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What I'm Reading: "The Art of Roughhousing" by DeBenedet and Cohen
I'm reading The Art of Roughhousing: Good Old-Fashioned Horseplay and Why Every Kid Needs It (2011), by Anthony T. DeBenedet and Lawrence J. Cohen. You might recognize Cohen as the author of the popular Playful Parenting (2002).
Here's roughhousing as DeBenedet and Cohen describe it:
[Roughhousing is] play that flows with spontaneity, improvisation, and joy. It is free from worries about how we look or how much time is passing. It is physical...interactive...[and] rowdy, but not dangerous.
DeBenedet and Cohen argue that play, roughhousing included, has intellectual, physical, social, and moral benefits for participants. They back their claims with science, including the fact that elephants, whales, and ants engage in roughhousing as well. In fact:
Animal behaviorists have observed that the smarter the species, the more its youngsters engage in physical play.
Through roughhousing, boys and girls learn to adapt quickly, to make mistakes in a safe environment, to practice managing emotional highs and lows, to find the line between play and aggression, to fine-tune their self-control, to express friendship, and, just as importantly, to experience joy.
The Art of Roughhousing suggests roughhousing activities for parents to try, with a few appropriate for toddlers and many others good up through the teenage years. Diagrams help readers figure out such moves as the Steamroller (a rolling maneuver for ages six months and up) and the Hummingbird (a difficult standing flip to try with teens).
Among the activities for the younger set (ages 2 to 5) is Rogue Dumbo, rated "Easy" and involving the essential skill "Twirling." You grip your child's legs around your upper body, with your child facing you, such that you serve as the body of a "wild, rampaging" elephant and he/she can lean backwards and act as the trunk. If you're adept enough, you can go for the "full effect...swaying, snorting, trumpeting, and spinning around the house."
Here are a few of the book's tips:
...reverse the roles when you play. Let your child be the strong one--the monster, the scary dog, the doctor giving the shot, etc.--while you exaggerate being fearful or clumsy and incompetent. This switch gives kids a chance to feel powerful and release their tensions through waves of laughter.
When in doubt, fall over.
If you do something that makes your child laugh, do it again. And again.
I have a one-year-old, so we can't do most of the book's activities yet, but I have a feeling she's already old enough to appreciate the self-explanatory "1-2-3 cuddle."
How to Observe and Adapt, Inspired by Reggio Emilia
I recently attended the open house of a DC-area playgroup based on the Reggio Emilia method, an educational approach for young children that developed in Italy after World War II. At the open house, the playgroup's founder emphasized the importance of a child's "third teacher," his or her environment. (The first and second teachers are parents and teachers.) She explained that she observes the babies and toddlers as they play, then adapts the classroom environment prior to the next session to cater to the children's current interests and development needs.
What a simple and seemingly intuitive move, and yet it's one that I rarely do at home. Sure, I put away gear as our (now-11-month-old) baby outgrows it, but I haven't usually had a deeper strategy behind the way I arrange her environment on any particular morning. After becoming aware that I could more consciously arrange Maya's surroundings, though, I started paying more attention to what I set out for her.
When I noticed the baby sticking her hand into my glass of water and wiggling it around, I filled a pan with water and put it on the kitchen floor, where she played with it gleefully, splashing and exploring.
Later that week, a relative watched the baby and said she gravitated toward a pile of clean laundry--socks in particular. My first reaction: Now we're going to have to refold everything! My second reaction: The next morning, I presented her (the baby, that is) with a pile of socks, and she took great joy in tossing them in and out of her Bumbo seat, making little shrieking sounds. Later that day, after I dumped blocks out of a basket, she began putting them back in, one after another, which is something she had not done before and which seemed inspired by the movements she'd done with the socks.
Then, the next day, I took the baby back to that pile of laundry. (Even when we fold our laundry, we don't get around to putting it away that often.) She was indeed passionate about playing with the clothes, and they led to a whole range of games: the what-color-are-these-pants sorting game, the can-you-find-the-rabbit cloth game, and that old classic, the up-and-down are-they-hats-or-boxers game.
It's not that hard to make minor changes to an environment based on a child's behaviors. Consider doing so for older children as well. Is your child excited about knitting? Arrange a basket of yarn and/or library books about knitting on your coffee table. If your child likes to bake, provide a shelf in the cabinet for appealing baking supplies, and occasionally add a container of sprinkles or a new cookie cutter.
You can also use this method to facilitate academics. Did your child struggle to find sharpened pencils yesterday afternoon? Rearrange your office supplies so that a cup in the living room holds several sharpened pencils, with a small pencil sharpener resting on a shelf nearby. Figure out where a stack of looseleaf or construction paper would get the most use, and place it there. Move, add, and remove components of your and your children's environments to make the most of your space and their passion for learning.
What I'm Reading: "Feel-Bad Education" by Alfie Kohn
I'm reading Alfie Kohn's Feel-Bad Education: And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling (Beacon Press, 2011). The book is a collection of 19 of Kohn's previously published essays, each arguing against a component of traditional American education in favor of more progressive thinking. He rejects the zero-tolerance policy, grades, homework, and standardized testing, citing research that shows all are counterproductive. Kohn challenges educators to create academic environments of true critical thinking and to emphasize and model uncertainty and investigation in the learning process.
I love what Kohn says about how to discuss readings with a student. He warns against the artificial simplicity that can result from asking if a child agrees or disagrees with a text. Though he acknowledges that it's possible to improve upon that question by asking "Why do you agree or disagree?," he suggests an even better approach. Ask your child, "What questions do you have that you didn't have before you read this?"
Add Kohn's question to your collection, parent-tutors and other educators. With it, you can encourage students to think deeply, remind them of the importance of questioning, and prompt deep discussion.
Now I suppose I should ask--what questions do you have that you didn't have before you read this? (If you decide you want to ask them, feel free to do so in the comments below!)
Recommended Read: "The End of Molasses Classes" by Ron Clark
In 2008, before the Obama v. McCain election, the rap video "You Can Vote However You Like" went viral. The rappers? A group of middle school students with a passion for politics. The teacher? Ron Clark, founder of the Ron Clark Academy and teacher extraordinare.
At the Ron Clark Academy, a twisty blue slide starts on the second story and spits riders onto the main floor lobby. A large wheel "sorts" (inspired by the Hogwarts sorting hat) new students into four academic houses, as the entire school cheers. Educators from across the globe attend RCA's teacher training sessions and can observe classes in session in a school where teaching is definitely a performance art.
Clark is the author of The Essential 55: An Award-Winning Educator's Rules for Discovering the Successful Student in Every Child (2003), The Excellent 11: Qualities Teachers and Parents Use to Motivate, Inspire, and Educate Children (2004), and, now, The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck--101 Extraordinary Solutions for Parents and Teachers (2011).
Having just finished The End of Molasses Classes, I can say that it's an inspiring read for all educators, parents included. And if you don't know something, don't worry:
Whenever I am talking with my students an they ask me a question I don't know the answer to, I will say, "Oooh, let's look that up!" I act genuinely giddy at the prospect of finding out information that I don't know.
As parents and teachers, that level of interest and curiosity is important to show our children.
I admire Clark's passion and his emphasis on a student's holistic well-being. He's clearly interested, above all, in helping students feel empowered and competent, with a "constant thirst for knowledge" and an appreciation for high standards, both academically and ethically.
Highly recommended.
My Reading List: 25 Books of 2011
Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the number of books I would need to read to be a "well-educated" person. Every time a colleague references a "classic" that I haven't conquered, I cringe and add it to a Word document full of unread literature. I also fall prey to guilt-inducing, bookseller-funded Top Book lists:
"The Top 10 Books of 2011"
"The Top 10 Books of Last Week"
"The Top 10 Books of Yesterday"
"The 150 Epic Poems Every Writer Should Reread Annually"
So it was a relief to encounter Joshua Bodwell's essay, "You Are What You Read: The Art of Inspired Reading Lists" in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Poets & Writers. He opens with an epiphany--"I won't get to all the books I want to read in my lifetime"--and backs it up with statistics: there were 300,000+ books published in 2010. As he points out, that's almost 900 books a day. No one could get through them all, or even through all the good ones. And, of course, there are the millions already out there on the shelves.
Once you give up on the idea that everyone has to read particular books from a universal best-of list, you can embrace the idea that you have your own literary niche. Relish the knowledge that you can follow a theme or author to its natural works of literature, replacing the should-reads with the want-to reads.
Bodwell made his own list of books, "Bodwell's Baker's Dozen," of books, both old and new, that inspired him over the past year. I think this is a valuable idea for all of us--and for our children and students. (You can do the same with movies, television shows, or even music.)
Any of these lists can provide an insightful look back into your mind over the past year. In that spirit, here's my list:
Of the Books I Read in 2011, Here Are 25 Notable Ones (and Some Audio Books)
I read books about education:
- Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Children a Real Education With or Without School by Grace Llewellyn and Amy Silver (More about this book in my post from 10/28)
- Radical Unschooling: A Revolution Has Begun by Dayna Martin
- The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma
- The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World as Your Child's Classroom by Mary Griffith
And self-help:
- Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy
- Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living by Tsh Oxenreider
- Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes by Jenny Anderson and Paula Szuchman
Books for older children:
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
- Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
- The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall (More about the Penderwick series in my post from 7/18)
- The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall
- The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall
And much younger:
- Dear Zoo: A Lift-the-Flap Book by Rod Campbell
- Dinosaur's Binket by Sandra Boynton
- I Kissed the Baby! by Mary Murphy
- Look, Look! by Peter Linenthal
And books about children, including how to prepare for and then raise them:
- The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two by William Sears, M.D.
- Caring for Your Baby and Young Child, Birth to Age 5 by the American Academy of Pediatrics
- New First Three Years of Life by Burton L. White
And how others prepare for and raise them:
- Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman
- Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
- Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein
- Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family by Catherine Newman
And how they cope when their children struggle or suffer:
- Blue Nights by Joan Didion
- Journey to the Edge of the Light: A Story of Love, Leukemia and Transformation by Cristina Nehring
I also used Audible.com to listen to these plays, most of which I'd recommend, though generally for teens and adults:
- Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz
- Dinner with Friends by Donald Margulies
- Great Men of Genius by Mike Daisey
- Molly Sweeney by Brian Friel
- Sight Unseen by Donald Margulies
- Speed the Plow by David Mamet
- The Tale of the Allergist's Wife by Charles Busch
- A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller


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I'm working through a multivariable calculus course. I'm ~5 years removed from my most recent calculus course, and ~10 years removed from my most recent trigonometry course. While I'm understanding the new material pretty easily, I keep tripping up on material that I'm (understandably) expected to already know.
One review exercise is:
Draw the level curve for $f(x, y) = \frac{x}{x^2 + y^2}$ at values $c = -2, 0, 4$.
For $c = 0$, this is trivial ($x = 0, y \ne 0$). I'm having a bit more trouble with the other values. I can look in the back of the book and see that the shapes are two circles. But what signs am I looking for to tell me this?
I can simplify the equation of the level curve to something like this:
$$c = \frac{x}{x^2 + y^2}$$ $$c(x^2 + y^2) = x$$ $$cx^2 - x + cy^2 = 0$$ $$cy^2 = -cx^2 + x$$ $$y^2 = -x^2 + \frac{x}{c}$$ $$y = \pm \sqrt{-x^2 + \frac{x}{c}}$$
For $x \ne 0, c \ne 0$.
I also recall that equations like this describe a ellipse:
$$a(x - x_0)^2 + b(y - y_0)^2 = r^2$$
I assume there is a similar form that accounts for the possibility of an $x$ term. But I'm not sure how to go about determining this form.
This problem isn't assigned as homework, but I'm marking it as homework anyway, because it relates to a class that I'm taking.

subset: commoncrawl


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From Grand Theft Wiki
Revision as of 15:11, 17 August 2008 by MetaCracken (talk)
The Broadway is a lowrider new to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It has the ability to be used as a pimping vehicle, and is also the only one that can be used for that purpose. It is an old fashioned style car, as it originated in the late 1940s. It drives very fast, has good overall handling, and can be upgraded to perform even better, but can easily flip over if operating the hydraulics while driving fast. The Broadway is based on a 1947 Cadillac. Although it doesn't appear to have a visible fuel cap, it will explode if the back license plate gets shot.
Jizzy's Broadway has purple seats and a licence plate numbered: HO 2 HO


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Professional Hypertext Preprocessor, a widely used platform for dynamic web applications.
PHP is a widely used web open-source web application platform, commonly used in conjunction with MySQL. Originally an abbreviation for 'Professional Home Page' the official backronym is now 'Professional Hypertext Preprocessor'. PHP is a key component of he eponymous 'LAMP' (Linux, Apache, MySQL PHP) web stack. The primary web site for php is http://www.php.net/.
If you have a question about PHP, and it's not intimately about databases, you would probably be better served on our sister site Stack Overflow


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An Introduction to Group Work Practice, 7th Edition, Ronald W. Toseland
This comprehenisve group practice text prepares students to work with either treatment or task oriented groups, this comprehensive revised edition offers the most up-to-date research available and continues to stress the importance of developing skills in group-work.
Students receive a thorough grounding in areas that vary from treatment to organizational and community settings. Numerous case studies, practice examples, and guiding principles add to the ease and readability of this popular text. Content is tied to CSWE's core competencies and practice behaviors that are necessary for generalist and specialized social work practice with groups.
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Ronald W. Toseland, University at Albany, State University of New York Dr. Ronald W. Toseland is Director and Professor, Institute of Gerontology, School of Social Welfare, University at Albany, State University of New York. He holds an MSW from Fordham University and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has published 6 books and over 110 articles and book chapters, many of which have focused on clinical practice with the frail and chronically ill older adults and their family caregivers. An edited book (with David Haigler and Deborah Monahan) Education and Support Group Programs for Family Caregivers: Implications for Practice, Research and Policy is in press (N.Y.:Springer). Dr. Toseland is internationally recognized for his research on social work practice with groups and effective interventions for problems faced by aging individuals. His research findings have been featured in Congress and internationally. Dr. Toseland has received more than $10 million in grants for research. He was awarded the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work Career Achievement Award in 2007 for outstanding lifelong contributions' the Society for Social Work and Research Distinguished Achievement Award in 2008 and was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare in 2010.
Robert F. Rivas, Siena College Robert F. Rivas is Professor of Social Work at Siena College in Albany NY. He has published 2 books, several articles, book chapters and conference papers. He holds a BA Degree from New Mexico Highlands University and an MSW degree from Arizona State University. His practice has focused on individual and group work with children and families as well as work with Native Americans. Professor Rivas has served on both the Commission on Accreditation and he Board of Directors for the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). He has also been honored by the Association of Baccalaureate Program Directors in Social Work (BPD) and was awarded the BPD Presidential Medal of Honor in 2008 for his service to this organization. Professor Rivas has consulted extensively with social work education programs across the country, specializing in curriculum development and accreditation services.
Product Details :
- Series: Connecting Core Competencies Series
- Paperback: 528 pages
- Publisher: Pearson; 7 edition (February 3, 2011)
- Language: English
- Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8 x 0.9 inches
More Details about An Introduction to Group Work Practice, 7th Edition


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[Third chapter continued from previous file.]
A second influence which contributed to the secularisation, and at the same time to the perfection of art, was the discovery of many of the great works of pagan sculpture. The complete disappearance of these during the preceding centuries may be easily explained by the religious and intellectual changes that had either accompanied or speedily followed the triumph of Christianity. The priests, and especially the monks, being firmly convinced that pagan idols were all tenanted by demons, for some time made it one of their principal objects to break them in pieces, and cupidity proved scarcely less destructive than fanaticism. Among the ancient Greeks, as is well known, marble had never obtained the same ascendency in sculpture as among ourselves. Great numbers of statues were made of bronze, but the masterpieces of the most illustrious artists were of far more valuable materials, usually of ivory or of gold. No features are more wonderful in the history of the Greek states than the immense sums they consented to withdraw from all other objects, to expend upon the cultivation of beauty, and the religious care with which these precious objects were preserved unharmed amid all the vicissitudes of national fortune, amid war, rebellion, and conquest. This preservation was in part due to the intense æsthetic feeling that was so general in antiquity, but in part also to the catholicity of spirit that usually accompanied polytheism, which made men regard with reverence the objects and ceremonies even of worships that were not their own, and which was especially manifested by the Romans, who in all their conquests respected the temples of the vanquished as representing under many forms the aspiration of man to his Creator. Both of these sentiments were blotted out by Christianity. For about 1,500 years the conception that there could be anything deserving of reverence or respect, or even of tolerance, in the religions that were external to the Church, was absolutely unknown in Christendom; and at the same time the ascetic theories I have noticed destroyed all perception of beauty, or at least of that type of beauty which sculpture represented. The bronze statues were converted into coinage, the precious metals were plundered, [1:258] the marble was mutilated or forgotten. When Christianity arose, the colossal statue of Jupiter Olympus, in gold and ivory, which was deemed the masterpiece of Phidias, and the greatest of all the achievements of art, still existed at Olympia. Our last notice of it is during the reign of Julian. At Rome, the invasion of the barbarians, the absolute decadence of taste that followed their ascendency, and those great conflagrations which more than once reduced vast districts to ruin, completed the destruction of the old traditions, while most of the statues that had been transported to Constantinople, and had survived the fury of the monks, were destroyed by the Iconoclasts, the Crusaders, or the Mahometans.
Towards the close of the twelfth century, as we have already seen, Nicolas of Pisa for the first time broke the slumber of mediæval art by the skill he had derived from the works of antiquity. There was then, however, no ancient model of the highest class known, and the principal subject of his study is said to have been a pagan sarcophagus of third or fourth rate merit, which had been employed for the burial of the mother of the famous Countess Matilda, and which was then in the Cathedral, and is now in the Campo Santo, of Pisa. Giotto, Masaccio, and their contemporaries, all pursued their triumphs without the assistance of any great ancient model. As Flaxman has noticed, Poggio, who wrote at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was only able to enumerate six statues within the walls of Rome. Rienzi and Petrarch gave some slight impulse to archæological collections, and during the latter half of the fifteenth century the exertions of the Medici, and of a long series of popes, sustained by the passionate admiration for antiquity that followed the revival of learning, produced vast works of excavation, which were rewarded by the discovery of numerous statues. [1:259] Art immediately rose to an unparalleled perfection, and an unbounded and almost universal enthusiasm was created. Paul II. indeed, in 1468, directed a fierce persecution against the artists at Rome; [2:259] but as a general rule his successors were warm patrons of art, and Julius II. and Leo X. may even be regarded as the most munificent of their munificent age. All the artists of Rome and Florence made the remains of pagan antiquity their models. Michael Angelo himself proclaimed the Torso Belvedere his true master. [3:259] The distinctive type and tone of Christianity was thus almost banished from art, and replaced by the types of paganism.
Such was the movement which was general in Italian art, but it did not pass unchallenged, and it was retarded by one most remarkable reaction. Under the very palace of the Medici, and in the midst of the noblest collections of pagan art, a great preacher arose who perceived clearly the dangerous tendency, and who employed the full force of a transcendent genius to arrest it. The influence of Savonarola upon painting has been so lately and so fully described by an able living historian of art, [1:260] that it is not necessary to dwell upon it at length. It is sufficient to say, that during the last few years of the fifteenth century a complete religious revival took place in Tuscany, and that Savonarola, who was much more than a brilliant orator, perceived very clearly that in order to make it permanent it was necessary to ally it with the tendencies of the age. He accordingly, like all successful religious revivalists of ancient and modern times, proceeded to identify religion with liberty and with democracy by his denunciations of the tyranny of the Medici, and by the creation of great lending societies, for the purpose of checking the oppressive usury that had become general. He endeavoured to secure the ascendency of his opinions over the coming generation by guiding the education of the children, and by making them the special objects of his preaching. He attempted above all to purify the very sources of Italian life, by regenerating the sacred music, and by restoring painting to its pristine purity. Week after week he launched from the pulpit the most scathing invectives against the artists who had painted prostitutes in the character of the Virgin, who under the pretext of religious art had pandered to the licentiousness of their age, and who had entirely forgotten their true dignity as the teachers of mankind. As these invectives were not inspired by the fanaticism of the old Iconoclasts, but proceeded from one who possessed to the highest degree the Tuscan perception of the beautiful, they produced an impression that was altogether unparalleled. Almost all the leading painters of Italy were collected at Florence, and almost all, under the influence of Savonarola, attempted to revive the religious character of art. The change was immediately exhibited in the painting of Italy, and the impression Savonarola made upon the artists was shown by the conduct of many of them when the great reformer had perished in the flames. Botticelli cast aside his pencil for ever. Baccio della Porta [1:261] retired broken-hearted into a monastery. Perugino (perhaps the greatest of all the purely religious painters of Catholicism) glided rapidly into scepticism, and on his death-bed refused disdainfully the assistance of a confessor. Raphael, who had derived all the religious sentiment of his early paintings from Perugino, was the first to vindicate the orthodoxy of Savonarola by inserting his portrait among those of the doctors of the Church, in the fresco of the Dispute of the Sacrament.
After the death of Savonarola the secularisation of art was portentously rapid. Even Raphael, who exhibits the tendency less than his contemporaries, never shrank from destroying the religious character of his later works by the introduction of incongruous images. Michael Angelo, that great worshipper of physical force, probably represented the influence to the highest degree. Scarcely any other great painter so completely eliminated the religious sentiment from art, and it was reserved for him to destroy the most fearful of all the conceptions by which the early painters had thrilled the people, By making the Last Judgment a study of naked figures, and by introducing into it Charon and his boat, he most effectually destroyed all sense of its reality, and reduced it to the province of artistic criticism. This fresco may be regarded as the culmination of the movement. There were of course at a later period some great pictures, and even some religious painters, but painting never again assumed its old position as the normal and habitual expression of the religious sentiments of the educated. In the first period of mediævalism it had been exclusively religious, and æsthetic considerations were almost forgotten. In the second period the two elements coexisted. In the last period the religious sentiment disappeared, and the conception of beauty reigned alone. Art had then completed its cycle. It never afterwards assumed a prominent or commanding influence over the minds of men.
It is worthy of remark that a transition very similar to that we have traced in painting took place about the same time in architecture. The architect, it is true, does not supply actual objects of worship, and in this respect his art is less closely connected than that of the painter with the history of anthropomorphism; but on the other hand, the period in which men require a visible material object of worship, is also that in which their religious tone and sentiment are most dependent upon imposing sensuous displays. Christianity has created three things which religious poetry has ever recognised as the special types and expressions of its religions sentiment. These are the church bell, the organ, and the Gothic cathedral. The first is said to have been invented by Paulinus, a bishop of Nola in Campania, about the year 400. [1:262] The second appears to have been first used in the Greek Church, and to have passed into the Western Empire in the seventh or eighth century. [2:262] The third arose under the revived sense of beauty of the twelfth century, and preceded by a little the resurrection of painting. The new pictures and the new churches were both the occasions of ebullitions of the most passionate devotion. When Cimabue painted one of his famous Virgins, the people of Florence gathered around it as to a religious festival, they transported it with prayers and thanksgivings to the church, and filled the streets with hymns of joy, because a higher realisation of a religious conception had flashed upon them. Just so those majestic cathedrals that arose almost simultaneously throughout Europe became at once the channel of the enthusiasm of Christendom; the noblest efforts of self-sacrifice were made to erect them, and they were universally regarded as the purest expression of the religious feeling of the age. That this estimate was correct, that no other buildings the world has seen are so admirably calculated to produce a sensation of blended awe and tranquillity, to harmonise or assuage the qualms of passion, to lull to sleep the rebellious energies of the intellect, to create around the mind an artificial, unworldly, but most impressive atmosphere, to represent a Church which acts upon the imagination by obscurity and terrorism, and by images of solemn and entrancing beauty, will be admitted by all who have any perception of the character, or any knowledge of the history of art. Whenever these modes of feeling have been very general, Gothic architecture has been the object of rapturous admiration. Whenever these modes of feeling were very rare, Gothic architecture has sunk into neglect and disfavour. [1:264]
I do not intend to follow at length the vicissitudes of architecture, or to trace the successive phases of its secularisation. It is sufficient to observe, that about the time when the dense ignorance that had overspread Europe was dispelled, there arose a form of architecture which was exclusively and emphatically Christian, which has been universally admitted to be beyond all others the most accordant with the spirit of mediæval religion, and in which the highest sense of beauty was subordinated to the religious sentiment. At the time when the modern and intellectual chaos that preceded the Reformation was universal, and when painting had been secularised and had passed entirely into the worship of beauty, architecture exhibited a corresponding decadence. The old Gothic style was everywhere discarded, and it was supplanted under the influence of Brunelleschi [1:265] by a style which some persons may deem more beautiful, but which is universally admitted to be entirely devoid of a religious character. The gorgeous, gay, and beautifully proportioned edifices that then rose to fashion were, in fact, avowedly formed from the model of the great temples of antiquity, and the beauty to which they aspired was purely classic. Cologne Cathedral, the last of the great mediæval works, remained unfinished while the whole energies of Europe were concentrated upon the church of St. Peter at Rome. The design of this great work was confided to Michael Angelo, who had been the chief agent in the secularisation of painting, and the spirit in which he undertook it was clearly expressed in his famous exclamation, that he would suspend the Pantheon in the air.
Of all the edifices that have been raised by the hand of man, there is none that presents to the historian of the human mind a deeper interest than St. Peter's, and there is certainly none that tells a sadder tale of the frustration of human efforts and the futility of human hopes. It owes its greatest splendour to a worldly and ambitious pontiff, [1:266] who has not even obtained an epitaph beneath its dome. It was designed to be the eternal monument of the glory and the universality of Catholicism, and it has become the most impressive memorial of its decay. The most sublime associations that could appeal to the intellect or the religious sentiment cluster thickly around it, but an association of which none had dreamed has consecrated it, and will abide with it for ever. The most sacred relies of the Catholic faith are assembled within its walls. The genius of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Bramante, Cellini, Thorwaldsen, and Canova has adorned it. Mosaics of matchless beauty reproduce the greatest triumphs of Christian painting, and mingle their varied hues with those gorgeous marbles that might have absorbed the revenues of a kingdom. Beneath that majestic dome, which stands like the emblem of eternity, and dwarfs the proudest monuments below, rest the remains of those who were long deemed the greatest of the sons of men. There lie those mediæval pontiffs who had borne aloft the lamp of knowledge in an evil and benighted age, who had guided and controlled the march of nations, and had been almost worshipped as the representatives of the Almighty. There too the English traveller pauses amid many more splendid objects at the sculptured slab which bears the names of the last scions of a royal race, that for good or for ill had deeply influenced the destiny of his land. But inexpressibly great as are these associations in the eyes of the theologian, the recollection of Luther, and the indulgences, and the Reformation, will tower above them all; while to the philosophic historian St. Peter's possesses an interest of a still higher order. For it represents the conclusion of that impulse, growing out of the anthropomorphic habits of an early civilisation, which had led men for so many centuries to express their religious feelings by sensuous images of grandeur, of obscurity, and of terrorism. It represents the absorption of the religious by the æsthetic element, which was the sure sign that the religious function of architecture had terminated. The age of the cathedrals had passed. The age of the printing press had begun.
I have dwelt at considerable length upon this aspect of the history of art, both because it is, I think, singularly fascinating in itself, and because it reflects with striking fidelity the religious developments of the time. When the organs of a belief are entirely changed, it may be assumed that there is some corresponding change in the modes of thought of which they are the expression; and it cannot be too often repeated, that before printing was invented, and while all conceptions were grossly anthropomorphic, the true course of ecclesiastical history is to be sought much more in the works of the artists than of the theologians. It is now admitted by most competent judges, that the true causes of the Reformation are to be found in the deep change effected in the intellectual habits of Europe by that revival of learning which began about the twelfth century in the renewed study of the Latin classics, and reached its climax after the fall of Constantinople in the diffusion of the knowledge of Greek and of the philosophy of Plato by the Greek exiles. This revival ultimately produced a condition of religious feeling which found its expression in some countries in Protestantism, and in other countries in the prevalence among the educated classes of a diluted and rationalistic Catholicism entirely different from the gross and absorbing superstition of the middle ages. Which of these two forms was adopted in any particular country depended upon many special political or social, or even geographical considerations; but, wherever the intellectual movement was strongly felt, one or other appeared. It is surely a remarkable coincidence, that while the literature of antiquity was thus on a large scale modifying the mediæval modes of thought, the ancient sculptures should on a smaller scale have exercised a corresponding influence upon the art that was their expression. And, although the æsthetic movement was necessarily confined to the upper classes and to the countries in which civilisation was most prominent, it represented faithfully a tendency that in different forms was still more widely displayed. It represented the gradual destruction of the ascendency which the Church had once exercised over every department of intellect, the growing difference in realised belief between the educated and the ignorant, and the gradual disappearance of anthropomorphic or idolatrous conceptions among the former.
The aspect, however, of the subject which is peculiarly significant, is, I think, to be found in the nature of the transition which religious art underwent. The sense of beauty gradually encroached upon and absorbed the feeling of reverence. This is a form of religious decay which is very far from being confined to the history of art. The religion of one age is often the poetry of the next. Around every living and operative faith there lies a region of allegory and of imagination into which opinions frequently pass, and in which they long retain a transfigured and idealised existence after their natural life has died away. They are, as it were, deflected. They no longer tell directly and forcibly upon human actions. They no longer produce terror, inspire hopes, awake passions, or mould the characters of men; yet they still exercise a kind of reflex influence, and form part of the ornamental culture of the age. They are turned into allegories. They are interpreted in a non-natural sense. They are invested with a fanciful, poetic, but most attractive garb. They follow instead of controlling the current of thought, and being transformed by far-fetched and ingenious explanations, they become the embellishments of systems of belief that are wholly irreconcilable with their original tendencies. The gods of heathenism were thus translated from the sphere of religion to the sphere of poetry. The grotesque legends and the harsh doctrines of a superstitious faith are so explained away, that they appear graceful myths foreshadowing and illustrating the conceptions of a brighter day. For a time they flicker upon the horizon with a softly beautiful light that enchants the poet, and lends a charm to the new system with which they are made to blend; but at last this too fades away. Religious ideas die like the sun; their last rays, possessing little heat, are expended in creating beauty.
There can be no question that the steady tendency of the European mind, not merely in the period that elapsed between the revival of learning in the twelfth century and the Reformation, but also in that between the Reformation and our own day, has been to disengage itself more and more from all the conceptions which are connected either with fetishism or with anthropomorphism. The evidence of this meets us on all sides. We find it among the Catholics, in the steady increase in Catholic countries of a purely rationalistic public opinion, in the vast multiplication of rationalistic writings, and also in the profound difference in the degree of reverence attached even by fervent Catholics to images and talismans, in cities like Paris, which are in the centre of the intellectual movement of the age, and in cities like Seville or Naples, which have long been excluded from it. Among the Protestants the same tendency is displayed with equal force in the rapid destruction of what is termed the sacramentarian principle. This is manifest in the steady and almost silent evanescence of that doctrine of consubstantiation which was once asserted with such extreme emphasis as the distinctive mark of the great Lutheran sect, but which is now scarcely held, or if held is scarcely insisted on; [1:270] in the decadence of the High Church party, which in the seventeenth century comprised the overwhelming majority of the Anglican clergy, but which in the nineteenth century, notwithstanding a concurrence of favourable circumstances and the exertions of a leader of extraordinary genius, never included more than a minority; [2:270] in the constant alteration of the proportion between Anglicans and Dissenters, to the detriment of the former; and in the rapid development of continental Protestantism into rationalism.
The dominating cause of this movement is, as I have said, to be found mainly in that process of education which is effected by the totality of the influences of education, and which produces both a capacity and a disposition to rise above material conceptions, and to sublimate all portions of belief. There is, however, one separate branch of knowledge which has exercised such a deep, and at the same time such a distinct, influence upon it, that it requires a separate notice. I mean the progress of physical science modifying our notions of the government of the universe.
In the early Church the interests of theology were too absorbing to leave any room for purely secular studies. If scientific theories were ever discussed, it was simply with a view to elucidating some theological question, and the controversy was entirely governed by the existing notions of inspiration. On this subject two doctrines prevailed, which did not by any means exclude each other, but were both somewhat different from those that are now professed -- one of them being allegorical, the other intensely literal. The first, which had been extremely popular among the Jewish commentators, rested upon the belief, that besides the direct and manifest meaning of a scriptural narrative, which was to be ascertained by the ordinary modes of exegesis, there was an occult meaning, which could be discovered only by the eye of faith, or at all events by human ingenuity guided by the defined doctrines of the Church. Thus, while the historian was apparently relating a very simple narrative, or enforcing a very simple truth, his real and primary object might be to unfold some Christian mystery, of which all the natural objects he mentioned were symbols.
This notion, which in modern times has been systematised and developed with great ingenuity by Swedenborg in his 'Doctrine of Correspondences,' was the origin of many of those extremely far-fetched, and, as they would now appear, absurd interpretations of Scripture that are so numerous in the Fathers, and several of which I have already had occasion to notice. Supposing it to be true, a very important question arose concerning the comparative authority of the historical and the spiritual meanings.
Origen, as is well known, made the principle of allegorical interpretation the basis of a system of freethinking, sometimes of the boldest character. Manichæism, having violently assailed the Mosaic cosmogony, he cordially accepted the assault as far as it was directed against the literal interpretation, turned into absolute ridicule, as palpable fables, the stories of the serpent and the trees of life and of knowledge, and contended that they could only be justified as allegories representing spiritual truths. [1:272] Origen, however, verged far too closely upon heresy to be regarded as a representative of the Church; and the prevailing though not very clearly defined opinion among the orthodox seems to have been, that the literal and the allegorical interpretations should be both retained.
Perhaps the clearest illustration of this doctrine is to be found in a short treatise of St. Augustine in defence of Genesis against the Manichæans, which is very remarkable when we remember that its author was not more distinguished for his great abilities than for the precision and logical characterter of his mind. In this work, St. Augustine reviews and answers at length the objections which the Manichæans had brought against each separate portion of the six days' work. Having done this, he proceeds to lay down the principle, that besides the literal meaning, there was a spiritual meaning which was veiled in the form of allegory. Thus the record of the six days' creation contained, not merely a description of the first formation of the material world, but also a prophetic sketch of the epochs into which the history of mankind was to be divided; the sixth day being the Christian dispensation, in which the man and woman, or Christ and the Church, were to appear upon earth. [1:273] Nor did it foreshadow less clearly the successive stages of the Christian life. First of all, the light of faith streams upon the mind which is still immersed in the waves of sin; then the firmament of discipline divides things carnal from things spiritual; then the regenerated soul is raised above the things of earth, and prepared for the production of virtue; spiritual intelligences rise like the planets in their various orders in the firmament of discipline, good works spring from the waves of trial as the fish from the sea, the purified mind itself produces its own graces, till, sanctified thought being wedded to sanctified action, as Eve to Adam, the soul is prepared for its coming rest. [1:274] In the same way, when the serpent was condemned to creep along the earth, this meant that temptation comes commonly by pride and sensuality. [2:274] When it was condemned to eat earth, this probably signified the vice of curiosity, plunging into the unseen. When it is related that there was a time when no rain fell upon the earth, but that a mist, rising from the ground, watered its face, this means that prophets and apostles were once unnecessary, for every man bore the spring of revelation in his own breast. The literal narrative was true, and so was the spiritual signification; but if in the first anything was found which could not be literally interpreted in a manner consonant either with the doctrines of the Church or with the dignity of the Creator, the passage was to be treated as an enigma, and its true purport was to be sought in the spiritual meaning. [3:274] Some touches of description were inserted solely with a view to that meaning. Thus, when in the summary of the creation that is said to have been effected in one day which was really effected in six, and when the 'green herbs' are specially singled out among created things, these expressions, which, taken literally, would be pointless or inaccurate, are intended merely to direct the mind to particular portions of the allegory.
Together with the method of interpretation laid down in this and in other works of the early Church, there was another different, though, as I have said, not necessarily antagonistic one, of an intensely literal character. Theologians were accustomed to single out any incidental expressions that might be applied in any way to scientific theories, even though they were simply the metaphors of poetry or rhetoric, or the ordinary phrases of common conversation, and to interpret them as authoritative declarations, superseding all the deductions of mere worldly science. The best known example of this is to be found in those who condemned the opinions of Galileo, because it had been said that the 'sun runneth about from one end of heaven to the other,' and that 'the foundations of the earth are so firmly fixed that they cannot be moved.' It may be well, however, to give an illustration of an earlier date of the extent to which this mode of interpretation was carried.
Among the very few scientific questions which occupied a considerable amount of attention in the early Church, one of the most remarkable was that concerning the existence of the Antipodes. The Manichæans had chanced to stumble on the correct doctrine, [1:275] and consequently the Fathers opposed it. Although, however, the leaders of the Church were apparently unanimous in denying the existence of the Antipodes, it appears that the contrary opinion had spread to a considerable extent among the less noted Christians, and some fear was entertained lest it should prove a new heresy.
About the year A.D. 535, in the reign of Justinian, there was living in a monastery of Alexandria an old monk named Cosmas, to whom the eyes of many were then turned. He had been in his youth a merchant, and in that profession had travelled much, especially in the regions of India and of Ethiopia. He was also noticed for his keen and inquisitive mind, and for his scientific attainments, and since he had embraced a religious life he had devoted himself zealously to the relations between Scripture and science. At the earnest request of some of the theologians of his time, he determined, though now somewhat broken in health, and suffering especially, as he tells us, from 'a certain dryness both of the eyes and of the stomach,' to employ the remainder of his life in the composition of a great work, which was not only to refute the 'anile fable' of the Antipodes, but was to form a complete system of the universe, based upon the teaching of Revelation.
This book is called the 'Topographia Christiana,' or Christian Opinion concerning the World.' [1:276] Independently of its main interest, as probably the most elaborate work on the connection between science and the Bible which the early Church has bequeathed us, it is extremely curious on account of its many digressions concerning life and manners in the different nations Cosmas had visited. It opens with a tone of great confidence. It is 'a Christian topography of the universe, established by demonstrations from Divine Scripture, concerning which it is not lawful for a Christian to doubt.' [2:276] In a similar strain the writer proceeds to censure with great severity those weak-minded Christians who had allowed the subtleties of Greek fables, or the deceitful glitter of mere human science, to lead them astray, forgetting that Scripture contained intimations of the nature of the universe of far higher value and authority than any to which unassisted man could attain, and seeking to frame their conceptions simply by the deductions of their reason. Such, Cosmas assures us, is not the course he would pursue. 'To the law and to the testimony' was his appeal, and he doubted not that he could evolve from their pages a system far more correct than any that pagan wisdom could attain.
The system of the universe of which remarks to this affect form the prelude may be briefly stated, According to Cosmas, the world is a flat parallelogram. Its length, which should be measured from east to west, is the double of its breadth, which should be measured from north to south. In the centre is the earth we inhabit, which is surrounded by the ocean, and this again is encircled by another earth, in which men lived before the deluge, and from which Noah was transported in the ark. To the north of the world is a high conical mountain, around which the sun and moon continually revolve. When the sun is hid behind the mountain, it is night; when it is on our side of the mountain, it is day. To the edges of the outer earth the sky is glued. It consists of four high walls rising to a great height and then meeting in a vast concave roof, thus forming an immense edifice of which our world is the floor. This edifice is divided into two stories by the firmament which is placed between the earth and the roof of the sky. A great ocean is inserted in the side of the firmament remote from the earth. This is what is signified by the waters that are above the firmament. The space from these waters to the roof of the sky is allotted to the blest; that from the firmament to our earth to the angels, in their character of ministering spirits.
The reader will probably not regard these opinions as prodigies of scientific wisdom; but the point with which we are especially concerned is the manner they were arrived at. In order to show this, it will be necessary to give a few samples of the arguments of Cosmas.
In the account of the six days' creation, it will be remembered the whole work is summed up in a single sentence, 'This is the book of the generation of the heaven and the earth.' These expressions are evidently intended to comprise everything that is contained in the heaven and the earth. But, as Cosmas contended, if the doctrine of the Antipodes were correct, the sky would surround and consequently contain the earth, and therefore it would only be said, 'This is the book of the generation of the sky.' [1:278] This very simple argument was capable of great extension, for there was scarcely any sacred writer who had not employed the phrase 'the heaven and the earth' to include the whole creation, and who had not thus implied that one of them did not include the other. Abraham, David, Hosea, Isaiah, Zachariah, and many others, were cited. Even Melchisedec, had thus uttered his testimony against the Antipodes. If we examine the subject a little further, we are told that the earth is fixed firmly upon its foundations, from which we may at least infer that it is not suspended in the air; and we are told by St. Paul, that all men are made to live upon the 'face of the earth,' from which it clearly follows that they do not live upon more faces than one, or upon the back. With such a passage before his eyes, a Christian, we are told, should not even speak of the Antipodes.'
Such arguments might be considered a conclusive demonstration of the falseness of the Manichæan doctrine. It remained to frame a correct theory to fill its place. The first great point of illumination that meets us in this task, consists in the fact that St. Paul more than once speaks of the earth as a tabernacle. From this comparison some theologians, and Cosmas among the number, inferred that the tabernacle of Moses was an exact image of our world, This being admitted, the paths of science were greatly simplified. The tabernacle was a parallelogram twice as long from east to west as from north to south, and covered over as a room. Two remarkable passages, mistranslated in the Septuagint, in one of which Isaiah is made to compare the heavens to a vault, and in the other of which Job speaks of the sky as glued to the earth, completed the argument, [1:279] and enabled the writer to state it almost with the authority of an article of faith. [2:279]
It is easy to perceive bow fatal such systems of interpretation must have been to scientific progress. It is indeed true that Cosmas belongs to a period when the intellectual decadence was already begun, that he was himself a writer of no very great abilities, and that some of the more eminent Fathers had treated the subject of the Antipodes with considerable good sense, contending that it was not a matter connected with salvation. [3:279] But still, from the very beginning, the principles of which this book forms an extreme example were floating through the Church. The distinction between theology and science was entirely unfelt. The broad truth which repeated experience has now impressed on almost every unprejudiced student, that it is perfectly idle to quote a passage from the Bible as a refutation of any discovery of scientific men, or to go to the Bible for information on any scientific subject, was altogether undreamed of; [1:280] and in exact proportion to the increase of European superstition did the doctrine of inspiration dilate, till it crushed every department of the human intellect. Thus, when in the middle of the eighth century an Irish saint, named St. Virgilius, who was one of the very few men who then cultivated profane sciences, ventured in Bavaria to assert the existence of the Antipodes, the whole religious world was thrown into a paroxysm of indignation, St. Boniface heading the attack, and Pope Zachary, at least for a time, encouraging it. At last men sailed for the Antipodes, and they then modified their theological opinions on the subject. But a precisely similar contest recurred when the Copernican system was promulgated. Although the discovery of Copernicus was at first uncensured, and his book -- which was published in 1543 -- dedicated to Pope Paul III., as soon as its views had acquired some weight among the learned, the suspicions of the Roman theologians were aroused, and the opinion of the motion of the earth was authoritatively censured, first of all in the persons of Copernicus and two of his disciples, [1:281] and seventeen years later in the condemnation and imprisonment of Galileo.
It is, indeed, marvellous that science should ever have revived amid the fearful obstacles theologians cast in her way. Together with a system of biblical interpretation so stringent, and at the same time so capricious, that it infallibly came into collision with every discovery that was not in accordance with the unaided judgments of the senses, and therefore with the familiar expressions of the Jewish writers, everything was done to cultivate a habit of thought the direct opposite of the habits of science. The constant exaltation of blind faith, the countless miracles, the childish legends, all produced a condition of besotted ignorance, of grovelling and trembling credulity, that can scarcely be paralleled except among the most degraded barbarians. Innovation of every kind was regarded as a crime; superior knowledge excited only terror and suspicion. If it was shown in speculation, it was called heresy. If it was shown in the study of nature, it was called magic. The dignity of the Popedom was unable to save Gerbert from the reputation of a magician, [1:282] and the magnificent labours of Roger Bacon were repaid by fourteen years of imprisonment, and many others of less severe but unremitting persecution. Added to all this, the overwhelming importance attached to theology diverted to it all those intellects which in another condition of society would have been employed in the investigations of science. When Lord Bacon was drawing his great chart of the field of knowledge, his attention was forcibly drawn to the torpor of the middle ages. That the mind of man should so long have remained tranced and numbed, seemed, at first sight, an objection to his theories, a contradiction to his high estimate of human faculties. But his answer was prompt and decisive. A theological system had lain like an incubus upon Christendom, and to its influence, more than to any other single cause, the universal paralysis is to be ascribed. [1:283]
At last the revival of learning came, the regeneration of physical science speedily followed it, and it soon effected a series of most important revolutions in our conceptions.
The first of these was to shake the old view of the position of man in the universe. To an uncivilised man, no proposition appears more self-evident than that our world is the great central object of the universe. Around it the sun and moon appear alike to revolve, and the stars seem but inconsiderable lights destined to garnish its firmament. From this conception there naturally followed a crowd of superstitions which occupy a conspicuous place in the belief of every early civilisation. Man being the centre of all things, every startling phenomenon has some bearing upon his acts. The eclipse, the comet, the meteor, and the tempest, are all intended for him. The whole history of the universe centres upon him, and all the dislocations and perturbations it exhibits are connected with his history. [2:283]
The science which especially corrects these notions is astronomy, but for a considerable period it rather aggravated them, for it was at first inseparably blended with astrology. It is an extremely ingenious and, at least as far as the period of the revival of learning is concerned, an extremely just observation of M. Comte, that this last study marks the first systematic effort to frame a philosophy of history by reducing the apparently capricious phenomena of human actions within the domain of law. [1:284] It may, however, I think, be no less justly regarded as one of the last struggles of human egotism against the depressing sense of insignificance which the immensity of the universe must produce. And certainly it would be difficult to imagine any conception more calculated to exalt the dignity of man than one which represents the career of each individual as linked with the march of worlds, the focus towards which the influences of the most sublime of created things continually converge. [2:284] But, notwithstanding this temporary aberration, there can be no doubt of the eventual tendency of a science which proves that our world is but an infinitesimal fraction in creation, and which, by demonstrating its motion, shows that it is as undistinguished by its position as by its magnitude. The mental importance of such a discovery can hardly be overrated. Those who regard our earth as the centre of the material universe will always attribute to it a similar position in the moral scheme; and when the falsehood of the first position is demonstrated, the second appears incongruous or a difficulty. [1:285]
It has been reserved for the present century and for a new science to supplement the discovery of Copernicus and Galileo by another which has not yet been fully realised, but is no doubt destined to exercise a commanding influence over all future systems of belief: I mean the discoveries of geology relating to the preadamite history of the globe. To those who regard the indefinite as the highest conception of the infinite, the revelation of eternity is written on the rocks, as the revelation of immensity upon the stars. But to more scientific minds the most important effect of geology has not been that it throws back to an incalculable distance the horizon of creation, nor yet that it has renovated and transformed all the early interpretations of the Mosaic cosmogony; but that it has conclusively disproved what was once the universal belief concerning the origin of death. That this fearful calamity appeared in the universe on account of the transgression of man, that every pang that convulses the frame of any created being, every passion or instinct or necessity that contributes to the infliction of suffering, is but the fruit of the disobedience in Paradise, was long believed with unfaltering assurance, and is even now held by many who cannot be regarded as altogether uneducated. And this general proposition became a great archetype, a centre around which countless congenial beliefs were formed, a first principle or measure of probability guiding the predispositions of men in all their enquiries. If all death and all pain resulted from the sin of Adam, it was natural to give every particular instance of death or pain a special signification; and if these the greatest of terrestrial imperfections were connected with the history of man, it was natural to believe that all minor evils were no less so. But geology has now proved decisively that a profound error lurks in these conclusions. It has proved that countless ages before man trod this earth death raged and revelled among its occupants; that it so entered into the original constitution of things, that the agony and the infirmity it implies were known as at present when the mastodon and the dinotherium were the rulers of the world. To deny this is now impossible: to admit it is to abandon one of the root-doctrines of the past.
A second kind of influence which scientific discoveries have exercised upon belief, has been the gradual substitution of the conception of law for that of supernatural intervention. This substitution I have already had occasion to refer to more than once; but I trust the reader will pardon me for reverting to it for a moment, in order to show with more precision than I have hitherto done the extent and nature of the change. It is the especial characteristic of uncivilised men that their curiosity and, still more, their religious sentiments, are very rarely excited by those phenomena which fall obviously within the range of natural laws, while they are keenly affected by all which appear abnormal. It is indeed true that this expression 'natural law' has to the uncivilised man only a very vague and faint signification, that he has no conception of the close connection subsisting between different classes of phenomena, and that he frequently attributes each department even of those which are most regular to the action of special presiding spirits; yet still certain phenomena are recognised as taking place in regular sequences, while others appear capricious, and the latter are associated especially with Divine intervention. Thus comets, meteors, and atmospheric phenomena were connected with religious ideas long after the sun and the stars. Thus, too, games of chance were from a very early period prohibited, not simply on account of the many evils that result from them, but as a species of blasphemy, being an appeal on trivial matters to the adjudication of the Deity. [1:287] Man being unable to calculate how the die will fall, it was believed that this is determined by a Divine interposition, and accordingly the casting of lots became one of the favourite means of approaching the Deity. [2:287]
From this habit of associating religious feelings chiefly with the abnormal, two very important consequences ensued, one of them relating to science and the other to theology. In the first place, as long as abnormal and capricious phenomena are deemed the direct acts of the Deity, all attempts to explain them by science will be discouraged; for such attempts must appear an irreverent prying into the Divine acts, and, if successful, they diminish the sources of religious emotion. [1:288] In the second place, it is evident that the conception of the Deity in an early period of civilisation must be essentially different from that in a later period. The consciousness of the Divine presence in an unscientific age is identified with the idea of abnormal and capricious action; in a scientific age with that of regular and unbroken law. The forms of religious emotions being wholly different, the conceptions of the Deity around which they centre must be equally so. The one conception consists mainly of the ideas of interference, of miracle, of change, and of caprice; the other of regularity, of immutability, and of prescience. The one conception predisposes most to prayer, the other to reverence and admiration.
The first science that rose to perfection at the period I am referring to was astronomy, which early attained a great prominence on account of the revival of astrology that had been produced in the fourteenth century by the renewed study of the works of pagan antiquity, and perhaps still more by the profound influence the Arabian intellect then exercised on Christendom. The great work of Copernicus, the almost simultaneous appearance of Kepler, Galileo, and Tycho Brahe, and the invention and rapid improvement of the telescope, soon introduced the conception of natural law into what had long been the special realm of superstition. The Theory of Vortices of Descartes, although it is now known to have no scientific value, had, as has been truly said, a mental value of the very highest order, for it was the first attempt to form a system of the universe by natural law and without the intervention of spiritual agents. [1:289] Previously the different motions of the heavenly bodies had been for the most part looked upon as isolated, and the popular belief was that they as well as all atmospheric changes were effected by angels. [2:289] In the Talmud a special angel was assigned to every star and to every element, and similar notions were general throughout the middle ages. [3:289] The belief in the existence of a multitude of isolated and capricious phenomena naturally suggested the belief in angels to account for them; and on the other hand, the association of angels with phenomena that obtruded themselves constantly on the attention produced a vivid sense of angelic presence, which was shown in countless legends of angelic manifestations. All this passed away before the genius of Descartes and of Newton. The reign of law was recognised as supreme, and the conceptions that grew out of the earlier notion of the celestial system waned and vanished.
For a long time, however, comets continued to be the refuge of the dying superstition. Their rarity, the eccentricity of their course, the difficulty of ascertaining their nature, and the grandeur and terror of their aspect, had all contributed to impress men with an extraordinary sense of their supernatural character. From the earliest ages they had been regarded as the precursors of calamity, and men being accustomed to regard them in that light, a vast mass of evidence was soon accumulated in support of the belief. It was shown that comets had preceded the death of such rulers as Cæsar, or Constantine the Great, or Charles V. Comets were known to have appeared before the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, before the Peloponnesian war, before the civil wars of Cæsar and Pompey, before the fall of Jerusalem, before the invasion of Attila, and before a vast number of the greatest famines and pestilences that have afflicted mankind. [1:290] Many hundreds of cases of this kind were collected, and they furnished an amount of evidence which was quite sufficient to convince even somewhat sceptical minds, at a time when the supernatural character of comets, harmonising with the prevailing notions of the government of the universe, appeared antecedently probable. Some theologians indeed, while fully acknowledging the ominous character of these apparitions, attempted to explain them in a somewhat rationalistic manner. According to their view, comets were masses of noxious vapour exhaled -- some said from the earth, and others from the sky, which by tainting the atmosphere produced pestilence. Kings were indeed especially liable to succumb beneath this influence, but this was only because their labours and their luxurious habits rendered them weaker than other men. [1:291] Usually, however, comets were simply regarded as supernatural warnings sent to prognosticate calamity. Two or three great men made vain efforts to shake the belief. Thus, during one of the panics occasioned by a great comet, Paracelsus wrote forcibly against the popular notions, [2:291] which he assailed on theological grounds as forming a species of fatalism, and as being inconsistent with the belief in Providence. In the midst of a similar panic in 1680, Bayle made a similar effort, but, in obedience to the spirit of the age, he adopted not a theological but a philosophical point of view. He displayed with consummate skill the weakness of a process of reasoning which rested on an arbitrary selection of chance coincidences, and he made the subject the text for one of the very best books that have ever been written on the gradual consolidation of superstitions. [3:291] But theology and philosophy were alike impotent till science appeared to assist them. Halley predicted the revolution of comets, and they were at once removed to the domain of law, and one of the most ancient of human superstitions was destroyed.
The process which took place in astronomy furnishes but a single though perhaps an extreme example of that which, in the seventeenth century, took place in every field of science. Everywhere the rapid conquests of the new spirit were substituting the idea of natural law for that of supernatural interference, and persuading men that there must be a natural solution even where they were unable to discover it. The writings of Bacon, although their influence has, I think, been considerably exaggerated, partly through national pride, and partly because men have accepted too readily the very unfair judgments Bacon expressed of his contemporaries, [1:292] probably contributed more than any other single cause to guide the movement, and have, in England at least, become almost supreme. Chemistry disengaged itself from alchemy, as astronomy had done from astrology. The Academy del Cimento was established in Tuscany in 1657, the Royal Society in London in 1660, and the Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1666. The many different sciences that were simultaneously cultivated not merely rescued many distinct departments of nature from superstition, but also by their continual convergence produced the conception of one all-embracing scheme of law, taught men habitually to associate the Divine presence with order rather than with miracle, and accustomed them to contemplate with admiring reverence the evidence of design displayed in the minutest animalcule and in the most shortlived ephemera, and also the evidence of that superintending care which adapts a sphere of happiness for the weakest of created beings.
A very important consequence of this change was that theological systems lost much of theft harsh and gloomy character. As long as men drew their notions of the Deity from what they regarded as the abnormal, their attention was chiefly concentrated upon disasters, for these are for the most part exceptional, while the principal sources of happiness are those which are most common. Besides, it is one of the most unamiable characteristics of human nature that it is always more impressed by terror than by gratitude. Accordingly, the devotion of our ancestors was chiefly connected with storms and pestilences and famine and death, which were regarded as penal inflictions, and consequently created an almost maddening terror. All parts of belief assumed a congenial hue, till the miserable condition of man and the frightful future that awaited him became the central ideas of theology. But this, which in an early phase of civilisation was perfectly natural, soon passed away when modern science acquired an ascendency over theological developments; for the attention of men was then directed chiefly to those multitudinous contrivances which are designed for the wellbeing of all created things, while the terrorism once produced by the calamities of life was at least greatly diminished when they were shown to be the result of general laws interwoven with the whole system of the globe, and many of which had been in operation before the creation of man.
Another branch of scientific progress which I may notice on account of its influence upon speculative opinions, is the rapid growth of a morphological conception of the universe. According to the great philosophers of the seventeenth century, our world was a vast and complicated mechanism called into existence and elaborated instantaneously in all its parts by the creative fiat of the Deity. In the last century, however, and still more in the present century, the progress of chemistry, the doctrine of the interchange and indestructibility of forces, and the discoveries of geology, have greatly altered this conception. Without entering into such questions as that of the mutability of species, which is still pending, and which the present writer would be altogether incompetent to discuss, it will be admitted that in at least a large proportion of the departments of science, the notion of constant transformation, constant progress under the influence of natural law from simple to elaborate forms, has become dominant. The world itself, there is much reason to believe, was once merely a vapour, which was gradually condensed and consolidated, and its present condition represents the successive evolutions of countless ages. This conception, which exhibits the universe rather as an organism than a mechanism, and regards the complexities and adaptations it displays rather as the results of gradual development from within than of an interference from without, is so novel, and at first sight so startling, that many are now shrinking from it with alarm, under the impression that it destroys the argument from design, and almost amounts to the negation of a Supreme Intelligence. But there can, I think, be little doubt that such fears are, for the most part, unfounded. [1:295] That matter is governed by mind, that the contrivances and elaborations of the universe are the products of intelligence, are propositions which are quite unshaken, whether we regard these contrivances as the results of a single momentary exercise of will, or of a slow, consistent, and regulated evolution. The proofs of a pervading and developing intelligence, and the proofs of a coördinating and combining intelligence, are both untouched, nor can any conceivable progress of science in this direction destroy them. If the famous suggestion, that all animal and vegetable life results from a single vital germ, and that all the different animals and plants now existent were developed by a natural process of evolution from that germ, were a demonstrated truth, we should still be able to point to the evidences of intelligence displayed in the measured and progressive development, in those exquisite forms so different from what blind chance could produce, and in the manifest adaptation of surrounding circumstances to the living creature, and of the living creature to surrounding circumstances. The argument from design would indeed be changed, it would require to be stated in a new form, but it would be fully as cogent as before. Indeed it is, perhaps, not too much to say, that the more fully this conception of universal evolution is grasped, the more firmly a scientific doctrine of Providence will be established, and the stronger will be the presumption of a future progress.
The effects of this process which physical science is now undergoing are manifested very clearly in the adjacent field of history, in what may be termed the morphological conception of opinions -- that is to say, in the belief that there is a law of orderly and progressive transformation to which our speculative opinions are subject, and the causes of which are to be sought in the general intellectual condition of society. As the main object of this whole book is to illustrate the nature and progress of this conception, it is not necessary to dwell upon it at present, and I advert to it simply for the purpose of showing its connection with the discoveries of science.
It will be remarked, that in this as in most other cases the influence physical sciences have exercised over speculative opinions has not been of the nature of a direct logical proof displacing an old belief, but rather the attracting influence of a new analogy. As I have already had occasions to observe, an impartial examination of great transitions of opinions will show that they have been effected not by the force of direct arguments, not by such reasons as those which are alleged by controversialists and recorded in creeds, but by a sense of the incongruity or discordance of the old doctrines with other parts of our knowledge. Each man assimilates the different orders of his ideas. There must always be a certain keeping or congruity or analogy between them. The general measure of probability determines belief, and it is derived from many departments of knowledge. Hence it is that whenever the progress of enquiry introduces a new series of conceptions into physical science, which represents one aspect of the relations of the Deity to man, these conceptions, or at least something like them, are speedily transferred to theology, which represents another.
It must, however, be acknowledged, that there are some influences resulting from physical science which are deeply to be deplored, for they spring neither from logical arguments nor from legitimate analogies, but from misconceptions that are profoundly imbedded in our belief, or from fallacies into which our minds are too easily betrayed. The increased evidence of natural religion furnished by the innumerable marks of creative or coördinating wisdom which science reveals, can hardly be over-estimated, [1:297] nor can it be reasonably questioned that a world governed in all its parts by the interaction of fixed natural laws implies a higher degree of designing skill than a chaos of fortuitous influences irradiated from time to time by isolated acts of spiritual intervention. Yet still so generally is the idea of Divine action restricted to that of miracle, that every discovery assigning strange phenomena their place in the symmetry of nature has to many minds an irreligious appearance; which is still further strengthened by the fact, that while physical science acquiesces in the study of laws as the limit of its research, even scientific men sometimes forget that the discovery of law is not an adequate solution of the problem of causes. When all the motions of the heavenly bodies have been reduced to the dominion of gravitation, gravitation itself still remains an insoluble problem. Why it is that matter attracts matter, we do not know -- we perhaps never shall know. Science can throw much light upon the laws that preside over the development of life; but what life is, and what is its ultimate cause, we are utterly unable to say. The mind of man, which can track the course of the comet and measure the velocity of light, has hitherto proved incapable of explaining the existence of the minutest insect or the growth of the most humble plant. In grouping phenomena, in ascertaining their sequences and their analogies, its achievements have been marvellous; in discovering ultimate causes it has absolutely failed. An impenetrable mystery lies at the root of every existing thing. The first principle, the dynamic force, the vivifying power, the efficient causes of those successions which we term natural laws, elude the utmost efforts of our research. The scalpel of the anatomist and the analysis of the chemist are here at fault. The microscope, which reveals the traces of all-pervading, all-ordaining intelligence in the minutest globule, and displays a world of organised and living beings in a grain of dust, supplies no solution of the problem. We know nothing or next to nothing of the relations of mind to matter, either in our own persons or in the world that is around us; and to suppose that the progress of natural science eliminates the conception of a first cause from creation, by supplying natural explanations, is completely to ignore the sphere and limits to which it is confined.
It must be acknowledged also, that as the increasing sense of law appears to many the negation of the reality or at all events of the continuity of the Divine action, so an increased sense of the multiplicity of the effects of matter not unfrequently leads to a negation of the existence of mind. The mathematician ridiculed by Berkeley who maintained that the soul must be extension, and the fiddler who was convinced that it must be harmony, are scarcely exaggerated representatives of the tendency manifested by almost every one who is much addicted to a single study to explain by it all the phenomena of existence. Nearly every science when it has first arisen has had to contend with two great obstacles -- with the unreasoning incredulity of those who regard novelty as necessarily a synonyme for falsehood, and with the unrestrained enthusiasm of those who, perceiving vaguely and dimly a new series of yet undefined discoveries opening upon mankind, imagine that they will prove a universal solvent. It is said that when, after long years of obstinate disbelief, the reality of the great discovery of Harvey dawned upon the medical world, the first result was a school of medicine which regarded man simply as an hydraulic machine, and found the principle of every malady in imperfections of circulation, [1:299] The same history has been continually reproduced. That love of symmetry which makes men impatient to reduce all phenomena to a single cause, has been the parent of some of the noblest discoveries, but it has also, by the imperfect classifications it has produced, been one of the most prolific sources of human error. In the present day, when the study of the laws of matter has assumed an extraordinary development, and when the relations between the mind and the body are chiefly investigated with a primary view to the functions of the latter, it is neither surprising nor alarming that a strong movement towards materialism should be the consequence.
But putting aside these illegitimate consequences, it appears that in addition to the general effects of intellectual development upon theological opinions in enabling men more readily to conceive the invisible, and thus rescuing them from idolatry, and in enabling them to spiritualise and elevate their ideal, and thus emancipating them from anthropomorphism, that particular branch of intellectual progress which is comprised under the name of physical science has exercised a distinct and special influence, which has been partly logical, but more generally the assimilating influence of analogy. It has displaced man's early conception of the position of his world in the universe, and of the relation of the catastrophes it exhibits to his history. It has substituted a sense of law for a predisposition to the miraculous, and taught men to associate the Deity with the normal rather than with the abnormal. It has in a great degree divested calamity of its penal character, multiplied to an incalculable extent the evidences of the Divine beneficence, and at the same time fostered a notion of ordered growth which has extended from the world of matter to the world of mind.
These have been its chief effects upon belief. It has also exercised a considerable influence upon the systems of Biblical interpretation by which that belief is expressed. The first great impulse to Rationalistic Biblical criticism was probably given by the antagonism that was manifested between the discovery of Galileo and Scripture as it was interpreted by the host of theologians who argued after the fashion of Cosmas. New facts were discovered and therefore a new system of interpretation was required, and men began to apply their critical powers to the sacred writings for the purpose of bringing them into conformity with opinions that had been arrived at independently by the reason. Each new discovery of science that bore upon any Scriptural question, each new order of tendencies evoked by the advance of civilisation, produced a repetition of the same process.
Probably the earliest very elaborate example of this kind of interpretation was furnished by a French Protestant, named La Peyrère, in a book which was published in 1655. [1:300] The author, who fully admitted though he endeavoured to restrict the sphere of the miraculous, had been struck by some difficulties connected with the ordinary doctrine of Original Sin, and by some points in which science seemed to clash with the assertions of the Old Testament; and he endeavoured to meet them by altogether isolating the Biblical history from the general current of human affairs. Adam, he maintained, was not the father of the human race, but simply the progenitor of the Jews, and the whole antediluvian history is only that of a single people. Thus the antiquity which the Eastern nations claimed might be admitted, and the principal difficulties attending the Deluge were dissolved. It was altogether a mistake to suppose that death and sickness and suffering were the consequences of the transgression. Adam had by this act simply incurred spiritual penalties, which descended upon the Jews. 'In the day thou eatest thou shalt die' could not have been meant literally, because it was not literally fulfilled; nor could the curse upon the serpent, because the motion of the serpent along the ground is precisely that which its conformation implies. The existence of men who were not of the family of Adam is shadowed obscurely in many passages, but appears decisively in the history of Cain, who feared to wander forth lest men should kill him, and who built a city at a time when, according to the common view, he was almost alone in the world. [1:301] The mingling of the sons of God and the daughters of men means the intermarriage between the two races. The Deluge is an absolute impossibility if regarded as universal, but not at all surprising if regarded as a partial inundation.
Proceeding to the history of a later period, La Peyrère in the first place denies the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. In defence of this position he urges the account of the death of Moses, and he anticipates several of those minute criticisms which in our own day have acquired so great a prominence. The phrase 'These are the words which Moses spake beyond Jordan,' the notice of the city which is called 'Jair to the present day,' the iron bedstead of Og still shown in Rabbath, the difficulties about the conquest of the Idumeans, and a few other passages, seem to show that the compilation of these books was long posterior to the time of Moses; while certain signs of chronological confusion which they evince render it probable that they are not homogeneous, but are formed by the fusion of several distinct documents. It should be observed, too, that they employ a language of metaphor and of hyperbole which has occasionally given rise to misapprehensions, special instances of providential guidance being interpreted as absolute miracles. Thus, for example, the wool of the Jewish flocks was quite sufficient to furnish materials for clothing in the desert, and the assertion that the clothes of the Jews waxed not old is simply an emphatic expression of that extraordinary providence which preserved them from all want for forty years in the wilderness. At the same time La Peyrère does not deny that the Jewish history is full of miracles, but he maintains very strongly that these were only local, and that the general course of the universe was never disturbed to effect them. The prolongation of the day at the command of Joshua was not produced by any alteration in the course of the earth or sun, but was simply an atmospheric phenomenon such as is sometimes exhibited in the Arctic regions. The darkness at the Crucifixion was also local; the retrogression of the shadow on the sun-dial in the reign of Hezekiah did not result from a disturbance of the order of the heavenly bodies; the light that stood over the cradle of Christ was a meteor, for a star could not possibly mark out with precision a house.
The author of this curious book soon after its publication became a Roman Catholic, and an consequence recanted his opinions, but the school of Biblical interpretation of which he was perhaps the first founder continues actively to the present day. To trace its history in detail does not fall within the plan of the present work. It will be sufficient to say that there are two natural theories by which men have endeavoured to explain the rise of religions, and that each of these theories has in particular ages or countries or conditions of thought exercised a supreme ascendency. [1:303] The first method, which attributes religions to special and isolated causes, found its principal ancient representative in Euhemerus, who maintained that the pagan gods were originally illustrious kings, deified after death either by the spontaneous reverence of the people or by the cunning of the rulers. [2:303] The work of Euhemerus, being translated by Ennius, is said to have contributed largely to that diffusion of scepticism in Rome which preceded the rise of Christianity; and its theory was generally adopted by the Fathers, who, however, added that devils had assumed the names of the dead. [3:303] To this class of criticism belong also all attempts to explain miracles by imposture, or by optical delusions, or by the misconception of some natural phenomenon, or by any other isolated circumstance. The other method, which is called mythical, and which was adopted among the ancients by the Pythagoreans, the Neo-Platonists, and the Gnostics, regards different dogmatic systems as embodying religious sentiments or great moral conceptions that are generally diffused among mankind, or as giving a palpable and (so to speak) material form to the aspirations of the societies in which they spring. Thus, while fully admitting that special circumstances have an important influence over the rise of opinions, the interpreters of this school seek the true efficient cause in the general intellectual atmosphere that is prevalent. They do not pretend to explain in detail how different miracles came to be believed, but they assert that in a certain intellectual condition phenomena which are deemed miraculous will always appear, and that the general character of those phenomena will be determined by the prevailing predisposition. The first of these schools of interpretation was general in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and has been especially favoured by nations like the ancient Romans, or like the modern English and French, who are distinguished for a love of precise and definite conclusions; while the second has been most prominent in the present century, and in Germany.
[Third Chapter Continued on Next File]


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Gynecological cancers are cancers of the female reproductive
organs. They are:
Cervical Cancer
The cervix is the lowest part of the uterus and connects to
the upper end of the vagina. To read more on Cervical
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Ovarian Cancer
The ovaries are two small organs located on each side of the
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Uterine Cancer
The uterus is a female reproductive organ. It is lined with
a tissue called the endometrium.
To read more on Endometrial Cancer>>>
To read more on Sarcoma of the
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Vaginal Cancer
Cancer of the vagina, a rare kind of cancer in women,
is a disease in which cancer (malignant) cells are found in
the tissues of the vagina. To read more on Vaginal
Cancer >>>
Vulvar Cancer
Cancer of the vulva, a rare kind of cancer in women,
is a disease in which cancer (malignant) cells are found in
the vulva. To read more on Vulvar Cancer
Gestational Trophoblastic Disease
Gestational trophoblastic tumor, a rare cancer in women, is
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What's New
in Gynecological Cancers?
Fighting Cancer with Sea Squirts
One of the dozens of ovarian cancer clinical trials now under way in the Cancer
Center involves a novel drug called ET-743, which is derived from the toxin produced
by the Mediterranean sea squirt. ET-743 has shown promise in other forms of cancer
with generally tolerable side effects. This drug is now in a phase 2 clinical
trial, the purpose of which is to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of a new
agent, for patients with advanced ovarian cancer.
Ellen Goldberg chose to begin treatment with ET-743 last spring, when her levels
of CA-125 started climbing following her initial treatment with surgery and chemotherapy.
Since beginning this therapy, Goldberg's CA-125 levels have plummeted (though
not to normal levels) and, thus far, have remained low. Moreover, she has experienced
none of the commonly reported side effects, such as fatigue or dry mouth. "When
I was offered this new therapy, I said yes immediately," says Goldberg.
"I'm going for broke, so I figured why not? And while I may not be
cured, I feel great."
Many other agents that work in novel ways are offered to selected patients through
clinical trials. For example, there are agents, such as EMD 72000, that block
growth receptors on cancer cells, causing the cells to grow slowly and ultimately
die. There is CTLA4, an antibody that enables the immune's system's
fighter T cells to battle cancer cells more effectively. And there is HMFG-1,
an antibody that will deliver a payload of a radioactive material directly into
any cancer cells lingering in the abdomen following surgery and, it is hoped,
destroy them.
"In the '60s, we had one drug to treat ovarian cancer," says
Fuller. " In the '70s, it was two, in the '80s, three, and in
the '90s, six. Today, we have about 30 drugs, many of which work in entirely
different ways, so we are witnessing an exponential rise in the number of drug
therapies we can offer patients."
Source: Synergy, Winter 2004, Vol 2, #1
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