was told at Bagna Cavallo that some one wished to speak with him. In a short time he rejoined his friends, deeply agitated, carrying a rosary once belonging to Ugo Bassi. A sympathizing Romagnole priest, who had stood by him when he was led out to be shot (bleeding from the shameful wounds of the "deconsecration"), had received it from him, with the request that he would one day give it into the hands of the general, for whom he often said he should be glad to die, and who had written of Bassi that "he possessed at once the simplicity of a child, the faith of a martyr, the knowledge of a scholar, and the calm courage of a hero."* Philadelphia. URSULA TANNENFORST. THE ETERNAL REALITY OF RELIGION.† BY JOHN FISKE, LL.D. Speaking historically, it may be said that religion has always had two sides. On the one side, it has consisted of a theory more or less elaborate; and, on the other side, it has consisted of a group of sentiments conformable to the theory. Now, in all ages and in every form of religion the theory has comprised three essential elements. First, the belief in Deity as quasi-human. Second, belief in an unseen world in which human beings continue to exist after death. Third, recognition of the ethical aspects of human life as related in a special and intimate sense to this unseen world. A graceful tribute has been paid to his memory in the poem of "The Disciples," by the gifted Englishwoman, Mrs. Harriet Eleanor Hamilton King. The portion relating to Bassi has been separately printed, in this country, ten years ago, in a booklet called "A Sermon in the Hospital." In flowing and musical blank verse we are told, as if by an auditor, of Bassi's preaching in one of the hospitals in Rome, whether during the period of the revolution or not, we do not hear. Beautiful in language, ranking high as a literary production, full of feeling, sympathy, and tenderness, this sermon, judged from the ethical standpoint, seems too deeply tinctured by what Mazzini called "the fatal philosophy of resignation." To a Catholic, like Bassi, or even to an orthodox Anglican, the ideas so touchingly set forth may commend themselves more than they do to minds accustomed to more liberal theology, and opposed to the doctrines of a mysticism likely to enervate rather than to brace the suffering soul. ↑ Abstract from an address delivered before the "Unitarian Club" of Boston, Mass. These three elements, I should say, are alike indispensable. If any one of the three be taken away, the remnant cannot properly be called a religion. Is, then, the subject-matter of religion something real and substantial, or is it a mere figment of the imagination? Has religion, through all these centuries, been dealing with an eternal verity, or has it been blindly groping after a phantom? Can that history of the universe which we call the doctrine of evolution be made to furnish any lesson that will prove helpful in answering this question? We shall find, I think, that it does furnish such a lesson. First, let us remember that, along with the three indispensable elements here specified, every historical religion has always contained a quantity of cosmological speculation, metaphysical doctrine, priestly rites and ceremonies and injunctions; and a very considerable part of this construction has been abolished by criticism. The destruction of beliefs has been so great that we can hardly think it strange if some critics have taken it into their heads that nothing can be rescued. But let us see what the doctrine of evolution has to say. Our inquiry will for a few moments seem to take us far afield, but that we need not mind if we find the answer directing us homeward. One of the richest contributions made to scientific knowledge in our day is Herbert Spencer's luminous exposition of life as "the continuous adjustment of inner relations to outer relations." The extreme simplicity of the subject in its earliest illustrations is such that the student hardly suspects the wealth of knowledge of various sorts to which it is opening the way. The most fundamental characteristic of living things is their response to external stimuli. If you come upon a dog lying by the roadside, and are in doubt whether he is alive, you poke him with a stick. If you get no response, you presently think that it is a dead dog. So, if a tree fails to put forth leaves, it is an indication of death. Pour water on a drooping plant, and it shows its life by rearing its head: this is a result of a continuous adjustment of relations within the plant to relations existing outside of it. All life upon the globe, whether psychical or physical, represents continued adjustment of inner to outer relations: the de gree of life is low or high, according as the correspondence between internal and external relations is simple or complex, perfect or imperfect. The whole progression of life upon the globe, in so far as it has been achieved through natural selection, has consisted in the preservation and propagation of those living creatures in whom the adjustment of inner relations to outer relations is most successful. This is only a more descriptive way of saying that natural selection is equivalent to survival of the fittest. The shapes of animals, as well as their capacities, have been evolved through almost infinitely slow increments of adjustment upon adjustment. In this way, for instance, has been evolved the vertebrate skeleton, through a process of which Spencer's analysis is as thrilling as a poem. Or consider the development of the special organs of sense: among the most startling disclosures of modern embryology are those which belong to this subject. The most perfect organs of touch are the vibrissa, or whiskers, of the cat. These are merely specialized forms of such hairs as those which cover the bodies of most mammals, and which remain, in evanescent shape, upon the human skin, imbedded in minute sacs. Now, in their origin, the eye and ear are, like these, sundry specialized, differentiated hairs. The implication of these facts is that sight and hearing were slowly differentiated from the sense of touch. We seem to discern from it how, in the history of the eye, there was at first a sensitive pigment, making one spot particularly sensitive to light. Then came, by slow degrees, the increased translucence, the convexity of surface, and the multiplication of vesicles arranging themselves as retinal rods. And what was the result of all this for the creature in whom organs of vision were thus developed? There was an immense extension of the range, complexity, and definiteness of the adjustment of inner relations to outer relations. In other words, there was an immense increase of life. There came into existence new marvels for those with eyes to see,-a mighty visible world that for sightless creatures had been virtually non-existent. With the further progress of organic life the high development of the senses was at tended or followed by the increase of brain development and the correlative intelligence, immeasurably enlarging the scope of the correspondence between the living creature and the outer world. In the case of man the adjustments by which we meet the exigencies of life from day to day are largely psychical. Our actions are guided by our theory of the situation; and it needs no illustration to show us that a true theory is an adjustment of one's ideas to the external facts, and that such adjustments are helps to successful living. The whole work of education is directed toward cultivating the capacity of framing associations of ideas that conform to objective facts. It is thus that life is guided. So, as we look back over the marvellous life-history of our planet, even from the time when there was no life more exalted than that of conferva scum on the surface of a pool, through ages innumerable until the present time, when man is beginning to learn how to decipher nature's secrets,we look back over an infinitely slow series of minute adjustments, gradually and laboriously increasing the points of contact between the inner life and the world environing it. Step by step in the upward advance toward humanity the environment has enlarged, from the world of the fresh water alga, with its tiny field and its brief term of existence, to the world of civilized men, which comprehends the stellar universe during æons of time. Every such enlargement has had reference to actual existences outside. The eye was developed in response to the outward existence of radiant light, the ear in response to the outward existence of acoustic vibrations. The mother's love came in response to the infant's needs. Fidelity and honor were gradually developed as the nascent social life required them. Everywhere the internal adjustment has been brought about so as to harmonize with some actually existing external fact. Such has been nature's method: such is the deepest law of all life that science has been able to detect. Now there was a critical moment in the history of our planet, when love was beginning to play a part hitherto unknown, when the notions of right and wrong were germinating in the nascent human soul, when the family was coming into existence, when social ties were beginning to be knit, when winged words first took their flight through the air. This is the moment when the process of evolution was being shifted to a higher plane, when civilization was to be superadded to organic evolution, when the last and highest of creatures was coming upon the scene, when the dramatic purpose of creation was approaching fulfilment. At that critical moment we see the nascent human soul vaguely reaching forth toward something akin to itself, not in the realm of fleeting phenomena, but in the eternal presence beyond. An internal adjustment of ideas was achieved in correspondence with an unseen world. That the ideas were very crude and childlike, that they were put together with all manner of grotesqueness, is what might be expected. The cardinal fact is that the crude, childlike mind was groping to put itself into relation with an ethical world not visible to the senses. And one aspect of this fact not to be lightly passed over is the fact that religion, thus set upon the scene coeval with the birth of humanity, has played such a dominant part in the subsequent evolution of human society that what his tory would be without it is quite beyond our imagination. As to the dimensions of this cardinal fact, there can thus be no question. None can deny that it is the largest and most ubiquitous fact connected with the existence of mankind upon the earth. Now, if the relation thus established, in the morning twilight of man's career, between the human soul and the world invisible and immaterial is a relation of which only the subjective term is real and the objective term is non-existent, then I say it is something utterly without precedent in the whole history of creation. All the analogies of evolution, so far as men have been able to decipher it, are overwhelmingly against any such supposition. the analogies of nature fairly shout against the assumption of such a breach of continuity between the evolution of man and all previous evolution. So far as our knowledge of nature goes, the whole momentum of it carries us forward to the conclusion that the unseen world, as the objective term in a relation that has coexisted with All the whole career of mankind, has a real existence; and it is but following out the analogy to regard that unseen world as the theatre where the ethical process is destined to reach its full consummation. The lesson of evolution is that through all these weary ages the human soul has not been cherishing in religion a delusive phantom; but, in spite of seemingly endless groping and stumbling, it has been rising to the recognition of its essential kinship with the ever-living God. Of all the implications of the doctrine of evolution with regard to man, I believe the very deepest and strongest to be that which asserts the everlasting reality of religion. So far as I am aware, the foregoing argument is here advanced for the first time. It does not pretend to meet the requirements of scientific demonstration : one must not look for scientific demonstration in problems that contain so many factors transcending our direct experience. But, as an appeal to our common sense, the argument here brought forward surely has great weight. It seems to me far more convincing than any chain of subtle metaphysical reasoning can ever be; for such chains, however invincible in appearance, are no stronger than the weakest of their links, and in metaphysics one is always suspecting some undetected flaw. My argument represents the impression irresistibly forced upon one by a pretty broad general familiarity with nature's processes and methods. It therefore belongs to the class of arguments that survive. Observe, it is far from being a trite repetition of the old argument that beliefs universally accepted must be true. Upon the view here presented, every specific opinion ever entertained by men regarding religious things may be wrong, and in all probability is exceedingly crude; yet the everlasting reality of religion, in its three indispensable elements, as here set forth, remains unassailable. Our common-sense argument puts the scientific presumption entirely and decisively on the side of religion, and against all atheistic and materialistic explanations of the universe. It establishes harmony between our highest knowledge and our highest aspirations by showing that the latter, no less than the former, are a normal result of the universal cosmic process. It has nothing to fear from the advance of scientific discovery; for, as these things come to be better understood, it is going to be realized, I think, that the days of the antagonism between science and religion must by and by come to an end. That antag onism has been chiefly due to the fact that religious ideas were until lately allied with the doctrine of special creation. They have therefore needed to be remodelled and reconsidered from new points of view. But we have at length reached a point where it is becoming daily more and more apparent that, with deeper study of nature, the old strife between faith and knowledge is drawing to a close; and thus, disentangled at last from that ancient slough of despond, the human mind will breathe a freer air and enjoy a vastly extended horizon. DEPARTED DAYS. Like leaves that came in early spring THE GREAT PHYSICIANS. BY FRANCOIS COPPEE. [Translated for the Unitarian.] The other day, as I walked along in the imposing procession which followed Pasteur's coffin to Notre Dame, I saw once more all along the route one of our Parisian crowds. The dead man whose name was on all lips was one of those whose work the humble and the ignorant admire without thoroughly understanding it. By what series of observations and experiments the great chemist had succeeded in discovering an invisible world, and in giving such new and powerful weapons to science with which to fight against suffering and even death itself, the greater number of those who saw his funeral pass evidently knew nothing. The wreath, for instance, ornamented with silk-worms' cocoons (an ingenious and touching souvenir sent by the silk-worm breeders of Provence) only served to remind a few spectators that Pasteur had discovered the cause of and invented the means to destroy the terrible silk-worm epidemic. The treatment of hydrophobia and also the more recent discovery for the treatment of diphtheria, due to Pasteur's method, are the only celebrated results known to most of the less educated classes of the scientific researches of the great man whom we have just lost. Nevertheless, this vast multitude, standing in dense masses on the foot-paths, leaning out of all the windows, mounted on the steps of ladders, and even looking down from the roofs of the houses, were all animated by one unanimous sentiment, and all shared the same feeling of certitude on one point. They all knew that the genial savant, the pure-minded, humane, and disinterested man, the good citizen and glorious French patriot, whose remains we were taking with so much pomp and honor to Notre Dame, had done good all his life, and had done nothing else but good. And this was why the vast crowd, moved by a deep feeling of respect and of gratitude, stood there, the men all bareheaded, as the coffin of their benefactor passed by. Certainly, the sight was impressive and touching in the extreme. Why, then, in spite of this, did such an intensely melancholy feeling come over me? It was just this, I was thinking how rare are the menoh, how rare !-about whom we can say, when they leave us, "He has done nothing but good in the world!” Surely, we can give this ineffable eulogy to men who, like Pasteur, have consecrated all their efforts to fight against the baneful forces of nature, against physical suffering. To live a little longer, to have less danger and less pain,- this, alas! is our pitiful ideal. Science can now realize this for us; for science has made great progress, thanks to the genius of Pasteur. We are sure, then, that he has rendered great service to mankind. But in the moral order of things what about the good there, and where are we to look for truth? The thinkers and the writers of to-day cannot help feeling profoundly troubled and anxious in face of certain modern problems. A hundred years of disturbances and of revolutions have unsettled us. This century, the dawn of which promised so much, and witnessed such a magnificent outburst of thought, of poetry, and of art,- this century which has seen material progress overturn the world,-well, it is closing now in the midst of doubt and negation. There are still some prophets left who go on persistently hoping, and who show us far away,—oh! very far away,―looming in the distance, a humanity free and fraternal. But even these prophets get furious when they look at the wide yawning gulf which separates them from their dream or their chimera, and they would fain bridge up the abyss with ruins; and so they give themselves up to destruction and violence, while some in their frenzied impatience do not even stop at crime. In the mean time the venerable foundations upon which the edifice of society rests are decayed and tottering. The very principles even of duty to home and country are called into question, and discussed with the most harsh and insulting disdain. The marriage vows are looked upon as grotesque, and it is considered ridiculous that little children should stretch out their arms to embrace a father and a mother. Let every one go his own way; and as for you, imbecile soldier, trample your cockade and your banner under foot! What is the good, too, of attending church? There may be just a few ignorant ones who still believe in prayer, but that is all. And then, as for education, why should our young men be worried with useless knowledge? There is only one force in the world, and that is-money! There is only one end and object in life, to enjoy one's self, and that quickly! What simpleton in these days would believe that true happiness consists in peace of mind and tranquil affection? What coward is there left who would dare to talk of resignation, sacrifice, obedience? The law of to-day is fierce combat, the right of the strong over the weak. Let us fight, then. But the strong ones, or, in other words, the rich, are not happy, either. In face of the ever-increasing and threatening army of the vanquished ones, the rich with trembling hands offer their charity; and they see with terror that the recipients of their alms close their hands tightly over the gift with a gesture of rage. We cannot be too grateful, certainly, to the savant who has saved so many human lives, and who, more powerful than a king, has freed those who, though innocent, were condemned to death. But, oh! how much good, also, would a moral physician do if he could but heal the ravages of those terrible moral poisons-selfishness, vanity, hatred, and envy-which are undermining our modern society. What incalculable good such a physician might do, by just bringing to our minds some essential truths and by convincing us once for all! He might, for instance, speak to us as follows: The form of government in a State is nothing. The tyranny of one or of many amounts to the same thing. Laws themselves are nothing much, but it simplifies matters to conform to them. Cut off some of the rotten branches from the ancient tree of codes. The justice of man will never be anything but a bundle of expedients, the minimum, as it were, of injustice. It is not worth while giving our time to consider all such details. The great thing is to know how to live, accepting the suffering, which is one of the conditions of life, and doing as little evil as possible. We know not from whence we came, nor whither we are going; but the metaphysicians who tell us that our species after death will return to Dame Nature, and that we shall be happy to appear again under the form of dandelions, are impostors, and such a theory does not satisfy our thirst for immortality. How, then, are we to live? Are we to satisfy all our caprices? We can only do this at the expense of others, and that I would be abominable. Are we to deprive ourselves and sacrifice ourselves? That would be contrary to our instincts. There does exist a solution, though, to the problem. |