Chapter 28

So far from setting aside the authority of the synoptics on "subjective" grounds, I have taken a great deal of trouble to show that my non-belief in the story is based upon what appears to me to be evident; firstly, that the accounts of the three synoptic Gospels are not independent, but are founded upon a common source; secondly, that, even if the story of the common tradition proceeded from a contemporary, it would still be worthy of very little credit, seeing the manner in which the legends about mediæval miracles have been propounded by contemporaries. And in illustration of this position I wrote a special essay about the miracles reported by Eginhard.[115]

In truth, one need go no further than Mr. Gladstone's sixth proposition to be convinced that contemporary testimony, even of well-known and distinguished persons, may be but a very frail reed for the support of the historian, when theological prepossession blinds the witness.[116]

PROP. 7. _And he treats the entire question, in the narrowed form in which it arises upon secular testimony, as if it were capable of a solution so clear and summary as to warrant the use of the extremest weapons of controversy against those who presume to differ from him._

The six heretical propositions which have gone before are enunciated with sufficient clearness to enable me to prove, without any difficulty, that, whosesoever they are, they are not mine. But number seven, I confess, is too hard for me. I cannot undertake to contradict that which I do not understand.

What is the "entire question" which "arises" in a "narrowed form" upon "secular testimony"? After much guessing, I am fain to give up the conundrum. The "question" may be the ownership of the pigs; or the ethnological character of the Gadarenes; or the propriety of meddling with other people's property without legal warrant. And each of these questions might be so "narrowed" when it arose on "secular testimony" that I should not know where I was. So I am silent on this part of the proposition.

But I do dimly discern, in the latter moiety of this mysterious paragraph, a reproof of that use of "the extremest weapons of controversy" which is attributed to me. Upon which I have to observe that I guide myself, in such matters, very much by the maxim of a great statesman, "Do ut des." If Mr. Gladstone objects to the employment of such weapons of defence, he would do well to abstain from them in attack. He should not frame charges which he has, afterwards, to admit are erroneous, in language of carefully calculated offensiveness ("Impregnable Rock," pp. 269-70); he should not assume that persons with whom he disagrees are so recklessly unconscientious as to evade the trouble of inquiring what has been said or known about a grave question ("Impregnable Rock," p. 273); he should not qualify the results of careful thought as "hand-over-head reasoning" ("Impregnable Rock," p. 274); he should not, as in the extraordinary propositions which I have just analysed, make assertions respecting his opponent's position and arguments which are contradicted by the plainest facts.

Persons who, like myself, have spent their lives outside the political world, yet take a mild and philosophical concern in what goes on in it, often find it difficult to understand what our neighbours call the psychological moment of this or that party leader, and are, occasionally, loth to believe in the seeming conditions of certain kinds of success. And when some chieftain, famous in political warfare, adventures into the region of letters or of science, in full confidence that the methods which have brought fame and honour in his own province will answer there, he is apt to forget that he will be judged by these people, on whom rhetorical artifices have long ceased to take effect; and to whom mere dexterity in putting together cleverly ambiguous phrases, and even the great art of offensive misrepresentation, are unspeakably wearisome. And, if that weariness finds its expression in sarcasm, the offender really has no right to cry out. Assuredly ridicule is no test of truth, but it is the righteous meed of some kinds of error. Nor ought the attempt to confound the expression of a revolted sense of fair dealing with arrogant impatience of contradiction, to restrain those to whom "the extreme weapons of controversy" come handy from using them. The function of police in the intellectual, if not in the civil, economy may sometimes be legitimately discharged by volunteers.

* * * * *

Some time ago in one of the many criticisms with which I am favoured, I met with the remark that, at our time of life, Mr. Gladstone and I might be better occupied than in fighting over the Gadarene pigs. And, if these too famous swine were the only parties to the suit, I, for my part, should fully admit the justice of the rebuke. But, under the beneficent rule of the Court of Chancery, in former times, it was not uncommon, that a quarrel about a few perches of worthless land, ended in the ruin of ancient families and the engulfing of great estates; and I think that our admonisher failed to observe the analogy--to note the momentous consequences of the judgment which may be awarded in the present apparently insignificant action _in re_ the swineherds of Gadara.

The immediate effect of such judgment will be the decision of the question, whether the men of the nineteenth century are to adopt the demonology of the men of the first century, as divinely revealed truth, or to reject it, as degrading falsity. The reverend Principal of King's College has delivered his judgment in perfectly clear and candid terms. Two years since, Dr. Wace said that he believed the story as it stands; and consequently he holds, as a part of divine revelation, that the spiritual world comprises devils, who, under certain circumstances, may enter men and be transferred from them to four-footed beasts. For the distinguished Anglican Divine and Biblical scholar, that is part and parcel of the teachings respecting the spiritual world which we owe to the founder of Christianity. It is an inseparable part of that Christian orthodoxy which, if a man rejects, he is to be considered and called an "infidel." According to the ordinary rules of interpretation of language, Mr. Gladstone must hold the same view.

If antiquity and universality are valid tests of the truth of any belief, no doubt this is one of the beliefs so certified. There are no known savages, nor people sunk in the ignorance of partial civilisation, who do not hold them. The great majority of Christians have held them and still hold them. Moreover the oldest records we possess of the early conceptions of mankind in Egypt and in Mesopotamia prove that exactly such demonology, as is implied in the Gadarene story, formed the substratum, and, among the early Accadians, apparently the greater part, of their supposed knowledge of the spiritual world. M. Lenormant's profoundly interesting work on Babylonian magic and the magical texts given in the Appendix to Professor Sayce's "Hibbert Lectures" leave no doubt on this head. They prove that the doctrine of possession, and even the particular case of pig, possession,[117] were firmly believed in by the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians before the tribes of Israel invaded Palestine. And it is evident that these beliefs, from some time after the exile and probably much earlier, completely interpenetrated the Jewish mind, and thus became inseparably interwoven with the fabric of the synoptic Gospels.

Therefore, behind the question of the acceptance of the doctrines of the oldest heathen demonology as part of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity, there lies the question of the credibility of the Gospels, and of their claim to act as our instructors, outside that ethical province in which they appeal to the consciousness of all thoughtful men. And still, behind this problem, there lies another--how far do these ancient records give a sure foundation to the prodigious fabric of Christian dogma, which has been built upon them by the continuous labours of speculative theologians, during eighteen centuries?

I submit that there are few questions before the men of the rising generation, on the answer to which the future hangs more fatally, than this. We are at the parting of the ways. Whether the twentieth century shall see a recrudescence of the superstitions of mediæval papistry, or whether it shall witness the severance of the living body of the ethical ideal of prophetic Israel from the carcase, foul with savage superstitions and cankered with false philosophy, to which the theologians have bound it, turns upon their final judgment of the Gadarene tale.

The gravity of the problems ultimately involved in the discussion of the legend of Gadara will, I hope, excuse a persistence in returning to the subject, to which I should not have been moved by merely personal considerations.

With respect to the diluvial invective which overflowed thirty-three pages of the "Nineteenth Century" last January, I doubt not that it has a catastrophic importance in the estimation of its author. I, on the other hand, may be permitted to regard it as a mere spate; noisy and threatening while it lasted, but forgotten almost as soon as it was over. Without my help, it will be judged by every instructed and clear-headed reader; and that is fortunate, because, were aid necessary, I have cogent reasons for withholding it.

In an article characterised by the same qualities of thought and diction, entitled "A Great Lesson," which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for September 1887, the Duke of Argyll, firstly, charged the whole body of men of science, interested in the question, with having conspired to ignore certain criticisms of Mr. Darwin's theory of the origin of coral reefs; and, secondly, he asserted that some person unnamed had "actually induced" Mr. John Murray to delay the publication of his views on that subject "for two years."

It was easy for me and for others to prove that the first statement was not only, to use the Duke of Argyll's favourite expression, "contrary to fact," but that it was without any foundation whatever. The second statement rested on the Duke of Argyll's personal authority. All I could do was to demand the production of the evidence for it. Up to the present time, so far as I know, that evidence has not made its appearance; nor has there been any withdrawal of, or apology for, the erroneous charge.

Under these circumstances most people will understand why the Duke of Argyll may feel quite secure of having the battle all to himself, whenever it pleases him to attack me.

[See the note at the end of "Hasisadra's Adventure" (vol iv. p. 283). The discussion on coral reefs, at the meeting of the British Association this year, proves that Mr. Darwin's views are defended now, as strongly as in 1891, by highly competent authorities. October 25, 1893.]

FOOTNOTES:

[107] _Nineteenth Century_, February 1891, pp. 339-40.

[108] Neither is it of any consequence whether the locality of the supposed miracle was Gadara, or Gerasa, or Gergesa. But I may say that I was well acquainted with Origen's opinion respecting Gergesa. It is fully discussed and rejected in Riehm's _Handwörterbuch_. In Kitto's _Biblical Cyclopædia_ (ii. p. 51) Professor Porter remarks that Origen merely "_conjectures_" that Gergesa was indicated: and he adds, "Now, in a question of this kind conjectures cannot be admitted. We must implicitly follow the most ancient and creditable testimony, which clearly pronounces in favour of Gadarênhôn. This reading is adopted by Tischendorf, Alford, and Tregelles."

[109] I may call attention, in passing, to the fact that this authority, at any rate, has no sort of doubt of the fact that Jewish Law did not rule in Gadara (indeed, under the head of "Gadara," in the same work, it is expressly stated that the population of the place consisted "predominantly of heathens"), and that he scouts the notion that the Gadarene swineherds were Jews.

[110] The evidence adduced, so far as post-exile times are concerned, appears to me insufficient to prove this assertion.

[111] Even Leviticus xi. 26, cited without reference to the context, will not serve the purpose; because the swine _is_ "cloven-footed" (Lev. xi. 7).

[112] 1st Gospel: "And the devils _besought him_, saying, If Thou cast us out send us away _into_ the herd of swine." 2d Gospel: "They _besought him_, saying, Send us _into_ the swine." 3d Gospel: "They _intreated him_ that he would give them leave to enter _into_ them."

[113] See Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, Bd. III. p. 408.

[114] _Nineteenth Century_, March 1889 (p. 362).

[115] "The Value of Witness to the Miraculous." _Nineteenth Century_, March 1889.

[116] I cannot ask the Editor of this Review to reprint pages of an old article,--but the following passages sufficiently illustrate the extent and the character of the discrepancy between the facts of the case and Mr. Gladstone's account of them:--

"Now, in the Gadarene affair, I do not think I am unreasonably sceptical if I say that the existence of demons who can be transferred from a man to a pig does thus contravene probability. Let me be perfectly candid. I admit I have no _à priori_ objection to offer.... I declare, as plainly as I can, that I am unable to show cause why these transferable devils should not exist." ... ("Agnosticism," _Nineteenth Century_, 1889, p. 177).

"What then do we know about the originator, or originators, of this groundwork--of that threefold tradition which all three witnesses (in Paley's phrase) agree upon--that we should allow their mere statements to outweigh the counter arguments of humanity, of common sense, of exact science, and to imperil the respect which all would be glad to be able to render to their Master?" (_ibid._ p. 175).

I then go on through a couple of pages to discuss the value of the evidence of the synoptics on critical and historical grounds. Mr. Gladstone cites the essay from which these passages are taken, whence I suppose he has read it; though it may be that he shares the impatience of Cardinal Manning where my writings are concerned. Such impatience will account for, though it will not excuse, his sixth proposition.

[117] The wicked, before being annihilated, returned to the world to disturb men; they entered into the body of unclean animals, "often that of a pig, as on the Sarcophagus of Seti I. in the Soane Museum."--Lenormant, _Chaldean Magic,_ p. 88, Editorial Note.

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