Part 6 (2/2)
Hegel's great success was in bringing forward the old dogmas with new claims to infallibility. When some of his disciples showed that his methods were equally well adapted for the destruction of orthodoxy, Sch.e.l.ling gave his last lectures in its defence. The singular fitness of traditions for acceptance as intuitions has been proved, late in the century, by the Rev. Joseph Cook in Boston as well as by many speakers at the Concord School of Philosophy. The reactionary tendency is already so strong that it may yet become predominant. We must not forget that Sh.e.l.ley called himself an atheist, or that among Hegel's most famous followers were Strauss and Renan. Who can say whether unbelief, orthodoxy, or liberal Christianity is the legitimate outcome of this ubiquitous philosophy?
Transcendentalism has been the inspiration of the century. Its influence has been mighty in behalf of political liberty and social progress. But there was no inconsistency in Hegel's opposing the education of women, and denying the possibility of a great republic, or in Carlyle's defending absolute monarchy and chattel slavery, or in Parker's successor in Boston trying to justify the Russian despotism.
Transcendentalism is a swivel-gun, which can be fired easily in any direction. Perhaps it can be used most easily against science. The difference in methods, of course, is irreconcilable, as is seen in Emerson; and the brilliant results attained by Herbert Spencer have been sadly disparaged by leading Transcendentalists in the conventions of the Free Religious a.s.sociation, as well as in sessions of the Concord School of Philosophy.
VI. The necessary tendency of Transcendentalism may be seen in the agitation against vivisection, which was begun in 1863 by Miss Cobbe.
She was aided by Carlyle, Browning, Ruskin, Lecky, Mar-tineau, and other Transcendentalists, one of whom, Rev. W. H. Channing, had been prominent in America about 1850. Most of the active anti-vivisectionists, however, belong to the s.e.x which has been peculiarly ready to adopt unscientific methods of thought. It is largely due to women with a taste for metaphysics or theology that the agitation still goes on in Great Britain and the United States.
Attempts ought certainly to be made to prevent torture of animals by inexperienced students, or by teachers who merely wish to ill.u.s.trate the working of well-known laws. There ought to be little difficulty in securing the universal adoption of such statutes as were pa.s.sed by Parliament in 1876. Vivisection was then forbidden, except when carried out for the purpose of important discoveries, by competent investigators duly licensed, and in regular laboratories. It was further required that complete protection against suffering pain be given by anaesthetics, though these last could be dispensed with in exceptional cases covered by a special license.
The animal must at all events be killed as soon as the experiment was over. This law actually put a stop to attempts to find some antidote to the poison of the cobra, which slays thousands of Hindoos annually.
Professor Ferrier, who was discovering the real functions of various parts of the brain, was prosecuted in 1881 by the Anti-Vivisection Society for operating without a license upon monkeys; but the charge turned out to be false.
The real question since 1876 has been as to whether vivisection should be tolerated as an aid to scientific and medical discovery. Darwin's opinion on this point is all the more valuable, because he hated all cruelty to animals. In April, 1881, he wrote to _The Times_ as follows:
”I know that physiology cannot possibly progress except by means of experiments on living animals; and I feel the deepest conviction that he who r.e.t.a.r.ds the progress of physiology commits a crime against mankind.... No one, unless he is grossly ignorant of what science has done for mankind, can entertain any doubt of the incalculable benefits which will hereafter be derived from physiology, not only by man but by the lower animals. Look, for instance, at Pasteur's results in modifying the germs of the most malignant diseases, from which, as it so happens, animals will in the first place receive more relief than man. Let it be remembered how many lives, and what a fearful amount of suffering, have been saved by the knowledge gained of parasitic worms, through the experiments of Virchow and others upon living animals.”
Another high authority, Carpenter, says that vivisection has greatly aided physicians in curing heart disease, as well as in preventing blood-poisoning by taking antiseptic precautions. Much has been learned as to the value of hypodermic injections, and also of bromide of pota.s.sium, chloral, salicylic acid, cocaine, amyl, digitalis, and strychnia. Some of these drugs are so poisonous that they would never have been administered to human beings if they could not have been tried previously on the lower animals. The experiments in question have recently a.s.sisted in curing yellow fever, sunstroke, diabetes, epilepsy, erysipelas, cholera, consumption, and trichinosis. The German professors of medicine testified in a body that vivisection has regenerated the healing art. Similar testimony was given in 1881 by the three thousand members of the International Medical Congress; and the British Medical a.s.sociation has taken the same position.
The facts are so plain that an English judge, who was a vice-president of Miss Cobbe's society, admitted that ”vivisection enlarges knowledge”; but he condemned it as ”displeasing to Almighty G.o.d.” It was said to go ”hand in hand with atheism”; and several of the Episcopalian bishops, together with Cardinal Manning, opposed it as irreligious.
Transcendentalists are compelled by their philosophy to decide on the morality of all actions solely by the inner light, and not permitted to pay any attention to consequences. Many of them in England and America agreed to demand the total suppression of vivisection, ”even should it chance to prove useful.” This ground was taken in 1877 by Miss Cobbe's society; and she declared, five years later, in _The Fortnightly_, that she was determined ”to stop the torture of animals, a grave moral offence, with the consequences of which--be they fortunate or the reverse--we are no more concerned than with those of any other evil deed.” Later she said: ”Into controversies concerning the utility of vivisection, I for one refuse to enter”; and she published a leaflet advising her sisters to follow her example. Ruskin took the same ground.
These hasty enthusiasts were equally indifferent to another fact, which ought not to have been overlooked, namely, that suffering was usually prevented by the use of anaesthetics, which are indispensable for the success of many experiments. The bill for prohibiting any vivisection was brought into the House of Lords in 1879; But was opposed by a n.o.bleman who presided over the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and it was lost by 16 votes against 97. The House of Commons refused even to take action on the subject, despite four years of agitation. Thus the right of scientific research was finally secured.
Miss Cobbe was one of the n.o.blest of women; but even she was made blind by her philosophy to the right of people who prefer scientific methods to act up to their convictions. Garrison, too, was notoriously unable to do justice to anyone, even an abolitionist, who did not agree with him. There is nothing in Transcendentalism to prevent intolerance. This philosophy has done immense service to the philanthropy as well as the poetry of the nineteenth century; but human liberty will gain by the discovery that no such system of metaphysics can be anything better than a temporary bridge for pa.s.sing out of the swamps of superst.i.tion, across the deep and furious torrent of scepticism, into a land of healthy happiness and clear, steady light.
CHAPTER VI. PLATFORM VERSUS PULPIT
DURING the nineteenth century the authority of preachers and pastors has diminished plainly; and this is largely due to a fact of which Emerson spoke thus: ”We should not forgive the clergy for taking on every issue the immoral side.” This was true in England, where the great reforms were achieved for the benefit of the ma.s.ses, and against the interest of the cla.s.s to which most clergymen belonged. The American pastor seldom differed from his paris.h.i.+oners, unless he was more philanthropic. He was usually in favour of the agitation against drunkenness; and he had a right to say that the disunionism of Phillips and Garrison, together with their systematically repelling sympathy in the South, went far to offset their claim for his support. It was difficult, during many years, to see what ought to be done in the North. When a practical issue was made by the attack on Kansas, the clergy took the side of freedom almost unanimously in New England, and quite generally in rural districts throughout the free States. The indifference of the ministers to abolitionism, before 1854, was partly due, however, to their almost universal opposition to a kindred reform, which they might easily have helped.
I. It was before Garrison began his agitation that Frances Wright denounced the clergy for hindering the intellectual emanc.i.p.ation of her s.e.x; and her first ally was not _The Liberator_, but _The Investigatory_ though both began almost simultaneously. She pleaded powerfully for the rights of slaves, as well as of married women, before large audiences in the middle States as early as 1836, when these reforms were also advocated by Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, a liberal Jewess. These ladies spoke to men as well as women; and so next summer did Miss Angelina Grimke, whose zeal against slavery had lost her her home in South Carolina. Her first public lecture was in Ma.s.sachusetts; and the Congregationalist ministers of that State promptly issued a declaration that they had a right to say who should speak to their paris.h.i.+oners, and that the New Testament forbade any woman to become a ”public reformer.”
Their action called out the spirited poem in which Whittier said:
”What marvel if the people learn To claim the right of free opinion?
What marvel if at times they spurn The ancient yoke of your dominion?”
Garrison now came out in favour of ”the rights of women,” and thus lost much of the support which he was receiving from the country clergy generally in New England. The final breach was in May, 1840, at the meeting of the National a.s.sociation of Abolitionists in New York City.
There came Garrison with more than five hundred followers from New England. They gained by a close vote a place on the business committee for that n.o.ble woman, Abby Kelley. Ministers and church members seceded and started a new anti-slavery society, which carried away most of the members and even the officers of the old one. The quarrel was embittered by the vote of censure, pa.s.sed at this meeting upon those abolitionists who had dared to nominate a candidate of their own for the presidency without leave from Mr. Garrison; but the chief trouble came from the prejudice which, that same summer, caused most of the members of the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, to refuse places to Harriet Martineau and other ladies as delegates. This exclusion was favoured by all the eight clergymen who spoke, and by no other speakers so earnestly. Among the rejected delegates were Mrs. Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and they resolved, that night, to hold a convention for the benefit of their s.e.x in America.
The volume of essays which Emerson published in 1844 praised ”the new chivalry in behalf of woman's rights”; and the other Transcendentalists in America came, one after another, to the same position. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott called their convention in that year of revolutions, 1848, on July 19th. The place was the Methodist church at Seneca Falls, in central New York. The reformers found the door locked against them; and a little boy had to climb in at the window. The Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776, furnished a model for a protest against the exclusion of girls from high schools and colleges, the closing of almost every remunerative employment against the s.e.x, and the laws forbidding a married woman to own any property, whether earned or inherited by her, even her own clothing. This declaration was adopted unanimously; but a demand for the suffrage had only a small majority.
Not a single minister is known to have been present; but there were two at a second convention, that August, in Rochester, where the Unitarian church was full of men and women.
There were more than twenty-five thousand ministers in the United States; but only three are mentioned among the members of the national convention, held at Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, in October, 1850, by delegates from eleven States. As Phillips was returning from this meeting, Theodore Parker said to him, ”Wendell, why do you make a fool of yourself?” The great preacher came out a few years later in behalf of the rights of women; but it was long before a single religious newspaper caught up with _The Investigator_.
How the clergy generally felt was shown in 1851, at Akron, in northern Ohio. There Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Universalist ministers appealed to the Bible in justification of the subjugation of women. There was no reply until they began to boast of the intellectual superiority of their own s.e.x. Then an illiterate old woman who had been a slave arose and said: ”What 's dat got to do with women's rights, or n.i.g.g.e.rs' rights either? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, would n't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?” The convention was with her; but the Bible argument was not to be disposed of easily. The general tone of both Testaments is in harmony with the familiar texts attributed to Paul and Peter. These latter pa.s.sages were written, in all probability, when the position of women was changing for the better throughout the Roman Empire: and the original words, a.s.serting the authority of husbands, are the same as are used in regard to the power of masters over slaves. Such language had all the more weight, because the ministers had been brought up as members of the ruling s.e.x. They may have also been bia.s.sed by the fact that their profession depends, more than any other, for success upon the unpaid services in many ways of devoted women. Emanc.i.p.ation was by no means likely to promote work for the Church. There was an audience of two thousand at Syracuse, in 1852, when what was called the ”Bloomer Convention,” on account of the short dresses worn by some members, took up a resolution, declaring that the Bible recognises the rights of women. Mrs. Rose said that the reform had merits enough of its own, and needed no justification by any book. A letter was read from Mrs.
Stanton, saying that ”among the clergy we find our most violent enemies, those most opposed to any change in woman's position.” The accuracy of this statement was readily admitted, after a reverend gentleman had denounced the infidelity of the movement, in a speech described as ”indecent” and ”coa.r.s.ely offensive” in the New York Herald; and the resolution was lost.
The lady who offered it was ordained soon after for the Congregationalist ministry; but she was obliged to confess, at the Woman's Rights' Convention, in 1853, that ”the Church has so far cast me off, that to a great extent I have been obliged to go to just such infidels as those around me for aid to preach my Christian views.” It was at this meeting that a doctor of divinity, and pastor of a prominent society, denounced the reform so violently that Mr. Garrison called him a blackguard and a rowdy, with the result of having his nose pulled by the champion of the Church militant. There were many such unseemly manifestations of clerical wrath. The _History of Woman Suffrage_, which was edited by Mrs. Stanton and other leading reformers, said, in 1881: ”The deadliest opponents to the recognition of the equal rights of women have ever been among the orthodox clergy.” The Unitarians were more friendly; but I do not think that the reform was openly favoured, even as late as 1860, by one clergyman in a thousand out of the whole number in the United States. The proportion was even smaller in Europe.
<script>