THE LITERARY GUIDE:
A M O N T H L Y R E C O R D A N D R E V I E W O F I N T E L L E C T U A L P R O G R E S S .
No. 1 2 1 .]
JA N U A R Y i, 1896.
[Price One Penny.
N E I V P U B L I C A T IO N S .
T he January issue of the M onist will he an especially strong number. Professor August Weismann will open with a paper on “ Germinal Selection,” and among the other contributors will be Th, Riliot, Professor Ernst Mach, Professor Joseph Le Conte, Edward Atkinson, and I)r. Paul Carus.
Mr. F. Hugh Cafron, a year or two back, wrote a superficial, but in some respects clever, reply to Mr. S. Laing’s “ Modern Science and Modern Thought.” This “ reply” was dealt with at length by the veteran Rationalist in “ The Agnostic Annual for 18 9 4 ;” the rejoinder being, in the judgment of his friends, masterly and unanswerable. Mr. Capron is now about to publish, in pamphlet form, a further answer to Mr. Eaing, who, however, we may safely prophesy, will not be induced to continue the profitless controversy.
Mr. G. W. Foote has published a pamphlet bearing the startling title, “ Who was the Father of Jesu s?” (2d.). He is also preparing for immediate publication a brochure entitled “ The Black Army,” being a searching and scathing, though certainly not bitter or malevolent, examination of the foibles and weaknesses of the members of the clerical profession. The missionary fraud is deservedly guillotined.
A second edition of Miss Mathilde Blind’s latest volume of poems, “ Birds of Passage: Songs of the Orient and Occident ” (6s.), is announced as being now ready.
Mr. George R edvvay is publishing a volume by Mr. V. E. Desertis, dealing with “ Psychic Philosophy as the Foundation of a Religion of Natural Law ” (5s.). The work is prefaced by an introductory note from the pen of Dr. A. R. Wallace.
Madame Darmesteter (formerly Miss A. Mary F. Robinson), the wife of the late distinguished Oriental scholar, Professor James Darmesteter, has undertaken to write a volume on Ernest Renan for Messrs. Methuen’s Leaders of Religion Series.
B rilliance of description, historical living pictures, romance, adventure, love, battle, murder, and sudden death combine with striking illustrations to render Mr. George Griffith’s “ Valdar the Oft-born” (6s.) one of the. literary sensations of the Christmas season. To the Agnostic world Mr. Griffith was once known as the poet and essayist “ Lara.” February’s Guide will contain a notice of this sanguinary but clever “ Saga of Seven Ages.”
A new edition is announced of Mr. J . E. Remsburg’s well-known booklet, “ Bible Morals: Twenty Crimes and Vices Sanctioned by Scripture ” (is.).
L I T E R A R Y C H A T S .
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IX.—WITH MR. J . ALLANSON PICTON. Mr. J ames Allanson Picton insists that he is a Christian. Yet his career has been a splendid witness for Rationalism ; his books teach i t ; his conversation breathes it. From the legend of Jesus he strips all supernatural overgrowths. At the Dissenting conventicle of St. Thomas’s Square, Hackney, he exhorted eager crowds, year after year, to reject the miraculous, and conserve only the sweetly-reasonable elements of religion. On the School Board for London, from 1870 to 1879, he figured as the foremost and immovable advocate of purely Secular Education. In Parliament, as member for Leicester, he took the side of Progress and Heresy. South Place hears him gladly. He made a speech at the Thomas Paine Exhibition. He lends a lustre to “ The Agnostic Annual.” Yet he names himself Christian, because he reveres the ethics of the original Jesus.
“ I am not a book-worshipper,” Mr. Picton said to me as I chatted with him'in his study. “ I am more interested in human life than its portrayal in literature. So far as any particular literature strongly, or tragically, or hopefully, or inspiringly, represents the evolution of human affairs, in just that proportion it interests me. The plays of /Eschylus, for example, the ‘ Agamemnon ’ and the ‘ Eumenides.’ ”
The allusion reminded me that, on a former occasion, I had surprised Mr. Picton in the act of reading a Greek play in the original tongue. It was on a Sunday evening, too. One would not usually associate Radicalism with a passion for the classics. But the ex-M.P. for Leicester talks with enthusiasm of the Greeks, their language, genius, architecture, sculpture. When I hinted at the question of deleting Greek from the syllabus of the public schools, he looked almost horror-stricken.
“ It would be an unspeakable loss to education. I don’t say that all boys and girls should learn either Greek or Latin ; but, for all those who are to pursue culture for its own sake, or be the means of conveying it to others, classical literature, as the embodiment of some of the greatest thoughts, is absolutely essential.”
We went on to compare the ethics of the Greek drama and of Christianity.
“ Look,” said Mr. Picton, “ at the *Antigone ’ of Sophocles. More than four hundred years before the Christian era the proud independence of conscience was set forth as heroically and ideally as among the early Christians. Think of the speech in which Antigone defends her refusal to obey the order of Kreon, who had forbidden the burial of her brother. She draws just that distinction between mere human ordinances and the eternal laws of God which forms so high a note in the Christian gospels.”
And Mr. Picton let fall the very just observation that there was a tendency in Christianity to under-value the importance of Self-assertion.
Still keeping company with the Immortals, we turned to Lucretius and his “ De rerum natura.”
“ A most comprehensive poem, an inspired poem,”
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