cover. They alone have the right to touch him. From time to time they take him in their hands and let him be seen."* Every great people has reached out and upward searching for God. Every great people has had its religion or religions, which have reflected the supreme conclusions of the master spirits of given times. These religions have unquestionably on the whole been very helpful to the peoples to whom they have appealed in a compelling way. Yet the poet insists that in the nature of the case they are but reflections of the divine light, much as the moon reflects the light of the sun, and they who receive religious truth only through the sacred books receive intellectual images more or less distorted by the reflector. “Religions,” he tells us, "moons of God, give light to man in the night. Hence those phantoms, those illusions, those optical falsehoods, those terrors, those apparitions, those visions which fill the horizon of the peoples, among whom religion's day has not yet dawned. "The ghost which looms from this doubtful brightness is called superstition. "Every ray that comes directly from the sun bears at its extremity the figure of the sun, and whatever the form of the opening through which it reaches us, whether this opening be square, polygonal or triangular, it ignores this form, and invariably imprints upon the surface which arrests it a circular image. Thus all light which comes directly from God imprints upon our mind-no matter what may be the character of the brainthe exact idea of God, and leaves thereon His real imprint. "At the same time, just as the rays of the moon lose the figure of the sun and bring to us instead of its image a certain aspect of the medium through which they pass, the idea of God, reflected by religions and proceeding from them, loses, *Intellectual Autobiography. so to speak, the form of God and takes on all the more or less miserable configurations of the human brain. "In politics, I put the country above party. In religion, I put God above dogma. If I were sure that this grave statement would be heard and understood seriously I would say that I am of all religions as I am of all parties. Here of signifies in the same manner. I believe in the God of a men, I believe in the love of all hearts, I believe in the truth of all souls. "This prophet is a seer. This conscience, which brings enlightenment to an age, sees farther than that age but participates in the age. It has its transparency or opacity, it has its purity or its rawness, it has its savagery or its refinement. It has in certain measure the same color and the same density. Hence, according to the surface proper to each age and each mirror, a more or less clearcut image of the star, sometimes a vague glimmering as with Socrates, sometimes shadow as with Spinoza, sometimes the specter as with Torquemada. "Hence among the peoples all those fierce reverberations of God-idolatries. Hence all that falsehood projected by truth. "Sometimes the brain of the prophet is prism as well as mirror, and irises with superstition and fable the contour of God. Sometimes this brain is in shadow and reflects Being on a black background; then you have the pagoda of Juggernaut, and earth has a place, a region, a given point where the reflection of God is the Demon. Misinterpretation of the translator goes to such a length. can. Take of it yourselves if they no longer give it to you pure and in abundant measure. A religion is a translation of God proportionate to your spiritual endowment. "You have not the strength to be religious? Then become a devotee."* Hugo protests against man's attempt to picture in words the future state of the soul. In speaking of the teachings of the various religions in regard to a future abode for the soul he says: "They talk of heaven, but they make of it a temple, a palace, a city. It is called Olympus, it is called Sion. Heaven has towers, heaven has domes, heaven has gardens, heaven has staircases, heaven has a gate and a porter. The bunch of keys is confided by Brahma to Bhawany, by Allah to Abou-Bekr, and by Jehovah to Saint Peter."* "Conscience," Hugo holds, "is the interior solar spectrum. The sun illumines the body, God illumines the mind. "In the depths of the human brain there is, as it were, the moon of God. "To be one end of the ray of which the ideal is the other; to sing in low-toned voice to the life of the present the mysterious song of the life of the future; to strive to infuse spirit into the flesh, virtue into the word, God into man-such is the sublime office of that winged splendor, conscience. "The endeavor of man, the divine function of freedom, the end of life is to establish on earth in the form of actual works the three ideal notions, to strive that the true, the beautiful, the just be made flesh, in a word to leave after him his conscience translated into action. Human progress lives upon this triple manifestation unceasingly renewed. to one of the three pillars of that pediment of the infinite which we name Truth, Beauty, Justice. Certain ones have labored at two. He who should labor at three would approach God. "To place conscience beyond self, slowly, day by day, to transform it into external reality, into actions or words; to be born with ideas, to die with works; in a word, to upbuild the ideal, to construct it in art and be a poet, to construct it in science and be a philosopher, to construct it in life and be just—such is the goal of human destiny."* We close this consideration of the views of this great and many-sided man of genius with the following beautiful observations and admonitions: 66 'Since it is given to no one whatsoever to escape the dream, let us accept it. Only let us try to have the right one. Men hate, are brutes, fight, lie; consider the first civilization that occurs, whether ancient or modern, consider any age whatever, your own or some other, and you see nothing but imposters, fighters, conquerors, robbers, murderers, executioners, wicked men, hypocrites; all this is somnambulism. Leave to this bloodstained host their fury and their gluttony. Leave to the violent and to the forces of blindness their hurricane fury. The tempest of human passion-how pitiful! Simulacra pursuing chimeras! "Leave their dream unto the shadows. But share you your bread with little children, see that no one goes about you with naked feet, look kindly upon mothers nursing their children on the doorstep of humble cottages, walk through the world without malevolence, do not knowingly crush the humblest flower, respect the nests of birds, bow to the purple from afar and to the poor at close range. Rise to labor, go to rest with prayer, go to sleep in the unknown, having for your pillow the infinite; love, believe, hope, *Intellectual Autobiography. live, be like him who has a watering-pot in his hand, only let your watering-pot be filled with good deeds and good works; never be discouraged, be magi and be father, and if you have lands cultivate them, and if you have sons rear them, and if you have enemies bless themall with that sweet and unobtrusive authority that comes to the soul in patient expectation of the eternal dawn."* B. O. FLOWER. Boston, Mass. THE MEANING OF THE INVASION OF EUROPEAN SOCIALISM. THC BY HENRY FRANK. HOUGHTFUL citizens of this country needs must be "cudgeling their brains" with the question: What is the meaning of the recent rapid increase of the organized Socialists of the nation and what sinister or salutary prophecy may inhere in their prospective uprise as a political power? That Socialism, Herbert Spencer's ideal of the Coming Slavery, in the form of a distinctive political party, should be gaining a strong footing in this, the supposed freest of all governments, is a fact which must compel conservative political economists to open wide their eyes and seek, if possible, a new interpretation of their pet theories. Until but recently it had been supposed that Socialism, as such, was an exotic which would but ill endure transplanting on American soil; that, indeed, it was emphatically a doctrine of German or French extraction which could find but little adaptation to the needs of this country. On Herbert Spencer's assumption that Socialism is but a complement of autocracy, and that when it shall have been finally established as the new order of society the most mechanical and stereotyped form of social slavery, of which the human race has yet seen an exemplification, will be witnessed, it is hard to understand why this new political conception should find any favor in a democracy advanced as our own. On the contrary if Socialism, as its scientific advocates insist, is more truly a complement of democracy than it is of autocracy, and that when it is fully established for the first time in human history will individual freedom be realized, a reason for its adaptation to the conditions of our nation may be discerned. Nevertheless, until very recently it was supposed to be an indisputable fact that Socialism was inherently foreign to the American idea, and being essentially of French and German extraction, would ever be ill suited to the requirements of our political conditions. It has been argued that where paternalism in government has become so predominant an idea in the political activities of a people as it has on the Continent of Europe, it would appeal to such people as but a natural step to transfer the entire machinery of government from hereditary rulers to the people at large. The people would then merely take the place of the former reigning families, the form of government not being essentially altered, the only alteration taking place in its officering and execution. Concerning this idea, so prevalent on the Continent, Herbert Spencer in a tone of caution *Intellectual Autobiography. says: "Impressed with the miseries existing under our present social arrangements, and not regarding these miseries as caused by the ill working of a human nature but partially adapted to the social state, they imagine them to be forthwith curable by this or that arrangement." Hence they appeal to the existing government to relieve them by this and that legislation. Among a people who have been reared in the political conception of their dependence upon class government, when the notion prevails that the ruling class is hazardous to the class that is ruled, which of course is ever in the majority, the idea that the larger class shall itself absorb the smaller and become the absolute legislator and common executive seems to follow as a natural corollary. Hence in Germany and on the Continent at large the socialistic political conception, which was primarily paternalistic, found speedy rooting and became widely cultivated. class cannot resist them, and we often hear persons of that class saying, "Why, indeed perhaps everything may go on better thus; why should there not be a trial?" Moreover, Socialism has reached the Upper Classes, it has a seat in the Academies, it speaks from the lecture chair in the Universities. The password now repeated by workmen's associations has been spoken by Savants; Conservatives have led the attack against Mammonism, and have been the loudest in uttering their grievance against Capitalism. We do not see anything like this outside of Germany.' But in this country, where the people are already supposed to be in possession of the reins of government, where shall we seek an explanation of a civic and political uprising so similar to that which has during the last decade so thoroughly swept the European continent? As an illustration of the common belief that the total emphasis and appropriation of the philosophy of Socialism is to be found in Germany alone, the home of its birth, I will here quote some passages from Anglo-Saxon Superiority, by Demoulins, a work which ran through numerous French editions and was finally published in English in 1898, from which edition these extracts are taken, he says: "That Germany is a focus of Socialism is unanimously acknowledged by all writers who have treated the subject and by Socialists themselves. 'A remarkable thing,' says a member of the Reichstag, Bamberger, is that Socialistic ideas have found nowhere a better welcome than in Germany. Not only do these ideas fascinate the work people, but the middle This writer published his book with a view of showing the world that the Anglo-Saxon peoples were superior to all others because they ever resisted the fancy of potential world solidarity, and kept themselves aloof from the delusions of a political economy that discouraged the workings and results of economic Individualism. Therefore he gloats over the fact that everywhere, as he insists, German Socialism has been resisted in the Anglo-Saxon world, and undertakes to demonstrate this fact in the following quotations: "This throws light upon another fact, namely, that Socialism does not find in all countries an equally prepared soil. Although the countries we have just instanced (France, Belgium, Russia, Switzerland, Italy) seem well disposed for receiving the seed; there are countries where the seed does not seem to germinate easily. "Such are Norway, Great Britain and the United States, and other countries inhabited by the Anglo-Saxon race. The historians of socialism betray a most curious embarrassment when transferring their attention to England: they have nothing or almost nothing to relate for the very good reason that there is nothing to say.' Another author trying to explain the circumstance writes: "The English are essentially Individualists. They want to be left to manage their own affairs in their own way. They object by temperament to any enrollment, to any surrender of their personal rule of conduct to some common action. Such is, I believe, one of the reasons which makes them hostile to Socialism.' "If now we proceed to the United States we find that there again Socialism has been unable to produce any impression on the Anglo-Saxon race. This race resists Socialism as the American vine resists Phyloxera. In America the adepts of Socialism are nearly all recruited from the Germans and Irish. . The Socialists have not succeeded in starting one single Socialist newspaper printed in English in the whole United States. The ten daily newspapers that do exist are printed in German. This is a significant fact. ... But the "Thus in the Anglo-Saxon world, as everywhere else, Socialism is propagated only by Germans. with them (the (the Anglo-Saxons) propaganda is a complete failure. . . . What may be the cause of it is to be found in the essential fact that the formation of the Anglo-Saxon race is as deeply Particularistic as that of the German race is Communistic. Whilst with the latter, the public Powers-the State-have assumed an importance which stunted private and local initiative, with the former, on the contrary, the public powers never were developed to such a point, but were kept in check by the combined private and local forces. Germany is the greatest contemporary center of Authority; the Anglo-Saxon world is the greatest center of Self-Help and Self-Government." Undoubtedly the learned author's facts and conclusions were wholly true at the time his work was published only a decade ago, also without a doubt his psychological analysis of the AngloSaxon and Teutonic races is true beyond dispute. But the facts and philosophy which he sets forth only the more cause students of recent political events to marvel at the threatened political revolution. A decade ago Demoulins could honestly assert that "the Socialist party exists as yet (in the United States) only in name; for nowhere can it yet affirm itself as a political party.” over But what are the facts to-day? Not only has the philosophy of Socialism invaded a large portion of the AngloSaxon race in America, but it has especially seized strongly on the cultured and refined among the masses. It has entered the Universities and often insists on asserting its voice loudly in the chairs established and endowed by eminent capitalists. It has hurled itself with somewhat furious intrusion into the pulpit, and does not hesitate to speak its raucous accent even where corporate interests are known to cast an shadowing pall upon the pews. It has evolved from the old Germanistic Socialist-Labor party a strongly Americanized Social Democracy, which was able to cast nearly a half-million votes in the Presidential election of 1904, although in the first election in which the SocialistLabor Party participated, only six years before, it could muster but slightly more than two thousand votes. It has not only now succeeded in establishing itself as a party "with more than a name, but its right to the party emblem has been sustained in nearly all the states of the union in local and national elections. It sustains several able English periodicals and at least one daily. More than this, although our author and critic is indisputably correct in asserting that the temperamental proclivities of the Anglo-Saxon incline him to the Particularistic form of government and society, whereas those of the German race incline them to the Communistic, yet, because of the overweening influence and appalling encroachments of Capitalism on the liberty of the individual, we see in this great country-the primal seat of freedom and personal liberty— the spectacle of one of its most influential |