The Century of Columbus Part 39

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APPENDIX I

SIR THOMAS MORE AND MAN'S SOCIAL PROBLEMS

There is a very general impression that this is the first time in history that the general social problems of humanity have been taken seriously and solutions of them deliberately sought. At least there is a very prevalent feeling that no generation before our time recognized all of these problems so well as we do and seriously tried to reach rational solutions in spite of vested interests of all kinds and old-time prejudices and traditions. Because Sir Thomas More's "Utopia"

represents a complete contradiction of this complacent att.i.tude of mind toward our sociological interests, it seems worth while to quote here a series of pa.s.sages from his book which ill.u.s.trate very well how as a young man of twenty-seven he faced all our social problems, which are of course those of humanity at all times when in a reasonably civilized condition, and saw as clearly as anyone has ever done, and expressed quite as thoroughly, the rational solutions of them.

Perhaps the most surprising pa.s.sage is that with regard to religious toleration, which in Utopia was complete. It has often been said that More himself afterwards, as Lord Chancellor, violated his own principles in the matter, but he has been ably defended from such imputations by some of the best lawyers of England. The supposed stain on his character is due to religious prejudices in those who write.

After religion, the question of armament for nations is More's most important contribution to political science, and there is a full discussion of the evil of standing armies and of the foolish reasons for keeping the nations on a war footing. As might be expected, there is severe condemnation of the vulgar display of such objects as costly precious stones, and More has the children of the Utopians even make great fun of such childish barbaric tendencies. The over-value of gold is laughed to scorn. More's idea of a certificate of health before marriage antic.i.p.ates many eugenic ideas of our day in a very simple way. The future Lord Chancellor had a fine appreciation for physicians, though surprisingly enough not so much for his own profession of lawyer, and his descriptions of the hospitals of Utopia shows how thoroughly they comprehended what a hospital should be and how little there is of any development in our modern plans for hospitals, though we are so inclined to think of these as a great evolution in hospital construction.

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There are many other phases of thought that he introduces which are extremely interesting in our time. Indeed one can scarcely turn a page of the "Utopia" without finding that it fulfils what James Russell Lowell suggested as at least the accidental definition of a cla.s.sic when he said that "to read a cla.s.sic is to read a commentary on the morning paper." The books the Utopians were interested in show More's own breadth of interest in great literature, and the fact that the great scientific writers are included contradicts many modern notions as to the limitations of intellectual curiosity at this time. In Utopia they reject astrology, have music during meals, which are prepared in common, saving much time for the individuals, think that discipline is the watchword of education, have invented door springs, care for their forests, antic.i.p.ating all our conservation ideas, and divided their time so that there is six hours of work and eight hours of sleep and the rest for culture and recreation. These are but examples chosen at random of the surprises that meet one constantly in the book.

The pa.s.sage with regard to religious toleration is all the more striking because, written in 1515, or at the latest 1516, it represents his opinion before the beginning of Luther's disturbance and just before that series of disturbances began in Europe which during the next three centuries was to prove of such serious detriment to art and literature and education, as well as the politics of Europe. It runs as follows:

"At the first const.i.tution of their government, Utopus having understood that before his coming among them the old inhabitants had been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were so divided among themselves that he found it an easy thing to conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces against him, every different party in religion fought by themselves. After he had subdued them he made a law that every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might endeavor to draw others to it by the force of argument and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against those of other opinions; but that he ought to use no other force but that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise were to be condemned to banishment or slavery.

"This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the public peace, which he saw suffered much by daily contentions and irreconcilable heats, but because he thought the interest of religion itself required it. He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly, and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from G.o.d, who might inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased with this variety; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what did not appear to him true. And supposing that only one religion was really true, and the rest false, he imagined that the native force of truth would at last break forth and shine bright, if supported only by the strength of argument and attended to with a gentle and {547} unprejudiced mind; while, on the other hand, if debates were carried on with violence and tumults, as the most wicked are always the most obstinate, so the best and most holy religion might be choked with superst.i.tion, as corn is with briars and thorns; he therefore left men wholly to their liberty, that they might be free to believe as they should see cause; only he made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise over-ruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so n.o.ble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast's: thus they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of such principles must needs, as oft as he dares to do it, despise all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made, that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appet.i.tes. They never raise any that hold these maxims, either to honors or to offices, nor employ them in any public trust, but despise them as men of base and sordid minds. Yet they do not punish them, because they lay this down as a maxim, that a man cannot make himself believe anything he pleases; nor do they drive any to dissemble their thoughts by threatenings, so that men are not tempted to lie or disguise their opinions; which being a sort of fraud, is abhorred by the Utopians: they take care indeed to prevent their disputing in defence of these opinions, especially before the common people: but they suffer, and even encourage them to dispute concerning them in private with their priest and other grave men, being confident that they will be cured of those mad opinions by having reason laid before them."

Standing armies would seem to be a subject that would interest statesmen mainly in the present time. It would rather be expected that we had evolved the arguments we now use against them in comparatively recent years. Some of Sir Thomas More's remarks then are extremely interesting because they show the problem as we have it fairly stated and the reasons for and against armies set forth very simply, but very emphatically. Four hundred years has made no difference in the situation, though we are p.r.o.ne to think of evolution as having made great changes in that length of time. Only the evils have been emphasized. More said at the beginning almost of his "Utopia":

"In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people, for the whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace (if such a state of nation can be called a peace); and these are kept in pay upon the same account that you plead for those idle retainers upon n.o.blemen: this being a maxim of those pretended statesmen, that it is necessary for public safety to have a good body of veteran soldiers ever in readiness. They think raw men {548} are not to be depended on, and they sometimes seek occasions for making war, that they may train up their soldiers in the art of cutting throats, or, as Sall.u.s.t observed, 'for keeping their hands in use, that they may not grow dull by too long an intermission.'

But France has learned to its cost how dangerous it is to feed such beasts. The fate of the Romans, Carthaginians and Syrians, and many other nations and cities, which were both overturned and quite ruined by those standing armies, should make others wiser."

And still we can find no better reason for large armies than what Thucydides called [Greek text], "the balanced fear," which we have come to designate by the courtlier term, the balance of power.

The pa.s.sage in "Utopia" in which More discusses the wearing of fine clothes and of precious stones and jewels has often been quoted. After 400 years it will still come home with great force to all those who think seriously on the subject. Of course it is literal common sense, but then what has common sense ever availed against fashion? The mid-African wears bra.s.s rings and fancy calico because they are hard to get and expensive and therefore give distinction to their wearer.

His cultured European brother--and sister--wears what is equally childish and barbaric because costly and distinctive and will doubtless continue to do so. Sir Thomas More's ideas on the subject are interesting, but will fall on quite as deaf ears in our generation as in all the others since his time.

"I never saw a clearer instance of the opposite impressions that different customs make on people than I observed in the amba.s.sadors of the Anemolians, who came to Amaurot when I was there. As they came to treat of affairs of great consequence, the deputies from several towns met together to wait for their coming. The amba.s.sadors of the nations that lie near Utopia, knowing their customs and that fine clothes are in no esteem among them, that silk is despised, and gold is a badge of infamy, used to come very modestly clothed; but the Anemolians, lying more remote, and having had little commerce with them, understanding that they were coa.r.s.ely clothed, and all in the same manner, took it for granted that they had none of these fine things among them of which they made no use; and they, being a vainglorious rather than a wise people, resolved to set themselves out with so much pomp that they should look like G.o.ds and strike the eyes of the poor Utopians with their splendor. Thus three amba.s.sadors made their entry with a hundred attendants, all clad in garments of different colours, and the greater part in silk; the amba.s.sadors themselves, who were of the n.o.bility of their country, were in cloth of gold, and adorned with ma.s.sy chains, earrings, and rings of gold; their caps were covered with bracelets set full of pearls and other gems--in a word, they were set out with all those things that among the Utopians were either the badges of slavery, the marks of infamy, or the playthings of children. It was not unpleasant to see, on the one side, how they looked big, when they compared their rich habits with the plain clothes of the {549} Utopians, who were come out in great numbers to see them make their entry; and, on the other, to observe how much they were mistaken in the impression which they hoped this pomp would have made on them.

It appeared so ridiculous a show to all that they never stirred out of their country, and had not seen the customs of other nations, that though they paid some reverence to those that were the most meanly clad, as if they had been the amba.s.sadors, yet when they saw the amba.s.sadors themselves so full of gold and chains, they looked upon them as slaves and forbore to treat them with reverence. You might have seen the children who were grown big enough to despise their playthings, and who had thrown away their jewels, call to their mothers, push them gently, and cry out, 'See that great fool, that wears pearls and gems as if he were yet a child!' while their mothers very innocently replied, 'Hold your peace! this, I believe, is one of the amba.s.sadors' fools.' Others censured the fashion of their chains, and observed, 'that they were of no use, for they were too slight to bind their slaves, who could easily break them; and, besides, hung so loose about them that they thought it easy to throw them away, and so get from them.' But after the amba.s.sadors had stayed a day among them, and saw so vast a quant.i.ty of gold in their houses (which was as much despised by them as it was esteemed in other nations), and beheld more gold and silver in the chains and fetters of one slave than all their ornaments amounted to, their plumes fell, and they were ashamed of all that glory for which they had formerly valued themselves, and accordingly laid it aside--a resolution that they immediately took when, on their engaging in some free discourse with the Utopians, they discovered their sense of such things and their other customs. The Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring, doubtful l.u.s.tre of a jewel or a stone, that can look up to a star or to the sun himself; or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread; for, how fine soever that thread may be, it was once no better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep was a sheep still, for all its wearing it." (John G. Saxe told the last generation how great a difference it made whether one wore the product of an India plant or an India worm.)

Immediately following this there is almost a more striking pa.s.sage with regard to wealth and the changes that it makes in the att.i.tude of the minds of men towards one another that would seem surely to have been written by a modern socialist.

"They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed that even man, for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than this metal; that a man of lead, who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good men to serve him, only because he has a great heap of that metal; and that if it should happen that by some accident or trick of law (which sometimes reduces as great changes as chance itself) all this wealth should pa.s.s from the master to the meanest varlet of his whole family, he himself would very soon become one of his servants, as if he were a thing that belonged to his wealth, and so were bound to follow {550} its fortune! But they much more admire and detest the folly of those who, when they see a rich man, though they neither owe him anything, nor are in any sort dependent on his bounty, yet, merely because he is rich, give him little less than divine honors, even though they know him to be so covetous and base-minded that, notwithstanding all his wealth, he will not part with one farthing of it to them as long as he lives!"

Perhaps his greatest contribution to social ethics and the solution of social problems is to be found in his emphatic a.s.sertion of the right of the laborer to a living wage in the best sense of that much abused term and his insistent deprecation of the fact that laborers must not be exploited so as to enable men to acc.u.mulate great wealth that is sure to be abused. More believed in profit-sharing very heartily and had no hesitation in expressing himself. Above all, he deprecates the injustice worked by predatory wealth. It was the judicial mind of the greatest Lord Chancellor England has ever had, who, after speaking of the Utopian state as "that which alone of good right may claim and take upon it the name of commonwealth," continues:

"Here now would I see, if any man dare be so bold as to compare with this equity, the justice of other nations; among whom, I forsake G.o.d, if I can find any sign or token of equity and justice. For what justice is this, that a rich goldsmith, or an usurer, or to be short, any of them which either do nothing at all, or else that which they do is such that it is not very necessary to the commonwealth, should have a pleasant and a wealthy living, either by idleness or unnecessary business, when in the meantime poor laborers, carters, ironsmiths, carpenters, and ploughmen, by so great and continual toil, as drawing and bearing beasts be scant able to sustain, and again so necessary toil, that without it no commonwealth were able to continue and endure one year, should get so hard and poor a living, and live so wretched and miserable a life, that the state and condition of the laboring beasts may seem much better and healthier? . . . And yet besides this the rich men, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and s.n.a.t.c.h away from the poor some part of their daily living.

. . . They invent and devise all means and manner of crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed under color of the commonalty, that is to say, also of the poor people, then they be made laws. . . . Therefore when I consider and weigh in my mind all these commonwealths which nowadays anywhere do flourish, so G.o.d help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and t.i.tle of commonwealth."

Everywhere one finds supreme common sense. For instance, Sir Thomas More points out that while the Utopians "knew astronomy and were perfectly acquainted with the motions of the {551} heavenly bodies; and of many instruments, well contrived and divided, by which they very accurately compute the course and positions of the sun, moon and stars; but for the cheat of divining by the stars, by their oppositions or conjunctions, it has not so much as entered into their thoughts." This sentence was written about the time that Copernicus was working out his conclusions with regard to the Universe as we now know it. Most people might presume that astrology had by this time lost all its weight. More than a century later, however, Galileo and Kepler were drawing up horoscopes, and astrology was very commonly accepted during the seventeenth century. Even in the eighteenth century, Mesmer wrote a thesis for his doctorate at the University of Vienna on the influence of the stars on human const.i.tutions. The really great thinkers in humanity had all of them refused to accept astrology, but it is a tribute to the genius of this man of thirty-seven who had been trained at the law to have reached so true a conclusion.

Almost any page of "Utopia" furnishes a quotation that shows how penetrating was More's view of the significance of life not alone for his own time, but for all time. Literally I turned over the page from the quotation with regard to astrology and find this: "A life of pleasure is either a real evil, and in that case we ought not to a.s.sist others in their pursuit of it, but on the contrary to keep them from it all we can as from that which is most hurtful and deadly; or if it is a good thing, so that we not only may but ought to help others to it, why then ought not a man to begin with himself?" He has many sentences on that page with reference to the philosophy of what we now call learnedly hedonism. "They infer that if a man ought to advance the welfare and comfort of the rest of mankind, nature much more vigorously leads them to do this for themselves. They define virtue to be living according to nature, so they imagine that nature prompts all people on to seek after pleasure as the end of all they do."

Ideas with regard to many modern questions are touched on only in pa.s.sing and yet with sufficient detail to make us realize that problems that we are sometimes likely to think of as new were faced and solved in that older time. For instance, the question of afforestation and the necessity for keeping up a readily available supply of wood is touched on.

"For one may there see reduced to practice not only all the art that the husbandman employs in manuring and improving an ill soil, but whole woods plucked up by the roots, and in other places new ones planted, where there were none before. Their princ.i.p.al motive for this is the convenience of carriage, that their timber may be either near their towns or growing on the banks of the sea, or of some rivers, so as to be floated to them; for it is a harder work to carry wood at a distance over land than corn."

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One might think that perhaps so practical a man as More would not believe in the usefulness of books for his ideal republic and it might even be thought that, devoted to law and to politics, he would not be over-familiar with the cla.s.sic authors. Here is his paragraph on the subject, however, that reveals at once his estimation and his tastes.

"I happened to carry a great many books with me, instead of merchandise, when I sailed my fourth voyage; for I was so far from thinking of soon coming back that I rather thought never to have returned at all, and I gave them all my books, among which were many of Plato's and some of Aristotle's works: I had also Theophrastus on 'Plants,' which, to my great regret, was imperfect; for having laid it carelessly by, while we were at sea, a monkey had seized upon it, and in many places torn out the leaves. They have no books of grammar but Lascaris, for I did not carry Theodoras with me; nor have they any dictionaries but Hesichius and Dioscorides. They esteem Plutarch highly, and were much taken with Lucian's wit and with his pleasant way of writing. As for the poets, they have Aristophanes, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles of Aldus's edition; and for historians, Thucydides, Herodotus and Herodian."

His description of how the Utopians divide up their time is interesting from many standpoints. Six hours of work, eight hours of sleep and the rest to be employed in learned leisure with lectures, sports, games and various exercises is indeed an ideal that human nature would find hard to surpa.s.s at any period of the world's history. Such a division would probably make for human health and happiness better than anything that has ever been tried.

"But they, dividing the day and the night into twenty-four hours, appoint six of these for work, three of which are before dinner and three after; they then sup, and at eight o'clock, counting from noon, go to bed and sleep eight hours: the rest of the time, besides that taken up in work, eating, and sleeping, is left to every man's discretion; yet they are not to abuse that interval to luxury and idleness, but must employ it in some proper exercise, according to their various inclinations, which is, for the most part, reading. It is ordinary to have public lectures every morning before daybreak, at which none are obliged to appear but those who are marked out for literature; yet a great many, both men and women, of all ranks, go to hear lectures of one sort or other, according to their inclinations: but if others that are not made for contemplation, choose rather to employ themselves at that time in their trades, as many of them do, they are not hindered, but are rather commended, as men that take care to serve their country. After supper they spend an hour in some diversion, in summer in their gardens, and in winter in the halls where they eat, where they entertain each other with music or discourse. They do not so much as know dice, or any such foolish or mischievous games. They have, however, two sorts of games not unlike our chess."

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Probably the most striking testimony to the life and character of Sir Thomas More is to be found in the fact that writers who have studied his career most carefully are agreed that he exemplified all the great principles that he has laid down in his "Utopia" in his own environment and family life. Maurice Adams, in his Introduction to the Camelot edition of the "Utopia," says:

"Utopia was but the author's home writ large. His beautiful house, on the river side at Chelsea, was, through his delight in social life and music, and through the wit and merriment of his nature, a dwelling of joy and mirth as well as of study and thought. It often rang with song, and was cheery with the laughter of children and grandchildren, he himself, in his own words, 'being merry, jocund and pleasant among them.' Erasmus, who was often his guest, has given us many delightful glimpses of his family life, of his children and their tasks, and the monkey and rabbits which amused their leisure. To the solitary and ever-wandering Erasmus, More's house was a haven of refuge from the discomforts and vexations of his bachelor existence. In one of his epistles he writes, 'More has built near London, upon the Thames, a modest yet commodious mansion.

There he lives, surrounded by his numerous family, including his wife, his son and his son's wife, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There is not any man living so affectionate to his children as he, and he loveth his old wife as if she were a girl of fifteen. Such is the excellence of his disposition that whatever happeneth that could not be helped, he is as cheerful and as well pleased as though the best thing possible had been done. In More's house you would say that Plato's academy was revived again, only, whereas in the academy the discussion turned upon geometry and the power of numbers, the house at Chelsea is a veritable school of Christian religion. In it is none, man or woman, but readeth or studieth the liberal arts, yet is their chief care of piety. There is never any seen idle; the head of the house governs it: not only by a lofty carriage and oft rebukes, but by gentleness and amiable manners. Every member is busy in his place, performing his duty with alacrity; nor is sober mirth wanting."

APPENDIX II

AFTER THE REFORMATION

It is such a commonplace of history as written in English, at least, that the beginnings of our modern progress are to be traced to the time when the movement called the Reformation freed men's minds from the domination of the Church, which had used every effort to keep men in darkness in order to secure their readier submission to Church teaching, that the tracing of all our modern developments to the century before the movement began may surprise many readers. Not only is it true, however, that for nearly a hundred years before the Reformation was there a climax of intellectual and artistic achievement in every department in every {554} country in Europe, but what is much more striking is that immediately after the "reform"

movement set in, decadence made itself felt everywhere. Art in all its phases, painting, sculpture, architecture, education and scholarship, literature, and, above all, humanitarianism, reached magnificent expression during the first three quarters of Columbus' Century. In the fourth quarter, coincident with the spread of the reforming doctrines, decadence begins in nearly every phase of human activity and continues until the revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gave a new stimulus to independent thinking. It has seemed necessary, owing to the position taken in the preceding pages, to ill.u.s.trate these facts by quotations from well-known non-Catholic writers.

No fallacy is cheaper than that of arguing because one set of events happens after another, therefore it is due to that other. It would take a much deeper and broader study of history than any that we have made here, or could make in our limited s.p.a.ce, to trace the philosophy of the history of Columbus' Century and the succeeding centuries and to indicate the causes at work and their effects. All that can be pointed out here is that the facts of intellectual history represent an exact contradiction to the usually accepted impression that whatever is best in the modern time can be traced to the Reformation.

On the contrary, immediately after the reform movement, human achievement declined for many generations, and the revival of the past hundred years represents a reversion to ideas and modes of thought current before the religious revolt and the evolution of which was interrupted by that movement.

EDUCATION, BOOKS, INSt.i.tUTIONS

An historical opinion which is considered by a great many people who are sure that they are well informed to be quite above all question, is that the Reformation had a wonderfully beneficial effect on education. As a matter of fact, education, which had been at a very high degree of cultivation during the Renaissance period, began to decline immediately after the Reformation nearly everywhere in Europe, and only for the schools of the Jesuits, would have reached a serious depth of degradation. As it was, there is a steep descent in the Protestant countries, until in the eighteenth century Cardinal Newman thought that education at Oxford was at its lowest possible ebb, and when Winckelmann wanted to teach Greek in Germany he had to have his pupils write out copies of Plato, because no edition of the author had been issued in that country for two centuries. Authorities in the history of education have emphasized this, and no one more so than Professor Paulsen, who, after a wide academic experience throughout Germany, held at the end of his life the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin. His book on the history of German education was {555} translated into English and published with an introduction by President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University. One does not have to go very far in it before finding the great German authority's opinion with regard to the influence of the Reformation on education.

He says:

"After 1520, Humanism, an aristocratic and secular impulse, was overtaken and succeeded by a movement of vastly greater power and depth, the religious and popular movement of the Reformation. For a brief s.p.a.ce the Reformation may well have seemed a reinforcement of Humanism, united as both these were in their hatred of scholastic philosophy and of Rome. Hutton and Luther are represented in pamphlets of the year 1520 as the two great champions of freedom.

Inwardly, however, they were very different men, and very different were the goals to which they sought to lead the German people.

Luther was a man of inward anti-rationalistic and anti-ecclesiastical religious feeling, and Hutton a man of rationalistic and libertinistic humanism. Hutton did not live to see the manifestation of this great contrast; but after 1522 or 1523, the eyes of the Humanists were open to the fact, and almost without exception they turned away from the Reformation as from something yet more hostile to learning than the old Church herself. In very truth, it appeared for the time as if the Reformation would be in its effects essentially hostile to culture. In the fearful tumults between 1520 and 1530 the universities and schools came to an almost complete standstill, and with the Church fell the inst.i.tutions of learning which she had brought forth, so that Erasmus might well say, 'Where Lutheranism reigns, there is an end of letters.'"

Those who hold a brief for the Reformation and its much vaunted beneficent influence on education may be tempted to retort that at least the German religious movement gave liberty of teaching to the German University. It is a constantly emphasized Protestant tradition that the incubus of the Church on teaching inst.i.tutions before this time had been most serious in its consequences, and that developments in education had been prevented because of this. Those who a.s.sume that the reformers, so-called, introduced academic liberty into Germany will find very little support for any such claim in Professor Paulsen.