USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 39
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George Eliot's life in London as Mr. Chapman's assistant on the " Westminster Review," and her union with Mr. Lewes strengthened her skepticism, and, at least out- wardly, identified her with positivism. Let us next consider how far she agreed with the main ideas of Comte's theory. She believed there was a law governing human society; that nothing came by chance; that every event had its logical cause in preceding events; that every act had its reason in the nature of the individual. Mr. Irwine says in Adam Bede :- " A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legit- imate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom."
In the delineation of her principal characters, she follows a natural law and not a false criterion of perfection. "The blessed work of helping the world forward, hap- pily does not wait to be done by perfect men; and I should imagine that neither Luther nor John Bunyan, for example, would have satisfied the modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what is exalted
(19)
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and does nothing but what is graceful. The real heroes of God's making are quite different; they have their natural heritages of love and conscience, which they drew in with their mothers' milk; they know one or two of those deep spiritual truths which are only to be won by long wrestling with their own sins and their own sorrows; they have carnest faith and strength so far as they have done genuine work, but the rest is dry, barren theory, blank prejudice, vague hearsay."
In her fictitious world the heroes and heroines grow by a series of misfortunes and mistakes to know their weaknesses and conquer them. "No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted."" Heroism consists in facing the results of mistakes, not succumbing to them.
George Eliot's princes of darkness are not intrinsically bad, but are fallen angels like Tito Melema, Hetty Poyser and Rosamond Vincy -- fallen through a persistent course of self-indulgence.
But, as Mr. Farebrother says, " You have not only got the old Adam within your- self against you, but you have got all those descendants of the original Adam, who form the society about you." How to conquer the external Adam is the problem of social regeneration. In solving this problem the positivists have deduced from experience the same law that the Christians have by revelation, that self-interests must be sacrificed where they interfere with the interests of all. We are too closely bound together to have separate interests. "So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins; so inevitably diffusive is human suffering that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsation of unmerited pain."
Our duty, however, is not to extol nor condemn this religion of humanity; simply to ascertain as accurately as we can its place and value as a regenerator. The general theory of monotheism is that there is a Divine being, a God, who created the universe and man. Man is dual, consisting of an carthly or bodily life connecting him with the material universe, and a spiritual or soul life connecting him with his Creator. The generally accepted religion of the Western World-Christianity-has two laws, love thy God and love thy neighbor. These two were meant to be equally binding, but gradually, in the course of centuries, the second fell into disuse. The church imagined it was fulfilling the first law, but it is hard to love a being of whom one has no imme- diate knowledge. The idea of God became more and more indistinct. Theologians created gods from their own minds, whom they set up for worship, and these became the deities of the Christian Church. This error would have been avoided if the second law had been rigorously obeyed; for man was originally created in his Maker's image, and the love of one's neighbor, and the self-denial necessary thereto, would have taught man some of the most important attributes of divinity. The spark of divinity which God had placed in man-the soul -- was smoldering for lack of fuel, and that once out man would be forever alienated from his Creator. Man had lost faith in the divinity within him, and was by his theology putting his God further and further away. Since the time of Luther there had been no widespread reformation among Christian nations, and they had reached such a state of religious torpor that one was necessary. The reformation of the nineteenth century has been to revivify the second commandment, "Love thy neighbor." The folly lay in ignoring the first law, love thy God. Dogmatism said, "There is a God;" and skepticism, reacting from that, said, " How do you know? We know nothing but what we can prove." They denied in toto the Divine authority of both commandments, but deduced the second from human experience.
God has two means of revelation-his material creation and the spiritual nature of his creature, man. Communicating through the spiritual natures of the first races of men, he had by inspiration, so-called, produced a Bible or written law, and after- ward, through his special prophet Christ, a more advanced Gospel. This had been accepted by the church as sole authority, and its correlative nature had been ignored. Without this key or safeguard against misinterpretation, God's written law became a
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blind guide. In the course of time man so tortured its meaning, so overlaid it with his own misconceptions, that church Christianity became null as a means of regenera- tion to the average man. The reformers very naturally took the other extreme, and, ignoring God's written law, exalted his natural law. They would believe only in such a good as they could learn from nature. As far as it goes, nature is a more accurate expositor of God than the revealed word, but it is incomplete, since it cannot reveal man's spiritual nature nor its own origin. The Bible and nature were meant to be complements, and by adopting one and denying the other the reformers made them- selves liable to error. The natural scientists were the more liable because their investi- gations ceased at animal nature, and it was easier there to deny a Creator than for the sociologists, who carried their studies on to man's social and higher nature. Thus arose materialism, which would naturally become popular with a large class of people who were ready to accept any religion that released them from obedience to a spir- itual law.
Each new thinker in this new movement took a step in advance, and we shall now see how George Eliot advanced upon Comte. She belonged to the class of investi- gators who were studying the higher nature of man. She believed in its spiritual exist- ence, and in studying and expounding its laws she drew nearer the truth that it must have a Divine origin. She believed in a Divine element in man that had its own laws and could live at least partly independent of material. "Justice is like the kingdom of God-it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning."
George Eliot not only had faith in the Divine element in man to help him make this decision: "You must have it inside you that your plan is right;" but she believed in its partial independence of material causes; in this she advanced upon Comte. She believed, also, that this divinity grew, and by its growth became human regeneration. The method of its growth was by sorrow and by love. "It would not be well for us to overleap one grade of joy or suffering; our life would soon lose its completeness and beauty."
She believed in the self-regenerating power of love, not to the recipient, but to the lover. With Romola, Dorothea and Milly Barton, to love was a " Divine necessity;" they had a "sublime capacity " for it. Dempster's love for his mother was the only hope of regeneration in his degraded nature.
The love of the best we know is Carlyle's idea of hero-worship: "We needs must love the highest when we see it." Through the best human love, Browning leads his men up to a Divine love. And George Eliot also, in Adam Bebe, says: "Our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of Divine mys- tery!" And: "The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength; we can no more wish to return to a nar- rower sympathy than a painter or musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to his less complete formula!"
This belief in the power of human beings, to save each other from soul destruction by leading them to a Divine love, is a great advance upon Comte, because it implies a God and His direct communication with at least some of His creatures. There comes a time in the life of all when the human helpers fail. Janet's last temptation came when she was alone, and it was an impulse rather than a resolution that finally caused her to dash the brandy bottle down. Romola, after she lost faith in Savonarola, fled again from duty, until some unseen power floated her to the pestilence-stricken vil- lage, and she learned God's love afresh. To what then has George Eliot's conscien- tious study of humanity led her, and how far from the materialists and Comte? To a belief in the divinity in man that is directly dependent on a Divine source. That she does not altogether believe her own conclusions seems to be proven by her life. That she had learned to depend on human love, without looking sufficiently at the Divine love beyond, seems to be the secret of her marriage to Mr. Cross. She dreaded lone- liness .. She felt no companionship with an unseen power, though she might believe in its existence. She had worked out her problem carefully and slowly, but in doing
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so she had exhausted her strength and was not sure of her conclusions. Like Amos Barton she could think herself strong but not feel herself so.
Thus George Eliot, living in a period of change and upheaval, represents the con- flict. By her antecedents and carly surroundings she is joined by the bonds of love to her countrymen, by her intellectual development she is linked to the democratic, active spirit of her mature age. Her innate love of truth, her fearless avowal of it, and her contempt for dogmatism, are common attributes of her contemporaries. By her capability for deep emotion, and by her lingering affection for the old, she more truly represents her countrymen than more skeptical thinkers do. Like the mass of the people through all the conflict she held latent in her the capability of evolving a new religion. In her faith in the truth of feeling she foreshadows the present era, which would guide, not repress emotion by reason. If she had lived after the struggle of opinions were over, and a new peace and joy were lighting the world with promise, we know not how much more perfect her life and philosophy would have been.
FOOT FREE IN GOD'S COUNTRY. By MRS. MARIE ANTOINETTE NATHALIE POLLARD.
As we look out on the ocean, and think of the thousand islands that gem its bosom, we know that they are created by the gradual accretions of the minutest particles. Far down in the deep waters the coral insect rears its superstructure. Year after year elapses, and its labors are visible only when the tempest tosses the foam over the hidden reef or the waves expose in. their deep hollows its white edge. But by and by it lifts itself above the waters, and catches upon its rugged horns the wreck of some shattered vessel, the soil, broken branches and seeds from some far off beaten strand, to re-create in the wilderness of waters an oasis with its fruits and flowers, a resting-place for man on the wild bosom of the deep. So that which once gave terror, the reef with its trembling billows which hymned the dirge of many a gallant crew, they now seek as they cross the trackless waters as an asylum of hope and safety. So, too, grows up out of the bewildering and chaotic sea of intemperance and corruption the enduring edifice of temperance reform.
Intemperance has in it crimes darker than mur- der, and a deep more hopeless than despair. It is as MRS. MARIE ANTOINETTE NATHALIE POLLARD. wide as the habitable earth, began with the birth of man, and may not cease until his race perishes from the globe. Strangest of all strange things in human conduct, man created it himself, fosters, nourishes, extends and builds it up of his own eager, voluntary effort, without which it would perish in a day. Bringing to him no semblance of good; bringing none to anything that he loves, values or cherishes; blasting, burning and consuming his best and proudest moments; consuming him in his form, his mind, his heart, his hope, his health and home, in his soul and in his hope of Heaven.
If this visitant from another world should recover from his astonishment, he might inquire further: "Why does not the government prohibit its production and sale?" Well, it derives a profit by permitting it to be made and sold; and besides, the government receives every year $75,000,000 for the manufacture and sale of liquors. The states receive $25,000,000 for licenses, making $100,000,000. As there are one hundred thousand men who die drunkards every year, this is equal to $1,000 to the government for every man who dies a drunkard-a sort of partnership with the devil, you know. Yet this does not pay one quarter the cost for caring for criminals? Besides, the majority of our people think it would be wrong to prohibit it."
"What good comes of it?" "None at all. It never did any good." "Did it always produce evil, as now?" "Always, everywhere; just as we see it here." "Explain, then, why all men do not agree to prohibit it?" "I can not." "How can
Mrs. Marie Antoinette Nathalie Pollard, lecturer, poet and authoress, was born in Norfolk, Va. Her parents were the Countess de Boussoumart and Col. Pierre Joseph Granier. At Norfolk, Va., Mrs. Pollard received her training under the careful guidance of a governess. At the age of fourteen she married James R. Dowell. After the close of the Civil war she married Edward Albert Pollard, author of "The Lost Cause." Her postoffice address is Safe Deposit Company, East Fourteenth Street, New York, N. Y.
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men be found so abandoned as to sell it?" "They are not the worst men among us. They only supply a common want of our people, which our laws permit." "Why do men drink it?" " Because many of them have an uncontrollable appetite for it; many because it is a mere fashion, a common custom." " What, a fashion to drink this dreadful liquid?" "Yes." "I do not understand that." " Nor do 1." "Are men born with this uncontrollable appetite?" "A very few inherit it." " How is it formed?" "Simply by drinking." "Explain this." "Well, a natural appetite in a healthy nature of this world, when it is fed, lies down like a full animal and goes to sleep until awakened by its own voice. This appetite for drink is created by that which feeds it, and the more it is gratified the more ravenous it becomes. It can never be allayed or gratified, but goes forth roaring and devouring, until the unhappy wretch whom it inhabits perishes." "Is there danger that every man who tastes this may thus create that appetite?" "Very great danger." "And yet, among you mortals of this wretched world, your laws encourage the production and furnishing of this diabolical fluid, and your fashions and customs compel its use."
Its evil lies in the passion and will of man, and away below the reach of law and written constitutions, but within the grasp of a power that alone can control heart and soul. The evil burns deeper, its fiery breath blasts wider. There seems no power in man's effort to stay it.
How beautiful the work of woman comes in. God has called you my sisters. Will you heed His voice? Will you stand up and say, as David did, " I will walk within my house with a perfect heart; I will set no unclean thing before my eyes?" Remember, it is line upon line and precept upon precept. Remember that intemper- ance deprives men of their reason and fosters and encourages all kinds of immorality. It destroys the peace and happiness of millions of families. It takes a boy of beauty and makes him a bloated, loathsome, worthless man. It takes a young girl, lovely and lovable, and makes her a degraded being, at whom passers-by point with the finger of scorn. You remember these lines: "Hated and shunned, I walk the street, hunting for what? For my prey, 'tis said. I look at it, though, in a different light. For this mighty shame is my daily bread, my food, my shelter, the clothes that I wear. Only for this I might starve or drown. What made me the guilty thing I am -- for I was innocent once, you know? It was drink -- that horrid word says all. What had I to gain by a moment's sin to weigh in the scales with my innocent years, my womanly shame, my ruined name, my father's curses, my mother's tears? The love of drink. Was it worth it? The price was a soul paid down. Your guilt was heavy, the world will say; and heavy, heavy your doom must be, for to pity and par- don woman's fall is to set no value on chastity."
Oh, women, who have suffered as only a woman can suffer, who have felt as only a woman can feel, who have hoped as only a woman can hope, come forth! Come without law! Come without man's help! Come in defiance of both, and kneel down on the cold, bare stones, if need be, amid hearts harder and colder than marble, and lift your voices and souls in undoubting faith to the God of Heaven, and men will feel their hearts thrill as if under the touch of His finger.
Stay thou, O, Lord! the tide of death! Rebuke the demon's blasting breath, And speed, O speed, on every shore The day when strong drink slays no more.
The clouds and storms of life are lessened by our love of God, and the nearer wc live to Him, the lighter our burdens scem. Next to God man believes in the good- ness and purity of woman .. He believes that God does and will hear her prayer, and when she comes to Him in his haunts of sin, in her purity and faith, and asks God to touch his heart and change his will and power, God does touch and change him. There is not a living man, save some abnormal or diseased wretch, who can and will hold out against this persistent pleading and imploring. Man may be affronted and
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talk of his constitutional rights of property; but the constitution written by God on the hearts of men is the paramount law. We are told that the public sense of decency is offended by the appearance of processions of praying women on its streets. Let it be offended. The public sense of decency always was and will be when the public vices and crimes are rebuked by plain truths spoken according to the Scriptures. Popular religion veils her decorous face, and pulls her skirts away, and fears that the cause of religion will suffer from such scandalous proceedings on the part of pious temperance men and women in the name of God. Poor thing! Let popular religion not be alarmed, for God is quite equal to the management of His own affairs.
This temperance movement is one of the deep throbbing movements of the human race; with unanimity and persistency, faith and prayer, on the part of the women of this land this huge evil can be dealt with as an offense against law and private morals.
I would ask you to sum up, if you can, the amount paid in a single day for drink alone. Now let the mind go out, extend the vision and the sum to all the cities, towns, villages, hamlets and waste places in the republic, and put the sum total in figures and multiply it by the days in the year, and you have a sum greater than the revenue of the United States Government. And paid for what? For that which is related to no good and which is wholly and utterly bad.
Add the yearly waste for drink of all the years of human life on this continent and, if the mind can carry it forward, estimate the cost of drink for all the years of modern Europe, and you reach a sum which can hardly find expression in words and figures.
Give me what is thus expended in fifty years, with wisdom to rightly use it, and what would I not do? I would feed and clothe, nurse and house every wretched child of wretched mortal man and woman on the broad earth. I would build up school- houses on all hillsides, in all the pleasant valleys, on all the smiling plains known to man. I would hire men to do good until they should fall in love with goodness. I would banish that nameless sin, for every female child should be placed above want and be made mistress of herself, to be approached only for her purity; and man should come to seek and love woman for that alone.
Drunkenness should be no more, for I would buy up the art and wish to produce that which could cause it, until the appetites and habits of men were healthy and pure. Men should be taught the science and art of self-government, and their labors and energies taxed alone for their self-good. Then, indeed, would fair opportunity come to all the sons and daughters of men unwarped and unfettered by starvation and want; uncrippled by crime and unstained by vice; with healthful, vigorous natures, pure desires and passions; with the broad, peaceful, beautiful earth opening its paths to their innocent feet without snares and pitfalls to go and do as they will.
This is a dream, you will say. I know it is. Such boundless wealth is not to be placed at the disposal of any mortal born, nor will mortal ever be endowed with such wisdom in its disposal. But could the fatal waste of these unknown millions of human beings at once and forever be stayed, and the little streamlets and drops of this waste turned and converted even to the ordinary means known to human advancement, my dream would be no longer a dream, but a hope of wondrous inspiration, leading the races of men to its happy realization, and then, and not until then, can we be foot free in God's country, America.
THE KINDERGARTEN AS A CHARACTER BUILDER. By MRS. SARAH B. COOPER.
woman
Dear friends and co-workers, I bid you a hearty God-speed! This is the era of It has been found not in keeping with the Divine plan to attempt to carry on this world with half its forces. As some one aptly puts it, the flag of humanity has been at half-mast. The vessel has been drifting about, with half its crew down in the hold with the hatches nailed upon them. The laborer has been at his work with one arm bound up very tenderly, but firmly, in a sling. This is not God's plan. Male and female created He them for the work of life. The way to make a noble race is to make nobler women. The way to make nobler women is to expand their sympathies, enlarge their energies, and elevate their aims. Nothing can do more to conserve such an end than a great convoca- tion like this, and so I bid you again a hearty God- speed, as I betake myself to my theme, thanking you with all my soul for the privilege of presenting a plea in behalf of the little child. I have said, this is the cra of women. I might say, also, this is the epoch of childhood. I am to speak on "The Kindergarten as a Character Builder."
I believe, dear friends, there is a vast range of MRS. SARAH B. COOPER. " unmapped country within us, awaiting discovery; a vast domain of unexplored territory, as yet unpre- empted and uncultivated, toward which the eye of Frederick Froebel, that great cdu- cational Columbus, was directed with a steady and divining gazc. He saw with true spiritual insight what eternal continents of truth, what priceless stores of hidden- away possibilities there are in the human mind. He saw the rich loam of faculty, needing only the clearing away of underbrush and briers, the letting in of soft sun- light and of gentle showers, to beckon forth the sleeping germs. Frederick Froebel saw it all in prophetic clarity of vision, and having consecrated himself to the Heaven- inspired work while he lived, with a perfect faith in its ultimate triumph, he bade a brave farewell to the few true friends who stood by him in his work, knowing that what is excellent, as God lives, is permanent. And so it has proved; for to-day the great educational principles which he discovered and laid down are going forth in every direction, conquering and to conquer. The kindergarten is his enduring monu- ment.
Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper is a native of Cazenovia, Madison County, N. Y. She was born in 1836. Her parents were Samuel Clark Ingersoll and Laura Case Ingersoll, both of okl Revolutionary stock ; she was educated in the Oneida Conference Sem- inary, graduating with high honors.
Subsequently she attended Troy Female Seminary under Emma Willard. She has traveled in nearly every state in the Union. She was married in 1855 to Halsey Fenimore Cooper, former teacher in mathe- matics in Cazenovia Seminary. She has had four children, only one of whom is now living, Harriett Cooper, who is asso- ciated with her mother in the kindergarten work, and who possesses rare executive ability. Mrs. Cooper originated the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association of San Francisco, which has trained over sixteen hundred little children. Over $450,- 000 have been given her for this great work. Mrs. Cooper gave thirty-six addresses in Chicago at the World's Exposition. She is a member of the Congregational Church and has taught a Bible-class for forty-four years, and has one of the largest Bible- classes in the world. She is vice-president of the Pacific Coast Woman's Club, and also of the Associated Charities of San Francisco; is'a member of the Century Club and of the Congregational Ministers' Club. lejo Street, San Francisco, Cal.
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