"But because (according to the wise Solomon) wisdom entereth not into a malicious soul, and science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul, it behoveth thee to serve, love, and fear God, and in Him to put all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and to cleave to Him by faith formed of charity, so that thou mayest never be separated from Him by sin.

"Hold in suspicion the deceits of the world. Set not thy heart on vanity; for this life passeth away, but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever. Be serviceable to all thy neighbors and love them as thyself. Revere thy preceptors. Flee from the company of those whom thou wouldst not resemble, and receive not in vain the graces which God hath given thee.

"And when thou shalt perceive that thou hast attained unto all the knowledge that is acquired in those parts, return unto me, that I may see thee and give thee my blessing before I die.

"My son, the peace and grace of our Lord be with thee. Amen."

One of the important teachers at this time in France was Julius Caesar Scaliger, born in Italy, particularly famous for the part that he took in the controversy over Ciceronianism, and who defended Cicero from the attacks of Erasmus, maintaining that the Latin orator was absolutely perfect. Scaliger is notorious for having introduced the bitterest kind of personalities into classical controversy. Unfortunately, his example was widely followed. His son is the better known Scaliger, but was only ten years old at the time our century closes. His education gives an idea of the educational methods of the century. When he was but fourteen he was required to produce daily a short Latin declamation and to keep a written record of the perennial flow of his father's Latin verse. It was thus that he acquired his early mastery of Latin. But he was already conscious that "not to know Greek was to know nothing" (Sandys).

In Spain there was a magnificent development of scholarship which began to make itself felt shortly after the discovery of America. Here, as elsewhere, contact with Italy gave the initiative. A Spanish nobleman, Guzman, who visited Italy during the Council of Florence, returned with translations of some of Cicero's works and of Quintilian, and interest was {538} awakened. Antonio of Lebrixa, commonly called Nebrisensis, after spending twenty years in Italy, returned in 1473 to lecture at Seville, Salamanca and Alcalá and to publish grammars of Latin and Greek as well as Hebrew. After this Barbosa, a pupil of Politian, taught Greek at Salamanca. Many of the Spanish bishops who visited Rome in the performance of their ecclesiastical obligations came back with manuscripts, and above all with awakened interest in classical studies to scatter the seeds of the New Learning. Indeed, this constituted a large factor in the great movement for humanism in all the Western countries at this time.

The most important factor for Spanish culture and scholarship, however, was the famous Cardinal Ximenes, sometimes known by his family name of Cisneros. With a career of importance opening out before him in the ecclesiastical life, Ximenes, who had been the Grand Vicar to Cardinal Gonzales of Sigüenza, resigned that office to become a Franciscan of the Strict Observance. His administrative ability soon brought about his election as Guardian of his monastery, and he became known among his brethren for his devotion to the spiritual life. The year of the discovery of America he was selected as the confessor of Queen Isabella. He accepted with the condition that he should be allowed to live in his monastery and appear at Court only when sent for. He had much to do with the successful appeal of Columbus to her Majesty. Three years later he was chosen to succeed his friend Mendoza as Archbishop of Toledo. This post carried with it the Chancellorship of Castile at this time. Ximenes refused the dignity, and it was only after six months of delay, and then in obedience to the express command of the Pope, that he accepted it. As archbishop he continued to live as a simple Franciscan, devoting the greater part of the immense revenues attached to his see to the relief of the poor and particularly for the redemption of captives. Just at this time the activity of the Turks made this one of the burning social needs of the time.

Ximenes was even reprimanded, it is said, by the Pope for neglecting the external splendor that belonged to his rank. He would not wear an episcopal dress, except in such a way {539} that his Franciscan habit might remain visible underneath. His fulfilment of his duties as Chancellor of Castile gave him ample opportunity for the exercise of his administrative ability and demonstrated his power and high sense of justice. He used his high office to the fullest extent to encourage culture and above all classical studies. In 1504 he founded the University of Alcalá, obtaining some of the most distinguished scholars from Bologna, Paris and the other Spanish universities to fill its chairs. Practically all the religious orders established houses at Alcalá in connection with the University. Among those who were attracted to Alcalá was Nuñez de Guzman, who brought out an edition of Seneca that earned the praise of Lipsius, and who besides suggested valuable emendations of Pliny's "Natural History." He also published, mainly at the suggestion of Cardinal Ximenes, it is said, an interlinear Latin rendering of Saint Basil's tract on the study of Greek literature. He is known as Pincianus from Pintia, the ancient name of Valladolid, his birthplace, and much of his enthusiasm for classical studies had been derived from visits to Italy during which he collected a number of manuscripts that he brought back with him as precious treasures.

The great work of Cardinal Ximenes, however, was the publication under his patronage of the first Polyglot Bible, known as the Complutensian Polyglot from Complutum, the ancient name for Alcalá. This occupied fifteen years, cost an immense sum of money, considerably over a million of dollars in our values, occupied a great many scholars, attracted wide attention and above all created an interest in linguistic studies that spread all over the country and was felt even in other countries. This was completed only four months before the Cardinal's death and was dedicated to Leo X. Most of the revenues of his archbishopric, which had accumulated because of his careful use of them, he left to his beloved University of Alcalá. In spite of a self-denial in the matter of food and drink that had been carried to an extent which it was feared might injure his health, and what seemed to many even at that time, a serious deprivation of sleep for prayer and study, continued amid all his great administrative work,--for he was often regent of the kingdom and displayed great ability in {540} military organization--he lived to the age of eighty-one. He has been honored as a saint, though this honor has never been confirmed by any formal declaration.

After this, the development of scholarship was comparatively easy. Men like Vives, Vergara, who published a Greek grammar, praised by many of the scholars of the time and thoroughly appreciated by Scaliger, and Sanchez, who was professor of Greek at Salamanca when he was but thirty-one, carried on the New Learning. Sanchez' text-book on Latin syntax called "The Minerva" came to be more used throughout Europe than almost any other. Haase declared that he had done more for Latin grammar than any of his predecessors, and Sir William Hamilton, the English philosopher, even held that the study of "Minerva" with the notes of the editors was more profitable than that of Newton's "Principia." Sandys notes that "it is at any rate written in good Latin and the author shows a familiarity with the whole range of Latin literature as well as Aristotle and Plato."

After this, indeed, grammar, the science of language, came to a great extent to be under the domination of Spanish minds. Nuñez, or as he is known by his Latin name Nunnesius of Valencia, who studied in Paris and was professor of Greek at Barcelona, was the author of an interesting little Greek grammar which, according to Sandys, differs little from those now used in schools. With the coming of the Jesuits, Emmanuel Alvarez produced the Latin grammar in which for the first time the principles of the language were formally laid down and the fancies of ancient grammarians laid aside. It became the text-book in all the Jesuit schools, has often been reprinted since, is the foundation of all our modern Latin grammars and is said by experienced teachers to surpass all its successors. Spain did not neglect other phases of scholarship, however. Agostino, after graduation at Salamanca, taught law at Padua and at Florence, became a member of the Papal Tribunal in Rome, studying the inscriptions and ancient monuments as well as the manuscripts of the old city. Later he became the Bishop of Lerida and then Archbishop of Taragona. He published a treatise on Roman Laws, often reprinted, but his masterpiece in classical archaeology was his {541} book on coins, inscriptions and other antiquities, published originally in Spanish and attracting wide, popular attention.

Portugal follows in scholarship the rest of the peninsula and owed its initiative to contact with Italian sources. Resende taught Greek at Lisbon and Evora and counted among his pupils the famous Achilles Statius, whose career comes mainly after the conclusion of Columbus' Century, though he was twenty-six before the century closed and his scholarship is a product of our period. He won his high reputation in Rome by a work on ancient portraits and by commentaries on the "Ars Poetica" of Horace, when he was not yet thirty, and confirmed this by subsequent fine work on Catullus and Tibullus. He was associated with Muretus in an edition of Propertius, and his studies on the "Illustrious Men of Suetonius" attracted the attention of the learned world of his time and was highly praised by Casaubon. The Jesuit Father Alvarez, whose grammar I have already mentioned, though of Spanish extraction, lived in Portugal and was educated and taught there. The University of Coimbra took on renewed vigor just at the end of Columbus' Century and its classical school became famous especially under the Jesuits. The University became noted for its Teachers' College, for graduates who purposed to follow teaching as a vocation, and for its opportunities for the training of the teaching religious orders.

England was often looked upon at the beginning of the Renaissance as so distant from the centres of culture on the Continent that very little was expected of her in scholarship. Of course, the same thing was more or less true with regard to Germany, not because of distance in space, but of speech. The peoples of the Latin languages felt a brotherhood to each other which they did not share with the Germans or English, whose speech it must be confessed, somewhat after the narrow fashion of the Greeks of the older times towards all nations not Greek in origin, they considered barbarous. It is always true that nations quite fail to understand each other, and our own attitude toward Italy at the present time, though the civilization and culture of the world owes more to Italy than to all the other nations of modern history put together, is typical of this constant tendency to national misunderstanding. {542} The Italians were very much surprised to have pupils from England rather early in Columbus' Century, and still more surprised apparently to have them succeed admirably. They soon came to appreciate them highly, and such men as Linacre, John Free and Caius were even made teachers at Italian universities. Over and over again, the Italians expressed their gratification at the spread of scholarship among the English and their congratulations on their success in the New Learning. The congratulations were amply deserved.

Bishop Creighton, in his "Early Renaissance in England," [Footnote 50] says that the first English humanist was Lord Grey of Codnor, who went from Balliol College to Cologne, which was famous at the time for its general culture and education, but as he desired to get classical culture more particularly, he stole away to Florence at night lest his going should be hampered by the many friends that he had made at Cologne. He found much of interest at Florence, ordered a library there and then went to Padua, where he studied for a time. He was attracted to Ferrara, however, by the reputation of Guarino, and from there went to Rome, where the scholarly Nicholas V nominated him Bishop of Ely. One of the next of the great English scholars was John Free, a physician, whose expenses during his Italian trip were paid by Lord Grey, and who had no less success among the Italian scholars. The scholarly doctor was appointed Bishop of Bath in 1465, but died before his consecration.

[Footnote 50: Cambridge University Press, 1895.]

Perhaps the most interesting feature of Italy's welcome for these students from Britain, "which is situated outside the world," was the absolutely unprejudiced way in which they were chosen to important posts in the University in competition with the Italians. Reynold Chicheley, who studied at Ferrara under Guarino, became Rector of the universities there. John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, compelled to leave England by political conditions at the beginning of the latter half of the fifteenth century, went to Venice and to the Holy Land and studied Latin at Padua, visited the aged Guarino at Ferrara, as Sandys in his "History of Classical Scholarship" tells us, and heard Argyropulos lecture on Greek. The Latin oration {543} which he delivered in the presence of Pope Pius II (AEneas Sylvius) is said to have drawn tears of joy from the eyes of the Pope because of the feeling of satisfaction that classical scholarship was now a world possession.

Erasmus, who was certainly in a position to judge both because of his own scholarship and his many years of residence in England, wrote a letter in December, 1499, to a friend in Italy in highest praise of English scholarship. It is a panegyric of his English friends, but it is a glorious tribute:

"I have found in England . . . so much learning and culture, and that of no common kind, but recondite, exact and ancient, Latin and Greek, that I now hardly want to go to Italy, except to see it. When I listen to my friend Colet, I can fancy I am listening to Plato himself. Who can fail to admire Grocyn, with all his encyclopaedic erudition? Can anything be more acute, more profound, more refined, than the judgment of Linacre? Has nature ever moulded anything gentler, pleasanter, or happier, than the mind of Thomas More?"

In England, as elsewhere, the Reformation worked sad havoc on education. The confiscation of educational endowments and the suppression of monasteries and the scattering of their libraries almost put an end to scholarship in England. The descent in education continued until the end of the eighteenth century. Only in the past hundred years has England begun to recover lost ground.

At this time men mainly studied Latin, but towards the end of the fifteenth century they took up Greek, The first Englishman who studied Greek in the revival of learning was William Selling, a Benedictine monk. Sandys tells us that "Night and day he was haunted by the vision of Italy, that next to Greece was the nursing mother of men of genius." He was the uncle of Linacre, who had the privilege of accompanying him on his embassy to the Pope in 1485. Modern English classical scholarship in both Greek and Latin begins with Linacre and his two friends, William Grocyn and William Latimer. Latimer was a great friend of Sir Thomas More. The younger of the group of English Greek scholars was William Lily, who, while on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, studied Greek in Rhodes. He was one of the poor scholars of history {544} who worked his way through school in the midst of all kinds of difficulties and privations. While earning his living in Venice he succeeded in keeping up his studies.

Grocyn was one of the greatest of the Greek scholars of this generation in Europe. He proved that the book known as the "Ecclesiastical Hierarchy" was not by Dionysius the Areopagite, to whom it had been so long attributed, and thus gave the first proof of the critical scholarship of English students of Greek. Still another distinguished Greek scholar was John Fisher, afterwards Bishop Fisher, whose patron, Lady Margaret, under his direction did so much for education and particularly for classical scholarship in England.

APPENDIX I

SIR THOMAS MORE AND MAN'S SOCIAL PROBLEMS

There is a very general impression that this is the first time in history that the general social problems of humanity have been taken seriously and solutions of them deliberately sought. At least there is a very prevalent feeling that no generation before our time recognized all of these problems so well as we do and seriously tried to reach rational solutions in spite of vested interests of all kinds and old-time prejudices and traditions. Because Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" represents a complete contradiction of this complacent attitude of mind toward our sociological interests, it seems worth while to quote here a series of passages from his book which illustrate very well how as a young man of twenty-seven he faced all our social problems, which are of course those of humanity at all times when in a reasonably civilized condition, and saw as clearly as anyone has ever done, and expressed quite as thoroughly, the rational solutions of them.

Perhaps the most surprising passage is that with regard to religious toleration, which in Utopia was complete. It has often been said that More himself afterwards, as Lord Chancellor, violated his own principles in the matter, but he has been ably defended from such imputations by some of the best lawyers of England. The supposed stain on his character is due to religious prejudices in those who write. After religion, the question of armament for nations is More's most important contribution to political science, and there is a full discussion of the evil of standing armies and of the foolish reasons for keeping the nations on a war footing. As might be expected, there is severe condemnation of the vulgar display of such objects as costly precious stones, and More has the children of the Utopians even make great fun of such childish barbaric tendencies. The over-value of gold is laughed to scorn. More's idea of a certificate of health before marriage anticipates many eugenic ideas of our day in a very simple way. The future Lord Chancellor had a fine appreciation for physicians, though surprisingly enough not so much for his own profession of lawyer, and his descriptions of the hospitals of Utopia shows how thoroughly they comprehended what a hospital should be and how little there is of any development in our modern plans for hospitals, though we are so inclined to think of these as a great evolution in hospital construction.

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

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

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

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

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

"In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people, for the whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace (if such a state of nation can be called a peace); and these are kept in pay upon the same account that you plead for those idle retainers upon noblemen: this being a maxim of those pretended statesmen, that it is necessary for public safety to have a good body of veteran soldiers ever in readiness. They think raw men {548} are not to be depended on, and they sometimes seek occasions for making war, that they may train up their soldiers in the art of cutting throats, or, as Sallust observed, 'for keeping their hands in use, that they may not grow dull by too long an intermission.' But France has learned to its cost how dangerous it is to feed such beasts. The fate of the Romans, Carthaginians and Syrians, and many other nations and cities, which were both overturned and quite ruined by those standing armies, should make others wiser."

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

The passage in "Utopia" in which More discusses the wearing of fine clothes and of precious stones and jewels has often been quoted. After 400 years it will still come home with great force to all those who think seriously on the subject. Of course it is literal common sense, but then what has common sense ever availed against fashion? The mid-African wears brass rings and fancy calico because they are hard to get and expensive and therefore give distinction to their wearer. His cultured European brother--and sister--wears what is equally childish and barbaric because costly and distinctive and will doubtless continue to do so. Sir Thomas More's ideas on the subject are interesting, but will fall on quite as deaf ears in our generation as in all the others since his time.

"I never saw a clearer instance of the opposite impressions that different customs make on people than I observed in the ambassadors of the Anemolians, who came to Amaurot when I was there. As they came to treat of affairs of great consequence, the deputies from several towns met together to wait for their coming. The ambassadors of the nations that lie near Utopia, knowing their customs and that fine clothes are in no esteem among them, that silk is despised, and gold is a badge of infamy, used to come very modestly clothed; but the Anemolians, lying more remote, and having had little commerce with them, understanding that they were coarsely clothed, and all in the same manner, took it for granted that they had none of these fine things among them of which they made no use; and they, being a vainglorious rather than a wise people, resolved to set themselves out with so much pomp that they should look like gods and strike the eyes of the poor Utopians with their splendor. Thus three ambassadors made their entry with a hundred attendants, all clad in garments of different colours, and the greater part in silk; the ambassadors themselves, who were of the nobility of their country, were in cloth of gold, and adorned with massy chains, earrings, and rings of gold; their caps were covered with bracelets set full of pearls and other gems--in a word, they were set out with all those things that among the Utopians were either the badges of slavery, the marks of infamy, or the playthings of children. It was not unpleasant to see, on the one side, how they looked big, when they compared their rich habits with the plain clothes of the {549} Utopians, who were come out in great numbers to see them make their entry; and, on the other, to observe how much they were mistaken in the impression which they hoped this pomp would have made on them. It appeared so ridiculous a show to all that they never stirred out of their country, and had not seen the customs of other nations, that though they paid some reverence to those that were the most meanly clad, as if they had been the ambassadors, yet when they saw the ambassadors themselves so full of gold and chains, they looked upon them as slaves and forbore to treat them with reverence. You might have seen the children who were grown big enough to despise their playthings, and who had thrown away their jewels, call to their mothers, push them gently, and cry out, 'See that great fool, that wears pearls and gems as if he were yet a child!' while their mothers very innocently replied, 'Hold your peace! this, I believe, is one of the ambassadors' fools.' Others censured the fashion of their chains, and observed, 'that they were of no use, for they were too slight to bind their slaves, who could easily break them; and, besides, hung so loose about them that they thought it easy to throw them away, and so get from them.' But after the ambassadors had stayed a day among them, and saw so vast a quantity of gold in their houses (which was as much despised by them as it was esteemed in other nations), and beheld more gold and silver in the chains and fetters of one slave than all their ornaments amounted to, their plumes fell, and they were ashamed of all that glory for which they had formerly valued themselves, and accordingly laid it aside--a resolution that they immediately took when, on their engaging in some free discourse with the Utopians, they discovered their sense of such things and their other customs. The Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring, doubtful lustre of a jewel or a stone, that can look up to a star or to the sun himself; or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread; for, how fine soever that thread may be, it was once no better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep was a sheep still, for all its wearing it." (John G. Saxe told the last generation how great a difference it made whether one wore the product of an India plant or an India worm.)

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

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

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

"Here now would I see, if any man dare be so bold as to compare with this equity, the justice of other nations; among whom, I forsake God, if I can find any sign or token of equity and justice. For what justice is this, that a rich goldsmith, or an usurer, or to be short, any of them which either do nothing at all, or else that which they do is such that it is not very necessary to the commonwealth, should have a pleasant and a wealthy living, either by idleness or unnecessary business, when in the meantime poor laborers, carters, ironsmiths, carpenters, and ploughmen, by so great and continual toil, as drawing and bearing beasts be scant able to sustain, and again so necessary toil, that without it no commonwealth were able to continue and endure one year, should get so hard and poor a living, and live so wretched and miserable a life, that the state and condition of the laboring beasts may seem much better and healthier? . . . And yet besides this the rich men, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the poor some part of their daily living. . . . They invent and devise all means and manner of crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed under color of the commonalty, that is to say, also of the poor people, then they be made laws. . . . Therefore when I consider and weigh in my mind all these commonwealths which nowadays anywhere do flourish, so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of commonwealth."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Utopia was but the author's home writ large. His beautiful house, on the river side at Chelsea, was, through his delight in social life and music, and through the wit and merriment of his nature, a dwelling of joy and mirth as well as of study and thought. It often rang with song, and was cheery with the laughter of children and grandchildren, he himself, in his own words, 'being merry, jocund and pleasant among them.' Erasmus, who was often his guest, has given us many delightful glimpses of his family life, of his children and their tasks, and the monkey and rabbits which amused their leisure. To the solitary and ever-wandering Erasmus, More's house was a haven of refuge from the discomforts and vexations of his bachelor existence. In one of his epistles he writes, 'More has built near London, upon the Thames, a modest yet commodious mansion. There he lives, surrounded by his numerous family, including his wife, his son and his son's wife, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There is not any man living so affectionate to his children as he, and he loveth his old wife as if she were a girl of fifteen. Such is the excellence of his disposition that whatever happeneth that could not be helped, he is as cheerful and as well pleased as though the best thing possible had been done. In More's house you would say that Plato's academy was revived again, only, whereas in the academy the discussion turned upon geometry and the power of numbers, the house at Chelsea is a veritable school of Christian religion. In it is none, man or woman, but readeth or studieth the liberal arts, yet is their chief care of piety. There is never any seen idle; the head of the house governs it: not only by a lofty carriage and oft rebukes, but by gentleness and amiable manners. Every member is busy in his place, performing his duty with alacrity; nor is sober mirth wanting."

APPENDIX II

AFTER THE REFORMATION

It is such a commonplace of history as written in English, at least, that the beginnings of our modern progress are to be traced to the time when the movement called the Reformation freed men's minds from the domination of the Church, which had used every effort to keep men in darkness in order to secure their readier submission to Church teaching, that the tracing of all our modern developments to the century before the movement began may surprise many readers. Not only is it true, however, that for nearly a hundred years before the Reformation was there a climax of intellectual and artistic achievement in every department in every {554} country in Europe, but what is much more striking is that immediately after the "reform" movement set in, decadence made itself felt everywhere. Art in all its phases, painting, sculpture, architecture, education and scholarship, literature, and, above all, humanitarianism, reached magnificent expression during the first three quarters of Columbus' Century. In the fourth quarter, coincident with the spread of the reforming doctrines, decadence begins in nearly every phase of human activity and continues until the revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gave a new stimulus to independent thinking. It has seemed necessary, owing to the position taken in the preceding pages, to illustrate these facts by quotations from well-known non-Catholic writers.

No fallacy is cheaper than that of arguing because one set of events happens after another, therefore it is due to that other. It would take a much deeper and broader study of history than any that we have made here, or could make in our limited space, to trace the philosophy of the history of Columbus' Century and the succeeding centuries and to indicate the causes at work and their effects. All that can be pointed out here is that the facts of intellectual history represent an exact contradiction to the usually accepted impression that whatever is best in the modern time can be traced to the Reformation. On the contrary, immediately after the reform movement, human achievement declined for many generations, and the revival of the past hundred years represents a reversion to ideas and modes of thought current before the religious revolt and the evolution of which was interrupted by that movement.

EDUCATION, BOOKS, INSTITUTIONS

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

"After 1520, Humanism, an aristocratic and secular impulse, was overtaken and succeeded by a movement of vastly greater power and depth, the religious and popular movement of the Reformation. For a brief space the Reformation may well have seemed a reinforcement of Humanism, united as both these were in their hatred of scholastic philosophy and of Rome. Hutton and Luther are represented in pamphlets of the year 1520 as the two great champions of freedom. Inwardly, however, they were very different men, and very different were the goals to which they sought to lead the German people. Luther was a man of inward anti-rationalistic and anti-ecclesiastical religious feeling, and Hutton a man of rationalistic and libertinistic humanism. Hutton did not live to see the manifestation of this great contrast; but after 1522 or 1523, the eyes of the Humanists were open to the fact, and almost without exception they turned away from the Reformation as from something yet more hostile to learning than the old Church herself. In very truth, it appeared for the time as if the Reformation would be in its effects essentially hostile to culture. In the fearful tumults between 1520 and 1530 the universities and schools came to an almost complete standstill, and with the Church fell the institutions of learning which she had brought forth, so that Erasmus might well say, 'Where Lutheranism reigns, there is an end of letters.'"

Those who hold a brief for the Reformation and its much vaunted beneficent influence on education may be tempted to retort that at least the German religious movement gave liberty of teaching to the German University. It is a constantly emphasized Protestant tradition that the incubus of the Church on teaching institutions before this time had been most serious in its consequences, and that developments in education had been prevented because of this. Those who assume that the reformers, so-called, introduced academic liberty into Germany will find very little support for any such claim in Professor Paulsen. Paulsen insists that exactly the opposite is true, and that far from bringing freedom of thought, the new religious movement still further shackled university and teaching freedom and the liberty of speech and writing, so that a sadly stilted period of educational development comes on the scene in Germany. He talks from the standpoint of his own department of philosophy, and evidently resents the shackles that were placed on freedom of speculation at this period.

"During this period also a more determined effort was made to control instruction than at any period before or since. The fear of heresy, the extra anxiety to keep instruction well within orthodox lines, was not less intense at the Lutheran than at the Catholic institutions--perhaps it was even more so, because here doctrine {556} was not so well established, apostasy was possible in either of two directions, Catholicity or Calvinism. Even the philosophic faculty felt the pressure of this demand for correctness of doctrines. Thus came about these restrictions within the petty States and their narrow-minded established churches, which well-nigh stifled the intellectual life of the German people."

A good deal of the misunderstanding of the effect of the reform movement on education is due to the fact that the novelty of the reformers' doctrines in religion and theology led to the use sometimes of the term, the New Learning, for their teaching. The same term, however, had come to be used for the study of the Latin and Greek classics, and the supposed opposition of the Church to the humanistic teachings is founded on the confusion of these two terms. Of course the ecclesiastics of the old Church opposed the New Learning in as far as it related to the reformers' doctrines with regard to free will, the lack of merit in good works and denials of other religious doctrines. They were, however, the most ardent patrons of the New Learning in as far as that term may be applied to the study of the classics. As a matter of fact, the Jesuits, founded at this time, based all their teaching on the classics and their schools spread all over Europe.

As to the lack of interest in books, in education, in scholarship, even in the preservation of the great monuments of national literature after the change of religion in England, the easiest way to know it is to read Bishop Bale's account of what happened to the valuable books which had belonged to the old monastic and educational institutions at the Reformation. He approved of the suppression of the monasteries and was an ardent reformer, but he cannot help calling attention to the absolute neglect of the treasures of literature, not only on the part of the nobility and the common people, but on the part of the very universities themselves. It is easy to understand what an awful state of affairs there must have been to draw this indignant protest from so good a king's man and follower of the new order and protestant against everything Catholic. Bishop Bale said, in his preface to Leland's "New Year's Gift to Henry VIII," in 1549:

"Never had we been offended for the loss of our libraries, being so many in number and in so desolate places, for the more part, if the chief monuments and most notable works of our excellent writers had been preserved. If there had been in every shire of England but one solemn library for the preservation of those noble works and preferment of good learning in our posterity, it had been yet somewhat. But to destroy all without consideration, a great number of them which purchased those superstitions mansions reserved of those library books . . . some to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots. Some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers, and some over sea to the book-binders, not in small number, but at times whole ships full to the wondering of {557} the foreign nations. Yea, the universities of this realm are not all clear in this detestable fact. But cursed is . . .(he) which seeketh to be fed with such ungodly gains and so deeply shameth his natural country. I know a merchant man, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings' price, a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied in the stead of gray paper by the space of more than these ten years, and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come. I judge this to be true, and utter it with heaviness, that neither the Britains under the Romans and Saxons, nor yet the English people under the Danes and Normans, had ever such damage of their learned monuments as we have seen in our time."

It used to seem some condonation of these sad evils to say that the suppression of the monasteries was brought because of the evil lives of the monks. Protestant historians were wont to proclaim that they were plague-spots of immorality which had to be eradicated. The careful investigation of historians in our time has completely refuted any such conclusion as this. A few of the smaller monasteries were found not to be living up to their high ideals. A few, but a very few monks, were found to be unworthy of their calling. Even with all the desire that there was to discredit them, nothing could be found to say against the greater monasteries, and the governments had to employ other means in order to bring about their suppression with some shadow of legality. Creatures of the king were forced into the position of abbot and then by prearrangement surrendered the monasteries and their possessions to the crown. Every advance in critical history in modern times has tended more and more to the vindication of the monks.

An American in our own time might well be expected to hold the balance straight without disturbance from old-time prejudices. Rev. Dr. George Hedges, Dean of the Episcopal Theological School, of Cambridge, Mass., in his "Fountains Abbey: The Story of a Medieval Monastery," said (p. 88):

"The quiet judgment of the modern historian is in favor of the monks, and finds most of them to have been men of respectable and pious lives. The sober persons in white cassocks, who confessed faults in the chapter meeting and cheerfully suffered chastisement for them to which the man in the street gave not a moment's thought, had a passionate longing to be good. They were intent upon the living of a righteous life."

He says, further quoting from Burke, "An enemy is a bad witness; a robber is a worse."