses to the gradual decline through ease of the classes. And what are the dominant factors in this growth and decay? (1) Warfare), (2) Agriculture, (3) Religion, (4) Science, [(5) Morality (?)].
We cannot here deal with the first two, and will only concentrate our attention on the third, and then on the fourth.
The great moving force that in its infancy urges man on to deeds that even revolt his better understanding to horrors, that tortures his sense of right, namely religion; ultimately settles, stagnates, and then corrupts his further endeavours, a drag on his progress, at length for pure self-preservation adapts itself to its new surroundings, and, like a phœnix, rises resplendent from the ashes of its corruption; it is, in fact, the first great moving principle from barbarism towards civilization. It grafts to itself not only the warlike tendencies of early man, but casts over kingship the halo of divinity, authorizes the legislation by the word of God, and further sanctifies itself and its actions, casting its tentacles like a great octopus from the nearest to the furthest limits of the semi-barbaric state.
All nations rose through toil, al nations perished through ease. Nature first massacres, then debauches. Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, India, Greece, Rome, arose; dynasty followed dynasty, and nation followed nation; blood overflowed, and then the wine cup; the acrid of the toiler gave place to the perfumed locks of the faineant; curses changed to love songs, blows to kisses, and the homespun shirt of the farmer to the emperor's vest of tyrean purple.
Glance at the last-named nation alone—the Roman.
Commonly accepted, Rome was founded in 753 B.C., between then and 509 the plebs (aliens) rose into recognition; in 494 the "First Secession" was held at the Mons-sacer, and the Tribunate was established; in 449 the "Second Secession" took place, resulting in the Valerio-Horatian laws; and in 287 the Third or last Secession established the legislative power in the Lex Hortensia. Meanwhile, in 367 the Licinian Rogations dealt a severe blow at patrician privileges, which were followed in 133 by the agrarian legislation of Tiberius Graccgus, and ten years later, in 123, by that of his brother, Gains.
The cup of blood was filled to the brim, and over-flowing. Long years of toil, of war, of misery, had brought with them a universal longing for rest. The triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, heralded in a new epoch. The Republic had reached its height. Demos stood triumphant over the toil of centuries, reaching the summit of his desires, he paused, and therein lays his fall; dashing to the ground the cup of his misery, he rose intoxicated on the cup of ease, Aristos the self-sufficient.
Augustus donned the purple in B.C. 27, in A.D. 410 Alaric sacked Rome, and sixty-six years later the Western Empire fell.
The heroic period of Rome, as all heroic periods, did not last long; the nation had travelled and born many a noble son, but now she had grown old and sterile; no longer was there a Coriolanus to utter, "Mother thou hast conquered me, but hast brought me to misery," as he departed to die in exile; nor a Camillus, who at the age of eighty, led the legions of his country against the foe; Curtius sprang into the yawning chasm, and Decius rushed to his death on the spears of Gaul; but where now were their like? Gone to rise no more, buried under the midden of increasing ease and sensuality. Cato, the last of the old Romans, and in his place stood the sybarite with dyed hair and painted cheek. What a picture is that of Cato on his farm, living in a hut on boiling turnips for his supper, compared to that of Trimalchio at his banquet, seated before a hog crowned with a pudding and garnished with fritters and giblets, tarts with Spanish honey, grape jelly, chitterlings, livers in patépans, chaperoned eggs, dormice stewed with honey and poppy seeds, paste-eggs containing beccaficos in yolk seasoned with pepper, sausages, etc., etc., and Opimian falernian a hundred years old.
Every great age of joy of national supremacy will give place to an age of sorrow and national degradation. As a seed strives in the soil, so does a people in the country where it has been cast by the hand of chance or determination; it dies and withers, or else it battles with adversity; and as from an acorn springs the oak, and the oak shades the birds of the air, so the ideal gathers under the cool of its shadowing wings the thoughts of the world; then in its supremacy is its creaking form torn from the mind by some raging gale, strangled by the creeping ivy of corruption, or else rots to a senile decay through decrepitude or stagnation. Thus with peoples and nations as they die so are they reborn, tribulation breeds aspiration, aspiration, empire, and glory, and glory the coffined-silence of death.
The soul of man centres in the ideal. Given a fertile soil it will in time bear fruit, irrespective of labour or plough. It is the past which produces the idea; it is the present which idealized the idea; and it is the future which extinguishes it with a nightly hand, or fans it into the sunburst of a resplendent dawn.
All great national crises are ethical ones; it is the inner soul trying to break the outer shell of circumstance, the inner soul mystically moving inwardly; it is a great explosion of feeling, the disruption of the present from the past towards the future. The dry bones of our ancestors weigh on us as the sins of Christian, yet we stagger on till we can bear them no longer; then the ideal man, the Avatara of the East, the Adam Qadmon of the Qabalists, the Christ of the Christians, and the Superman of modern philosophy, rises before us a holy graal of aspiration, and as we grasp it the burden slips from off our weary shoulders and bounds rattling down the hill of past hopes to the vale of shrieks and ribald songs, to the creaking wheel of circumstance the straining ropes of desire. Yet lo! the cup of a greater hope is dry, and the summit of our expectation has receded. Struggle on, poor martyr, thy journey is endless as the years, infinite as time, vast as eternity; yet, struggle on, for the day is short and the night is long, flourish as the flower of the field and be beautiful, "For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone."
As all dies so all is born, and birth foretells death, and death actualizes birth. Egypt has gone, and so has Assyria; the splendour of Greece laboured and bore the grandeur of Rome, and the spirit of eternity hovered over the capital of the seven hills; silently in the hearts of man it uttered: "Oyez! oyez! le roi est mort; vive le roi!" So the old order changed with the iron crown of power, we see his form no more, but in his stead that of the Son of Man, son of the crushed and yearning East deified and crowned with the twisted thorns of woe.
Times were propitious; Rome had reached the zenith of her power, and the empire which had known Cæsar and Augustus soon began only to know such men as Nero and Caligula. Rome was supreme, and yet a cankering worm was eating away her very soul. The amassing of wealth had brought in its turn a wave of luxury that swept over the empire. Rome was its centre, and a veritable seething pot of cultured vice. The lupanaria and fornices infested every quarter of the city; the imperial palace was one vast harem, wherein the most abandoned orgies and bacchanalian revels took place. Courtesans, as the hetæra of Corinth, usurped the highest positions in society and a woman could only enter it by such means as would now facilitate her exit. Messalinas would share the imperial couch or the pallet in the lupanaria as desire prompted; the days of Asphasia and Phryne had returned with all the viciousness of ancient Greece, and with little of its refinement, for it was the desire of all to wallow undisturbed in the ruin of bestial lust.
A great ethical change, however, was setting in, as it always must when the climax of luxury has been reached. As Aristos was born so must he die; and as Demos died so must he be reborn. The Roman empire was on its decline, the sun of its glory was setting, and decay had taken hold of all its members. The old religions were tottering; the glories of Zeus had been eclipsed by the grossness of Priapus, and Priapus could but for a short time satisfy the craving of even the most debased of men.
Amongst the lower classes of slaves and workers, hundreds of smaller sects were arising, permeated with a gross spiritism, for all great changes are heralded in with mysticism and wonder; and amidst these many sects was one—the Nazarenes, the followers of a certain Galilean carpenter, by name of Jesus. In him they found a kindred spirit, one who preached poverty, who depreciated riches, descried learning, offering them a kingdom where they should reign supreme, receiving for the ephemeral sorrows of this transient world the eternal joys of an everlasting heaven.
"Blessed by ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God." "Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled." "Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh."
But:—
"Woe unto you that are rich: for ye have received your consolation." "Woe unto you that are full: for ye shall hunger." "Woe unto you that laugh now: for ye shall mourn and weep."
Such were the words of Jesus, and just such an appeal the down-trodden masses yearned for. "They have caught a glimpse of a better life. They lift their soiled hands and bloodshot eyes in trembling prayer and cry: 'We poor people are human; we are men, women; we are children of love and light; and the earth is ours, and the new earth that is to come.' "
"Christianity was the great sob, the great sigh, and also the great smile of a proletariat that was learning its own human dignity."
Demos was reincarnated.
III. [16 March 1907]
These first Christians were as little children taken in the arms of their great Master; as children they loved him, wondered and followed him; but as children they were child-like, morally weak, intellectually ignorant. At times they would discuss who should be the greatest in the kingdom that was to come (Mark ix., 34), and would be pacified by such simple answers as: "I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke xxii., 29, 30); at other times they might say: "Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory" (Mark x., 37).
Their childish questions were only rivalled by the obtuseness of their understanding, as displayed in (Matthew xvi., 11, and Mark viii., 17). They were simple; they were impulsive: "There shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine righteous persons which need no repentance."
A little love was all they needed, a little human affection; without it they were beasts, with it they were men.
After the death of their master, the sect which he had been the instrument of founding continued to assemble at Jerusalem, under the guidance of Simon Peter, being based on the strictest communistic maxims. It probably gained many converts among the ignorant and oppressed classes who flocked there yearly to celebrate the Passover. The sect grew, and among its heterogenous congregation one result only was possible, namely, that many quarrels and schisms would occur. During the life of Jesus disputes had even arisen among his own followers as to who should be the greatest. Among the ultra-communistic section such incidents as that of Ananias and Sapphira occurred (Acts v., 1-10). In Paul's community Elymas was smitten with blindness as "a child of the devil" (Acts xiii., 10, 11), and Hymenæus was handed over "unto Satan" (I. Timothy, 1, 20). As time wore on, their differences became more acrimonious. John, in his Revelation, scowls at Paul and his Gentile following, who "say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan" (Rev. ii., 9). He denounces the doctrines of Nicolas (Rev. ii., 6, 25), one of the seven first deacons of the Church, as hateful, and he expresses his detestation of the Laodiceans (Rev. iii., 16), by saying that the Almighty would spue them out of his mouth. Paul returns the compliment by "withstanding" Peter for his "dissimulation" (Galatians ii., 16), and sneering at James and John (Galatians ii., 9) as seeming to be pillars, the former of whom retorts that Paul is a "vain man" (James ii., 20). Paul vehemently tells the Galatians: "If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed" (Galatians i., 9). Even the "beloved disciple," in his second epistle, manifests the same persecuting spirit: 'If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God-speed; for he that biddeth him God-speed is partaker of his evil deeds" (II. John, 10, 11).
But, in spite of these bickerings and disputes, this was the heroic age of Christianity, when men would die for their faith, when women and children would prefer to be torn to pieces by wild beasts, burnt at the stake, and torn to shreds, than renounce the God of their hopes, and the Heaven of their dreams.
The Neronian persecutions first forced this faith into notoriety, and fresh fuel was added to the blazing flames of reputation by those of Domitian, Vespasian and Trajan: and as the death of the martyr was often fanatically noble, so was his life only too frequently bestially vicious. Even as early as the time of St. Peter, we find that Saint reproving the Christians for profaning their own feast of the Lord's Supper: "When ye come together, therefore, into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's Supper; for in eating every one taketh before other his own supper; and one is hungry, and another is drunken. . . . (I. Corinthians xi., 20-34). Again, we find them chided for their wickedness in (II. Peter ii., 10-15)—"Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin, beguiling unstable souls . . ."; and in the 12th verse of Jude: "Woe unto them! for they have gone the way of Cain . . . these are spots in your feasts of charity."
Nevertheless, Demos toile don, and the crime that crept into the Christian community in many ways rather strengthened than weakened its cause; a stern asceticism set in, celibacy, which had long been regarded as a virtue, was considered as doubly so now; marriage as a vice; anchorites were not even allowed to see their own mothers, or possess female animals; St. Euphraxia would not wash her feet; St. Ammon had never seen himself naked; St. Macarius slept in a marsh; and St. Simeon lived on a pillar.
Christianity was not only fast becoming mad, but was also becoming vastly attractive. Gibbon relates an anecdote of a Benedictine abbot, who confessed: "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." The historian sarcastically adds: "I forget the consequence of his vow of chastity."
In 304 A.D. the emperor Marcellus was reduced to the servile position of a groom, and held the stirrup for the Pope to mount his horse. The heroic age was over.
In the midst of all this hideous ignorance and sordid filth, quarrels were forever arising, and schisms splitting up parties, intolerance became the order of the day, sect hating sect as they would the very fiend himself. The first age of Christianity was rapidly passing away, the persecuted became persecutors and assumed a power superior to the masses; distinction arose between the clergy and laity; but still the former were the representatives of the latter. This, however, did not last long; the power that had rapidly grew, the spiritus priviatus became an intolerable onus, and was cast off, henceforth, the road to heaven lay alone through the gateway of the Church. "No man could have God for a father unless he had also the Church for a mother"; religion became a monopoly, an era of mental slavery set in, and "the Church became the State concubine." Aristos was reborn.
The central figure in this change was Constantine—the murderer of his wife, his brother-in-law, his nephew, his father-in-law, and his son. His title being unsound, he threw in his lot with the rabble, and, being converted to Christianity drew to his side the powerful Christian mob. During his reign the famous Nicene creed was drawn up (A.D. 325) with an addendum declaring that:—
This only added fresh fuel to the Arian schism in the East, and helped the condensation of the supreme ecclesiastical power in the supreme bishop in the West; whilst the former was confused by Arians, Macedonians, Appollinarians, and later by Nestorians and Monophysites, the progress of the latter was certain. The sack of Rome in 410 A.D. destroyed the power of Paganism for ever; two years previously the heathen temples had been despoiled: "The last fatal sign and omen of the departure of Roman greatness was, that the statue of Fortitude, or Virtue, was thrown into the common mass" (Zosimus, v. 41).
In the East, religion ceased more than ever to be an affair of pure religion, and developed into a string of imperial court intrigues. The wild and ferocious monks of the Nitrian desert murder he gentle Hypatia, and scoop the flesh from her body with broken shells. Justinian, the cowardly slave of the royal prostitute Theodora, who ministered to the licentious pleasures of the populace as a courtesan, was emperor; intellect was down-trodden, philosophy was at a stand-still, the Dark Ages were swiftly approaching, the gloom fell, and Aristos was enthroned for the night of a thousand years.
Paganism once exterminated, fraud and forgery set in with renewed vigour. Those who deceived received commendation instead of censure. The "greatest and most pious teachers," says Mosheim, were "nearly all of them infected with this leprosy." No fable could be too gross, no invention too transparent, for their unsuspicious acceptance, if it assumed a pious form or tended to edification," says the author of "Supernatural Religion." The forgery of documents appears to have been a recognised part of the ecclesiastical profession. It was not obscure laymen who composed these manuscripts for the amusement of their leisure, but the recognised leaders of Christianity, who held that the end sanctioned the means, and prostituted Truth in the temples of Religion." Neither was fraud behind hand. "Piety, like the itch, could be caught by wearing another man's clothes." Helena discovered the true cross, and soon all Europe was covered with its splinters. The Virgin's girdle was preserved, also her shoes, her stockings, and her milk; the prepuce of the Redeemer was treasured at Charroux, also at Antwerp, Besancon, Calcata, Heldesheim, and Rome; every village had its saint, every hut its relic; art was extinct, science was extinct, philosophy was extinct, literature was extinct—only rubbish abounded.
The ignorance of the age hurried on the hideous supremacy of the Papacy. Everything was done to render the people ignorant, everything was done to extract from them the little they might know. Auricular confession was instituted to wrest the domestic secrets from their brainless sycophants, and so gave the Church as great a power over the individual as she held over the State. If the individual rebelled, excommunication was his lot; if a State, an interdict was the award.
During the creeping gloom of this intellectual night the only ray of light that flickered in the European darkness was that of two Semetic races—the Moors and the Jews.
IV. [23 March 1907]
The times which had known Pythagoras and Thales, Aristotle and Plato, Archimedes and Euclid, Epictetus and Aurelius, had vanished from the memory of man; alone in the night the crescent shone, and such names flash forth as Ben Musa, Al Mamun, Alhazen, Giaber, Avicenna, Averroes, and Algazzali. From the time of Constantine to the days of Roger Bacon, scarcely a man of scientific worth arose in the whole of Christian Europe; and as Christianity gained power in Spain, Moorish learning died.
Jewish literature met with a similar fate. Wherever found it was destroyed, and this unfortunate people, who had not only furnished Europe with an Almighty God, but had also supplied a Goddess and a Saviour, met with the most ruthless persecution.
Milman thus describes one of these scenes:—
The next move on the part of the Church to strengthen herself at the expense of others and to give a vent to the factious spirit of her vassals, was to start the crusades. This was done by Urban II., who promised absolution from all sin to whomsoever should take up arms to win back for Christendom the tomb of Jesus. "Women appeared in arms in the midst of warriors," says Michaud, "prostitution not being forgotten among the austerities of penitence." "The moral fabric of Europe," says Mill, "was convulsed; the relations and charities of life were broken; society appeared to be dissolved."
Hordes of pious savages swept over southern Europe, thousands of helpless Jews and peasants were massacred, carnage and rapine were the order of the day, "virgin modesty was no protection," and "conjugal virtue no safeguard," Gibbon tells us: "In the dire necessity of famine, they sometimes roasted and devoured the flesh of their infant and adult captives," and Mills relates that at the taking of the Mosque of Omar: "Such was the carnage . . . that the mutilated carcasses were hurried by the torrent of blood into the court; dissevered arms and hands floated into the current that carried them into contact with bodies to which they had not belonged. Ten thousand people were murdered in this sanctuary."
In the fifth crusade the most hideous scenes were enacted, the Cathedral of St. Sophia rang with the gambler's curse and the obscene song of the drunkard; the floors ran with blood and a prostitute was seated on the throne of the patriarch, ridiculing him whose tomb they were supposed to be endeavouring to wrest from the hand of the infidel.
The sixth crusade was chiefly composed of "Women, children, the old, the blind, the lame, the lepers": they were sacred, but, however, the boys were sold as slaves, and the girls to the Oriental harems.
The ninth crusade, in 1268, ended this wave of European insanity, by signing a treaty in favour of the infidel. And the result? Aristos was supreme, not only in Rome, but over the Western world; the Crusades, as a running ulcer, had freed his body from physical decay; he grasped in his hands the reins of power and the goad of despotism; his coffers were filled with the gold of the devout, individuals were excommunicated, and nations placed under interdict. Aristos became a God!
But, as Time knows no repose, a change was at hand. Man is but a passing breath from the lips of the Eternal; and a God, is he any more? As manhood decays, so does godhood rot; as the former sloughs through ease, so does the latter through excess; all changes, all passes, and in the crucible of the alchemist, in the alembic of the sorcerer, and in the cauldron of the witch, scorched with the flames of superstition, choked with the smoke of ignorance, gloomed in the crimson darkness of this age, the shadowy form of Demos the reborn. Half-sane, half-insane, maddened, illumined with mystery, the thoughtful groped through the night; the God of the Papacy had become the Power of the Dead, the emblem of the martyred Jesus had become the oriflamme of massacre, the insignia of corruption, the symbol of crime. Can we wonder, then, that man sought the Devil as his protector, and the wizard as his redeemer.
As the "serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field," so was the Diabolus of the mediaeval eclipse. "And the serpent said . . . Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Seeking wisdom, they found it in the Compact with the Devil! and the asinine collections of the Dominicans gave place to the gruesome appurtenances of the laboratory.
"From when does the Sorceress date? asks Michelet, and he answers: " 'From the ages of despair.' "
"From the profound despair the world owed the Church. I say again unhesitatingly: 'The sorceress is the Church's crime.'
And what was the Church's crime? Vice that was more than Neronic, obscenity that was undreamt by the Arbiter Elegantiorum, and lechery that would have brought a blush to the brow of a Messaline. Boniface VI. was a man of infamous character; Sergius III, the slave of every vice; Stephen VIII. was such a peril to the wives and daughters of the Roman citizens that they unsexed him; John III. was the son of Sergius III. by his concubine Marozia, and surpassed his parents in crime; John XII. was publicly accused of concubinage, incest and simony, he was murdered whilst in the act of committing adultery; Benedict IX. Mosheim calls "a most flagitious man, and capable of every crime"; Boniface VIII. was accused of assassination, usury and living in concubinage with his two nieces; Clement V. gave himself up to the most criminal debaucheries; John XXII. was found guilty of murder and incest, and was accused before the Council of having seduced two hundred nuns; Sixtus IV. strove to excel all his predecessors in crime; Symonds says: "The private life of Sixtus rendered the most monstrous stories plausible, while his public treatment of these men [ED—his nephews] recalled to mind the partiality of Nero for Doryphorus"; Alexander VI. (1492-1503) was one of the most depraved scoundrels that ever lived; Mosheim says "so many and so great villainies, crimes, and enormities are recorded of him, that it must be certain he was destitute not only of all religion, but also of decency and shame.
Can we wonder that men even groped for better things in the lowest depths of hell?
Let us see now how these walls were cracked, and how the whole building crumbled into dust.
We have already enumerated some of the names that added lustre to the Golden Age of Spain, There, whilst learning was honoured, to the rest of Europe it only met with persecution.
Erigena (d. 875), was the only man in the whole West who knew Greek. After him, for five centuries, it was unknown; scarcely a lay name of note appears till the thirteenth century, the century which saw the invention of paper; and it was not till 1453, the year which saw the fall of the Eastern Empire, and the invention of printing in Europe, that free inquiry in any way became instituted.
From this date we find the pulpit rendered secondary, and a host of Titanic names appear in the pages of modern history. Aristos was stricken with the palsy. Europe was sick of such men as Sergius, Stephen, Sixtus, and Alexander; the cup of hope was filled with the excrements of degradation: Demos, son of the astrolabe and the alembic, shattered it to the ground; Europe had conceived, she now laboured, and, travailing, bore such sons as Columbus, Leonardo, Copernicus, and Paracelsus to avenge the night of a thousand years. Wycliffe had already left his mark, the socialistic opinions of the Lollards were spreading in England, the Albigenses had been exterminated; but their ghostly finger beckoned on the sons of the age, the peasants revolted, the pseudo-sciences were revived, the Renaissance, as a flash of vivid lightning rushed through the dismal sky of the Dark Ages, the clouds parted, the dawn broke, the Reformation was at hand.
V. [30 March 1907]
As early as the third century Lactantius and Eusebius had poured forth their contempt on astronomy. Peter Damian, the Chancellor of Gregory VII., declared all sciences to be "absurdities" and "fooleries." Alchemy was considered untrue because not mentioned by Solomon. In 1317 John XXII. issued his bull, Sondent pariter, against alchemists, and the more chemistry came to be known it became classed as one of the "seven devilish arts." In 1437, and again in 1445, Eugene IV. exhorted, in a bull, the inquisitors to punish so-called magicians. In 1484 Innocent VIII. destroyed tens of thousands of men and women accused of magic by his bull Summis Desiderantes. Similar bulls were issued by Julius in 1504, and Adrian VI. in 1523. In 1163 Alexander III. forbade physical studies to ecclesiastics; in 1243 the Dominicans interdicted every member of their order from the study of medicine and natural philosophy. In 1278 the authorities of the Franciscan order condemned Bacon's teaching, and threw him into prison for fourteen years. In 1380 Charles V. of France forbade the possession of furnaces and chemical apparatus. In 1418 Antonio de Dominis was tortured to death for investigating the phenomenon of light, and in Spain everything like scientific research was crushed out among the Christians.
Six hundred years B.C. Pythagoras, and after him Philolaus, had suggested the movement of the planets round the sun, three hundred years later Aristarchus stated this truth with greater precision, in the fifth century A.D. it was brought to light again by Martianus Capella, and then lost in the darkness in the middle ages till a demi-god arose in the person of Nicolas Copernicus.
Demos had one foot on the throne; soon he was destined to wrest crown and sceptre from the hands of the despot, and to hurl him from the dais of his pride down the steps for his presumption.
In 1543, the year of his death, Copernicus published his great work "De Revolutionibus Orbium Cælestium." On May the 24th he received the first copy, a few hours later he was beyond the reach of the world. In 1616 his works were condemned as damnable; in Nuremburg the Protestants ridiculed him as the Roman Catholics did at Rome; in the same year Pope Paul V. placed his works on the Index, from which they were not removed till 1835 by Pius VII. The Ptolomiac astronomy was dust.
In 1591 Giordano Bruno asserted that other worlds might be inhabited as well as ours, on the 16th of February, 1600 A.D. he was burnt to ashes at Rome, and to-day his statue stands there as a verification of the Truth.
Still the truth lived on, and ten years after the execution of Bruno, Galileo established beyond all possible doubt the certainty and truth of the doctrine of Copernicus.
"Herein was fulfilled one of the most touching of prophecies. Years before, the opponents of Copernicus had said to him: 'If your doctrine were true, Venus would show phases like the moon.' Copernicus answered: 'You are right; I know not what to say; but God is good, and will in time find an answer to this objection.' The God-given answer came when, in 1611, the rude telescope of Galileo showed the phases of Venus."
In 1615 Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition. Christian Europe thundered with applause. In 1632 he published his "Dialogo," for which he was thrown into prison, threatened with torture, and publicly made to recant his heresy, "The Movement of the Earth."
Thus Demos strode into manhood; and whilst Paul III. was breeding bastards at Rome, Luther fondling Catherine von Bora at Wittenberg, and Henry VIII. ogling his own daughter, Anne Boleyn; men like Palestrina, Aquapendente, Ubaldi, Gilbert and Tycho Brahe, rose into eminence. Luther attacked Copernicus, Calvin attacked Servetus, and Zwingle condemned all astronomy, but the sceptre had fallen from the hands of Aristos, and his crown was wrenched from his head by such Titans as Kepler, Newton, Laplace, Priestly and Voltaire.
In 1859, Charles Darwin published the first installment of his great work, "The Origin of the Species." It was at once met with a howl of execration and a shriek of blatant abuse. Newton described it as "a brutal philosophy—to wit, there is no God, and the ape is our Adam."
Another critic spoke of persons accepting Darwinian views as "under the frenzied inspiration of an inhaler of mephitic gas," From America came the words, "If this hypothesis be true, then is the Bible an unbearable fiction. . . . Then have Christians for nearly two thousand years been duped by a monstrous lie . . . Darwin requires us to disbelieve the authoritative view of the Creator."
"Duped by a Monstrous Lie." Aristos was dead!
Oyez! Oyez! le roi est mort! Vive le roi! We enter a new epoch, the great age of Science.
The democratic republic of Rome grew into the aristocratic empire of the Caesars; the empire gave way to communistic Christianity, which in its way grew into the oligarchic papacy; then becoming unbearable, the Papacy succumbed to Catholic learning. Learning has grown into practical science. Have we reached the goal of our aspirations? Have we climbed the summit of Parnassus? In a few years, a few centuries, a millennium, perhaps, shall we have conquered the spheres of knowledge, and, like Alexander, find no fresh worlds to subdue? I think not. Science in her time will become as corrupt as Christianity, as dogmatic as oppressive. Life will be rendered unbearable, and, like the Erewhonians, we shall rise and destroy the cursed machines; and a new heroic age will again begin, of what kind there is no certain knowledge. Perhaps it will be a great age of love and a higher morality. When women mentally, as well as socially, shall rise to be equal, and worthy partners of men; when the laws of marriage give place to the laws of love; when people seek excitement in healthy exercise and works of virtue, and not in the fœted atmosphere of the Divorce Courts; when better laws are instituted, when better education is taught, when birth is regulated, rational suicide and homicide legalized, better sanitation undertaken, better food, better air, better literature, music, and art; then will drunkenness, prostitution, vagrancy, cruelty, disease, idiocy and ignorance give way to the great powers of Love, Truth, and Beauty.
Yet by Demos stands Aristos, the eternal Gemini.
How long? how long? the wheel of Fortune turns; to-day we are with the heroes of Olympus, to-morrow gibbering with the outcasts of Orcus.
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